Women in Early Christianity

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AbstractThe 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.