Hermeneutics of Holiness Ancient Jewish and Christian Notions of Sexuality and Religious Community

This book tells the story of how the biblical notions of 'holy person' or 'holy community' comes to be defined by sexual and marriage practices by various interpretive communities in late antiquity. Koltun-Fromm argues that the biblical texts already create a link between holiness and sexuality which is further interpreted by later readers. Tracing this development from the biblical texts into the fourth century, she suggests that sexual practices among Jews and Christians, particularly ascetic sexual practices, are rooted in the history of biblical exegesis and tradition as much as in any other late ancient phenomena. Moreover holiness as sexual practice thus helped these groups demarcate differentiation from each other. Hence this book establishes the importance of biblical interpretation for late ancient Jewish and Christian practices, the centrality of holiness as a category for self definition, and fourth-century asceticism's relationship to biblical texts and interpretive history.

Associate Professor of Religion, Haverford College