Homosexuality and Virginity: A Preliminary Inquiry into the Relationship between Plato’s Symposium and Methodius’ Symposium

• Main Authors: Chin-YiRay, 雷晉怡
• Other Authors: Jia-Sheng Ueng
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/263hpj

碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 歷史學系 === 103 === This is an inquiry into how the relatively unknown church father Methodius of Olympus (?-311 CE) appropriated the classical tradition he inherited by a comparison of his Symposium with that of Plato (427-347 BCE). It is an in-depth analysis of texts by a comparative method in the examination of related social institution, genre and topic in both texts. Both Symposiums are structured with an insight that a certain kind of physical regulation could be closely bounded to the pursuit of truth: in Plato it is eros (male homosexuality above all) leading one to a love of beauty that became the first step to the final grasp of Form while in Methodius it is female virginity that constitutes a precondition for a prelapsarian return and for a final salvation. Besides these two texts, there is a brief review of related texts ranging from the classical authors, via New Testament and Apocryphal Acts, to the church fathers in the late Roman Empire. All of these are used as a foil for an illumination of these two key texts in their paradigmatic discourses on sexuality and truth. This thesis will prove that Methodius is an excellent reader and interpreter of Plato both in his depth of thinking though never losing sight of his Christian faith and in his mastery of the skill and epistemology implied in the symposium as a literary genre. This research therefore provides an insight into how a church father transformed a classical text of homosexuality into a masterpiece on Christian virginity.