Bodily Transformation

This chapter approaches the phenomenon of transformation within the New Testament, using Ovid’s Metamorphoses as a starting-off point. The essay examines the transformational experience of pregnancy and childbirth as narrative events and as eschatological metaphors. I also examine the transfiguration event in light of divine epiphanies and the use of light as a marker of divinity in Hellenistic and Roman literature and iconography. The question of how a resurrected body is transformed generally, and Jesus’s ability to transform his own body specifically, are also treated herein.