Contextualising Pain and Remedy in Early Judaism and Christianity: A Response

Abstract This response engages with several essays in a special issue of Journal of Early Christian History on the theme of contextualising pain and remedy in early Judaism and Christianity. The response brings the ancient case studies into a brief dialogue with a modern anthropological study on paediatric pain by Mara Buchbinder. In so doing, the study shows how ancient readings and analyses of pain may benefit and benefit from similar modern explorations. The importance of a multidisciplinary approach to pain is emphasised, with attention given to pain as an emotion, the social relationality of pain, competing cultures of pain, and pain as a gendered discourse.