Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism

by Bernadette J. Brooten

Overview

Love Between Women examines female homoeroticism and the role of women in the ancient Roman world. Employing an unparalleled range of cultural sources, Brooten finds evidence of marriages between women and establishes that condemnations of female homoerotic practices were based on widespread awareness of love between women.

"An extraordinary accomplishment. . . . A definitive source for all future discussion of homoeroticism and the Bible."—Mary Rose D'Angelo, Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review

"[Brooten's] convincing analysis . . . not only profoundly reshapes our understanding of the past, but it should also shape the way in which that past, particularly the early Christian texts with their immense normative weight, will be used for the future."—Anne L. Clark, Journal of Lesbian Studies

"Love Between Women gives contemporary debates on sexuality a carefully delineated past. It boldly insists upon a different future, one informed by history but not tyrannized by it."—Susan Ackerman, Lambda Book Report

"Fascinating, provocative and lucid. . . . Brooten has made a fundamental contribution to women's and gender studies, gay and lesbian studies, and classics."—Elizabeth A. Castelli, Women's Review of Books

Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Studies Book, 1997

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226075921
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	11/01/1998
Series:	The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society
Edition description:	1
Pages:	446
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations and Technical Terms, Short Titles, and Keys to Symbols
1: Introduction
2: Introduction: Of Sappho, Woman-Woman Marriage, and the Ways of the Egyptians
3: "Inflame Her Liver with Love": Greek Erotic Spells from Egypt
4: Predetermined Erotic Orientations: Astrological Texts
5: Women with Masculine Desires: Medical Treatments
6: Unnatural Love: Classifying Dreams
7: Introduction: Of British Schoolteachers and Romans
8: Paul's Letter to the Romans: Interpretive Frameworks and Female Homoeroticism
9: Romans 1:18-32: A Commentary
10: Intertextual Echoes in Romans 1:18-32
11: Tortures in Hell: Early Church Fathers on Female Homoeroticism
12: Conclusion
Select Annotated Bibliography on Roman 1:26f and the New Testament and Homosexuality Generally
Indexes
Glossary
Index

Editorial Reviews

An extraordinary accomplishment...A definitive source for all future discussion of homoeroticism and the Bible.
— Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review

Mary Rose D'Angelo