Read more
Veiling meant many things to the ancients. On women, veils could signify virtue, beauty, piety, self-control, and status. On men, covering the head could signify piety or an emotion such as grief. Late Roman mosaics show people covering their hands with veils when receiving or giving something precious. They covered their altars, doorways, shrines, and temples; and many covered their heads when sacrificing to their gods. Early Christian intellectuals such as Origen and Gregory of Nyssa used these everyday practices of veiling to interpret sacred texts. These writers understood the divine as veiled, and the notion of a veiled spiritual truth informed their interpretation of the bible. Veiling in the Late Antique World provides the first assessment of textual and material evidence for veiling in the late antique Mediterranean world. Susannah Drake here explores the relation between the social history of the veil and the intellectual history of the concept of truth as veiled/revealed.
List of contents
Introduction: veils and revelations; 1. Veiling in the ancient Mediterranean; 2. Veils in Corinth: Paul's first letter to the Corinthians; 3. Women's veiling practices in late antiquity; 4. Draping the sacred: veils in late ancient ritual, art, and architecture; 5. Origen's veils: the ask¿sis of interpretation; 6. Gregory's veils: Gregory of Nyssa's homilies on the song of songs; Epilogue: Derrida's tallith.
About the author
Susanna Drake is Professor of Religious Studies at Macalaster College. The author of Slandering the Jew: Sexuality and Difference in Early Christian Texts (2013), she specializes in late antique religions, Jewish and Christian relations, and gender and sexuality studies.
