Women in the Jesus Movement– Reflections by Larry Hurtado

Here’s a helpful post by my friend and colleague Larry Hurtado. BW3

Women in the Jesus-Movement
by larryhurtado

Last night in the UK, Channel 4 aired a TV documentary on the evidence of women’s involvement in the ministry of Jesus and the earliest Jesus-movement, featuring Professor Helen Bond (New College, Edinburgh) and Professor Joan Taylor (Kings College London). On the whole, and for the popular TV audience for which it was prepared, the programme was interesting and informative. The main point was (quite rightly) to bring to the foreground the place of women among Jesus’ followers and in early Christianity thereafter.

For many (most?) TV viewers of the programme, the named women who were highlighted (from Luke 8:-3, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Salome), and the references to many other women followers as well, were perhaps new things to consider. And, of course, with scholars in any discipline, I’m always grateful when the popular media take account of my subject area.

Professors Bond and Taylor performed their task well, combining some serious discussion of key texts, Greek words, and archaeological data with the sort of “light touch” necessary for TV. One could quibble about this or that particular item, such as Professor Taylor’s proposal that Greek wording in the reference to Jesus’ followers sent out “by two” in Luke 10:1 (ἀνὰ δύο δύο) intentionally echoed the Greek text of Genesis 7:9, which portrays the animals entering Noah’s ark “two by two, male and female.” Professor Taylor suggested that the phrasing in Luke perhaps meant that Jesus sent out his followers in (unmarried) male/female pairs.

We do have Paul’s reference to other apostles and “the brothers of the Lord” travelling about with their wives (1 Corinthians 9:4). But in the ancient cultural setting it would have been quite another matter for unmarried male/female pairs to travel about without generating suspicions and accusations. And among the accusations against Jesus in the Gospels, we don’t have reflection of that sort of scandal.

But, also, the textual data aren’t quite so simple. For one thing, the manuscript witnesses are actually rather strongly divided over the variant readings in Luke 10:1, ἀνὰ δύο δύο or ἀνὰ δύο. The editors of the Nestle-Aland Greek NT indicate their lack of confidence as to which is to be preferred by printing the first reading and putting the second δύο in square brackets.

The δύο δύο reading, however, may well be the prior one, for it reflects a Koine idiom attested in various other instances as well.[1] The other variant, ἀνὰ δύο, is somewhat more “Atticizing” and may have been preferred by some readers of Luke as a bit more elegant. But, in any case, the δύο δύο variant isn’t really remarkable, and for ancient readers wouldn’t necessarily comprise an allusion to the Genesis passage. So, on grammatical grounds, too, I don’t find Professor Taylor’s proposal persuasive.

Such quibbles aside, the larger force of the programme is, in my view, to be applauded: Women, many women, were among Jesus’ followers, made substantial contributions (both in effort and finances) to his ministry, and continued to exercise important and leading roles in earliest Christian circles.

TV producers, of course, have to make grand claims to generate an audience. But it should be noted, however, that the recognition that women were important in Jesus’ ministry and earliest Christianity is hardly new or surprising, at least in scholarly circles. I think immediately of Witherington’s 1988 volumes, Women in the Ministry of Jesus, and Women in the Earliest Churches.[2] In the same year, also, there appeared perhaps one of the most widely noted books of the late 20th century, by Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, which likewise highlighted the place of women.[3] As well, there were studies pointing to evidence of women leaders in early Christianity, such as the sort of archaeological data treated in the TV programme.[4] So, for several decades now scholars have been producing studies of the matter.

But there is hardly a place for footnotes in a TV programme, and, as I say, for most viewers the observations presented were new, perhaps startling. So, Professors Bond and Taylor performed a useful service in dissemination of scholarly findings, and presented a commendably sane and educative programme. It’s so nice to have this sort of programme, instead of the sometimes zany ideas that get TV time. Congratulations to my two colleagues, and may there be more TV programmes of similar quality.

[1] E.g., J. H. Moulton, A Grammar of New Testament Greek, Vol. 1: Prolegomena (3rd ed.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1908), 97; and see also Moulton and Milligan, Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament, 172-73.

[2] Ben Witherington III, Women in the Ministry of Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); idem, Women in the Earliest Churches, SNTSMS 59 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

[3] Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1988).

[4] Ross Shepard Kraemer and Mary Rose D’Angelo, eds., Women and Christian Origins (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Ute E. Eisen, Women Officeholders in Early Christianity: Epigraphical and Literary Studies, trans. Linda M. Maloney (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000); Linda Belleville, Women Leaders and the Church (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000). Earlier, Bernadette Brooten pointed to similar evidence of women in ancient Judaism: Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue, Brown Judaic Studies 36 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1982). But note also Kathleen E. Corley, Women and the Historical Jesus: Feminist Myths of Christian Origins (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 2002).