“Exegetical Torture” in Early Christian Biblical Interpretation: The Case of Origen of Alexandria
This essay engages Page duBois’s work on torture and truth to contextualize a curious logic in Origen of Alexandria’s exegetical method. That logic insisted on “torturing” (Greek, basanos) the text in the style of a forensic investigation. From Thucydides to Galen and Origen, this vocabulary of exeg...
| Published in: | Biblical interpretation |
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| Subtitles: | Redrawing the Boundaries |
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2017
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| In: |
Biblical interpretation
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| IxTheo Classification: | HA Bible KAB Church history 30-500; early Christianity |
| Further subjects: | B
basanos
Galen of Pergamum
Origen of Alexandria
slavery
torture
truth
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| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | This essay engages Page duBois’s work on torture and truth to contextualize a curious logic in Origen of Alexandria’s exegetical method. That logic insisted on “torturing” (Greek, basanos) the text in the style of a forensic investigation. From Thucydides to Galen and Origen, this vocabulary of exegetical torture figured texts as uncooperative witnesses in a situation familiar to ancient readers from the courtroom and in their own households. This agonistic paradigm of torture and truth offers the best interpretative context in which to read Origen’s call for the basanos – a metaphor very much alive in his work and world. The study concludes by connecting exegesis and martyrology as discourses in early Christian literary culture, which share the same fundamentally agonistic rhetoric of cross-examination.
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| ISSN: | 1568-5152 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Biblical interpretation
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15685152-00251p05 |