Early Christianity and the Discourse of Female Desire

Abstract

The most cursory reading of early Christian literature demonstrates that the representation of women presented major difficulties. They attracted attention from Christian writers --- almost exclusively male --- both as members of the Christian community and as the subject of discourse. Much of the latter was negative in character, expressing suspicion of the female and denying women a place equal to that of men in the Christian dispensation. Yet it coexisted not merely with a glorification of female virgins in general, and especially of the virgin mother of Jesus, but also with the description of the relation of the soul and God in explicitly sexual and bridal imagery. This chapter explores some of these tensions within the context of early Christian texts and asks what they mean in relation to early Christian attitudes to women. I use the term `early Christian' rather broadly, since I shall be concerned not primarily with the New Testament period but with the centuries during which Christianity became the majority religion in the empire, and especially the period from Constantine (AD 306--37) to the sixth century.