Book contents
- Food, Virtue, and the Shaping of Early Christianity
- Food, Virtue, and the Shaping of Early Christianity
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The Medicine of Moderation
- 3 From Dinner Theater to Domestic Church in Late Antique Antioch
- 4 Shenoute’s Botanical Virtues
- 5 The Places of God
- 6 Meals, Mouths, and Martyrs
- 7 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - From Dinner Theater to Domestic Church in Late Antique Antioch
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 August 2020
- Food, Virtue, and the Shaping of Early Christianity
- Food, Virtue, and the Shaping of Early Christianity
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The Medicine of Moderation
- 3 From Dinner Theater to Domestic Church in Late Antique Antioch
- 4 Shenoute’s Botanical Virtues
- 5 The Places of God
- 6 Meals, Mouths, and Martyrs
- 7 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The ideal Christian household, according to one of John Chrysostom’s best-known dictums, is a little church (ἐκκλησία μικρὰ). With this identification, he places the personal virtuous regimens of Chapter 2 in a spatial framework that shapes the lay Christian experience just as significantly as do the medico-philosophical and economic frameworks we saw there. This, too, is a metaphor, in the sense that it structures one thing (the Christian household) in terms of another (the church) but, like the medical metaphors of Chapter 2, it has such tangible real-world entailments that it practically functions as a nonfigurative statement. In addition, it is a metaphor that involves the transference of meaning between two places. To understand what he means by it, we must look at the meaning-making power of place, and the place-making power of accumulated meaning.
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- Food, Virtue, and the Shaping of Early Christianity , pp. 69 - 106Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020