ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the sense of self constituted by various discourses of conversion and how this self receives somatic articulation and representation. Conversion is a transgressive act, a crossing of boundaries that both creates and destroys identities. While for both late antique Judaism and Christianity conversion is both a state of mind and a state of body, the type of body constructed through conversion was different. It is interesting to note that, while the rabbinic tale ends with conversion in Palestine, Pelagia's conversion takes place in Antioch and her transvestite sainthood involves an additional journey to Jerusalem. Pelagia is a deep ditch of mire' who seeks the cleansing bath of God's baptism'. The chapter explains the rabbinic conversion ritual is basically non-narrative or, more exactly, all narrative elements point towards the future. In biblical and rabbinic law the emission of semen renders a man impure. Both of the Talmudic traditions reinterpret the biblical paradigm.
