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Article: The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity.(Review)
- Article from:
- The Christian Century
- Article date:
- March 17, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 The Christian Century Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity
By Teresa M. Shaw. Fortress, 298 pp., $27.00 paperback.
IT IS ALWAYS gratifying to find a book rigorous enough to please specialists and engaging enough to appeal to a general audience. Teresa Shaw addresses ascetic prescriptions and practices whose formation has long engrossed historians and whose modern analogues have often preoccupied contemporary Christians. Building on the work of scholars who have sought to explain the diverse modes of bodily renunciation in early and medieval Christianity, Shaw highlights what she describes as the "profound ambivalence" with which Christian ...