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An Ecstasy Of Folly: Prophecy And Authority In Early Christianity – By Laura Nasrallah [Review Of The Book An Ecstasy Of Folly: Prophecy And Authority In Early Christianity By L. Nasrallah], Rubén R. Dupertuis

Religion Faculty Research

Nasrallah’s book is a valuable contribution to the study of prophecy and ecstatic manifestations in early Christianity, for its reading of representative Christian texts within the larger context of debates about such phenomena in the Greco-Roman world, and for viewing the materials through the lens of rhetorical criticism. Nasrallah focuses on three texts or authors: Paul’s discussion of the gifts of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians, Tertullian’s defense of prophecy in De anima and related texts, and the Anti-Phrygian source, Nasrallah’s name for the late second—early-third-century source probably embedded in Epiphanius’ Panarion. Nasrallah argues that taxonomies of forms of …