The sexual abuse of children has now become a major and publicly recognized concern (and high time too!). A recent study by John W. Martens shows that for early Christians, too, it was a major concern, and that this is reflected in what appears to be a distinctive early Christian vocabulary to refer to the practice: John W. Martens, “‘Do Not Sexually Abuse Children’: The Language of Early Christian Sexual Ethics,” in Children in Late Ancient Christianity, eds. Cornelia B. Horn and Robert R. Phenix (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 227-54.
As Martens notes, there was a whole Greek vocabulary for the practice of having sex with children: “pederastia” (“child-love”), “pederastes” (“child-lover”), etc. Indeed, Roman-era poets and others celebrate the practice, and it seems to have been tolerated widely. It was particularly slave-children who likely suffered the most. But (and this is Martens’ contribution) in early Christian texts we see what appears to be a rejection of these benign and condoning terms in favour of terms to express forthrightly that the practice is evil and destructive.
In Christian texts from the second century onward, the person who engages in sex with children is called a “paidophthoros” (“child-corrupter/abuser”), and there is the prohibition, “do not corrupt/abuse children” (“me paidophthoreseis“). Our earliest instances are in Epistle of Barnabas (10:6; 19:4) and Didache (2:2). These terms seem to have been coined by early Christians to re-label and condemn the practice and those who engage in it: Not “child-love,” but “child-corruption.” https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2015/08/26/early-christianity-on-sexual-abuse-of-children/
Read this rest with the above link.
-Steven C
No comments:
Post a Comment