Ascetisism

Asceticism. Edited by Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis, with the assistance of Gay L. Byron and William S. Love. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. xxxiii + 638 pp. $125.00 (cloth).

This volume collects papers from an interdisciplinary conference on asceticism held in New York in 1993. The conference papers represent a wide variety of religious traditions (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Indian), including less well-known ones, such as the Zoroastrian. A considerable range of methodologies is also represented, from the straight historical, to the comparative-religions approach, to philosophical, archaeological and feminist studies. Participants examine ancient practices, contemporary practices, iconography, literature and even the way in which modern medical research supports some of the traditional claims of ascetics.

The editors and conference organizers attempted to create unity out of this plethora of...