WOMEN IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY
The role of women in early Christianity has undergone tremendous tumultuous theses over the centuries since Jesus Christ spread the Gospel. Viewing women’s roles in Christianity is an excellent example of the unevenness of women’s contributions to history. If one looks at the actions of Jesus as related in the New Testament, a positive picture emerges on how Christ viewed women and their role in his mission. In fact, some historians consider Jesus the first feminist. Paul the Apostle, Origen, Tertullian, and later the church fathers, St. Jerome and St.
Augustine, succeeded in relegating women’s contributions in early Christianity back to the lower status of women in ancient Greece and Rome. Then, over the centuries, women’s role in early
Christianity waxed and waned as the political structure of Western European society went from tribal to kingdoms. Currently, lay women and scholars have sought to recover and return to the original tenets of Christ’s messages. Sectarian interests in the last five hundred years have also played their part in the roller coaster role of women in the Christian church.
What does the Bible tell us about the role of women during Christ’s lifetime and the next several centuries? Jesus’ actions according to the Bible consistently resonated his belief in the equality of women, and that woman could study, teach and preach. Luke 10:38-42 tells the story of Mary of Bethany’s right to study with male disciples around Jesus. Both male and female examples are given in the gospels’ parables. A woman sought a lost coin can be paired with a shepherd seeking his lost sheep. Another one whereby a woman, who sows leaven in a measure of flour is paired with farmers sowing seed in the fields. Accounts of Jesus’ life consistently mention five women companions: Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany (sisters of Lazarus and
Martha), Joanna and Salome (women at the tomb) and the Samaritan, who Christ met at the well was called the First Apostle by the Orthodox church fathers. She was given the name Photina later.
Mary Magdalen has been the most controversial female figure contemporary with Jesus.
She was the one that went to the tomb and saw the risen Christ first. More on Mary can be

2 adduced from the Gospel of Mary, which was discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945 and part of what became known as the Gnostic texts or Nag Hammadi library. In this non-canonical book it reveals much about the leadership role of Mary. It portrays Peter as her opponent. In another of the Nag Hammadi texts, The Gospel of Thomas, the conflict surrounding her position with Jesus is resolved when she is transformed into a male. Throughout the centuries many have conjectured that she was actually Jesus’ wife, and the story of the miracle of Jesus turning water into wine at the marriage at Cana, was actually his wedding to Mary. Mary is not called a prostitute in the Bible, but was an error in the 6th century when a pope mixed up her with another figure. The Papacy or Roman Catholic Church apologized in 1956 for this egregious error. Her rise from a promiscuous prostitute to an apostle of Christ (the Eastern Orthodox Church recognizes her as such) has been the subject of biographies, novels, paintings, and justification for women’s subordination to men. How one interprets Mary’s place in Christianity seems to be determined by one’s view of women.
After Jesus’ death, Christianity became the new driving force for the apostles and Christ’s followers. Perhaps Paul, the infamous persecutor of the early Christians, utilized women even more than Jesus. Paul, known before his conversion as Saul of Taurus, was a Roman citizen raised in the Pharisee Jewish traditions, which were very conservative. Once his miraculous conversion took place, he energetically traversed the Roman and Greek world proselytizing.
However, he was not alone. While the New Testament usually mentions the men who travelled with him, not all of Paul’s women companions were identified by name. In Paul’s epistles to the
Romans he mentions thirty-six colleagues and sixteen of them are women. Junia, according to
Paul “was foremost among the apostles” (Romans 16:7). Women, as leaders of their own congregations, corresponded regularly with Paul. In the city of Corinth, Paul even taught with a woman, Prisca or Priscilla. Just like Mary of Magdalen’s relationship with Jesus, Thecla of
Iconium’s relationship with Paul is debated. She was engaged to be married when she left her family to teach with Paul. Accepted as a bona fide apostle by the early church, she is still

3 regarded as such by the Eastern Orthodox Church. Paul ordained her as a preacher of the gospel and an apostle of Christ. In the first four to five centuries of Christianity before the canon of the
New Testament was solidified, the book called the Acts of Paul and Thecla was widely read, and considered authentic biblical scriptures. Until it was barred from the official canon of the New
Testament in 367 c.e., hardly anyone questioned its authenticity. Even St. Jerome, the translator of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin (The Vulgate edition), vouched for Acts of Paul and Thecla’s authenticity, and by extension for the historical Thecla. This book is now in the
Apocrypha. (see the vignette for a more colorful rendition of Thecla’s life)
What other specific roles did women engage in according to the New Testament? Four daughters of Philip attest to women as prophetesses. Two women, Euodia and Syntyche, preached the gospel with Paul and Barnabas (Philippians 4:2-3). Paul called Phoebe both a deacon and prostasis or leader of her community.
Yet there seems to be an inconsistency regarding Paul’s treatment of women, or at least subsequent interpreters of the Bible’s thoughts on Paul’s view of women. This inconsistency perhaps can be explained by the concept of bifurcation between the general negative view of women, and the positive view of an individual woman. Or a more simple explication is forthwith. Drawing on Hebrew law and custom, Paul asserted that women should be veiled and keep silent in church. “For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, even as the law says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for women to speak in church.” Supposedly, this was written so that submissive and chaste wives would attract converts. This same idea prevailed in promoting virginity as a virtue to emulate in the early church. So much of the harsh treatment of women by Paul is directed towards the Corinthians, the notorious “sin city” of antiquity, where the Temple of Aphrodite was a center of prostitution for the sailors who plied her port. Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “...to the unmarried and to widows I would say this; it is an excellent thing if, like me, they remain as they are. Yet if they cannot contain, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn [with

4 passion] Let those who have wives live as if they had none...” Yet we know that Paul was probably a widower.
As historians have analyzed the various roles of women in early Christianity, what can be said in general about their participation and influence? The first Christian churches were houses of wealthy widows. As long as Christianity was an illegal sect, church buildings could not be built. All Christian communities in the New Testament record meeting under women’s roofs.
The common duties of the early church: teaching, praying, prophesying, baptizing and administering the meal of bread and wine, women could do. Many scholars state that the social services that these women provided such as lodging, meals, money, and jobs, were probably the most powerful persuasive tool that convinced people of the sincerity of these early Christians. In
Luke the story of Elizabeth the prophetess is outlined. She is filled with the holy spirit, who gave prophetic witness to the uniqueness of the child in Mary’s womb. The Virgin Mary herself prophesied. “The Magnificat” (Luke 1:47-55) is perhaps the most loved and recited prophecy:
“He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.”
As the church became more bureaucratized, then some of the titles used to denote these duties were changed Originally the titles of priest or priestess were not utilized as they were used by pagan religions of the classical world. Over time, the priest title was added, but the title priestess was not. Women were called deaconesses, a lower-status position. Later on it became unacceptable for women to baptize as the Orthodox Church attempted rid Christianity of
Gnostics. They used the specious argument that if Jesus had wanted women to baptize, then his own mother would have baptized him. When the men in position of power wanted women to not be ordained as priests, they used two arguments to promote this view. One, that Jesus only appointed male disciples and Paul’s injunctions for women to keep silent during public discussions, then women could not teach.
They are many positive traditions regarding women in the New Testament and the early

5 church. Women’s presence in the gospels whether as mother or follower remained powerful traditions for later women. After Jesus’ death many women helped the new faith. A seamstress,
Tabith, was called a disciple of Jesus’. She was considered so essential to her followers that they prevailed upon the Disciple Peter to bring her back to life.
Part of Christianity’s appeal to society was the martyrdom of its believers. Many were willing to die for their beliefs, and this included a good number of women. Naturally their stories and legends were expounded to perpetuate the faith. Perpetua of Carthage, who later became a saint, was a well-born woman, who was imprisoned for being a Christian. We are fortunate to have an eye-witness account of her execution. Apparently she was still nursing her infant and the crowed was horrified when “her breast still dripped with milk” as she was led into the arena.
Finally, when an inexperienced soldier was unable to kill her with the first blow, Perpetua guided his sword to her chest. Recent research has postulated that Perpetua was the victim of incest, and so did not recant when given the chance.
In the early years of Christianity, martyrdom usually led to sainthood. Only in the high middle ages did canonization follow a more rigorous rule. Many women became saints, and even some of the pagan goddesses were converted to saints. St. Bridgit was originally the Celtic goddess Bridgit. Saint Catherine was tortured to death on a wheel, St. Blandina was whipped, burned and finally died trussed in a net, gored by a bull, St. Pelagia of Antioch, a staunch virgin, jumped off a roof rather than suffer rape.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, is another wonderful example of the bifurcation regarding women in Christianity. Not much is revealed about Mary in the New Testament, but as centuries passed after Jesus’ death, people became curious about his life and by extension his mother.
Theologians like Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian called Mary the new Eve, implying her negative part in history. Tertullian even believed Mary was not among her son’s followers as
Christ rejected Mary. Today in the Catholic Church, Mary is the mother of God, a perpetual virgin, immaculately conceived, and taken into heaven with her body and soul uncorrupted,

6 where she reigns as queen of heaven. All these characteristics of Mary were added over the centuries because devotion to Mary was not to be quelled and Christian theology was forced to follow its adherents. Mary, it can be argued, is a personification of the goddess figure as represented by Cybele, Aphrodite, Demeter, Astarte, Isis and Inanna. Like them she is both virgin and mother, and like many of them she gives birth to a half human and half divine child, who dies and is reborn. The biblical references to Mary are mostly in Luke, although in Chapter twelve of the Book of Revelation there are enough similarities to Mary that many have assumed it is her although no name was given to the woman. Mary was often portrayed artistically as wearing radiant clothing with a moon under her feet and a crown of stars on her head; the same imagery is in the Book of Revelations. During the centuries after her death, pseudeoegraphical texts emerged as in the case of Mary Magdalene and Thecla. One purports to have been written by James, the son of Joseph by a previous marriage. In this text, Mary’s parents are named, and the death of Mary is given in detail. Early celebrations of Mary’s birth and death were added to the Christian calendar, the eighth of September and the fifteenth of August respectfully. Early
Church councils also solidified Mary’s various positions. At the 4th century Council at
Constantinople, Mary’s virgin motherhood was avowed. Mary was proclaimed as God-bearer at the Council of Ephesus in 431 c.e., and now the imagery had Mary with a crown on her head.
Mary was proclaimed ever-virgin at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 c.e., and finally in 1956 the
Catholic Church proclaimed Mary as Queen of Heaven.
During the last two centuries, another miraculous event has occurred regarding Mary.
Through the vision of a German mystic, the house where Mary spent her last days was found in
Ephesus in Asia Minor. It is now a noted pilgrimage site and believers think that Mary is actually buried nearby. Ephesus was the site of the burial of St. John, who Jesus requested at the cross to take care of his mother. As with the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis, shown nursing her infant
Horus, so too Mary will be painted and sculpted in exactly the same pose. However, as one theologian has said, “Christians may desire to worship a goddess, but they should not be allowed

7 to do so.”
As Christianity became accepted and institutionalized according to the Roman government model, equality granted to women in the first centuries disappeared. Church officials like Tertullian, Origen, Chrysostom, Jerome and Augustine emphasized women’s inferiority and subordination to men, migogynistic ideas that were endemic in the classical Greco-Roman societies. Ideas from the classical writers were injected into the message of the New Testament, and women suffered in a variety of ways.
Now Adam’s relative innocence and Eve’s greater guilt was postulated. The resemblance between Pandora and Eve as bringers of evil to men was stressed. From the second century Eve was seen as the source of sin and the killer of Jesus. According to Tertullian, a Carthagian theologian circa 160-230 a.d. “And do you know that [each] of you is an Eve. The sentence of
God on this sex of your lives in this age; the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil’s gateway...you destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desertion, even the son of God had to die.” Furthermore, Eve became the supreme temptress, the cause of lust. By extension now, women were blamed for causing lust in men, and thus celibacy was necessary for men. The dichotomy between the pit and the pedestal, between Mary and Eve became even more pronounced.
By the third century menstruating women could not approach the altar even if a deaconess. A woman’s body now had the power to pollute. Once again Jewish and other societies’ customs impacted Christianity. A woman was unclean for thirty-three days after the birth of a son, and double that number after the birth of a daughter. Purification was necessary for women to be allowed to enter a church. Menstruation will now e used to justify the removal of women from any position of responsibility or leadership in the Christian church. Pagan myths that menstrual blood had destructive power were revived. Eventually, within a few centuries, menstruating women could even prevent fruit from ripening and cause plants to die according to
Bishop Isidore of Seville.

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Perhaps one of the most burdensome laws was the outlawing of any method of birth control. St. Augustine will assert that practicing birth control with one’s husband was a worse sin than a father committing incest with his daughter. Before Augustine converted to Christianity he had spent his teens and early twenties as a Manichean. In this bizarre offshoot of Zorasterianism and Christianity, rituals where sexual intercourse was meant to be strictly non-procreative,
Augustine instigated the Christian ideal of sexual intercourse for procreative purposes. If the act of Onan or some birth control methods were used, then it was the killing of an unborn child.
As a result of women’s status and position declining in these early centuries, offshoots of orthodox Christianity grew. Gnosticism, eventually declared a heresy, gave women the most powerful position. After the discovery of the gnostic texts at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945, we have learned more about this form of Christianity. Eve was praised and they considered Mary
Magdalene an apostle. Controversial was their belief in the bisexual nature of God. One gnostic hymn listed the attributes of God in terms reminiscent of the contemporary hymns to the
Egyptian goddess, Isis, a religion considered a major competitor of Christianity:
“For I am the first and the last. I am the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin. I am the mother and the daughter.” By the third century many Gnostic congregations were condemned as heretics. This is when women in the mainstream of Christianity were excluded from baptizing and when total immersion changed to sprinkling.