Scholars of early Christianity are not complete strangers when it comes to discourse about virgins and virginity. Such characters and concepts appear in Christian sources from as early as the first century CE, and they feature regularly in Christian iconography and later theological and ethical ruminations. But the way that virgins are discussed in scholarship may give the impression that defining “virginity” today or in antiquity is a straightforward matter, one on which there is relatively widespread agreement. In Virgin Territory: Configuring Female Virginity in Early Christianity, Julia Kelto Lillis makes the case that whatever agreement that exists on conceptualizing virginity in antiquity often rests on an incomplete knowledge of how ancient authors actually conceived of the matter. This is a remarkable book whose thesis is clear, compelling, and supported by a mountain of relevant source material.

In the book's introduction, Kelto Lillis outlines the importance that the concept of female virginity has held both in the ancient world and the present day. Yet she also notes the sometimes-ambiguous nature of this concept. Questions abound in contemporary discourse about the “loss” of virginity: “Does it require penetration? Of or with which body parts? If it requires orgasm, whose? Does cybersex count?” (13). And of course, there is also the important matter of whether virginity is something that, once “lost,” can be found again. She also notes the presence of hymenal tissue in modern discussions about virginity, although she is also quick to foreground the highly problematic nature of the claim that one's virginity is linked to an intact hymen (or lack thereof). The idea that virginity can be verified physically is one that Kelto Lillis dubs the “perceptibility turn,” and the rest of the book is aimed at tracing this turn's trajectories and consequences.

The argument proceeds over six dense yet readable chapters that are distributed evenly into three parts. In the first chapter – “Testing, Showing, and Perceiving Virginity in Antiquity” – Kelto Lillis surveys ancient Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian sources that address the topics of virginity and women's bodies. In the second chapter – “Mary's Forms of Virginity in Early Christian Writings” – Kelto Lillis focuses more specifically on Christian authors who discuss the virginal status of Mary before, during, and after childbirth. Special attention is given to second-century texts like the Protevangelium of James and the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria, and also to the slightly later Tertullian and Origen. Her survey of these texts demonstrates the diversity with which these early Christian authors framed the virginity of Mary. She concludes this chapter by examining how these earlier ideas are taken up by later authors, including Athanasius of Alexandria, Basil of Caesarea, Epiphanius of Cyprus, John Chrysostom, Jerome, and Ambrose of Milan. Through this two-chapter survey, Kelto Lillis demonstrates convincingly that the notion of “physically perceptible” virginity develops between the fourth- and seventh-centuries CE, quite a bit later than many scholars have previously assumed.

The second section of the book shifts to the fourth century, and in the first chapter of this section – “Virginity of Body and Soul: Fourth-Century Christian Configurations” – Kelto Lillis examines virginity discourses of four authors: Basil of Ancyra, Gregory of Nyssa, Ephrem of Nisibis, and Ambrose of Milan. These authors continue to exhibit a degree of diversity when it comes to how they define virginity and how virginity is (or is not) connected to the body. Basil, for example, equates virginity with freedom from passions (119), whereas Ephrem's understanding is more physiological. For Ephrem, “virginity is always bodily,” Kelto Lillis writes, “but it is bodily in multiple ways” (125). The second chapter of this section – “Sealed Fountains: The Imagery of Fourth-Century Christian Virginity Discourse” – continues with these authors but focuses on their commonalities, namely, that in their writings about virginity they all employ language of water and “seals.” Examination of these shared images further cements how differently these authors conceptualized female virginity, while also revealing a gradual veering toward anatomical configurations, which Kelto Lillis rightly labels “distinctive and innovative rather than universal and inevitable” (136–137).

The book's final section takes up the perceptibility turn itself, why it was appealing to late-ancient Christian thinkers, and also some of the effects that it had. In the first chapter of this section – “Perceptible Virginity: Its Usefulness and Consequences” – Kelto Lillis argues that this turn developed as a way of confirming already-extant expectations about women's bodies in the context of marriage as well as sexual enslavement. Women were expected to be “virginal” at the time of their marriages, for example, and the idea that such things could be perceived anatomically developed over time as a way of “verifying” this claim. Late-ancient Christians found the idea of physically verifiable virginity useful in a number of ways, including being able to substantiate the statuses of vowed virgins and also articulating the claim that Mary's giving birth to Jesus had no effect on her virginal status. The second chapter in this section – “Augustine of Hippo and the Problem of Double Integrity” – is a case study that examines some of the consequences of this perceptibility turn. In his City of God, Augustine addresses the issue of whether a virgin who has been raped is still a virgin. His conclusion is that she retains her chastity if her mind is chaste, but physically, she is no longer virginal. Kelto Lillis argues that Augustine's insistence on the physicality of virginity creates a tension that forces him to betray his logic elsewhere in City of God.

In this book, Julia Kelto Lillis has provided a helpful corrective for scholars of early Christianity whose work involves virgins, virginity, and/or women's bodies more broadly, and I suspect and hope that this book will have significant staying power and continued relevance in the field. It will be an excellent addition to a number of graduate seminars, and many of the individual chapters could serve as readings in advanced undergraduate courses. It is also one of those books to keep within reach of one's writing space, as it is not something to read once and then set aside. Although it is not the expressed goal of the book to speak to contemporary debates and situations, it serves as a pointed reminder that debates about bodies are never simply ideological; they have consequences that are real, often unfortunate, and frequently violent. Julia Kelto Lillis has, in short, given the field of early Christianity much to think about. I recommend this book highly and will look forward to seeing the impact that it will undoubtedly have.