by Jose Fenestra

Created on: January 29, 2011

Virginia Burruse’s Sex Lives of Saints, and Stephen D. Moore’s God’s Gym are two examples of queer interpretations of early Christianity. Both of these works provide a strange interpretation of not only early Christian texts, but also Christian ideas. The Sex Lives of Saints does this by introducing ancient stories and showing the reader different ways of thinking of those stories. God’s Gym is split into three sections, each talking about some aspect of early Christian theology. 

In the Introduction of The Sex Lives of Saints, the authior explains how many of the past characters gave up normative rolls in society to have more socially taboo ones. These socially taboo rolls are only taboo to those who try to force their views of today’s society on those of the past. From the introduction, Burrus moves into discussing various people and how they cast out their social roles to live and wander alone. These hermits were viewed as socially awkward, but had certain strange reasons for these actions. Her book then begins to discuss various women of the past. Again, these stories are made to be viewed in a non normative way. These strange acts by women are put into a different meaning and introduced to the reader. She presents psychoanalytic views on femininity. This moved into Taboo Acts. Mixed and forbidden desires are then introduced with inappropriate acts. Various people’s inappropriate desires and acts are reflections on her main theme of the book. This unusual theory is made to help view ancient texts in an atypical way. Burrus then moves onto the subject of Prostitution. Prostitution is brought in a different light and makes the reader question the derogatory thoughts that come to mind when thinking of a harlot. The theme is well rounded up in the last sentence of the book. “ Seduction is God’s challenge to the saints and also the saints challenge to god-the very wager of all asceticism”(Burrus 159).

The book God’s Gym, is split up into three sections; torture, dissection, and resurrection. The first section, torture, discusses the torturing of Jesus. “ The central symbol of Christianity is the figure of a tortured man”(Moore 4). The book then generalizes some information about torture and then talks about some specific situations that  are viewed in a different light. In the dissection section the author discusses the hierarchies of dissection. It describes how the book Grays Anatomy correlates with historical views on dissections. It then discusses various anatomical parts and tries to explain different myths of Jesus. Each anatomical part is examined and discussed in detail. The parts that are described are mostly the parts of Jesus upon which pain had been inflicted. The final section, resurrection, examines ways individuals strive to attain “perfection”.   The author reveals the relationship between the art of contemporary body building and the Bible.   

These two works help show different views on sections of Christianity. They take given information on early Christianity and offer rather distorted views of it by pointing out miniscule facts. These unusual ideas will perhaps offer a reader different views and are something that should be taken into account when studying or reading early Christian texts. 

 The sex lives of saints. An erotics of ancient hagiography. By Virginia Burrus. (Divinations. Rereading Late Ancient Religion.) Pp. vi+216. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.

Moore, Stephen D. God’s Gym: Divine Male Bodies of the Bible. New York: Routledge, 

1996.  

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