Blog & Resources
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She Reads Truth
I got to help kick off the next She Reads Truth series, which is on the genealogy of Jesus, starting with Genesis. She Reads Truth helps people, especially women, keep reading the Scriptures—improving their Bible literacy. Have a listen to the episode.
Got Questions?
Recently I taped two podcasts/videos with "Got Questions?" talking with the host about 1) the debate surrounding women being pastors and 2) those head-scratching Bible verses about women.
Part 1 – What about women pastors?
Part 2 - What about those hard Bible verses about women? What was Paul saying?
Woman: Who She Is/What's She's Made For
Over the weekend, I was in Omaha, Nebraska speaking at a retreat. I met some wonderful people and ate my first runza. Good eating on a cold, windy day!
My topic related to identity: Who woman is and what she was made for—or her calling. I've done versions of it several times in the past year. And I promised to post retreat notes here. But everyone is welcome to use them. You can download the PDF by clicking on the link along with a short Bible study. (Chrome seems to work best.) Once inside the retreat-notes document, if you see a rectangle on top of or near a word, click on the hyperlink if you want to read a blog post I've written on the topic relating to that word.
Podcast: Hear my thoughts on Artemis of Ephesus
Recently, Dr. Preston Sprinkle hosted me on his popular "Theology in the Raw" podcast. We talked about my forthcoming book, Nobody's Mother: Artemis of the Ephesians in Antiquity and the New Testament (IVP Academic), which is about, well, Artemis (the book is due out in October and available now for pre-order). We also talked about Amazon women. And what the apostle Paul means when he talks about a woman/wife being "saved through childbearing." Plus the probable meaning of those breast-y appendages on the goddess's front in the Ephesus-specific images of her. Also, hermeneutics and cultural backgrounds. Grab a coffee or sit in the carpool line and have a listen!
Gender and Bible translation
My former student Rick Hale compared how different Bible translations rendered the word "anthropos" in passages that (a) could reasonably have both men and women in view and (b) are translated with gender inclusive language in the NET Bible. The table provides interpretation of ‘anthropos’ in the specified Bible translations for each passage listed. Click on the link to download the entire PDF. (Works best in Chrome.)
Revisiting the Topic of Women in Public Ministry: My Recommended Resources (2022)
For more than two decades, I’ve taught a course on gender and its ramifications in the church and for women in public ministry. Since #MeToo and #ChurchToo combined with Christian leaders saying women have to endure abuse to be biblical and also that women shouldn’t teach in seminaries, I’ve seen a shift in attitudes. Add to that the one-two punches of Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez with Beth Allison Barr’s book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: People are revisiting what and why they believe on the topic.
Some have sat up and said, basically, “Evangelicals have barred the front door against radical feminism while leaving the back door wide open to misogyny.” Some have heard Beth Moore told to “Go Home!” and responded with, “Stop already. That misrepresents us.” I’m hearing pastors get up and say, “I was wrong” to slut-shame Bathsheba. I’ve been told by radio hosts, “If I had talked with you a year ago about this, I would have heard you uncharitably, but now. . . .” Something has changed.
Consequently, churches and parachurch organizations are asking for guidance about how to revisit the Bible’s words about topics like women’s silence and being “saved through childbearing.”
Churches are seeing how inconsistent it is to have formulated policy about women without consistently applying their commitment to “God made men and women different by design, so that means we need to partner with them in having dominion.”
Additionally, many are realizing that most debates are taking place within the complementarian camp. Indeed, within this camp, a lot of folks want to distance themselves from traditionalist views of women (e.g., “women are ontologically inferior to men”) and views of women’s public ministry that have women’s lives revolving only around those of men. There is a growing willingness to state outright that woman was made in God’s image; that violence in a marriage is what severs the marriage bond, not the departure of the person seeking safety; that if a sign of the Spirit in Acts 2 includes old and young women prophesying, it cannot somehow violate a grounded-in-creation mandate for a man to learn biblical truth from a woman. Here’s a chart I made with the help of my friend Catherine Arnsperger that shows a spectrum of beliefs within the inerrancy camp, and mostly within the complementarian camp.
I’ve done some consulting on the subject. But my first love is my students. So….
Are you and/or your team wanting to revisit questions about gender in the church? Here are my recommended resources:
While there is no one book I recommend, here are some sources that will help you explore the issue for yourself. I highly recommend doing so in community. Through the years I have noticed that those who do so alone tend to end up in a different place (and not always a good place) from those who do so in community. Books with an asterisk are required reading in the course I teach (some in entirety, some only chapters).
Recommended Books on Women in Public Ministry
HOT OFF THE PRESS: I wrote the foreword for 40 Questions about Women in Ministry (Kregel Academic) by Sue Edwards and Kelley Mathews.
*Winston, George and Dora. Recovering Biblical Ministry by Women. Longwood, Florida: Xulon Press, 2003. 551 pages. Textual considerations. I require the first half of this book, and it’s a game changer for my students in helping them see how to frame the study. George graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary and was president of Belgium Bible Institute years before his retirement. His late wife, Dora, was a missionary in Europe for years and also taught at the institute. Significantly, the Winstons are more global in their thinking about masculinity and femininity/manhood and womanhood than many of the popular sources.
*Bartlett, Andrew. Men and Women in Christ: Fresh Light from the Biblical Texts. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), 2019. 464 pp. Many books approach the subject from a firmly partisan point of view, whether complementarian or egalitarian. Andrew Bartlett makes use of his experience as a judge and arbitrator in assessing the debate with impartiality rather than advocacy (like a barrister). In a thorough but accessible analysis, he engages with exemplars of each view and with all the key biblical texts. He partly agrees and partly disagrees with both sides, and he offers fresh insights into interpretation of the texts.
*Dzubinski, Leanne M. and Anneke H. Stasson. Women in the Mission of the Church: Their Opportunities and Obstacles throughout Christian History. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021. 238 pp. Many have been taught that women served only behind the scenes in the church for 1,950 years till US feminism came along and wrecked everything. Such a version of history ignores the long history of women in public ministry. Also, this article for many is full of historical surprises.
*Hübner, Jamin. A Case for Female Deacons. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2015. 90 pp. Exactly what it says it is. Short, concise.
*McKnight, Scot. The Blue Parakeet, 2nd ed: Rethinking How You Read the Bible. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2018. 336 pages. McKnight helps readers consider the hermeneutics of culture. How do we know when something is cultural (e.g., slavery) and when it’s timeless? He applies hermeneutics of culture to the debate on women in vocational ministry.
*Piper, John, and Wayne Grudem, eds. Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1991 (re-published with only a new preface in 2006; contents in both editions are identical to the 1991 edition). Many church leaders read this book in seminary and have read nothing since. How these authors frame the debate will raise some eyebrows after reading Winstons.
*Pierce, Ronald W., Cynthia Long Westfall and Christa McKirland. Discovering Biblical Equality. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2021. 3rd ed, 698 pp. Egalitarian scholars provide alternative interpretations than those presented in Piper/Grudem’s Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. This is a big, fat book that presents egalitarianism from the perspective of contributors who hold to inerrancy.
*Sayers, Dorothy L. Are Women Human? Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005. From a speech given in 1938. 69 pp. Sayers’s observations about sexism predate the Women’s Movement.
*Witt, William G. Icons of Christ: A Biblical and Systematic Theology for Women’s Ordination. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2020. 447 pp. Witt makes a biblical and theological case for the ordination of women to the ministerial office of Word and Sacrament. He argues that both sides of the debate about women’s ordination embrace new theological positions in response to cultural changes of the modern era. Witt touches on issues such as theological hermeneutics, relationships between men and women, Christology and discipleship, and the role of ordained clergy in leading the church in worship.
*Cohick, Lynn. Women in the World of the Earliest Christians. If you think the women with shaved heads referenced in 1 Cor. 11 were prostitutes, or that the Samaritan woman at the well was immoral, you’re overdue an update. Lynn Cohick knows her stuff.
*Chapter on “head” in Sumner, Sarah. Men and Women in the Church: Building Consensus on Christian Leadership. Seriously, Sumner’s chapter on what “head” means in Ephesians 5 is outstanding. It’s a metaphor. Efforts to substitute the metaphor have given us either “authority” or “source” as literal equivalents. And in doing so, we’ve destroyed the metaphor and missed the point.
For 1 Timothy 2, I give my students my two academic articles on Artemis. I did my dissertation on that one. See links below to summary posts of the content. My forthcoming book, Nobody’s Mother with IVP Academic explores the goddess’s identity and the ramifications for Paul’s writings.
I require the *chapter on eschatology in Paul and Gender by Cynthia Westfall.She and I disagree about what is happening with head coverings in 1 Corinthians 11. But her chapter on women and the kingdom (eschatology) is worth the price of the book.
Meanwhile, for the past fifteen+ years, I’ve been writing on these issues right here on bible.org. I’m including below an index with links to all the relevant blog posts I could find. Some churches have preferred to use these because, well, shorter than that book list I just dropped above.
Godspeed!
My Blog Posts on Women in Public Ministry
Church History: What Do We Learn from Women in Public Ministry? (Hint: Women have been more present than most of us thought.)
Do males image God more than females?
Male and Female in God’s Design
Video: Sexuality and Faith: Male and Female in God’s Good Design
Foundations: What is biblical womanhood?
What Does It Mean that Woman is “Helper” (Ezer)?
Does Genesis Command a Man (not a Woman) to Leave Parents?
Women rule (have dominion)
Are women worth less than men?
What Does Genesis 6 Have to Do with Healthy Male/Female Relationships?
Is it unfeminine to be strong?
Nine steps to biblical manhood/womanhood
God as Male and Female: Metaphor and Simile
What’s a man card got to do with it?
Was Abigail right to go behind Nabal’s back?
Did Jesus Have Women Disciples? and Other Questions
Mary Magdalene: Mary from Magdala or Mary Tower?
Gender and Jesus: Scripture Over Stereotype
“Act like men”: What does Paul mean?
Seven views on the role of women w/in the inerrancy camp
Complementarians on women in ministry: diverse images
What’s the main difference between complementarian and egalitarian?
Interview w/ Eugene Peterson women in church
The Bible: Women Are More Present Than You Might Think
What the presence of women prophets in the Bible tells us
Can Women Speak for God in Mixed-Sex Groups?
“She was a pretty good prophet…for a woman”
Proverbs 31: The Most Hated Woman in the Bible
Can a woman be a seminary professor?
Women and Theological Education: Capitulating to Culture or Historically Rooted?
Women and submission in the workplace
Staying home with kids vs. marketplace work
1 Cor. 11 – Who were the women with shaved heads?
1 Corinthians 14: Are Women Really Supposed to be Silent in Church?
Does Paul really think women are gossips and busybodies?
Ephesians 5: Paul and His Subversive Passage on the Family
1 Peter 3: Weak and weaker vessels
Why Peter today would not want a wife to call her husband “lord”
Is Peter insulting women? Part 1
Is Peter insulting women? Part 2
“Not with braided hair or pearls”
What does “workers at home” really mean?
Are the Women in 1 Timothy Leaders, Needers, or Both?
1 Timothy 2: Who Was Artemis & Why Does It Matter, Part 1
1 Timothy 2: Who Was Artemis & Why Does it Matter Part 2
1 Timothy 2: Do Women Have to Be Quiet?
Bible Backgrounds: Read Some NT Books with the Artemis Cult in View
Paul, Artemis, Ephesus, and 1 Timothy
History: Reintroducing Five Women
Meet Some Female Martyrs of the Early Church
Lost in (Bible) Translation: Are Women Really Missing?
Why Don’t We See More Women in the Biblical Text?
The Bible: Women Are More Present than We Might Think
Four Books to Put on Your Reading List re. Gender and Ministry
Bible Backgrounds: When Is It Legit to Appeal to Them?
The Bent-Over Woman Jesus Healed
Acsah: A Lesser-Known Woman of the Bible
Vindicating Vixens: What about Michel, Wife of David?
The Most Woman-Friendly Book in the Hebrew Bible
Fight Toxic Masculinity (Vs. Thinking All Masculinity is Toxic)
Church History: What Do We Learn about Women in Public Ministry
Was Abigail Right to Go Behind Nabal's Back?
One morning after I taught a women’s Bible study on the life of Abigail—wife of Nabal, a woman hustled over to me, elbows swinging. Seeing her body language, I braced myself.
Her argument about my teaching went something like this: “You're wrong! Abigail was most definitely not righteous. By taking matters into her own hands, she shows what happens when a wife steps out from under her husband’s ‘umbrella of authority.’ If Abigail had submitted to Nabal rather than intervening, David would have felt guilty for killing Nabal, and that guilt would have kept him from killing later."
I’d heard this interpretation already—from Bill Gothard, among others.
So how do we figure out how to interpret this story? Was Abigail good or evil? The text itself provides the needed clues.
We find the "Abigail and David" story in 1 Samuel 25:2–43. The narrator begins with his assessment: “[Abigail] was both wise and beautiful.” In contrast, of Nabal the storyteller says, “But the man was harsh and his deeds were evil” (v. 3). The first clues about how to view this story appear at the beginning.
Now, Nabal was filthy rich, and David’s men had treated Nabal's servants well. But when the time came for Nabal to reciprocate, he screamed at the king’s servants: “WHO IS DAVID, AND WHO IS THIS SON OF JESSE? This is a time when many servants are breaking away from their masters! Should I take my bread and my water and my meat that I have slaughtered for my shearers and give them to these men? I don’t even know where they came from!”
Whoa. As they say in Texas, “Them’s fightin’ words!”
The reader knows David is God's anointed, but Nabal has no respect. And when David heard how Nabal had dissed him, he rounded up four hundred men. His plan: wipe out Nabal and every one of his children and slaves. Nabal was totally outnumbered.
Fortunately, one of Abigail’s servants told her what Nabal had done. This slave provided her with the backstory about how David’s men had treated Nabal’s servants with utter kindness and deserved better from Nabal. This servant needed Abigail to intervene or he would die along with the rest of the innocents.
Abigail chose to act. But it wasn’t just her own neck she sought to save. It was hers, and her kids', and her servants'—and even her evil husband's.
Abigail was no rebel. She was a peacemaker—in the best sense. And as such, she put together enough food for the army and sent her servants ahead of her. But she temporarily withheld her plan from Nabal, who would have tried to stop her, and a lot of innocent people would have died.
Riding on her donkey, the equivalent to a Mercedes in her day, Abigail went down to meet David and his men. By the time she arrived, David was good and worked up over Nabal's insults. The future king planned to kill all the men in any way associated with Nabal’s household
When Abigail met David, she showed the humility her husband should have exhibited. She “got down off her high horse”—or donkey, threw herself to the ground, fell at David's feet, and pleaded with him. Notice how much she talked about the Lord: “Please forgive the sin of your servant, for the Lord will certainly establish the house of my lord, because my lord fights the battles of the Lord. May no evil be found in you all your days! When someone sets out to chase you and to take your life, the life of my lord will be wrapped securely in the bag of the living by the Lord your God. But he will sling away the lives of your enemies from the sling’s pocket! The Lord will do for my lord everything that he promised you, and he will make you a leader over Israel. Your conscience will not be overwhelmed with guilt for having poured out innocent blood and for having taken matters into your own hands. When the Lord has granted my lord success, please remember your servant.”
Did you catch that? Abigail was focused on God. And she considered it evil to “take matters into your own hands”—the very action for which she is accused by contemporary critics. So…either this story is full of extreme irony or Abigail is a model of righteousness. Textual clues suggest the latter.
Now, notice the future king's "God talk." He says, “Praised be the Lord, the God of Israel, who has sent you this day to meet me! Praised be your good judgment! May you yourself be rewarded for having prevented me this day from shedding blood and taking matters into my own hands! Otherwise, as surely as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives—he who has prevented me from harming you—if you had not come so quickly to meet me, by morning’s light not even one male belonging to Nabal would have remained alive!”
David saw Abigail’s actions as preventing him from sin, as wise, and as guided by the Lord himself.
A less honest wife would have hidden her actions from her man. But once Nabal sobered up and the danger had passed, Abigail summoned the courage to tell her husband what she'd done. And he flipped out so intensely that he had a stroke. Literally. Utter rage exploded in his head, leading to his death.
And again David saw the circumstances as being from God. When he heard about Nabal’s death, the future king exclaimed, “Praised be the Lord who has vindicated me and avenged the insult that I suffered from Nabal! The Lord has kept his servant from doing evil, and he has repaid Nabal for his evil deeds.” David was so impressed with Abigail and how God used her that he sent for her to marry her.
So how do we know how to interpret this story? The text itself gives us the clues we need to see the point-of-view of the narrator: Abigail was beautiful inside and out, and the hand of the Lord was on her and on David. As is often true of Bible stories, the text interprets itself.
Aside from learning hermeneutics in Abigail's story, we can also learn from Abigail's life. Although suffering in an abusive marriage, Abigail protected others—and herself—from harm rather than thinking only of herself. She refused to cover for Nabal's sin, and she retained her voice in the situation. Sounds like a timely message, huh?
Photo: "David und Abigail," Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Gemäldegalerie
Permission granted for non-commercial use. Permalink: www.khm.at/de/object/ac796a52db/
https://blogs.bible.org/was-abigail-right-to-go-behind-nabals-back/
Women’s History Month: Meet Some Female Martyrs from the Early Church
When I spoke to a class of seminary students recently about women in public ministry in the early church, someone asked me to share some names and narratives about our foremothers. It seemed fitting to provide a sampling here during Women's History Month. (Some day I hope we will simply learn "history"; but until women are included in the telling of history, we'll continue to need a special annual focus.) You can find all the women listed below in the mosaics of Ravenna's "new" (6th c) Basilica of Sant'Apollinare. I've included a summary of the stories that usually accompany them, as well. You will notice a theme of women exercising agency over their own bodies to the glory of God.
Agatha. Virgin martyr. Agatha died in 251. Born in Sicily into a noble family, she steadfastly vowed to remain a virgin. She was taken to a house of prostitution, tortured by rods, hooks, the rack, and fire. She died after being rolled over coals and sharp broken pieces of pottery.
Agnes. Virgin martyr. As a child, Agnes committed herself to God. At age thirteen she was killed by the swift stroke of the executioner’s sword.
Anastasia. Virgin martyr. The Roman daughter of a nobleman, Anastasia was forced to marry an unbeliever. She often disguised herself as a man to minister to Christians in jail. When her husband found out, he imprisoned her—along with three maids—and threatened to starve her. But he died, and she was released.Anastasia was later burned alive. She has been described as “one of the most highly venerated” of the church of Constantinople.
Anatolia and Victoria. Virgin martyrs. Sisters. During the reign of Decius, they refused to recant and died from sword wounds.
Cecilia. Virgin martyr. Cecilia took a vow of chastity as a girl. Her parents betrothed her to a man who, upon learning of her vow, was baptized on what was to be their wedding day. Cecilia proclaimed the good news and is said to have summoned 400 people to her home, where they were baptized. It took three attempts on her life to kill her.
Crispina. Martyr. Raised a Christian by her noble family, Crispina was accused of disregarding edicts. The proconsul tried to get her to recant her faith by threatening her with death. “Crispina replied that she cared not for this life,” and was beheaded in 304. Augustine held her up as a model for Christians, as she gave up luxury and ease for eternal glory.
Cristina. Virgin martyr.Cristina’s father, a Roman patrician, had her beat and imprisoned at age 12 for refusing to sacrifice to a god. His successor ordered her tongue cut out and had her put in a dungeon with snakes. Bound to a tree, she was impaled with arrows.
Daria. Virgin martyr.An educated young woman from Athens, she had a fiancé who converted to Christianity and was baptized. They were arrested, put in separate prisons, tortured, and sentenced to die. Both were tossed in a pit and covered with dirt and stones—buried alive.
Emerentian. Virgin martyr. Known as the foster-sister of Agnes, she was stoned to death while confronting pagans at Agnes’s burial place.
Eugenia. Virgin martyr. She left alife of privilege to enter a monastery and, upon the abbot’s death, was elected as his replacement. She was later beheaded for her faith.
Eulalia. Virgin martyr. At age twelve, she refused offers of marriage, choosing to remain a consecrated virgin. Her parents hid her at their country home, but she escaped and publicly delivered a courageous message. She was burned to death by flaming torches.
Euphemia. Virgin martyr. During Diocletian’s persecutions, Euphemia wore black and renounced worldly goods and pleasures. A judge tried to get her to recant at age 15, but she refused, so she was tortured on a wheel, but the wheel broke. She was thrown to wild beasts, but they ignored her. She is said finally to have been struck on the mouth with a hammer.
Felicity. Martyr. Enslaved and pregnant, she gave birth two days after her arrest. Her labor and delivery of a preterm baby girl was celebrated, as fellow believers had prayed for such an outcome. Per her wish, Felicity died in the arena together with St. Perpetua and other believers. A Christian woman adopted and raised her daughter in the faith.
Justina. Virgin martyr. Born in Padua, Italy, Justina was raised in a Christian family. Her father, a king, was said to have been baptized by a disciple of Peter. After her father's death, the emperor pressured Justina to renounce her faith. When she refused, she was put to death by sword.
Lucy. Virgin martyr. Lucy died in 304 under Diocletian. She sold her belongings and gave the money to the poor. She was arrested and brought before a judge, who commanded her to sacrifice to idols. She died from a sword through the neck.
Paulina. Virgin martyr. Paulina’s family witnessed her mother’s miraculous healing and converted with three hundred others. Father, mother, and daughter were martyred for their faith.
Perpetua. Martyr. Perpetua was educated. She converted to Christianity despite her father’s objections. Her father was beaten due to her confession of faith, but she still refused to recant.Perpetua was married and still nursing a baby when arrested. She died a martyr in the arena of Carthage, alongside her servant, Felicitas. Perpetua’s account of her experience has earned her the designation as the first known Christian female writer.
Savina. Third-century martyr and widow of Milan. Upon her husband’s death, Savina helped victims of persecution under Diocletian, even burying their bodies in her own home. Found praying at their tombs, she was martyred.
St. Pelagia. Virgin martyr. To defend her virginity, at age 15, Pelagia—born in Antioch—took her own life in 311. When soldiers arrived to arrest the girl at her father’s home, she said a prayer and jumped into the sea.
Valerie. Widow and martyr.In first-century Ravenna, Valerie married Vitalis, who was tortured and buried alive. (Justinian built a church in Ravenna to honor him—the Basilica of San Vitale.) When Valerie refused to participate in a pagan festival, villagers beat her to death.
These are women of whom the world was not worthy. May we follow them as they followed Christ.
Special thanks for Cynthia Hester for her help with research.
I shot the image below in 2017 in Ravenna, Italy. It's a mosaic in the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuevo that depicts Jesus with the woman at the well/Samaritan woman. According to tradition, her name was Fotina, and she was martyred.
Bible Backgrounds: Read Some NT Books with the Artemis Cult in View
Ever seen drawings of the ancient goddess Artemis? If so, she was probably carrying a bow and arrow. More recent iterations of her as Wonder Woman still depict her the same way—with shields, bows, and arrows.
Ancient literature includes many references to Artemis as a master of archery. We see a similar connection in the epigraphic (inscription) evidence. In what is known as “the Oracle Inscription” found in the ruins of Ephesus, the goddess is described as “Artemis of the golden quiver,” a “shooter of arrows” and a “straight-shooting one.” In the ancient Ephesians’ manifestation of her, as with the more generic Artemis, the arrow was her primary weapon.
What does Artemis have to do with Bible? Maybe a lot…
Talking about spiritual warfare in his epistle to the Ephesians (Eph. 6:10–18), Paul was writing to people in this city that served as guardian of Artemis’s temple and Ground Zero for her cult (see Acts 19). And he gives a reason Christ-followers need to armor-up with the breastplate of faith: to extinguish “flaming arrows of the evil one” (6:16). Might he have had the cult of the queen of archery in mind?
Ephesus was a port city with access to great roads and harbors. So the metropolis was strategic geographically and politically. As such, it became an important site of early Christianity. Priscilla and Aquila, Paul’s partners in tent-making and ministry, eventually moved with Paul to Ephesus (Acts 18:19). The city served as home base for Paul for three years (c. AD 50–53). And to or from Ephesus he probably wrote 1 Corinthians (see 1 Cor. 16:8), the Book of Ephesians, and 1 and 2 Timothy. The addressee of the latter, Paul’s protégé, continued to minister in Ephesus even after his mentor left (1 Tim. 1:3). Tradition places Jesus’s mother in Ephesus along with the elder John after his exile on Patmos in the 90s. And John reportedly wrote his Gospel while in Ephesus and surrounding towns, along with 1, 2, and 3 John. That is a lot of “Ephesus” influencing the New Testament (NT)!
In Acts we find a good summary of some key events that happened in this city at the time of the earliest Christians. Sorcerers burned magic books (Acts 19:18–20), Paul taught daily, and an uprising made Paul decide to end his three-year stint in the city earlier than planned (19:23–20:1). The problem? Serious opposition from followers of, you guessed it, Artemis.
Scholar Michael Immendörfer in Ephesians and Artemis notes that in the Book of Ephesians, Paul “adopts local Artemis terminology and infuses it with new meaning or defines it in relation to Christ, so that cultic terms are used to criticize the cult.” The author concludes, “As readers were familiar with the [cult] language, it is very likely that they recognized the author’s allusions and could comprehend the intended associations. They consist of direct attacks on the cult and of indirect polemic.”[1]
Comparing words in the NT written from or to an Ephesian context with ancient words about Artemis one does indeed find surprising overlap. In some cases, terms that appear only once in the NT show up in the papyri or inscriptions and provide some context. For example, Paul is in the great city (1 Cor 16:8) when he describes his time there saying, “I fought with beasts (ἐθηριομάχησα) at Ephesus” (15:32). By “beasts” does he mean animals or people? We get a clue when we notice that Homer described Artemis as “Potnia theron” (Πότνια Θηρῶν), mistress (counterpart to master) of wild beasts. In his choice of the term for “beast” Paul has chosen to use the form of a word found in one of Artemis’s titles. The NT describes how Paul faced great difficulty because of Artemis’s followers (Acts 19:23–41; 1 Cor 16.9). So perhaps we have found a plausible explanation for what he meant by fighting beasts?
While Immendörfer has focused on the Book of Ephesians and the overlap of words relating to Artemis and her cult, I’ve been looking at a similar phenomenon in 1 Timothy. And I haven’t had to look far. Three of seven key titles ascribed to Artemis Ephesia in ancient literature and inscriptions (lord, savior, god) appear multiple times in the letter Paul sent Timothy with instructions for how to complete the work in Ephesus (1 Tim. 1:3). In fact, all three appear in his salutation. Now, usually Paul greets recipients of his missives with something like “grace and peace to you”—but not this time. To his protégé in Ephesus he writes this: “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, To Timothy my true son in the faith: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord” (1 Tim. 1:1, 2). In Second Timothy we find another of Artemis’s seven key titles, this one relating to epiphany/appearance. And Paul has combined that title with that of Savior to describe the plan of God that “…has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10).
The creators of our Koine-English lexica (dictionaries) took into account literary sources from the ancient world when they wrote their works, but they drew on very few inscriptions. Meanwhile, more than half a million inscriptions from the time of the earliest Christians are available to us today. (One source even puts that number at a million!) Now that inscriptions are available online and many have even been translated into English, it’s time to revisit how these background sources can shed further light on the settings and meanings in our NT texts.
[1] Immendörfer, Michael. Ephesians and Artemis: The Cult of the Great Goddess of Ephesus as the Epistle’s Context. Tübingen : Mohr Siebeck, 2017, pp. 313.
The influence of Artemis on the issues of 1 Tim 2:8–15
Wendy Wilson, the Mission Advisor for Development of Women and the Women’s Development Track Exec Director over at Missio Nexus asked me to write the following for the Missio Nexus audience, and it provides a sneak preview of what you can expect when my book comes out.*
Many have undertaken to explain how understanding the identity of Artemis, the goddess of midwifery in first-century Ephesus, can shed light on the apostle Paul’s instructions about being saved through childbearing (or childbirth, or the childbearing) (2:15), but fewer have explained how understanding first-century Artemis and her cult helps provide a context for the entire pericope or section of 1 Timothy 2 when the apostle talks to his protégé Timothy about women (or wives) in the church. Paul is addressing a problem, but his doing so is often universalized. The problem was specific with broad ramifications, as is always true of Scripture. But this passage is often understood in the opposite way—as speaking to a broad universal problem with specific application.
In his instructions to these wives or women (Koine has only one word that encompasses both, so we must do some interpretation to determine which he means), the author of 1 Timothy begins, “I do not allow a gune (γυνή) (2:12). In saying, “I do not allow,” he uses the present tense, which in Koine Greek has more of a sense of progressive action than in English. So the first-century Koine-speaking person would probably have heard this phrase as, “I am not allowing.” Such a progressive statement carries the idea that “disallowing” is the author’s practice, perhaps always, but perhaps only for a limited audience and/or duration. This in itself is not necessarily significant.
What makes the present tense stand out a bit more than it might otherwise is Paul’s use of the first person combined with the present tense. It’s not that one must not allow, or that women should never be allowed. But rather, he says, “I am not allowing….” In a personal letter, not an epistle addressed to an assembly, the apostle states what he himself is not doing so as he gives his protégé directions in his task of charging certain people in Ephesus to stop teaching false doctrine (1:3). Rather than asserting “Thus saith the Lord” to a group, Paul describes his own practice to his mentee.
Again, rather than saying, “A woman (or wife) must not teach,” he says, “I am not allowing a woman (or wife) to teach.” The apostle uses similar limited-context first-person language elsewhere when he refers to the marital status of virgins and widows in Corinth. In that context he counsels Corinthian women to stay single (1 Cor. 7:25–40), which is quite different from the counsel he offers about Ephesian widows (i.e., to marry, 1 Tim. 5:14). In his instructions to the Corinthians, he states outright that he is not giving a universal directive: “Now concerning virgins I have no command of the Lord, but I give an opinion as one who by the mercy of the Lord is trustworthy” (1 Cor. 7:25).
Regardless of whether the author’s practice transcended time and culture or was temporary, both husbands and wives in the assembly at Ephesus needed to stop doing something disruptive. Husbands were angry during prayer, and apparently wives were acting in a way that communicated a sense of superiority or perhaps violated civil law.
One might also see an Artemis influence in Paul’s reference to limiting women or wives teaching. He gives this reason for the restriction that he says is his practice: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve” (v. 13). To Jewish people, the Adam-and-Eve narrative was the old, familiar creation story. But for Gentiles—the focus of Paul’s ministry—the Genesis narrative was new. The non-Jewish members of Timothy’s spiritual community were well versed in a far different creation story. They had a special pride of place about this story, because they believed its events—known throughout the empire—took place near their city. In the Artemis cult’s origin narrative, the woman came first, and her twin, Apollo, followed. In Timothy’s context the creation story from Genesis contradicts the local story and would have served as a logical corrective. To the Ephesians, woman came first and was preeminent; to Jews, the woman was not only second, but she was even deceived. This is not to suggest Eve was a prototype of females’ sin. Rather, the facts about Eve knock women back to a place of equality with men.
Seeing the author’s use of Genesis as a corrective to the local story’s implications rather than as an inviolate principle of firstborn preeminence allows for reading Genesis in a straightforward way. Rather than trying to find hierarchy in the creation story, readers can see in the Genesis text a stress on how “alike” the man and woman are. Adam exclaims that the woman “finally” is a creature who corresponds to him (Gen. 2:23). This is not to diminish the beautiful difference between man and woman; it is merely to say that the Genesis text emphasizes oneness and unity and likeness, not difference.
If Paul’s exhortation is addressing a local issue, how might the phenomenon of a woman teaching square with what God has called women to do since the beginning? It actually corresponds beautifully. Throughout redemption history, the Holy Spirit has moved women such that in every era in which God has raised up male prophets (e.g., Law, kings, post-exilic, pre-Pentecost, Pentecost, church age), he has also raised up women prophets. And women will prophesy again in the future, not due to a failure of male leadership, but as a sign of the Spirit (Joel 2:28–29; Acts 2:17–21).
Seeing the reference to Eve’s creation order in 1 Timothy 2:13 as an all-time prohibition against females imparting spiritual content to males creates far more textual difficulties, both in this text and throughout the canon of Scripture, than it resolves. But seeing Paul’s instructions to Timothy as an apologetic against false teaching in Ephesus both fits the context and allows interpreters to better synthesize the whole counsel of God.
Paul writes, “Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.” Again, in contrast with the Artemis myth, the facts of the Genesis creation story correct false thinking. If Timothy’s charges in Ephesus were unduly influenced by the Artemis cult and its over-exalting of woman, the Genesis story brought a course correction. The female is not superior; Genesis proves it.
The author’s local corrective does have universal implications, but not the sorts of ramifications that have often been assumed. Paul’s statement about Eve is not to suggest that women are inferior teachers because of an inborn vulnerability to corruption. Rather, the truth that Eve was deceived restores equality in a context in which pride of creation order probably brought an imbalance. The application: If someone teaches false doctrine, make them stop, but let them learn.
Seeing the text this way is consistent with Paul’s teaching about Eve elsewhere. Not only of women, but of the entire assembly at Corinth, he wrote, “I am afraid, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your [plural] minds should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:3). Noting this, Sumner argues that the apostle did not view vulnerability to deception as a female-only weakness, but rather as a human one. Paul warned the entire assembly that they were vulnerable to being deceived in the same way Eve was.
Paul was writing to his protégé living in a culture in which Artemis of the Ephesians was esteemed as a midwife who was believed to bring mercy-killing or rescue to women in labor. Her temple was one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and people came from all corners of the empire to worship her. That there was a clear conflict between her followers and the followers of Jesus Christ is clear from the Book of Acts. A Christian whose loyalty had recently shifted from following Artemis to following Jesus as the Jewish Messiah would have faced an adjustment both in going from a female-dominated cult to a more male-dominated one, and in viewing childbirth differently. Refusing to make offerings to the goddess of midwifery as a statement of her faith likely would have caused a wife great anxiety, as the prospect of death would have terrified her. But because Christ is superior to Artemis, it’s entirely plausible that Paul was assuring his protégé that no such disaster will happen. She will be saved/delivered safely—assuming she lives for Christ.
The city’s prominent goddess and her cult had a profound influence on first-century Ephesus. Ancient inscriptions dating to the time of the earliest Christians suggest that at that time, Artemis was associated with saving and midwifery, and also that women enjoyed great autonomy in that city. While some have said that Artemis was a goddess of sex and fertility and that a concern to oppose such an influence motivated Paul’s instruction about women in 1 Timothy 2, there is no evidence to support such a claim. But seeing the Book of 1 Timothy, and especially his instructions about women in its cultural context sheds light on how readers today are to take heed. The problem is not women; the problem is falsehood. So, let us learn.
(* I have signed a contract with IVP Academic to publish my dissertation work on Artemis of the Ephesians at the time of the earliest Christians. My working title is: Nobody's Mother: Artemis in First-Century Ephesus and Why She Matters. I expect the book to release in the fall of 2023.)
Why Don't We See More Women in the Biblical Text?
Recently, someone asked me why we don’t find more women in the Bible. Last time, I pointed to translation concerns that hide the presence of women. Today, I want us to consider that sometimes we miss the women who are actually named and featured.
Here’s a sampling from some of the earliest stories:
* * *
Go back in time with me to the thirteenth century BC in Egypt. The king has issued an order to kill all boys born into bondage, because members of the slave class—your own people, descendants of Israel—have proliferated, and the ruling class fears an uprising. Born under the ban, you lie in a pitch-lined basket that your mother, Jochebed, crafted before floating you in the Nile. Soon, the king’s daughter finds you and raises you as her own. So, you get an education in the royal court of Egypt—some of the best academic training in the world. As you grow, you learn the geography of Egypt and of the Sinai, and eventually you record the oral history of your people.
As you write, you include the heroic midwives Shiphrah and Puah—making sure everyone remembers their names—who refused to drown Hebrew boys like you (Exo. 1:15–21).
Writing the books of the Law, you include stories about your older sister, Miriam, who helped save your life and who, decades later, partnered with you and your brother, Aaron, to lead Israel (Cp. Micah 6:4).
And you write of Sarah and Keturah. And of Hagar, who named God. Of Rebecca. And of Rachel the shepherd. And Leah. Of Bilhah and Zilpah. And of Dinah. And how Tamar, a Canaanite, was more righteous than her father-in-law, Judah, through whom Jacob said the Promised One would come (Gen. 49:10). Judah had conspired to sell his stepbrother, Joseph, into slavery. And Judah later had evil sons. But loyal love from an outsider, his daughter-in-law Tamar, had a radical effect on him. Before his encounter with her, he would sell a brother; afterward, he offered his life in exchange for one (see Genesis 38.)
You record how God calls parents to consecrate both first-born sons and first-born daughters (Ex. 13:1).
You write down one of the stories that you witnessed firsthand, which involved five sisters, the daughters of Zelophehad: Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. Their father had five daughters, but no male heirs. These females raised a question about women’s rights, even obligations, to inherit property in the absence of a male heir. You yourself told them you would ask God directly about their case. And the Lord had strong words: “What Zelophehad’s daughters are saying is right. You must certainly give them property as an inheritance among their father’s relatives and give their father’s inheritance to them.”
You and the people you write about inhabit a patriarchal culture. The words from God are inspired, of course, but the culture isn’t. And because those who will read and teach your words in centuries to come will live in worlds also steeped in patriarchy, they will focus more on the men. As they preach or teach or write commentaries, they (men and women alike) will skip Tamar’s contribution to Judah’s character arc; or gloss over the courage of Shiphrah and Puah; or miss the significance of the chieftain Timna (Gen. 36:12, 22, 40). Or as they wrap up their look at the Book of Job, they might not even notice how, as an evidence of God’s blessing, that Job will grant his daughters—Jemimah, Keziah, and Keren-Happuch—an inheritance among their unnamed brothers (Job 42:14–15). Or note how the story of Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah receives mention in five places in Scripture (Num. 26:33; 27:1–11; 36:1–12; Josh. 17:3–6; 1 Chron 7:15—only Moses and Miriam are mentioned in more OT books).
***
The Bible does indeed shine a spotlight on more men than women. But even many of the women we do find in its pages get minimized if not altogether left on the cutting-room floor as people preach, teach, and write about Scripture. We need these women. Why don’t we see more women in the biblical text? Why, indeed! Maybe you can have a part in telling the full story?
To be continued…
Kat Armstrong: The In-Between Place
Today one of my favorite authors, Kat Armstrong, launches her latest book, The In-Between Place. Kat is a powerful voice in our generation. She's an innovative ministry leader and sought-after communicator who holds a master’s degree from Dallas Theological Seminary and is the author of No More Holding Back and The In-Between Place. She and her husband, Aaron, have been married for eighteen years and live in Dallas, Texas, with their son, Caleb. They attend Dallas Bible Church, where Aaron serves as the lead pastor.
I read her most recent book, The In-Between Place, and wrote this endorsement: Sometimes a place in the Bible’s narrative becomes like a character with a voice of its own. Shechem/Sychar is such a place. Dinah was raped in Shechem, and Jesus met “the woman at the well” there. In Kat's new book she takes readers to this city in Samaria and guides them through a literary, religious, and geographical look at how God has used this locale and its people to reveal his sovereignty and grace. Armstrong’s book is full of amusing anecdotes, astute observations, and life-changing applications.
Here's an interview with Kat, who was born in Houston, Texas, where she says the humidity ruins her curls.
Kat, welcome back! Let’s talk about your newest book, The In-Between Place. What inspired you to write it?
The In-Between Place was born when Ronnie (my Holy Land tour guide) said, “We are standing in modern-day Samaria. You’ll remember, it’s the setting for the story of the woman at the well. And now we’ll hear from Rev. Dr. Jackie Roese about Dinah’s story from Genesis 34.” One casual transition statement from our Israel tour guide, Ronnie, about the Holy Land site visit for the day to our Bible teacher, Rev. Dr. Jackie Roese, reoriented the way I read the Samaritan woman’s conversation with Jesus in John 4. How did I not see it sooner? Both women’s stories have Samaria as their setting, and I think there is divine purpose in the places and spaces God revisits in the Scriptures. I believe God redeems broken places into sacred spaces. I have this wild, audacious dream that people will read The In-Between Place and be filled with hope that Jesus is in our messy middle places.
In the book you compare and contrast Dinah’s story (Genesis 34) with the woman at the Well’s story (John 4). Can you share some observations you make in the book about these two women’s stories?
I take the whole book to answer this question, but here are just a few of my observations.
While Dinah is the first named daughter in the Bible, and her experience represents evil’s accessibility to even the most prestigious of women, the nameless woman at the well in John 4 represents all women, all Gentiles, and ultimately, all people.
In Dinah’s story we meet her father’s landlord, Hamor the Hivite, who was the “region’s chieftain” (Gen. 34:2); and second we meet Hamor’s son, Shechem. The saying “like father, like son” rings true for these two. Hamor and Shechem, both princes of terror, stand in sharp contrast with the main man in John 4, Jesus, the Prince of Peace. Whereas Hamor and Shechem gave their town a bad name with their intimidation, Jesus, the one who knows all our names, ushers in harmony and safety with his presence.
When Dinah casually ventured out to connect with her friends, the mood was easy and laid back. Just another day in the neighborhood. But while Dinah was minding her own business, Shechem was hunting his prey. We get the sense from the story that we need to hide from his wandering eye and protect ourselves from his looming presence. Compare that to the nameless Samaritan woman at the well who encountered the Prince of Peace. The Samaritan woman was also minding her own business, but when Jesus sat down near the well, his posture spoke to his vulnerability. Our Savior was a safe stranger to approach. Unlike Shechem, Jesus just wanted to talk.
Dinah’s voice was never heard in all of the Scriptures. Never. Her perspective was never acknowledged. On the other hand, Jesus not only gave the Samaritan woman a voice, he also then gave her an audience to proclaim her truth—and the eternal truth that Jesus is the Savior of the world.
Dinah’s story ends with genocide, and we can’t help but close the chapter disappointed that there was no redemption in the ending. In sharp contrast, the Samaritan woman’s story ends with joy and many in the town being saved.
What would you say to someone struggling to find hope in their in-between place?
If you don’t have the energy, hope, or faith to follow Jesus, take heart: he comes to you. Maybe you are working your very first job, restarting school to finish your degree, becoming a first-time mom, or beginning a new life after a major loss. Although you might not be able to see your way out, and your determination might have been knocked out of you in your fall, Jesus can climb into that pit with you and lift you up with his mighty power. You don’t even have to make the first move; he will. I know this because of Jesus’s conversation recorded in John 4 with the Samaritan woman at the well.
Anything else you want to tell my readers?
Friends, it's excellent. Order from Amazon.
Shepherd Like a Girl
Does your nativity set have any female shepherds? Mine doesn’t. And it’s amazing how much I have picked up unconsciously from art….
I didn’t realize that—without anything being said outright—I had internalized the idea that “shepherd” was a “guy” job. So, if I saw a Christmas pageant with girls dressed in bathrobes holding crooks, I told myself the real nativity story lacked girl roles so the directors were taking creative license. But now I know those girls in bathrobes more closely represented reality than did my misinformed imaginations.
My understanding about shepherds shifted radically when I traveled with my husband and daughter to Kenya’s Rift Valley. My husband is a U.S.-based missionary serving national leaders there. And while we were in Kenya, his ministry partner, Joseph, a Maasai warrior, introduced us to some of his friends.
The Maasai are pastoral people—shepherds. Like Joseph, they live in individual huts inside bomas—enclosures made of brambles encircling huts made by women out of mud, sticks, grass, and cow dung. Inside the perimeter of the boma, another area, also made of brambles, serves as a livestock pen.
The girls usually shepherd goats and sheep, sometimes with their moms or a grandparent, while boys shepherd the larger livestock. If a family has no girls—or not enough of them—the youngest son or sons also get assigned to sheep/goat duty. The pecking order is usually men, animals, women, children. For these pastoral peoples, livestock serve as their pantries, 401(k) plans, Meals on Wheels, bank accounts…. Often the shepherd-girls lack education, because someone has to guard the assets, and the boys’ educations have typically taken priority.
This setup or a similar one has been true for many shepherding tribes and peoples across time and geography. Consider that David, son of Jesse, who had multiple brothers—at least three in the army—was the youngest boy and the shepherd among Jesse’s eight sons.
The Maasai, like some of the Bedouins my husband and I met in Jordan this summer, live—or abide—in the field. And that is exactly how Luke describes what the shepherds in Jesus’s birth narrative are doing—they are abiding, or living in the field. Not just “hanging out.” And they are watching their flock. Singular. So, the shepherds to whom the angel choir appeared were probably not a bunch of unrelated guys from different families watching multiple flocks on an open hillside. More likely, they were from one extended family unit with male, female, old, and young present.
The highlight of my time with the Maasai in 2008 was watching the “Jesus” film with them. We threw a bedsheet over the top of a hut, hooked up a generator and voila! The best part was hearing them gasp for joy when the angels appeared to shepherds saying, in Naa—their own language— “Fear not! For I bring you good news of great joy for all the people!”
A week later, we moved on to meet members of the Pokot tribe. And along the dirt road far from town we saw female shepherds out by themselves herding sheep.
These experiences made me pose some questions about the biblical text to people who live much closer to its reality. And here’s what I learned:
Vocational shepherds are not outcasts. They smell a lot like a typical cowboy. Animal pens stink, but humans who keep the animals don’t walk around with dung clinging to themselves if they can help it.
Nevertheless, shepherds don’t inhabit halls of power. My shepherd friends were overjoyed that in the film instead of appearing to leaders in palaces or temples, the angels came to those on the lower rungs of social power. These shepherds heard in the angels’ proclamation an emphasis on “all the people”—from the highest to the lowest.
Girls were likely to have been present when the announcement was made about the good news being for all. The shepherds, plural, to whom the angels appeared were not individuals out by themselves alone in the dark.
As is true today, sheep in Jesus’s time were probably not wandering around on the hillside at night, but gathered into the sheepfold (see John 10). Shepherds guarded one entrance. And I corresponded yesterday with a Maasai brother who told me that in his world, after the animals go into their pen for the night, the whole extended family gathers around the fire for stories. That means we should probably envision an extended family warming themselves around a fire near a pen.
So, what are some spiritual ramifications?
Women shepherd people. In a book on the ultra-conservative end of the gender debate, the authors imply that women cannot be spiritual shepherds because “shepherd” is a male job. Yet “Rachel came with her father’s sheep, for she was a shepherd” (Gen. 29:9). If we want to read biblical texts about shepherding as the original readers would have understood them, we will envision both males and females in view. The metaphor of a shepherd is that of one entrusted with the care of souls.
We must read the Bible in community with Christians whose lives are closer to the world of the text than those of us with central heating and bank accounts with passwords. That means taking the posture of a learner in the presence of those who can see what many of us cannot.
Representation matters. When I mentioned on Twitter the possibility that females were present at the pronouncement of “good news for all the people,” some responded with tears and joy. For the first time they saw themselves in the story. In a quick search for Christmas Bible art, I found Mary to be the only female in any of the multiple scenes. The biggest demographic leaving the church is young females. Why might that be?
God loves the lowly; and so must we. Although shepherds are not the lowest of the low (as they are sometimes described), they themselves still acknowledge that neither are they the rich or powerful of this world. The heavenly choice to make the announcement to those outside of the usual power structures reveals something about the heart of God and inclusiveness of the good news. Do we want to be like him?
Thanks to my time in the Rift Valley and in Jordan, I’m on the hunt for a manger scene that includes a female shepherd or two. (And some old people.) Since females were last at the cross, first at the tomb, and the first to herald the good news that Jesus is alive, it makes perfect sense that they also would have been among the first at the manger. And what does Luke tell us these shepherds did? After seeing the swaddled child, they spread the word.
Like them, let us do the same—Go, tell it on the mountain! Jesus Christ is born!
P.S. Some think the sheep being watched in the Bible story were those specially destined for sacrifice. The source of this information was a rabbinic Jewish scholar who converted to Christianity. But his idea has been further vetted. And comments in the link of this post address the details. Based on this research, I’m no longer inclined to think so. Nevertheless, the child who was born, the Good Shepherd, was indeed the lamb who was slain.
Photo “Rebecka” by Dikla Laor at DiklaLaor.Photography. Used with permission.
Church History: What Do We Learn about Women in Public Ministry?
“It was the feminist teachings of the past few decades that first spurred Christians to try to argue for [women in public ministry]. Like it or not, the two schools of thought are intertwined.” – Christian blogger
“The role of women in church ministry was simply not a burning question until it asserted itself in recent decades in conjunction with the modern women’s movement” – Men and Women in Ministry: A Complementary Perspective,p. 20
When I took some doctoral courses in history, I read numerous primary documents which revealed that the question about women in public ministry in the church has been burning since long before the U.S. Women’s Movement. So, I set out to determine when it actually started.
I thought maybe it began with the American and French Revolutions with the cry for individual rights. But then I read documents like the pamphlet that Margaret Fell Fox (think George Fox of Quaker fame) wrote in 1666 titled “Women’s Speaking Justified, Proved, and Allowed by the Scriptures.” And I saw art like the above engraving dated to 1723 that features a woman preaching.
So, I looked earlier. Maybe the Reformation started it, I thought—with its emphasis on the priesthood of all believers and the involvement of early women reformers like Katherina Zell.
But then I found writings like those of Christine de Pizan, who was born in the 1300s. Her work, The Book of the City of Ladies, presents a positive view of the Bible as she cites examples of biblical women, carefully selecting those who challenge her culture’s misogynistic ideals.
I kept going. Here are some samplings from the first nine centuries:
Pope PaschalI [Rome – West, AD 822] had a mosaic made of his mother, Theodora, labeled with the title “episcopa” (bishop). An inscription in another place in the same church (St. Praxedes) also describes her as “episcopa.”
Council of Trullo, Constantinople [Turkey – East], AD 692, canon 14. The Council speaks of “ordination” [cheirotonia] for women deacons using the same term used for ordination of priests and male deacons.
Synod of Orleans AD 533, canon 17 [France – West]. Attended by 32 bishops. Here’s a quote from the Synod: “Women who have so far received the ordination to the diaconate against the prohibitions of the canons, if it can be proved that they have returned to matrimony, should be banned from communion.”
St. Remigius of Reims [AD 533 AD, France] makes mention of his daughter, the deacon(ess) Helaria, in his will.
Synod of Epaone, AD 517, canon 21 [France]. “We abrogate the consecration of widows whom they call ‘deaconesses’ completely from our region.”
Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon, [East – Turkey] canon 15, AD 451. An earlier minimal age of 60 years for women deacons was relaxed to 40 years. The earlier practice was based on 1 Timothy 5:9: “Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age.”
Synod of Orange, [West – France] AD 441, canon 26. Attended by 17 bishops. “Altogether no women deacons are to be ordained. If some already exist, let them bend their heads to the blessing given to the (lay) people.”
First Council of Nicea, [Turkey – East] canon 19, AD 325. Deacon(esse)s are mentioned in passing in a canon referring to the reconciliation of ex-members of the sect of Paul of Samosata (AD 260–272). Paul, patriarch of Antioch, denied the three Persons of the Trinity: “In this way one must also deal with the deaconesses or with anyone in an ecclesiastical office.”
Back, back, back I went. And each century sent me to an earlier one to find when it started. Eventually, I concluded that evidence for orthodox Christians affirming women in public ministry started on the day of Pentecost.
So what happened after that? What led to the changes?
This fall, I have been camping out in the first six centuries of church history, tracing the office of widow, which I first saw years ago mentioned in my Greek lexicon (BADG) as the last entry for the meaning of “widow.” It appears that the early church did have such an office, along with that of deacon(ess).
In 1976, a scholar in Belgium named Roger Grayson published a book titled The Ministry of Women in the Early Church with The Order of St. Benedict. It was translated into English and published by The Liturgical Press—not exactly feminist credentials. And he traces the offices of widow and deacon(ess) through the early centuries of the church. After surveying the data, he draws this conclusion: “Up to the end of the nineteenth century, historians of the early Church often identified deaconesses and widows as if these two different titles corresponded, for those who held them, to the same function.” In other words, historians conflated the two offices of deacon(ess) and widow. He goes on to note that “since deaconesses and widows obviously corresponded to quite different institutions, one can only wonder, after a close study of all the evidence, at the persistence of such an error” (110). That is, how is it possible that—in light of such overwhelming evidence—the error of conflating the two so stubbornly persisted?
Before exploring the answer, we need to keep in mind two details:
First, there was no female form of the word “deacon” in the early church and for some centuries to follow, in the same way that the word “teacher” in English does not indicate gender (e.g., teacher/teachess). That’s why I’m denoting uses of the word in this post as “deacon(ess)” unless the word “deaconess” appears in someone else’s quote.
Second, I’m using “office” to refer to positions in the church that have come with qualifications of character, as contrasted with “gifts,” which are bestowed by the Spirit on all believers.
Now then, apparently, historians expanded their tools of analysis beyond church fathers’ manuscripts and pronouncements by councils to include liturgies and tombstones for mentions of “deacon(ess)” in the early church. Yet in some places, we don’t even begin to find mention of “deacon(ess)” till the third century because the prominent office in that geographical location was “widow.” And the office of deacon(ess) looked different from the office of “widow” in the first centuries. And how the clergy was even configured varied by location (east as compared with west), century, and local council.
As Grayson has noted, such historians were not looking for references to the office of “widow.” Thus, some concluded that women’s membership in the clergy was a late development. Because if someone is thinking the word “widow” refers only to a woman bereft of her husband rather than also including an office rooted in 1 Timothy 5, that researcher can see a tombstone that says “a widow of the church” and miss that he or she is looking at the very evidence sought. Consequently, some historians have drawn faulty conclusions.
Grayson summarizes: “One thing is undeniable: there were in the early Church women who occupied an official position, who were invested with a ministry, and who, at least at certain times and places, appeared as part of the clergy. These women were called ‘deaconesses’ and at times ‘widows’” (xi).
May I remind the reader that Grayson was writing in the 1970s for a Roman Catholic publisher in a different country? This is not US feminism in the Protestant church talking.
The history of women in public ministry reveals that it started at the beginning. And practices in the East differed from those in the West.
In some locations, the widow was 60 years old or older, and the virgin was younger. Tertullian [b. AD 160, N. Africa] ranked the widows among the clergy, and spoke of seats being reserved for them. In his work titled De virginibus velandis (9:2–3) he wrote with displeasure, “I know plainly that in a certain place a virgin less than twenty years old has been placed in the order of widows (in viduatu)!” Clearly, in this instance a “virgin” is not simply a maiden, but someone consecrated to Christ for vocational ministry.
In the East, deacon(esse)s catechized women considering conversion, assisted at baptisms for women converts, and distributed the Eucharist to female shut-ins. The ordination rites for deacons and deacon(esse)s were almost identical.
By the third century in the West, the office of widow was described as a thing of the past. Grayson notes that whenever the Alexandrians [i.e., Egypt—West] mentioned women deacons or widows, they referred to these as offices of the past, not active in the present. Both Clement and Origen occasionally recognized that women were placed in the service of the church in the time of the apostle Paul, but these men did not indicate that the office survived.
In the fifth century the Testamentum Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, probably from Syria [East], devoted four long chapters to widows. It referred to the “ordination of widows,” in two instances using the same word employed for clerics in major orders.
Later in the East, the relationship between widows and deacon(esse)s makes a reversal, and widows, who had once supervised deacon(esse)s become subject to deacon(esse)s.
Eventually, offices in the East have the same labels as in the West, but in the West they are merely honorary. The East was actually more conservative and segregated, so we find more mentions of workers doing ministry focused exclusively on women. For men to do so would have been considered an encroachment beyond their boundaries. But as infant baptism eventually replaced adult baptism, the need for someone to assist with female adults being baptized (often nude to symbolize “rebirth”) disappeared.
What other factors besides infant baptism led to the tapering off of women in ordained ministry?
These reasons emerged from the writings:
Rise of the all-male priesthood in the pattern of the Old Testament. (What happened to the NT priesthood of all believers?)
A return to Old Testament temple practices—especially after Constantine, with church buildings and the clergy/laity divide—such as barring menstruating women from worship. (What happened to the veil being ripped and the Law being replaced by Christ?)
Anthropology. Some of the church fathers held to Greek views (think Aristotle) of woman’s nature, which would be unanimously denounced today. (Why pattern the church’s practice after the thinking of a pagan philosopher?)
Misogyny. Many believed women were weak, fickle, lightheaded, of mediocre intelligence, and a “chosen instrument of the devil.” (Does that sound at all like Jesus?)
Regardless of what conclusions we draw about what of today’s practices should build on tradition and what need to go, we must never think that the US Women’s Movement was ground zero for the public, vocational, ordained ministry of women in the church. When we say such things, historians roll their eyes. If we talk only of what the church fathers were doing without including what the women were doing, we are talking only about “men in church history,” not “church” history.
It was not the feminist teachings of the past few decades that first spurred Christians to argue for women in public ministry. Like it or not, it started at Pentecost. And it will be fully realized in the eschaton (Joel 2, Acts 2).
On True Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Beyond Ordinary Women Ministries featured a podcast/webinar in which I talked with host Sharifa Stevens about biblical manhood and womanhood. Lots of teachings floating around on the subject are rooted in stereotype rather than scripture. If something is scriptural, it must be timeless and not bound to a specific culture. Have a listen.
Artemis of the Ephesians: A Conversation with Wayne Stiles
Our understanding of Artemis of the Ephesians at the time of the apostle Paul has, I believe, implications for how we read 1 and 2 Timothy. Recently I spoke with Wayne Stiles with Walking the Bible Lands about my research on this goddess and her influence, especially in the Province of Asia. You can watch our conversation in this video.
Right now I'm working on two books right now relating to the Ephesian Artemis and the ramifications for women and our understanding of first-century backgrounds—one a work of fiction and the other, an academic book.
My readers can get a free video series on Jesus's life from Walking the Bible Lands courtesy of Wayne.
Women and Theological Education:
Capitulating to Culture or Historically Rooted?
Not long ago, I overhead a female ministry leader noting with some enthusiasm that we are seeing the first generation in Christendom in which women have received theological higher education. But her statement, while well intentioned, was completely untrue.
Some of our lack of knowledge about women’s history, particularly in the Protestant tradition, stems from post-Reformation amnesia about women in monastic spaces. About all we know—maybe—is that about 500 years ago a German nun, Katerina, married a former monk, Martin Luther, and religious living spaces were emptied of their occupants, partly in response to the Protestant Reformation.
Here’s what we need to know, though: A similar phenomenon happened about that same time in Switzerland. And then in the 1530’s, the emptying-monasteries phenomenon hit England. In his article for History on “The Dissolution of the Monasteries,” G. W. Bernard reminds readers that in the late 1530s, England alone had about 900 religious houses—of which more than 140 were occupied by two thousand nuns. And one of the functions served by these communities was scholarship and education—in addition to hospitality, medical care, the arts, and music (390). But then, in addition to the reformers, along came King Henry VIII, who, with the help of Thomas Cromwell, consolidated and then dissolved England’s monasteries, sold the real estate, and soon had an uprising on his hands.
But the conflict is not my point. And Europe was not the only continent to have Christian nuns… But don’t miss the detail here about women. Many were in full-time vocational ministry. And they were educated and educating. Where do you think we got that stereotype of nuns rapping on the knuckles of schoolchildren? Nuns have a long history of teaching.
In his presidential address to the Evangelical Theological Society in November of 2016, Dr. Daniel B. Wallace talked about “Medieval Manuscripts and Modern Evangelicals: Lessons from the Past, Guidance for the Future.” And he argued, among other things, that we can learn much from medieval manuscripts—including a reminder that the church owes women a huge debt for work done on textual preservation.
Consider Hilda of Whitby (AD 614–680). In their book Spiritual Traditions for the Contemporary Church Maas and O’Donnell write, “Along with the copying of manuscripts and teaching, women became scholars of theology and learned their Latin, sometimes to a high degree of erudition. Hilda…is a case in point; a nun from the age of thirty-three, she became abbess of Whitby at forty-three and educated future monks and clerics of the English Church. [Women helping to train men for vocational ministry is nothing new.] She was also, according to Bede, a counselor to the royalty and nobility of England” (401). Additionally, Bede in his AD 731 work titled Ecclesiastical History of the English People noted that Hilda was actually the founding abbess of the monastery at Whitby—a double monastery—which was the venue for the Synod of Whitby. Indeed, she was abbess of several monasteries.
Before her, there were women like Marcella (325–410). She corresponded with Jerome, who wrote this about her at her death: “As in those days my name was held in some renown as that of a student of the Scriptures, she never came to see me without asking me some questions about them, nor would she rest content at once, but on the contrary would dispute them; this, however, was not for the sake of argument, but to learn by questioning the answers to such objections might, as she saw, be raised. How much virtue and intellect, how much holiness and purity I found in her I am afraid to say, both lest I may exceed the bounds of men’s belief …. This only will I say, that whatever I had gathered together by long study, and by constant meditation made part of my nature, she tasted, she learned and made her own.”
Marcella mentored Paula, who, while on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, settled in Bethlehem and established a monastery for men and a convent for women.
There are thousands of women's stories like these. Thousands. Descriptions filled with words like study. Education. Learning. Transmission. Manuscripts. Questions and answers. Intellect.
For hundreds and hundreds of years, a woman wishing to follow Jesus had two options (sometimes decided for her, depending on the money for a dowry or her family’s need—or greed): the monastic life, which involved education; or married life, which involved no education. Both were considered holy callings, though the former was often elevated as more spiritual (until we flipped that script and elevated family life. Eventually, we will hopefully see them both as equally holy callings).
When the Protestant Reformers read their Koine Greek New Testaments, they noted that the human biblical authors referred to all believers as “saints.” So they nixed the whole saints-as-elevated-Christians thing, including the feast days that went with remembering the biographies of the male and female cloud of witnesses. We don’t acknowledge these saints or saints’ days (though we do eat chocolate on St. Valentine’s Day, try to avoid being pinched on St. Patrick’s Day, and sing with jollity about the Feast of Stephen). Consequently, we lost the daily biographies. But in the past, people learned the stories of men and women of faith every day.
All this does not even include more recent theological education. Many Black colleges and seminaries had male and female professors and students from their beginnings. Moody Bible Institute at one time proudly trained women for pastoral ministry and featured them as such in their alumni publication (see Janette Hassey, No Time for Silence, Appendix 12). Christabel Pankhurst shared the stage with D. L. Moody at Bible Conferences. Henrietta Mears mentored Bill Bright (Cru founder) and Jim Rayburn (Young Life founder) and a relatively unknown guy named Billy Graham via a Bible class she taught in California. And John Walvoord (second president of Dallas Theological Seminary) had a Bible teacher at Wheaton named Edith Torrey, whom the school hired in 1917.
Ours is not the first generation of theologically educated women. So while some may suggest that women learning and teaching theology is evidence that radical feminism has infiltrated the church, women's presence in learning and teaching spaces actually has a long, long history—a celebrated one!—starting with a woman in an ancient Near Eastern town called Bethany sitting at the feet of the first rabbi ever to formally teach a woman…and that awesome rabbi's name was Jesus.
Are the “Widows” in 1 Timothy 5 Leaders, Needers, or Both?
One of my students, Corinne Samuelson, has spent the summer investigating what’s happening with “widows” in 1 Timothy 5. At first glance, one might think Paul was simply instructing Timothy about how to handle the many hungry older women in the Ephesian church (1:3). But on closer exploration we see a description of what might look like an office. That's a challenging question. As Corinne notes, “While Timothy would have surely understood Paul’s instructions about widows in the Ephesian Church, 1 Timothy 5:3–16 leaves today’s readers with many questions.” Each of the questions below (most of which she crafted) are worth considering when making interpretive decisions about this passage:
- Meaning of “to honor” (τίμα, v. 3) – (“Give proper honor to those widows who are really in need.”) Does “to honor” imply interpersonal respect, financial support, or both? Is this a parallel to granting “double honor” to elders who teach (v. 17)?
- Placement of need/pleasure contrast (v. 5–6) – (“The widow who is really in need and left all alone puts her hope in God and continues night and day to pray and to ask God for help. But the widow who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives.”) Is the reference to need/praying a Pauline tangent, further description of the “real” widow, or a prerequisite for enrollment?
- Meaning of “to enroll” (καταλεγέσθω, v. 9) – (“No widow may be enrolled unless she is over sixty, has been faithful to her husband, and is well known for her good deeds, such as bringing up children, showing hospitality, washing the feet of the Lord’s people, helping those in trouble and devoting herself to all kinds of good deeds.”) What are the implications of “to enroll”? Did Paul simply describe a name being added to a charity list or is he implying accompanying duties for the person placed on a list? If the former, do we refuse food to hungry older women who have not done these things? The description parallels in many ways the description of an elder in 3:2–7 (faithful to his wife/faithful to her husband). Speaking of which…
- Meaning of “faithful to her husband” (ἑνός ἀνδρὸς γυνή , v. 9) – Was Paul referring to a woman who was married once only or is the emphasis on being a one-man kind of woman?
- List of qualifications/duties (v. 10) – “Raised children, practiced hospitality, washed the feet of the saints, helped those in distress”: does this list describe the past character of the widow in view, or was Paul outlining ongoing responsibilities of an enrolled widow?
- Meaning of “a widow who is really a widow” (τάς ὄντως χήρας; vv. 3, 5, 16) – What’s the difference between a “widow” and an “actual” or “real” widow? Her lack of family members, her devotion to God, the characteristics listed in vv. 3–10? All of the above? A few people roughly contemporary with Paul (e.g., Philo QE 2.3, Ignatius13.1) speak of “widows who are virgins”—suggesting the word was used to mean a “without-a-man woman.” So are there “widows” and then “actual widows”? And if so, did one include older single woman never married vs. those bereft of husbands?
- Different kinds of widows? – Are the widows in verse 9 and verses 3, 5, 16 one and the same, or was Paul referring to two types of widows (a “real widow” and “an enrolled widow”)?
- Meaning of “their first pledge” (τήν πρώτην πίστιν, v. 12) – What is the meaning of “pledge” (πίστιν)? The first wedding vow? Or a vow of office? Perhaps a vow of commitment to celibacy?
- Harsh language –(“being led away from Christ,” v. 11; “wandering after Satan,” v. 15) What actions did Paul have in mind here?
- Bad behavior – (“idlers, going house to house, talking nonsense,” v. 13) Was Paul insinuating young widows were spreading heresy, participating in witchcraft, or committing social faux pas? Can we gather from “going around from house to house” that these women were conducting bad house visits which were a part of their duties as enrolled widows? Does “house to house” refer to going from house church to house church?
- Overall purpose – Why did Paul give this instruction about enrolling widows and the qualifications? Did he provide here some requirements for selective charity, or was he talking about widows being enrolled into an order/office? Is there an overlap between the two? He wrote quite a bit about church organization in this letter to Timothy. Is it possible he had more in mind here than food distribution?
- Contradictory advice? – Is it problematic that Paul lists qualifications for widow enrollment for those who married once (v. 9), but instructs younger widows to remarry (v. 14)? Why would he give different advice to women in differing age groups? Is he taking into account Roman civil marriage laws that apply to younger but not older women?
- Background information – What pertinent background information about women and widows is helpful in understanding Paul’s instructions?
The options for translating and interpreting this passage are numerous. Considering that compared to fifty years ago we have a lot more social-background information (e.g., Roman civil laws) available to us, this passage is certainly due a closer look.
Interview with Jenny McGill, author of Walk With Me
Meet my friend Jenny McGill (PhD, King’s College London), a pastor’s wife and university dean who loves to explore countries and cultures. She has a new book out that I endorsed—heartily!
Tell us a bit about the book and its intended audience.Written as a series of letters in a conversational tone, Walk with Me: Learning to Love and Follow Jesus is an interactive tool designed to help those in a spiritual mentoring relationship. It summarizes four areas in following Christ: the beliefs of a Christian, living like a Christian, habits of a Christian, and exploring the Bible. As a ministry leader and pastor's wife, I want to encourage and bolster women in their Christian faith, addressing some difficult subjects in a down-to-earth fashion. Walk with Me is a discipleship guide for all believers, no matter how long they have walked with Jesus.
Why a book on discipleship?Sadly, because I see few churches discipling their members in a systematic way. I was discipled through the Navigators and Cru, which are para-church ministries, but I believe it should ideally be emanating from the local church. Also, I wanted to give an overview of what discipleship entails. Many claim faith in Jesus; fewer are discipled. While not comprehensive, my book is a starting guide. Third, I wanted to write a simpler guide that is not too lofty in its descriptions to explain the essentials of our faith and translate it to everyday life.
How would you define discipleship?Discipleship refers a process of how we mature in Christ, how Christ is formed in us—in our thoughts, actions, and lives. Discipleship is a walking together for a period of time, discussing life’s challenges and God’s answers together, with accountability. Discipleship is not church attendance or Bible study or BFFing. Some folks who have gone to church their entire lives have never been discipled. Take me. I went to church for almost twenty years before I was actually discipled.
How did you come to arrange it as a series of letters?I was discipling a young woman, Annie, at the time and was struck with the thought of what would happen if we weren’t able to finish meeting. I decided to write her letters expressing the rest of what I would want her to know. After a year of writing, I realized I had a book and a unique Christmas gift for her.You can connect with Jenny at www.jennymcgill.com and @drjennymcgill
