摘要：[1]This collection of essays resulted from a conference on "Asceticism and the New Testament" convened in October 1996 at Emmanuel College, University of Toronto. Its purpose is to explore how asceticism, generally understood in very broad, cross-cultural terms, can contribute as a hermeneutical tool for the interpretation of the New Testament and early Christianity, despite its being relatively ignored as such in the past. Individual contributions are not intended as exegesis papers or commentaries, but rather essays that "use asceticism as a heuristic point of entry or methodological wedge into the different symbolic worlds" of the New Testament (6). The Introduction reminds the reader that "there is no effort to force asceticism onto or out of any text" (5-6), and yet, one is left to wonder if we are not occasionally flirting with Procrustean beds
