‘Lest She Pollute the Sanctuary’
The Influence of the Protevangelium Iacobi on Women's Status in Christianity
By (author) P. M. Rumsey
No text in Christian history has had such a profound influence on how Christians perceive women: this book explores the Protevangelium Jacobi, the most influential Christian text that most Christians have never heard of! This work explores a second-century text, the Protevangelium Iacobi, and, by examining current scholarship on the subject, assesses the way it has influenced the Christian perception of women and the ordering of their lives through the centuries down to the present day. It demonstrates how Mary, as she is presented in this text with extreme and unreal emphasis on her purity, has been held up as an unattainable model for all Christian women and takes as a case study the lives of contemplative women in the Roman Catholic church, showing how the image of Mary impossibly secluded in the temple has been partly responsible for their enclosure. By exploring the way female biological processes have been allowed to intrude on the sacred, tracing this influence from the Old Testament, through this text and its connection with Mary to the present day, it argues that this has been a significant factor in the denial of presbyteral ordination to women in some Christian churches. One of the original features of this work is the tracing of art work depicting scenes from the text across the Christian world, thus demonstrating the breadth of its influence, right down to New Age writings today.
- By (author) P. M. Rumsey
Other Titles in this Series
Inventio meditativa
The Rhetoric and Hermeneutics of Meditation in Hugh of Saint-Victor, Guigo II, and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio
Volume 58
Analogical Identities
The Creation of the Christian Self: Beyond Spirituality and Mysticism in the Patristic Era
Volume 28
Friendship as Ecclesial Binding
A Reading of St. Augustine's Theology of Friendship from his In Iohannis Euangelium Tractatus
Volume 48
The Christian Topography of Early Islamic Jerusalem
The Evidence of Willibald of Eichstatt (700-787 CE)
Volume 2
Through the Bone and Marrow
Re-examining Theological Encounters with Dance in Medieval Europe
Volume 45
Removing Masculine Layers to Reveal a Holy Womanhood
The Female Transvestite Monks of Late Antique Eastern Christianity
Volume 13
‘The Letter Killeth’
Redeeming Time in Augustine's Understanding of the Authority of Scripture
Volume 51
Saints and Sinners in Early Christian Ireland
Moral Theology in the Lives of Saints Brigit and Columba
Volume 3
The Spirit, the World and the Trinity
Origen's and Augustine's Understanding of the Gospel of John
Volume 40
‘The loss of a minute is just so much loss of life’
Edward Robinson and Eli Smith in the Holy Land
Volume 39
Healing not Punishment. Penitentials in the Insular Church
Historical and Pastoral Networking of the Penitentials between the Sixth and the Eighth Centuries
Volume 25
Computus and its Cultural Context in the Latin West, AD 300-1200
Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on the Science of Computus in Ireland and Europe, Galway, 14-16 July, 2006
Volume 5
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