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The rise of Christianity included the development of distinctively Christian discourses and practices related to marriage and the place of married persons in the faith community. Diverse sources of influence on the subject of marriage came from Jewish Scripture and tradition, eschatological apocalypticism, philosophical traditions of the Greco-Roman world, and especially the multifaceted teachings of the New Testament. Early Christian thought on marriage developed in the context of asceti…

Sarcophagi were coffins, usually made of stone (the most expensive of marble), or of lead, terracotta, or wood. The term sarcophagus (from Gk sarx + phagein, “flesh-eater”) reflects an ancient belief that certain types of stone had corpse-consuming properties (Plin. Nat. 2.211; 36.131; Juv. Sat. 10.172). However, the primary purpose of a sarcophagus was not to decompose the body but to separate it, house it, and, when sarcophagi were decorated with reliefs, to replace it with a figured expression of the identity, life, and hopes of the deceased (Ewald, 2012, 53).At Rome, sarcophagus …