Topics (move over topic to see place in topic list)
03 Religious festivals, cults, rituals and practices
03 Religious festivals, cults, rituals and practices
02 Religious and ideological symbols and iconographic motifs
Keywords
virginity
Period
1st century CE
Roman Empire
Channel
Jewish-Roman philosophers and scholars
Text
Philo of Alexandria, On the Cherubim 14 (50): The union of human beings that is made for the procreation of children turns virgins into women. But when God begins to consort with the soul, He makes what before was a woman into a virgin again, for he takes away the denegrate and emasculate passions which made it womanish and plants instead the native growth of unpolluted virtues. Thus God will not talk with Sarah till she has ceased from all that is after the manner of women (Genesis 18:11), and is ranked once more a pure virgin.
Abusch, Ra'anan. “Eunuchs and gender transformation. Philo's exegesis of the Joseph narrative.” In: Shaun Tougher (ed.). Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, London: Duckworth 2002, 103-122.
