Colleagues of Apostles, Presbyters, and Bishops

This chapter points out and examines evidence for the role of female ‘colleagues’ or ‘partners’ (syzygoi) in the early churches. It focuses initially on the meaning(s) of syzygos, literally ‘yokefellow’, and the patristic debate about it. The chapter takes into consideration iconographic and archaeological evidence, and literary material, from Paul to patristic writings, including the Acts of Philip and its portrait of the apostolic couple of Philip and Mariamme. The chapter also points to the suggestion of a pairing in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and includes assessment of Clement, Origen, Theodoret, and Gregory Nazianzen. Nazianzen testifies to the existence of a woman presbyter, colleague of a male presbyter and bishop, and highly respected in Cappadocia in the late fourth century, Theosebia, who was most likely the sister of Gregory Nyssen. It also notes that the women syzygoi need to be seen in the context of other women office holders in the Church, and provides a detailed overview of the key evidence, ending with Origen, who could even use passages of the Pastoral Epistles as a means of acknowledging them.

Introduction

This authoritative volume brings together the latest thinking on women’s leadership in early Christianity. Featuring contributions from key thinkers in the fields of Christian history, the volume considers the evidence for ways in which women exercised leadership in churches from the first to the ninth centuries CE. This rich and diverse collection breaks new ground in the study of women in early Christianity. This is not about working with one method, based on one type of feminist theory, but overall there is nevertheless a feminist or egalitarian agenda in considering the full equality of women with men in religious spheres a positive goal, with the assumption that this full equality has yet to be attained. The chapters revisit both older studies and offer new and unpublished research, exploring the many ways in which ancient Christian women’s leadership could function.

Male–Female Missionary Pairings among Jesus’ Disciples

This chapter expands on aspects of Joan Taylor’s previous argument that the designation ‘two by two’, δύο δύο‎, in Mark 1:7 suggests that the twelve male apostles appointed by Jesus in Galilee were not paired off internally as masculine teams but were paired with unnamed and obscured female companions as they went to heal and preach in Galilee. It is argued that the use of δύο δύο‎ in Mark, found without a preposition, needs to be distinguished from the usage in Luke 10:1 in regard to the seventy (or seventy-two) apostles sent out ἀνὰ δύο δύο‎, since the Gospel of Peter [9].35 indicates this latter expression means ‘two after two’: namely, pairs going off in sequence, successively. The expression δύο δύο‎, without any preposition, is not idiomatic Koinē but rather is an expression reliant on the Semitic pattern of distributive repetition, and in Sirach 33:14–15 it is used precisely in regard to pairs of opposites, or contraries, created by God, which would normatively include the binary pair of male and female, in accordance with Aristotelian archetypes.

The Image of the Feminine in the Gospel of Philip

This chapter considers a text that is often considered ‘Gnostic’ in character. ‘The Image of the Feminine in the Gospel of Philip: An Innovative Assimilation of Paul’s Gender Legacy in the Valentinian Milieu’ explores the richness of images of the feminine preserved in the Coptic Gospel of Philip and their significance to the life of the Christian community. It assesses?the diversity and dichotomy of the feminine symbolism in?relevant documents from Nag Hammadi. In this context the study highlights the importance and creativity of Philip’s construction of?the feminine.?The chapter also offers a discussion of?the assimilation of the Pauline exegesis of the story of the creation of Adam and Eve by this document.?On that basis the chapter shows the original trajectory of the Gospel, which goes beyond the Pauline legacy, to serve the needs of its audience. Finally, as the Gospel of Philip pays a great deal of attention to the value of Christian teaching (exegesis) and the sacraments, the essay addresses the vital question: could?Christian women?take an active role in teaching and worship in the light of this Gospel and its gender construction?

Gendered Space

This chapter considers the meeting place of the Therapeutae, described in Philo of Alexandria’s De Vita Contemplativa, as represented by Eusebius of Caesarea. Since Eusebius read Philo’s treatise as indicating an early Christian community, he sees a church here, with gendered space, affirming this is Christian practice. The ministries of Christian women overall then need then to be considered within a gendered construct of space and movement. While the appropriate ‘place’ for women in the earliest congregations depends on how meeting spaces are configured (for meals, charity, teaching, healing, and prayer), the recent work of Edward Adams has contested the ubiquitous house-church model and allowed for more cognitive templates for how gendered space was constructed. The third-century ‘Megiddo church’ seems to suggest a divided dining hall for women and men, in line with gendered dining as a Hellenistic norm, with centralized ritual space.

More ‘Holy Women’ in Early Christianity

This chapter explores ‘More “Holy Women” in Early Christianity: The Gospels of Mary and Marcion’. It provides a comparison between the role of women as described by the Gospel of Mary and Marcion’s Gospel (and Apostolikon) to that of the canonical Gospels. It emerges that in the two non-canonical texts women were regarded as true witnesses, prophets, and apostles of Christ in contrast to the ambiguous, if not dubious role of the twelve, and especially of that of Peter. The chapter also looks into the role of women in the Roman church where, for example, in Hippolytus (In Song of Songs 25.6) they are still known as ‘Apostles to the Apostles’. This picture differs considerably from what we are used to read, at least at face value, in the canonical texts, and ultimately asks us to consider the editing process that resulted in certain versions of the earliest stories to be erased.

Sacred Intercessors: Widows as Altar in Polycarp, Philippians

This chapter continues with the subject of widows and considers the metaphorical way that widows can be presented. It notes how a small number of Christian texts, dating from the second to the fifth centuries CE, briefly invoke the strange metaphor of the widow as an altar of God. It asks: in what ways might such a metaphor have been intelligible to early Christian audiences? In service of what rhetorical aims might the metaphor have been employed, and what might have been effects of its usages? The contributor considers the use of the metaphor in relation to evidence for widows’ statuses as recipients of community funds and as those who offer prayer on behalf of the community. By characterizing the widows as altars these texts present them as objects under the control of others yet acknowledge their position at the centre of a transformational economy of offering.

The Entrepreneurial Widows of 1 Timothy

This chapter continues a focus on the Christian Bible with examination of ‘The Entrepreneurial Widows of 1 Timothy’. It argues that the exhortations and admonitions to widows (i.e. unmarried women) voiced in 1 Timothy—identified as a highly rhetorical pseudonymous letter written in Paul’s name—attests to a concern with single women’s patronage of Christ assemblies, which the writer seeks to address by having them marry. The contributor seeks to move beyond a common explanation that the letter was occasioned by ascetical teachings in which women discovered in sexual continence a new freedom from traditional gender roles. The chapter aims to establish that the letter has a broader economic concern with widows, through an historical exploration of the socio-economic status of women who were artisans in the imperial urban economy. It identifies the means by which women gained skill in trades, the roles they played in the ‘adaptive family’ in which households of tradespeople plied their trade often at economic levels of subsistence. New Testament texts point to artisan women, some of them probably widows, who played important roles of patronage and leadership in assemblies of Christ followers. By attending to levels of poverty in the urban empire, traditional views of the widows of 1 Timothy as wealthier women assigned to gender roles are seen in a new light through consideration of spouses accustomed to working alongside their husbands and taking on the businesses after they died. While the lives of these women are largely invisible, attention to benefactions of wealthy women to synagogues and associations gives insight into the lives of women acting independently in various kinds of social gatherings.

Women in Gnosticism

This chapter goes further along this track in ‘Women in Gnosticism’, noting that real women are difficult to find from the sources conventionally identified as ‘Gnostic’. The few that are mentioned in a variety of sources—Marcellina, Flora, and Flavia Sophē—remain enigmatic, mere fleeting mentions that force us to draw on all our resources to reconstruct even the barest contours of their lives. In every case, however, these women appear to have irritated and scandalized the pious self-proclaimed arbiters of Christian ‘orthodoxy’. Sadly, however, these women do not seem to have had better spiritual lives in ‘Gnostic’ circles; there, too, they encountered men ready to take advantage of the power differential evident in Roman imperial Christian culture, such as it was at the time. To be perhaps less pessimistic, however, the language and imagery of ‘Gnostic’ documents—particularly those found at Nag Hammadi—contain often startling plays on sexual politics in the spiritual realm. At times, these result in sweeping cosmic dramas that place human women not merely as victims of male spiritual malevolence but as heroines who are able to transcend their earthly fates because there is a place, even in the highest heavenly realms, where ‘the feminine’ holds sway; beyond that, even, gender differences melt away and are absorbed into an absolute, genderless oneness of existence.

Eudocia’s Homeric Cento and the Woman Anointing Jesus

This chapter moves forward in time to look at the way precedents of women’s leadership could be used later, here in the work of the estranged wife of the emperor Theodosius II, Eudocia. In ‘Eudocia’s Homeric Cento and the Woman Anointing Jesus—An Example of Female Authority’, the author identifies how the woman of Bethany in the Gospel of Mark is praised in words taken from Achilles, a most prominent figure of manly honour in the Iliad. However, the honour for which she is praised remains within the boundaries of a proper, submissive woman. This duality corresponds to how Eudocia portrays herself in her preface to the Homeric Cento. On the one hand, she improved upon Patricius’ poem, presenting a better poem in style as well as content. She demonstrated her superiority. Her superiority was, however, coupled with restrictions implied in her being a woman. It seems, therefore, that Eudocia has inscribed her own dual authority of both superior and woman into her interpretation of the woman of Bethany.