Sexual Desire, ‘Deviant Behaviour', And Moral Discourse

In an earlier posting I mentioned Holger Szesnat's webpage on Hermeneutics, but I do think I at that time overlooked his reference to his dissertation on Philo and Paul. My recent visit to his site made that clear to me. It turns out that Holger wrote his dissertation on Sexual Desire, ‘Deviant Behaviour', And Moral Discourse In The Writings Of Paul And Philo: An Historical-Exegetical Study of the Moral Problematisation of Sexual Desire and Behaviour in First-Century Hellenistic Judaism and Christianity, with Special Reference to the Work of Michel Foucault. Submitted in fulfilment of the academic requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Theology, University of Natal, Mankweng, South Africa, August 15, 1998.
His own summary runs like this:This study is concerned with the moral problematisation of sexual desire and intercourse in two Jewish / Christian writers of the first century of our era, namely Philo of Alexandria and St.Paul. A detailed methodological chapter argues for a fundamental re-thinking of the analysis of Jewish and Christian writings of this period in line with the theoretical discussion which is taking place in cognate disciplines like classics, philosophy, sociology and history: the author argues that a social constructionist perspective on the study of ‘sexuality' in antiquity is called for in the study of Philo and Paul, that is, an approach which regards sexual desire and behaviour as a social phenomenon rather than a ‘natural given'. This methodological part is followed by an extensive summary and review of the critical responses to the historical proposals of Michel Foucault on the history of ‘sexuality' in antiquity, which are taken as the focus of this study. Rather than an extensive critique of Foucault's proposals themselves, however, the focus of this study is on reading two important authors representing strands of first-century Hellenistic Judaism, which Foucault's work ignores altogether. The author presents an extensive study of Philo and Paul, analysing their moral problematisation of desire and intercourse, and comparing Foucault's historical suggestions with the results. The study suggests that reading Hellenistic Jewish texts would help to correct and sometimes explain some of Foucault's suggestions with regard to this historical period in the ‘history of sexuality'. If you use this link, you can get a .pdf list of the content of the dissertation.

Now I just wonder, Holger, do you have any plans of publishing this work, e.g., on the Internet?