The Social Significance of the Sacralized Body in The Epistle to the Romans: Pauline Subversion of Cultural Constructions of Human Worth

body;status;honor;shame;sacrality

Bay, Erin Stuart ; Trebilco, Paul ; Allan, Arlene

University of Otago

关键词: body;    status;    honor;    shame;    sacrality;   

Others  :  https://ourarchive.otago.ac.nz/bitstream/10523/6182/3/BayErinS2016PhD.pdf

美国|英语

来源: Otago University Research Archive

【 摘 要 】

The hierarchical stratification of Greco-Roman culture emphasized corporeal features as integral to maintaining social status.The elite body was protected from physical and sexual assault; the servile or low-status body was liable to such dishonoring treatment.The body and its presentation – its gestures, postures and clothing – formed a canvas which communicated to others a person’s social location.Low status, then, was a somatic phenomemon: the scars of floggings, for example, signaled one’s degraded status and left one vulnerable to further abuse.On the other hand, the primary literature characterizes the bodies of high-ranking males (the politician, the general, the paterfamilias) or of elite females (the priestess, wife or daughter) in sacral terminology. This thesis investigates the meaning of Paul’s sacralization of the body in the Epistle to the Romans.Romans 12:1 states ;;parakalō oun hymas … parastēsai ta sōmata hymōn thysian zōsan hagian euareston tō Theō”, that is: ;;I exhort you … to offer your bodies [to God] as a sacrifice which is living, holy and pleasing to God” (my translation).Given the predominantly low social status of his hearers, Paul’s construction of their bodies as holy helps establish an identity of high worth which conflicts with their social locations.Paul’s construal of these degraded bodies is at odds with the cultural norm to characterize only elite bodies in sacral and honorable terms.For many of Paul’s hearers, their bodily identity was the antithesis of the sacral. I will argue that, by construing the Christ-followers’ bodies as sacral, Paul subverts the cultural construal of many of his hearers’ bodies.Those whose bodily experiences and appearances would have been construed by the social code as demeaning have this interpretation contested by Paul.For him, the suffering of the body is no longer an indication of degraded status; rather, it is to be considered sacrificial, viz., an aspect of worshiping identity.In contrast with the tendency of biblical scholars to neglect the lived experiences of Paul and his hearers as bodily beings, it is suggested that Paul is deliberate in claiming that it is the bodies of his hearers which are to be offered to God.Rather than demanding that the Christ-followers offer ;;themselves” to God in some abstract sense, Paul constructs their bodies as sacred phenomena which stand under God’s claim.By construing their low-status bodies in such terms, Paul subverts the dominant social narrative which read the bodies of the elite in terms of sacrality and honor and degraded those whose bodies were vulnerable to physical and sexual assault, thereby offering a potent counter-reading of the low-status body.