Critical Approach to the Notions of Asceticism and Ascetic Deification in the Oxford Handbook of Deification

In this paper, I will critically examine the notions of asceticism and ascetic deification as presented in The Oxford Handbook of Deification. In the first part, I will analyze how contributors to the handbook—including Paul Blowers, Paul Gavrilyuk, David Luy, Maximos Constas, and Elizabeth Theokritoff—approach these concepts. Building on this analysis, in the second part I will explore the asceticism, first as a way of the ancient philosopher’s deification and second as a practice and a method of biblical and theological interpretation, focusing on a rare and particularly intriguing hagiographical text: The Life of Hosios Elias the New, a monk and priest from Southern Italy who lived in the Southern Peloponnese.