Hannah Hunt: Asceticism and the body: late antique religions in dialogue?

Christianity, especially in its late antique Syrian guise, is at heart an embodied religious tradition. But how did the concept of Christian asceticism, with its at times negative responses to the human body, engage with other late antique religious traditions, especially Buddhism and Jainism? This communication represents work in progress on a project which draws together scholarship on the social, cultural and environmental implications of seeing the body as an agent of asceticism.