Hell Hath No Fury: Gender, Disability, and the Invention of Damned Bodies in Early Christian Literature (The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library)

by Meghan Henning

Publisher:

Yale University Press

, 2021

Overview

The first major book to examine ancient Christian literature on hell through the lenses of gender and disability studies

Throughout the Christian tradition, descriptions of hell’s fiery torments have shaped contemporary notions of the afterlife, divine justice, and physical suffering. But rarely do we consider the roots of such conceptions, which originate in a group of understudied ancient texts: the early Christian apocalypses.

In this pioneering study, Meghan Henning illuminates how the bodies that populate hell in early Christian literature—largely those of women, enslaved persons, and individuals with disabilities—are punished after death in spaces that mirror real carceral spaces, effectually criminalizing those bodies on earth. Contextualizing the apocalypses alongside ancient medical texts, inscriptions, philosophy, and patristic writings, this book demonstrates the ways that Christian depictions of hell intensified and preserved ancient notions of gender and bodily normativity that continue to inform Christian identity.

Contents

• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: Eternal Suffering between Reality and Imagination
• 1 Assigned to Suffering: Gendered Bodily Suffering in the Ancient World
• 2 Gendered Bodies, Social Identities, and the Susceptibility to Sin
• 3 Becoming Female and Deformed through Suffering in Hell
• 4 From Passive to Active: Gender and Atonement in Mary's Tours of Hell
• Conclusion: Making Hell on Earth
• Epilogue: Ancient Christian Hell's Afterlives
• Notes
• Index

Praise for Hell Hath No Fury

Few works written recently are as enthralling, engaging, and challenging as Henning’s work on hellscapes and their inhabitants. She has successfully given hell the right sort of attention, at last filling a major gap in the story and simultaneously charting new territory.

—Jarel Robinson-Brown, Los Angeles Review of Books

Hell Hath No Fury offers much for readers who desire to learn from an underappreciated era to live more justly in our own.

—Amy Peeler, Bulletin for Biblical Research

This book expands our understanding of the formative power of the ‘tours of hell,’ especially in relation to gender and disability.

—Religious Studies Review

Product Details

• Title: Hell Hath No Fury: Gender, Disability, and the Invention of Damned Bodies in Early Christian Literature
• Author: Meghan Henning
• Series: The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Print Publication Date: 2021
• Logos Release Date: 2025
• Era: era:contemporary
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subjects: Christian literature, Early; Hell in literature; Women in literature; People with disabilities in literature; Slavery in literature; Women; Future life; Damned; Hell
• ISBNs: 9780300223118, 0300223110
• Resource ID: LLS:HLLHTHRFRNLBRRY
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-06-02T20:20:53Z

About Meghan Henning

Meghan Henning is associate professor of Christian origins at the University of Dayton. Her previous books include Educating Early Christians through the Rhetoric of Hell and Hell Hath No Fury: Gender, Disability, and the Invention of Damned Bodies in Early Christianity.