| For each of the early Christian writers considered in The Sleeper's Dream, dreams provide material for meaningful psyche-soma engagement at the "root level," and it is this inherent, visceral quality which makes them attractive to early Christian writers in the creating of what David Frankfurter calls "narrating power"---the power of the spoken word. This includes the way dreams become influential media for the social formation of Christian cults experiencing "alienation from the world." They occur as human experience, rooted in temple ritual and sacrifice. This conclusion is far different from that of Patricia Cox Miller, whose semiotic reading leaves dreams flat and lacking any sense of inherent vibrancy. (Bodily) healing often results from such transformative experience, but it does not receive the primary emphasis of attention by early Christian cults. This contrasts the Asclepius cult focus on incubation dream experiences and immediate, tangible healing results. For early Christian cults "salvation" ultimately and most importantly has to with divine presence being revealed and lived out through the sleeper's dream and waking world. For the Asclepius cult "salvation" is synonymous with bodily healing. |
