ABSTRACT
It will be evident by now that for many of the authors in this book, including the editors, the topic of asceticism and the New Testament is appealing especially because of its subversive or transformative potential. Subversion would be at hand, or underhand, wherever the practice of (ancient) asceticism might be seen to represent a particular form of social resistance to different (ancient) cultural hegemonies. The same is also true insofar as the question itself of (ancient) asceticism helps to unravel and to reorient prevailing assumptions and analytical habits of contemporary (modern) New Testament scholarship. Hence all of the chapters presented herein under the aegis of “Paul” and “Jesus” that claim, forthrightly or cautiously, to have found evidence of “asceticism” in their respective New Testament text(s) tend to understand by the term “asceticism” a disciplinary practice that would stand in significant opposition to one or more aspects of the surrounding dominant culture. The same practice would also ideally and simultaneously struggle to articulate an alternative, counter cultural, previously subjugated social sensibility. Those chapters which claim to find no evidence of “asceticism” also do so, it seems, on the basis of a similar understanding of what the term “asceticism” properly designates.
