Meghan Henning
Biographic Data
| ID | 5179181 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Meghan Henning |
| GIVEN NAMES | Meghan |
| FAMILY NAME | Henning |
| SIGNATURE | HENNING M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Dayton |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 10 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Manufacturing Martha’s Madness
The story of Mary and Martha is a “text of terror” for women and the mentally disabled, elevating Martha as emblematic of the spiritual failure of the anxious woman. While scholarship has focused upon the precise nature of Martha’s work, this article argues that whether Martha was in the kitchen or doing ministry, she was doing servile labor and incurring the “slavish” worry associated with such work. Attention to the socio-economic context of Ma…
Healing and Exorcism
The study of the Synoptic Gospel healing and exorcism stories has been dominated by contemporary medicalized ways of viewing the human body. This essay challenges those approaches, which assume that there are universal ideals of the body that transcend time and space, and privileges approaches which seek to rigorously contextualize the healing and exorcism stories amid ancient conceptions of the body. One primary way in which ancient conceptions …
Holy Impairment
This article reads Acts 2:1–13 as an example of apocalyptic ekphrasis, bringing together disparate imagery for rhetorical effect. In particular, the Septuagint imagery of theophany is combined with the imagery of divine healing that was associated with the god Asclepius. I explore the imagery of the divided tongue that rests on bodies and transforms them, an element of Acts 2:3 that many interpreters have given up trying to explain. The visual as…
Pulling Apart and Piecing Together
Afterlife bodies in Christian thought have been successfully analyzed as expressions of cultural ideals, loci in which justice can be administered, and mirrors of societal structures and hierarchies. As hypothetical and constructive as they are, descriptions of heavenly and hellish bodies reinscribe or subvert norms about the gender, status, and appearance of their earthly counterparts. Building upon earlier work about eschatological bodies and d…
Educating Early Christians through the Rhetoric of Hell
Meghan Henning explores the rhetorical function of the early Christian concept of hell, drawing connections to Greek and Roman systems of education, and examining texts from the Hebrew Bible, Greek and Latin literature, the New Testament, early Christian apocalypses and patristic authors.
Weeping and Bad Hair
This chapter draws upon the conceptions of gendered bodily suffering found in the ancient medical corpus (Hippocrates, Galen and inscriptions), martyrdom literature, and the Roman judicial rhetoric of punitive suffering to read apocalyptic depictions of bodily suffering as “effeminizing” punishments, which in turn utilized masculinity and bodily normativity to police behavior, and equated early Christian ethical norms with masculinity and bodily …
Learning While Teaching
This article serves as an introduction to themes explored in the special issue of the Journal of Disability and Religion on disability and religion in the classroom. Dr. Kirk VanGilder (Gallaudet University) and Dr. Meghan Henning (University of Dayton) share their reflections from two academic workshops focusing on pedagogical strategies for teaching at the intersection of disability studies, religion, and theology. Rather than limiting the conc…
Mark T. Finney, Resurrection, Hell and the Afterlife
The Ransom of the Soul
The Ransom of the Soul is based upon three lectures that Peter Brown delivered at the Institute für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna, in 2012. In his preface, Brown situates this project with respect to other scholarly depictions of the afterlife, as well as his own oeuvre. Brown is working against the tendency to depict “the development of a Christian doctrine of the afterlife as if it were the unfolding of a single master narrative.” H…
Educating early Christians through the rhetoric of hell
Meghan Henning explores the rhetorical function of the early Christian concept of hell, drawing connections to Greek and Roman systems of education, and examining texts from the Hebrew Bible, Greek and Latin literature, the New Testament, early Christian apocalypses and patristic authors.
No prominent works on this page.
Educating early Christians through the rhetoric of hell
Meghan Henning explores the rhetorical function of the early Christian concept of hell, drawing connections to Greek and Roman systems of education, and examining texts from the Hebrew Bible, Greek and Latin literature, the New Testament, early Christian apocalypses and patristic authors.
The Ransom of the Soul
The Ransom of the Soul is based upon three lectures that Peter Brown delivered at the Institute für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna, in 2012. In his preface, Brown situates this project with respect to other scholarly depictions of the afterlife, as well as his own oeuvre. Brown is working against the tendency to depict “the development of a Christian doctrine of the afterlife as if it were the unfolding of a single master narrative.” H…
Weeping and Bad Hair
This chapter draws upon the conceptions of gendered bodily suffering found in the ancient medical corpus (Hippocrates, Galen and inscriptions), martyrdom literature, and the Roman judicial rhetoric of punitive suffering to read apocalyptic depictions of bodily suffering as “effeminizing” punishments, which in turn utilized masculinity and bodily normativity to police behavior, and equated early Christian ethical norms with masculinity and bodily …
Learning While Teaching
This article serves as an introduction to themes explored in the special issue of the Journal of Disability and Religion on disability and religion in the classroom. Dr. Kirk VanGilder (Gallaudet University) and Dr. Meghan Henning (University of Dayton) share their reflections from two academic workshops focusing on pedagogical strategies for teaching at the intersection of disability studies, religion, and theology. Rather than limiting the conc…
Mark T. Finney, Resurrection, Hell and the Afterlife
Educating Early Christians through the Rhetoric of Hell
Meghan Henning explores the rhetorical function of the early Christian concept of hell, drawing connections to Greek and Roman systems of education, and examining texts from the Hebrew Bible, Greek and Latin literature, the New Testament, early Christian apocalypses and patristic authors.
Holy Impairment
This article reads Acts 2:1–13 as an example of apocalyptic ekphrasis, bringing together disparate imagery for rhetorical effect. In particular, the Septuagint imagery of theophany is combined with the imagery of divine healing that was associated with the god Asclepius. I explore the imagery of the divided tongue that rests on bodies and transforms them, an element of Acts 2:3 that many interpreters have given up trying to explain. The visual as…
Pulling Apart and Piecing Together
Afterlife bodies in Christian thought have been successfully analyzed as expressions of cultural ideals, loci in which justice can be administered, and mirrors of societal structures and hierarchies. As hypothetical and constructive as they are, descriptions of heavenly and hellish bodies reinscribe or subvert norms about the gender, status, and appearance of their earthly counterparts. Building upon earlier work about eschatological bodies and d…
Healing and Exorcism
The study of the Synoptic Gospel healing and exorcism stories has been dominated by contemporary medicalized ways of viewing the human body. This essay challenges those approaches, which assume that there are universal ideals of the body that transcend time and space, and privileges approaches which seek to rigorously contextualize the healing and exorcism stories amid ancient conceptions of the body. One primary way in which ancient conceptions …
Manufacturing Martha’s Madness
The story of Mary and Martha is a “text of terror” for women and the mentally disabled, elevating Martha as emblematic of the spiritual failure of the anxious woman. While scholarship has focused upon the precise nature of Martha’s work, this article argues that whether Martha was in the kitchen or doing ministry, she was doing servile labor and incurring the “slavish” worry associated with such work. Attention to the socio-economic context of Ma…
Art (7 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Biblical Studies and Interpretation (5 works) · Literature (5 works) · Theology (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · History (4 works) · Afterlife (3 works) · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome (3 works) · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies (3 works)