The Sentences of Sextus and the origins of Christian ascetiscism /Daniele Pevarello.

Revised thesis (Ph. D.) - University of Cambridge, 2012.

Includes bibliographies and index.

Introduction : the golden cup of Babylon -- The sentences of Sextus : reception and interpretation -- The testimony of origen -- Sextus in Contra Celsum -- The sentences among radical ascetics -- Controversies over the sentences in Latin Christianity -- Rufinus' Latin Sextus : a manual of asceticism -- Jerome : the sentences and moral perfectionism -- The sentences and the Pelagian understanding of sin -- The Later Ascetic tradition up to the modern era -- Evagrius of Pontus and the Armenian Sextus -- The sentences in Egypt and Syria -- Sextus in the monastic tradition of the west -- From the monastic scriptorium to the printing press -- Sextus in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries -- The first critical studies -- Sextus in nineteenth-century German scholarship -- The beginning of the twentieth century -- The sentences of Sextus in the modern scholarly debate -- Sextus between Hellenistic and Christian morality -- Sextus between early Christian wisdom and Gnostic asceticism -- Sextus in recent scholarship -- Conclusion -- Looking forward -- Sextus and sexual morality : castration, celibacy and procreation -- Sext. 12-13 and 273 : the problem of castration -- Self-castration in the sentences -- Literal and allegorical castration -- From suicide to castration -- Sext. 230a : celibacy in the sentences of Sextus -- Companions of God? : variations on Paul -- The special bond between God and the ascetic continent -- Sextus, procreation and the Pythagorean tradition -- Marriage in Sextus and Clitarchus -- The ... husband in Sext. 231 -- Aborting procreationism -- The diet of love -- Conclusion -- Looking forward -- Sages without property : the example of Sext. 15-21 -- The ... in Sextus -- Dispossession and freedom -- Poverty as godlike self-sufficiency -- Self-sufficiency as an ascetic practice in the Sentences -- From the ... to the ... -- Ascetic Christians in a Cynic's Rags? -- Poor sages and poor monks -- Sextus and Caesar's Denarius -- "To the world the things of the world" (Sext. 20) -- The rule of necessity -- Sextus' interpretation and Alexandrian Christianity -- Sextus and wealth : further pagan and Christian interactions -- Conclusion -- Looking forward -- Wordiness, brevity and silence in Sextus -- The dangers of Wordiness -- Idle, thoughtless talking -- Prov 10:19 LXX in Sext. 155 -- Sextus and brevity -- The words and the Word : brevity as a theological and moral problem -- "Wisdom accompanies brevity of speech" (Sext. 156) -- Sextus' Laconic Sage -- Concise Socrates, concise Moses, concise Jesus -- From brevity to silence -- The austerity of the Christian sage -- Conclusion -- Looking Forward -- The social life of the Ascetic sage -- A sage in the world : philanthropy, purity and separation -- The sage as a philanthropist -- Wisdom as an act of purification -- The world as a separate entity in Sextus -- The Sage's solitude -- From cosmopolitism to political disengagement -- Seclusion and the quest for wisdom -- Contemplation and Imitation -- The soul's journey towards God -- Contemplation and imitation of God -- Conclusion -- Conclusion --

"Daniele Pevarello analyzes the Sentences of Sextus, a second century collection of Greek aphorisms compiled by Sextus, an otherwise unknown Christian author. The specific character of Sextus' collection lies in the fact that the Sentences are a Christian rewriting of Hellenistic sayings, some of which are still preserved in pagan gnomologies and in Porphyry. Pevarello investigates the problem of continuity and discontinuity between the ascetic tendencies of the Christian compiler and aphorisms promoting self-control in his pagan sources. In particular, he shows how some aspects of the Stoic, Cynic, Platonic and Pythagorean moral traditions, such as sexual restraint, voluntary poverty, the practice of silence and of a secluded life were creatively combined with Sextus' ascetic agenda against the background of the biblical tradition. Drawing on this adoption of Hellenistic moral traditions, Pevarello shows how great a part the moral tradition of Greek paideia played in the shaping and development of self-restraint among early Christian ascetics"--

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