Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. List of Abbreviations xi
4. Introduction. Dangling Bodies, Robes of Glory: The Garb of Embodiment in Ancient Christianity 1
5. PART I: MAKING BODIES
6. Body and Soul: Union in Creation, Reunion at Resurrection 15
7. Jesus’s Dazzling Garments: Origen’s Exegesis of the Transfiguration in the Commentary on Matthew 35
8. Conversing with Clothes: Germanos and Mary’s Belt 57
9. PART II: PERFORMING BODIES
10. “Denominationalism” in Fourth-Century Syria: Readings in Saint Ephraem’s Hymns against Heresies, Madrāshê 22–24 79
11. A School for the Soul: John Chrysostom on Mimēsis and the Force of Ritual Habit 101
12. A Question of Character: The “Labor of Composition” as “Preventative Medicine” in Theodoret of Cyrrhus’s Religious History 124
13. “I Want to Be Alone”: Ascetic Celebrity and the Splendid Isolation of Simeon Stylites 145
14. Crowds and Collective Affect in Romanos’s Biblical Retellings 169
15. Christian Legend in Medieval Iraq: Siblings, Sacrifice, and Sanctity in Behnam and Sarah 191
16. PART III: SCRIPTING BODIES
17. Five Women Martyrs: From Persia to Crete 221
18. Gregory of Nazianzus’s Poetic Ascetic Aesthetic 234
19. Eclipsed in Exile: In Defense of Athanasius and the Ethiopians 263
20. Sacred Bonds: Religion, Relationships, and the Art of Pedagogy 276
21. “And Yet the Books”: Patristics in the Footnotes 294
22. Cultural Heritage Preservation and Canon Formation: What Syriac and Coptic Can Teach Us about the Historiography of the Digital Humanities 318
23. Bibliography 347
24. List of Contributors 391
25. Index 397
26. Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought 411