The Care of the Self in Early Christian Texts

Download or read book The Care of the Self in Early Christian Texts written by Deborah Niederer Saxon and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-05 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the first three Christian centuries through the lens of what Foucault called “the care of the self.” This lens reveals a rich variation among early Christ movements by illuminating their practices instead of focusing on what we anachronistically assume to have been their beliefs. A deep analysis of the discourse of martyrdom demonstrates how writers like Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp represented self-care. Deborah Niederer Saxon brings to light an entire spectrum of alternative views represented in newly-discovered texts from Nag Hammadi and elsewhere. This insightful analysis has implications for feminist scholarship and exposes the false binary of thinking in terms of “orthodoxy” versus “heresy”/”Gnosticism.”