‘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
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The experience of God's withdrawal in late antique exegesis, Christology and ascetic literature
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The Easter Controversy of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Its Manuscripts, Texts, and Tables
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Volume 57
Seeking the Face of God
The Reception of Augustine in the Mystical Thought of Bernard of Clairvaux and William of St Thierry
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The ‘Universal Prayer’ in the Ancient Latin Liturgies. Patristic Evidence and Liturgical Texts
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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
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Friendship as Ecclesial Binding
A Reading of St. Augustine's Theology of Friendship from his In Iohannis Euangelium Tractatus
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Through the Bone and Marrow
Re-examining Theological Encounters with Dance in Medieval Europe
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The Christian Topography of Early Islamic Jerusalem
The Evidence of Willibald of Eichstatt (700-787 CE)
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