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Abandoned to Lust: Sexual Slander and Ancient Christianity. By Jennifer Wright Knust. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. xviii + 279 pp. $45.00 cloth.
Jennifer Wright Knust's Abandoned to Lust: Sexual Slander and Ancient Christianity explores how accusations of sexual immorality helped produce and solidify early Christian group boundaries. Contextualizing early Christian "sex talk" in the larger framework of Greco-Roman invective, Knust convincingly argues that although Christian writers constantly accused pagans, Jews, and each other of sexual immorality, such polemic provides little evidence for actual practices. It does, however, reflect a highly charged rhetorical terrain in which early Christian writers tried to eliminate their opponents, police in-group boundaries, deflect external criticism, and enhance their own authority. Moving away from the question of these accusations' truth value to the issue of how did such claims function, Knust investigates the ways first- through third-century Christian writers employed "sexual slander as a discursive practice implicated in competitive struggles for power and prestige" (13).
After a brief introduction (provocatively titled "Who's on Top"), Abandoned to Lust begins with an overview of sexual slander in the ancient world. Examining a wide range of classical sources-from Cassius Dio's depictions of Cleopatra to Augustan marriage legislation-Knust persuasively demonstrates "the importance of sexualized invective across genres, eras, and regions" (48). The presence of sexual slander in model oratories and its...