Divine Deliverance Pain and Painlessness in Early Christian Martyr Texts [Hardcover]

Does martyrdom hurt? The obvious answer to this question is “yes.” L. Stephanie Cobb, asserts, however, that early Christian martyr texts respond to this question with an emphatic “no!”Divine Deliveranceexamines the original martyr texts of the second through fifth centuries, concluding that these narratives in fact seek to demonstrate the Christian martyrs’ imperviousness to pain. For these martyrs, God was present with, and within, the martyrs, delivering them from pain. These martyrs’ claims not to feel pain define and redefine Christianity in the ancient world: whereas Christians did not deny the reality of their subjection to state violence, they argued that they were not ultimately vulnerable to its painful effects.

L. Stephanie Cobbis the George and Sallie Cutchin Camp Professor of Bible in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Richmond. She is also author ofDying to Be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts.

“Are ancient Christian martyr texts sadistic? Masochistic? Why carefully catalogue a victim’s excruciating death if not to valorize pain? InDivine Deliverance,L. Stephanie Cobb explores depictions of martyrs as oblivious to the pain inflicted on them by torture. Her delightfully accessible discussions of data from a wide subset of Greek and Latin texts expose the variously successful narrative techniques employed to describe torture and the ways in which these techniques effect a shift from a credible (history) to an incredible (theology) generic horizon. The purpose of such a shift was to not to collapse but to broaden the interpretive distance between martyrs and the mundane world, allowing audiences to marvel at painless torture as divine analgesia imparted by Christ in staged usurpations of Roman state power. Highly recommended!”—Clare K. Rothschild, Lewis University

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