Through Athanasius of Alexandria's fourth-century biography of Antony, we learn how the Christian appropriation of Greek ideas on geography, bodies and immortality raised asceticism to an entirely new level. Placed in his uncultivated landscape, Antony became a true martyr, an athlete of God, and a holy man able to retrieve the bodily incorruptibility lost in the Fall, which all Christians could look forward to at the end of times. In this way Athanasius employed a traditional Greek worldview to demonstrate the superiority of Christianity over Paganism, which never promised ordinary people anything but an eternal existence as dead and disembodied souls.
![Primordial Landscapes, Incorruptible Bodies Primordial Landscapes, Incorruptible Bodies](https://www.angusrobertson.com.au/images/2984/9781433101816.jpg?width=250)
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