[fe]male virgins mutatis mutandis op hoopjes .....
Vreemde vogels dus al met al die verschillende soorten van joden, christenen, moslims, hindoes, boeddhisten & alle andere gelovigen & ongelovigen in wat dan ook! Allemaal gewone mensen, maar toch: very "strange"!!!
Moeilijk om algemeen menselijke zaken te scheiden van al die 'bijgelovige', bovennatuurlijke & symbolische?
In early Christianity for men, the pursuit of Christian ascesis entailed the rejection of public life and therefore of the hierarchies of office and gender; in this respect their opponents were not far off the mark when the insinuated that male ascetics were 'feminized' through their rejection of the most basic cultural expressions of male identity!
Sulpicius Severus, a Gallic ascetic synchronous with our talmudic text [zie ook allerlei voorgaande mydiverhaaltjes i/d afgelopen jaren], like Ambrose, his contemporary & associate explicitly identifies women, and especially virginal women, as his models for the ascetic life of retirement & withdrawal from public exposure & activity.
Sulpicius' special interest in virginal women is in large part attributable, to the fact that it is women in general & virginal women in particular who traditionally model the life of complete retirement & avoidance of public exposure.
Thus Sulpicius puts forth the radical suggestion that the male must indeed "become female" through his ascetic renunciation of public life and presents the virgin as an ideal of which Martin of Tours the soldier/monk who brought Christianity to much of the fourth-century Gaul acknowledges himself to fall short, compromised by his episcopal office and also by his very maleness.
A male must 'become female' in order to escape the moral dangers of his masculine state! It should be noted for clarity that the quotation marks around "become female" are not meant to indicate a quotation of Sulpicius, but rather precisely the appropriation of another culture's terms to interpret his practice.
The admiration of both Sulpicius and Ambrose for Paulinus of Nora, a wealthy and cultivated poet ~ and disciple of Ausonius ~ who renounced his wealth, together with his wife, and retired to rural Italy, is emblemic of this position.
This parallels the becoming female of the Rabbis through their ascetic renunciations of intercourse with alluring Christianity or participation in the Roman state.
The Rabbis, as well, adopted distinctly feminized stances of renunciation of political power. In the talmudic text, the Rabbis are close, mutatis mutandis, to those ascetics for whom the virgin was a model for a life of withdrawal from public exposure ~ mutatis mutandis, for the withdrawal of a Roman aristocrat from the public could not be identical to the withdrawal of a Jewish Sage.
Insofar as the female virgin was being utilized by male cultural products as a mode of negotiation of their critical, resisting, accomodating, alienated, envious, and other stances toward Roman power and cultural prestige, different positionings with respect to "Rome" would result in different virgins?
Kortom: vreemde vogels, cultuurveranderingen, underground movements, social change{s} & allerlei andere {r}evolutions gedurende de afgelopen tweeduizend jaar!
Het probleem met 'priesters' e.d. ligt nog maar al te vaak in 't peil hunner manlijke hormonen & protestantse dominees zijn ook soms overspelig als de pest, nog afgezien van hun multinationals, financiele malversaties & al die andere malle kunsten?!
Als overbevolking 't grootste menselijke probleem is naast de rechtvaardiger verdeling van geld en goed, dan is het dus best wel dienstig om een en ander te zien in het licht der afgelopen tientallen eeuwen, en natuurlijk de stand der wetenschap, missionaire zendingsactiviteiten met kruis & zwaard, diverse heethooften & al die merkwaardige variabele staartjes die al die religieuze muisjes schijnen te hebben op andere plaatsen & de voorbije tijden vol opmerkelijke gedragspatronen, koddige klederdrachten, fanatieke verkondigingen & politieke bij- verschijnselen ...
Eerst dus maar eventjes een eindje gaan fietsen en/of lopen naar zand & bos.