Anna Rebecca Solevåg: Medical Metaphors in Ignatius’ Letters

In the letters of Ignatius a number of metaphors draw on the source domain of health and medicine. Christ is referred to as the true physician (Ign. Eph. 7) and the eucharist is called “the medicine of immortality” (Ign. Eph. 20). However, it is not necessarily the healthy body that is good in Ignatius’ metaphors. He advises the readers to “be deaf” when they hear docetic heresy (Ign. Trall. 9), and refers to his own body as an abnormality (ektrōma, Ign. Rom. 9). The paper explores Ignatius’ metaphors in light of early Christian discourses on disability and illness. Conceptual metaphor theory will be used as a theoretical framework.