The Role of Women in Jesus Christ’s Religious Movement with an Emphasis on Mary Magdalene

Reviewed by: Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership by Ally Kateusz Elizabeth Ursic (bio) Kateusz, Ally. 2019, Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Pp. 295. $31.00 In her compelling book, Mary and Early Christian Women, Ally Kateusz presents a multidisciplinary analysis of literary texts, church art, and church correspondence to show that women religious leaders preached, baptized, led communities, and served Eucharist in the early Christian church. She supports her literary and iconographic claims with official church commissions, directives, and commentaries, sometimes made by popes. She also shows how Mary, the mother of Jesus, was initially remembered and honored as a dynamic religious leader. Her thesis is that Mary’s recharacterization as submissive and demure as well as the absence of women religious leaders in later church text and art was the result of intentional church efforts after the sixth century to constrain women’s religious leadership and to create a “false imagination about the past.” Kateusz’s work on a discipleship of equals builds upon that of Harvard professor Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, and she adds new discoveries and current scholarship to the conversation. Kateusz points out that today’s leading scholars are nearly unanimous in their belief that firstand second-century followers of Jesus gathered in small meal groups with rotating, informal leaders, and she presents historical proof that some of these Jesus groups had female leaders. It is interesting to learn that a fourth-century Christian community justifies women’s religious leadership with Galatians 3:28, the same scripture passage often cited by Christian communities today. She includes a quote from a text written by Bishop Epihaneus of Salamis (ca. 310–403 C.E.): “They have women bishops, presbyters and the rest; they say that none of this makes any difference because ‘In Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female.’” She also provides iconographic evidence of women and men officiating at the altar from the beginning of the Christian era. [End Page 107] The same fourth-century bishop also complained that a large geographic region of Eastern Christianity was breaking bread to the name of Mary. Kateusz frames these practices in the larger context of how Mary, the mother of Jesus, was remembered and honored in text and art. The Life of the Virgin is a biography of Mary’s life, and this narrative sheds light on how women participated in the ministry of Jesus. While the Gospel of Mark only depicts male disciples with Jesus as he heals Peter’s mother-in-law, the author of The Life of the Virgin remembers female disciples being there: “When the Lord entered Peter’s house and healed his mother-in-law, who was confined because of a fever, his all-holy and blessed mother, the Virgin Mary, was with him as well as the women who were disciples of the Lord.” In this text, women baptize and are present at the Last Supper. There is also gender parity of religious leadership. “She was always inseparable from the Lord and king her son, and as the Lord had authority over the twelve apostles and then the seventy, so the holy mother had over other women who accompanied him.” Significantly, after Jesus dies, in this account Mary teaches both male and female apostles and sends them forth to evangelize. So, how can it be that so few canonical textual references show this discipleship of equals occurring in the early church? Kateusz documents how scribes participated in erasure of evidence by destroying texts as well as obscuring evidence through translation. Examples include Chapter 18 of Paul’s Letter to the Romans, where the apostle Junia’s name was changed to Junius in certain translations. Excising female authority while male authority was left intact was also accomplished when words for male and female disciples were translated as male disciples and women. Narratives about women were also redacted, including multiple versions of the “Dormition of Mary,” about the death and ascension of Mary. The longest and most complete manuscript describes her as a liturgical leader who preaches the gospel, leads prayers, heals with her hands, exorcises, baptizes, and gives female evangelists books and writings to...

The review is devoted to the latest scientific publications in English, which examine the role of women in the formation, development and spread of Christianity from the first centuries to the present day. In particular, the monograph of Ally Kateusz “Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership”, which provides a lot of literary and artistic evidence and illustrations to confirm the image of Mary as a leader among early Christians, is reviewed. The monograph also disusses the public activities of women of that time and the leadership positions they held. The following is a review of the collection of articles edited by Janet Wootton, “Women in Christianity in the Age of Empire: (1800–1920)”, which shows how women from Europe and America took an active part in Christian missionary work in the East, and what role they played in Africa, China, Taiwan and Korea. Gina Zurlo’s “Women in World Christianity: Building and Sustaining a Global Movement” provides useful historical, geographical, theological, and other information on the role women have played in the maintenance and development of Christianity over the past several centuries.

The need for compilation of data and careful assessment about women in early Christianity came to the fore acutely in the late 19th century in the United States when the movement toward enfranchising women as well as the debate concerning the ordination of women in various Protestant denominations was gaining momentum. Feeling that the Bible was actually misused to undergird and defend modern patriarchy, and in response to those who argued against the ordination of women on the grounds that women were supposedly never leaders in early Christianity, some scholars increased examination of the biblical texts regarding women. Their work actually underscored that women, even within the patriarchal parameters reflected in the nascent churches' history, had in fact been among the most significant of early Christian figures. For example, women had been prominent Christian teachers, house church leaders, deacons, etc. Some 19th century female analysts of the Bible, however, also observed that even as the biblical texts reflected a measure of data about women, at the same time the texts, none of which scholarship judges to have been written by a female, were solely maleoriented due to their authors' patriarchal worldviews. The texts thus alsoconcealedto a great extent the actual role of women which they at the same time marginally recorded. A notable publication in this context was the two volume commentary on many books of the Bible entitledThe Woman's Bible(1895, 1898) by the suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a group of female colleagues called the Revising Committee, among them Susan B. Anthony. Cady Stanton and her committee literally went through the text of the complete Bible and cut out every passage which related to women, pasted those excisions on blank pages, and then placed their feminist commentary below each text. Because the various academic women who had training in biblical languages and scholarship at the time were adamantly unwilling to participate in Cady Stanton's project, and thereby jeopardize their university positions,The Woman's Biblewas not, even by the standards of its day, considered to be a scholarly compilation. Nevertheless, some groundwork had been laid for numerous developments in the second half of the next century regarding the women of the Bible.

Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion. The Power of the Hysterical Woman. By Margaret Y MacDonald. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1996. Pp. xiv, 276. $54.95 hardback; $19.95 paperback.) Feminist books have been appearing recently in great numbers, and they vary in quality. Those that deal with Christian history are mostly respectable scholarly books, and many of them rank among enduring academic achievements. This one can be called a feminist book only because its topic early Christian women; otherwise it a serious historical-exegetical study. The author, who teaching in the religious studies department of the University of Ottawa (Canada), has previously published an essay on the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline churches and several articles in scholarly journals on early Christian women. She must have received the inspiration for the present book from these earlier studies, which she successfully incorporated in her new book. Nothing wrong with this procedure; on the contrary, it gives the reader the assurance that the book based on long, careful research. The book consists of three major components. First, there a lengthy review of cultural-anthropologists' and sociologists' works pertaining to the author's topic. This part a very interesting and informative review of what crosscultural studies can do to make us better understand women's place in ancient societies. The concepts of honor (associated with males) and shame (= reputation, associated with females) are discussed in detail. Then we are told that to clearly understand women's situation we must be aware of the concepts of public (male) and private (female) power and authority-all of which explained thoroughly. But when we come to the statement that to understand women's lives more attention should be given to chronological, geographical, and even architectural variation (p. 37), one begins to wonder just how far this scholarly hairsplitting should go. Do we have to define first what the meaning of is before we can talk about early Christian women? The second major topic of the book the pagans' reaction to early Christian women. This topic (pagan reaction to Christianity) has been adequately researched by many scholars, and Mrs. MacDonald knows them all and duly quotes them. But ancient society was not as aware of the blessings of diversity (divided we stand, united we fall) as some in modern America are, and references specifically to women are rare; most ancient authors deal with Christianity as a strange phenomenon and not with male and female Christians. …

This thesis investigates Martha in the New Testament and early Christian tradition. Itnis situated primarily in the areas of feminist biblical studies and in women's studies innearly Christianity. Both biblical and non-biblical references to Martha are gatherednand analysed using literary and rhetorical methods. The interest of the thesis is not innany historical Martha that might have given rise to the traditions, but in the way innwhich the figure of Martha appears in the texts and in the rhetorical purposes whichnshe serves. The thesis includes not only literary texts but also images and it considersnnot only narrative texts but also patristic interpretations of the biblical texts andnliturgical texts such as hymns.nnnnnn Beginning with an analysis of Martha in the Gospel of John, the thesis argues thatnMartha appears as the carrier of J ohannine theology and the figure that expressesnJohannine faith most completely. A survey of patristic commentary on the textndemonstrates that she is interpreted both as faithful witness (a 'second Peter') and asnfaithless, to the point of being depicted as an Arian heretic, while early Christianniconography focuses on her role as intercessor for her brother.nnnnn Next the thesis examines a number of texts which name Martha as one of the womennwho went to the tomb of Jesus. Included here are the Epistula Apostolorum, thenCommentary on the Song of' Songs of Hippolytus, an early Christian hymn, thenAmbrosian Missal, the Syrian Catholic F enqitho and numerous images. In all of thesentexts and images Martha replaces, rather than being added to, the women known fromnthe canonical texts. The analysis suggests that this tradition of Martha as myrrhophorenand apostle is as ancient as the canonical Gospels, widespread and persistent. it also demonstrates that Martha is not simply an adjunct to Mary in these texts, for shentypically takes the leading role. There is some evidence to suggest that the tradition ofnMartha as myrrhophore might have been known to the author of the Gospel of Johnnand that this tradition had its Sitz im Leben in the liturgical celebrations of Easter,nincluding the Easter celebrations in Jerusalem.nnnnnn The thesis then turns to a number of texts that link Martha with 'serving' (diakonein),nLuke 10:38-42, John 12:1-3, the Apostolic Church Order and the Acts of Philip. It isnargued that Martha's 'serving' could be interpreted Eucharistically and that thisnconnection was at times used polemically in the struggle over women's authority andnparticipation at the Eucharist.nnnnnn Finally the thesis examines a number of texts in which Martha appears in lists ofnJesus' women disciples. These include Origen's Contra Celsus, Pistis Sophia, thenManichean Psalmbook, the First Apocal_vpse of James, the Ethiopic DidascalianAposto!orum, the Apostolic Constitutions, the Testamentum Domini and the Acts ofnPilate (Gospel of Nicodemus). The thesis contends that Martha served as an apostolicnauthority for some groups. She is depicted as a key female disciple and mediator ofndivine knowledge in some texts. In some cases she is used to undermine women'snauthority, while other texts cite her to support the authority of women.nnnnnn The analysis of early Christian texts and images offered here reveals that Martha heldna more significant place in early Christian tradition than has been recognisednheretofore. It also illustrates the value of attending to liturgy and iconography for thenstudy of women in early Christianity as important non-literary avenues into the tradition. The way in which some Martha stories are used in early Christian rhetoricnabout women's authority and leadership in the church offers an important point ofncomparison for scholarship carried out on the figure of Mary Magdalene in relation tonwomen's authority. In shifting Martha qfrom the marginsq to the centre of theninvestigation and gathering as broad a range of texts and images as possible the thesisnsheds new light and offers a richer context for interpreting Martha within earlynChristian tradition.n

This authoritative volume brings together the latest thinking on women’s leadership in early Christianity. Featuring contributors from key scholars 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.

Attention has often been paid to the description of Paul's external appearance in the Acts of Thecla (Acts The. 3), but scarcely at all to the question of how Paul is portrayed in the narrative as a whole. This essay looks on the Acts of Thecla as a historically and theologically significant source for the reconstruction of early Christian developments and conflicts, and attempts to employ the methods of social-historical exegesis to investigate how Paul is depicted on the level of the narrative in his conduct towards Thecla. We discover that the perspective of the narrative is extremely critical. The portrayal of Paul reflects on Pauline and post-Pauline discussions of the image of women and the attribution of particular roles to women in early Christianity. The aim is not so much to reconstruct the historical Paul, but rather to uncover the theological self-contradiction of Paul and of early Christian men, who propagated justice in gender relationships, but did not put this into practice. The analysis of the portrait of Paul in the Acts of Thecla reveals this text to be a critical and theologically independent voice in the early Christian debate about gender hierarchy.

The present article attempts to discuss the relationship between time and gender in the Acta Pauli et Theclae and the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis. By analyzing both the temporal perception in the narrative and the construction of time through a series of narratological devices, I will focus on how specific notions of time that emerged in the early centuries of the Christian era proved to be a key factor in shaping women’s agency. Building on this evidence, I aim to identify a set of key features that may define the relationship between eschatology and the role of women in early Christianity. The figures of Thecla, Perpetua and Felicitas will be analyzed as highly representative case studies of gendered temporality.

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.

This essay analyzes evidence for leadership roles of women in early Christianity. Gendered cultural constraints were necessarily at play from the beginning and throughout the development and enactment of leadership structures. Yet women found ways to exercise leadership in a milieu of intertwined and pervasively patriarchal and androcentric cultures—Greek, Jewish, and Roman. The essay argues that any notion of linear development in either direction, toward the “liberation” of women or toward their containment and subordination, does not seem warranted. Rather, the dynamics of both “liberation” and “oppression” and everything in between are to be seen at every level and in every historical period. It explores early Christian women’s roles in the household, in the assembly, as apostles, prophets, and teachers, as martyrs, and as widows and deacons.

Reviewed by: The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History Blake Leyerle Rodney Stark. The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. Pp. xiv + 246. $24.95. In this electrifying book, an eminent sociologist of religion “introduce[s] historians and biblical scholars to real social science, including formal rational choice theory, theories of the firm, the role of social networks and interpersonal attachments in conversion, dynamic population models, social epidemiology, and models of religious economies” (p. xii). The result is stimulating, provocative, even revolutionary. The study begins with an estimation of the numbers involved in the early Christian movement. While hard numbers initially seem irretrievable, Stark works backwards from an estimate of 5–7.5 million Christians in the fourth [End Page 306] century to a starting number of 120 (derived from Acts 1:14–15). This estimated growth rate of 40% per decade encourages our confidence since it corresponds so closely with the rate maintained by the Mormon church over the past century (pp. 3–7). A chart demonstrates how “the extraordinary features of exponential curves,” can account for the late third century perception of a tremendous increase in absolute numbers of Christians, without having recourse to theories either of miraculous intervention or of the pivotal importance of the conversion of Constantine (pp. 7–12). Growth rate implies conversion. But why did people convert? Stark finds deprivation theory persuasive as long as two quite different aspects of human want are acknowledged: while desiring rewards that are scarce (like wealth or health), people also desire rewards that are absolutely unavailable (like immortality). This latter desire “explains why the upper classes are religious at all” and are among those most often drawn to cult movements (pp. 32–37). But what of the mission to the Jews? Long tagged a failure, Stark suggests, to the contrary, that large numbers of Jews did convert. Assuming that the attraction of Christianity for Hellenistic Jews was little different from that of Reform Judaism for nineteenth century Jews, he claims Christianity’s appeal lay in its retention of much of the content of both Judaism and Hellenism, while stripping away the ethnicity that relegated Jews to social marginality. Compared to Philo’s allegorized Judaism, Christianity’s vigorous otherworldly faith offered explanations for natural disasters as well as a hopeful scenario for the future (pp. 51–74). Conversion to Christianity was also facilitated by the higher percentage of women in early Christianity, due not only to over-recruitment but also to the condemnation of abortion (which was often lethal to the woman) and exposure (which was usually of girls). The relative dearth of women in the surrounding society along with Christian tolerance of exogamy invites us to posit a high number of secondary conversions as well as an enhanced fertility rate among Christians (pp. 100–128). We know that early Christianity was predominantly an urban movement, but were there specific “characteristics of cities [that] were conducive to Christianization” (p. 129)? In answer, Stark points to the “acute disorganization of Greco-Roman cities” largely caused by extraordinary congestion. The urban density of Antioch at the end of the first century, he estimates at 117 inhabitants per acre, whereas modern New York City has only 37. Calcutta forms a closer comparison with 122 persons per acre (pp. 149–50). The consequences of such crowding are not only dirt and rampant disease, but tendencies to crime and riot. To this scenario of human disorder, we must add such frequent natural disasters as fire, earthquake, and famine (pp. 154–61). Christianity’s success can be attributed, at least in part, to its response to urban chaos and misery. But what enabled Christians to risk their own health and resources? Stark answers by appealing to “rational choice theory” which suggests, counter-intuitively, that “the more expensive the religion, the better bargain it is” (p. 167). Costly demands tend to produce vital religious groups by effectively excluding those with low levels of commitment and participation. By asking much of its members, Christianity generated a strong sense of belonging as well as substantial resources (pp. 177–88). Members complying with the demand to [End Page 307] assist those...

Whether pagan, Jewish, or Christian, religion was an integral part of the lives of women in the Greco-Roman world. Yet studies of the ancient Mediterranean world have focused almost exclusively on the religious beliefs and practices of men. In Her Share of the Blessings, Ross Shepard Kraemer provides the first comprehensive look at women's religions in Greco-Roman antiquity. She vividly recreates the religious lives of early Christian, Jewish, and pagan women, with many fascinating examples: Greek women's devotion to goddesses, rites of Roman matrons, Jewish women in rabbinic and diaspora communities, Christian women's struggles to exercise authority and autonomy, and women's roles as leaders in the full spectrum of Greco-Roman religions. In every case, Kraemer reveals the connections between the social constraints under which women lived, and their religious beliefs and practices. Women's religious devotion often reflected and reinforced social definitions of women in terms of their relationships to men, as daughters, wives, sisters and mothers. Yet religions such as the ecstatic worship of Dionysos (where women periodically abandoned husbands, children and social responsibilities for nocturnal mountain rites), enabled women to find increased autonomy and female community, at least temporarily. The relationship between female autonomy, sexuality and religion emerges as a persistent theme. In antiquity, the body was associated with the female: soul and spirit with the male. Analyzing the monastic Jewish Therapeutae and various Christian communities, Kraemer demonstrates the paradoxical liberation which women achieved by rejection of sexuality, the body and the female. In the epilogue, Kraemer pursues the disturbing implications such findings have for contemporary women. Based on epitaphs and public inscriptions, letters and personal documents, references in literary works, and feminist and anthropological studies, Her Share of the Blessings is an insightful work that goes beyond the limitations of previous scholarship to provide a more accurate portrait of Jewish, Christian and pagan women in the Greco-Roman world.

DR Brendan Byrne SJ teaches at the Jesuit Theological College, Jesuit College of Spirituality, Parkville, Melbourne, Australia. This is an adapted version of his words when launching Lost In Translation earlier this year. Education, Identity and Women Religious, 1800–1950. Convents, classrooms and colleges, Deirdre Raftery and Ellizabeth M Smyth (eds). (Routledge: Abingdon, 2016), 221 pages. This book is a collection of articles by a number of women writers. All of the contributors have a background in education and/or history and are involved in university teaching or have researched and published on specialist topics relevant to the varied work of religious women over the 150 years the study covers. In their introduction, the editors, Deirdre Raftery and Elizabeth M Smyth, point out that the significant work done by women religious all over the world has, until recently, been side-lined. There is a number of reasons for this but the editors stress that the influence of a hierarchical, male-dominated church has rendered these women voiceless for centuries. Many contributors enlarge on this in their articles. While the focus of the book is the work of religious in education, it covers a broad spectrum. The work of some religious at home in Ireland is addressed but many of the articles deal with missionary work in education overseas, including Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Phil Kilroy is a Research Associate in Trinity College, Dublin and a member of the Society of the Sacred Heart. Among other writings, she has published Protestant Dissent and Controversy in Ireland 1660–1714. In the article under review, ‘Coming to an edge in history: writing the history of women religious and the critique of feminism’, she points to the negative image of women in early Christianity, including their portrayel by the apostle Paul. She points, also, to the fact that the Virgin Mary was elevated to such an extent that she was removed from the human condition and placed in polarity with Mary Magdalen who, without any evidence, became ‘the clerical projection of women as evil, weak and sinful’. (9) The author takes us through the history of women religious in the early centuries of the church, through Celtic Christianity, Christianity in AngloStudies • volume 107 • number 426 244 Summer 2018: Book Reviews Saxon England and the history of women religious in medieval, late medieval and early modern communities. She writes of Mary Ward, who founded a radically new community, the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in the seventeenth century. After its foundation, Mary Ward preached before the altar, gave her blessing and members of the community taught theology in their schools and did not observe cloister. The intrusions on clerical territory led to denial of papal approval for the community and Mary Ward was imprisoned in a Poor Clare convent. Phil Kilroy also writes of the Mexican scholar-nun Juana de la Cruz (late seventeenth century), who was renowned for her scholarship and learning and wrote theological treatises. She was examined and condemned by the Inquisition and continued to be relentlessly pursued. Eventually she broke under the pressure and disowned her own work and died a broken woman. Following the upheaval of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and Napoleon’s relationship with Rome), Pius IX convened the first Vatican Council in 1869. The Council set down measures to maintain discipline in the church, including turning its attention to works of education and nursing, i.e. to schools and hospitals, the work-places of women religious. This brought them further under clerical supervision and ‘the rules and regulations laid down became more stringent than ever before and in minute, invasive detail’. (21) This situation prevailed until Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council. Following the Second Vatican Council, the institutional church recognised the inherent challenge of feminism and demonised the word and its content and ‘most women religious agreed with this opinion’. (23) The author notes that, in time, many women religious became familiar with the insights of feminism and came in tune with the culture of their time, including its focus on issues such as justice, poverty, human rights, sex and gender. She concludes that religious women today...

Illness, Pain, and Health Care in Early Christianity

The Influence and Impact of Bernadette Brooten Not Only on LGBTIQ+ People in Germany Angela Standhartinger (bio) As we all know, Bernadette Brooten is an impressively polyglot person. She knows Norwegian, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, French, and of course German. Actually, she is the best non-native German speaker I have ever met in my life. In preparation for this contribution, I solved the riddle of Brooten's facility: she started her career with a maxima cum laude BA in German from the University of Portland, Oregon, including one year of study in Salzburg in Austria. Immediately after, she studied theology for another two years at Tübingen in Germany before entering the PhD program at Harvard, which included a year at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.1 At Tübingen she became involved in the critical discussion, at that time, of the recently closed Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church and its failure, among other reforms, to begin ordaining women as priests. So her famous rediscovery of the female apostle Junia was published in the volume Women Priests: A Catholic Commentary on the Vatican Declaration, edited by Leonard and Arlene Swidler.2 The following year, the Junia article was published in one of the premiere German publications on feminist theology, the book Frauenbefreiung (women's emancipation), edited by Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel.3 With Moltmann-Wendel and Hans Küng, Brooten developed a research project, "Women and Christianity," part of which resulted in her famous paper "Early Christian Women and Their [End Page 183] Cultural Context: Issues of Method in Historical Reconstruction."4 The German Volkswagen Foundation funded the Women and Christianity project, under the category "unconventional ideas," with 732,000 DM. From 1982 to 1984 Brooten held an academic research position at the University of Tübingen to publish in the area of "Sexualität, Ehe und Alternativen zur Ehe in den ersten vier Jarhunderten christlicher Geschichte" (sexuality, marriage, and alternatives to marriage in the first four Christian centuries). However, when she decided to focus on "Frauen, Macht und Sexualität: Röm 1,26 im Kontext" (women, power, and sexuality: Rom 1:26 in context), Hans Küng, the only chair holder in the group, saw this as a fundamental thematic change of topic. Because of this academic freedom dispute, Bernadette Brooten left Tübingen and moved to Harvard and later to Brandeis. Yet she had already initiated two political movements in Germany. One movement was the discussion of anti-Jewish patterns in Christian feminist theology. Brooten's engagement in this debate was triggered by the 1981 issue of Concilium, the international journal dedicated to critical Catholicism and perhaps the first mainline journal in Germany to publish on feminist theology.5 That same year, Brooten responded to the initial volume her paper "Jüdinnen zur Zeit Jesus" (Jewish women at the time of Jesus).6 She openly criticized the anti-Jewish stereotyping involved in constructing a feminist Jesus through a contrast with the (other) alleged patriarchal Jewish teachers and the accompanying tendentious selections of Jewish sources, in order to rescue early Christianity from patriarchy. The next year she republished most of the Concilium articles in her coedited book Women in a Men's Church, in which she included her own article and two from Jewish feminists Naomi R. Goldenberg and Judith Plaskow as well as one from Jacquelyn Grant entitled "Black Theology and Black Women."7 In so doing, [End Page 184] Brooten wrote in the foreword, she hoped to initiate a dialogue between Jewish and Christian feminists in Germany—a goal the book accomplished.8 While the German debate on anti-Judaism in feminist theology reached its high point in 1986–87, Brooten's 1981 article is still remembered as the starting point.9 One typical apologetic argument of that time was that Jesus rescued women from the patriarchal arbitrariness of Jewish men through his general prohibition of divorce. Brooten countered with extensive source work in "Konnten Frauen im Alten Judentum die Scheidung betreiben? Überlegungen zu Mk 10,11–12 and 1 Kor 7,10–11" (Did Jewish women divorce themselves from their husbands? Considerations on Mark 10:11–12 and 1 Cor 7:10–11).10...