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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2009
The prominence of women in the spread of Christianity in the earliest period has long been a commonplace. It was recognized as such by the early Christians themselves. On the other hand, St. Paul's willingness to use women in setting up the organization of the early church seems to conflict with his opinion that they should stay in their subordinate place. Now Christian women of the early Empire do not usually fall into the scope of books on women in antiquity. But there is no obvious reason for this exclusion, especially when the role of women in the early Church figures prominently in the work of New Testament scholars. A closer look suggests that both sides have something to learn from the other and this paper sets out to examine from the point of view of classicists some of the large claims made in recent New Testament scholarship, which are indeed beingbrought into sharp focus by the current debate on the ordination of women. In particular, a recent book by John Gager6 has stressed Christianity's appeal to women as an important factor in its success, while an interesting article by W. Meeks relates the well-known prominence of women in the Acts of the Apostles to a supposed rising status of women in the contemporary Greek world and to a general questioning of male/ female roles which is said to have been taking place in the early Empire. It is obviously vital foranyone interested in the position of women in antiquity to consider these claims seriously.
1. See, e.g., Harnack, A., The Mission and Expansion of Christianity during the first three centuries, i–ii (2nd edn., Eng. trans., London, 1908), ii. 64–84Google Scholar.
2. Clement, , Strom. 3.6.53Google Scholar. And by their opponents—e.g. Celsus, ap. Origen, c. Cels. 3.44.
3. The positive view of Paul's attitude to women is well put by Constance Parvey, F., ‘The Theology and Leadership of Women in the New Testament’, in Ruether, R. (ed.),Religion and Sexism (New York, 1974), pp. 117–49Google Scholar. But already in the early seventeenth century Mary Astell was arguing that Paul was writing allegorically—Reflections upon Marriage (1700), cited by Mitchell, Juliet in Mitchell, Juliet and Oakley, Ann (eds.), The Rights and Wrongs of Women (Penguin, 1976), pp. 387–8Google Scholar.
4. e.g. they are omitted from Sarah, B. Pomeroy's standard book, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (New York, 1975)Google Scholar, as well as , J. P. V. D.Balsdon's Roman Women (London, 1962)Google Scholar. An honourable exception however is the entry by Thraede, s.v. ‘Frau’, in RAC, and there is a useful bibliography on ‘Women under Christianity’ by Southall, M., Arethusa 6 (1973), 149–52Google Scholar.
5. It originated as a contribution to the seminar on Acts organized by the Revd. Professor C. F. Evans in the Theology Faculty at King's College in 1976, and I am grateful for comments from colleagues on that occasion.
6. Kingdom and Community: the Social World of Early Christianity (New York, 1975)Google Scholar, described by a reviewer as an ‘exciting initial [sic] exploration of the application of sociological concepts to early Christian history’ (JTS 27 (1976), 209)Google Scholar.
7. ‘The Image of the Androgyne: some uses of a symbol in earliest Christianity’, History of Religions 13 (1974), 165–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8. Acts 16:14; Rom. 16:1–3,6; See Meeks, , art. cit. 197f.Google Scholar; Harnack, , op. cit. ii. 66Google Scholar.
9. Philipp.4:2; Rom. 16:2; Philemon 2.
10. Judge, E. A., Journal of Religious History 1 (1960/ 1961), 125 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11. Meeks, , art. cit. 198Google Scholar.
12. Parvey, , art. cit. (n. 3) 144Google Scholar.
13. Meeks, , art cit. 168 fGoogle Scholar. Significant also isthe brevity of the section on Hellenistic women in Sarah Pomeroy's useful general bibliography on women, Arethusa 6 (1973), 127 ffGoogle Scholar. Parvey, , art. cit. 118 ff.Google Scholar, tackles the problem of the ‘Hellenistic and Jewish background’, but her remarks are almost entirely confined to Jewish women and Roman women. Interesting new evidence is however presented by Pomeroy in ‘Technikai kai Mousikai. The Education of Women in the Fourth Century and in the Hellenistic Period’, Am. Journ. Anc. Hist. 2 (1977),51–68Google Scholar.
14. See Pomeroy, , Ancient Society 7 (1976), 215–27Google Scholar.
15. Meeks, , art. cit. 179; cf. 207. Meeks is on stronger ground when he relates Paul's pronouncements on women to the philosophical and religious background (pp. 169 f.), but how far any of this related to or reflected real social conditions remains very uncertainGoogle Scholar.
16. Judge, , The Social Pattern of Christian Groups in the First Century (London, 1960), pp. 49 ffGoogle Scholar.
17. Meeks, , art. cit. 198Google Scholar.
18. 1 Cor. 1:26.
19. e.g. the proconsul of Cyprus (Acts 13:7 f.). See Hengel, M., Property and Riches in the Early Church (Eng. trans., 1974), p. 38Google Scholar.
20. Balsdon, , op. cit., pp. 45–62Google Scholar; Pomeroy, , op. cit., pp. 150–89Google Scholar; cf. Hopkins's, Keith notion of a ‘salon culture’, ‘Contraception in the Roman Empire’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 8 (1965/1956), 124–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
21. See Heyob, S. K., The Cult oflsis among Women in the Greco-Roman World (Leiden, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
22. Acts 16:13 f., 17:12. Women in a traditional society are always likely to find in religion an outlet denied them in other spheres; cf. Douglas, Mary, Natural Symbols (Penguin, 1973), pp. 117 f.Google Scholar, and see Lewis, I. M., Ecstatic Religion (Penguin, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The question is whether this influences their social condition at all.
23. e.g. Bartchy, S. Scott, First-Century Slavery and I Corinthians 7.21 (SBL Diss. Series 11, Montana, 1973)Google Scholar, which is vitiated by false assumptions about ancient slavery. Contra, Croix, G. E. M. de Ste., ‘Early Christian Attitudes to Property and Slavery’, Studies in Church History 12 (1975), 1–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially p. 19, and see 1 Cor. 7:20, ‘Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called’.
24. For the latter see Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger (London, 1966), pp. 186–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar (but perhaps overemphasizing the extent to which Paul's offer was directed at Jews, and thus reflects the Jewishbackground, and implying that the Christian idea of virginity was free of the association of women and sin with sex pollution: contrast Tertullian, de cultu feminarum 1.1.2, ‘tu es diaboli ianua’, and the like).
25. Meeks, , art. cit. 206Google Scholar. See too Scroggs, R., Journal of the American Academy of Religion 40 (1972), 283 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For LöschCorinth, S. Corinth, S., Theologische Quartalschrift 127 (1947), 216 ff.Google Scholar, and Parvey, , art. cit. 123 ffGoogle Scholar.
26. Gager, , op. cit., e.g., pp. 27 f.Google Scholar, 33 (‘liminal groups or persons’). Against such ‘compensation theory’, Grant, F. C., Roman Hellenism and the New Testament (Edinburgh and London, 1962), p. 90Google Scholar.
27. Meeks, , art. cit. 169Google Scholar.
28. Ann. 2.85.
29. See de Ste. Croix, art. cit.(n. 23). It spread in urban centres, but not in the circles of Roman elite culture (if any). De Ste. Croix rightly emphasizes the enormous social variety among the towns described as having Christian communities: Corinth was hardly on the same footing as, say, Beroea or Joppa.
30. See Harnack, , op. cit. ii. 73 fGoogle Scholar.
31. For Gnosticism see the in teresting paper by Pagels, Elaine, Signs 2 (1976), 293–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
32. See Cameron, Averil, JTS 29 (1978), 79–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
