|
Women's Ministerial
Role in the Early Church
This strong claim that in
the origins of Christianity women enjoyed more responsible positions
than in the Church of subsequent ages is excerpted from Elizabeth
Schuessler-Fiorenza: In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction
of Christian Origins (1983). The footnotes in the printed text
are here omitted.
Chapter 4. (pp
105-154)
The Jesus Movement as Renewal Within Judaism
Women in Judaism Before 70 c.e.: Perspectives
The Dominant Ethos: The Kingdom and Holy Nation
of Israel
The Basileia Vision of Jesus as the Praxis
of Inclusive Wholeness
The Sophia-God of Jesus and the Discipleship
of Women
Liberation from Patriarchal Structures and
the Discipleship of Equals
Conclusion
Chapter 5. (pp 160-199)
The Early Christian Missionary Movement:
Equality in the Power of the Spirit
"The Church in Her House"
Missionaries
The House Church
Theological Self-Understanding of the Missionary
Movement
Conclusion
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Women in Judaism Before 70 c.e.: Perspectives
The Dominant Ethos: The Kingdom and Holy Nation
of Israel
The Basileia Vision of Jesus as the Praxis
of Inclusive Wholeness
The Sophia-God of Jesus and the Discipleship
of Women
Liberation from Patriarchal Structures and
the Discipleship of Equals
Conclusion
To speak about the Jesus movement is to speak about
a Jewish movement that is part of Jewish history in the first century
c.e. It is therefore misleading to speak about "Jesus and his
Jewish background" as though Jesus' Judaism was not integral
to his life and ministry, or to describe the behavior of Jesus' disciples
over and against Jewish practice as though the first followers of
Jesus were not Jews themselves. Such statements reflect both rabbinic
Jewish and Christian historical sources, virtually all of which were
written in a period when the separation and schism between Judaism
and early Christianity was an accomplished fact. Such historical reconstructions
of Christianity over and against Judaism can be continuing resources
for Christian anti-Judaism because they perceive Christian origins
in light of the historical fact of Christianity's separation from
and partial rejection of its Jewish roots and heritage.
Such an anti-Jewish sentiment and
historical misperception is especially deeply ingrained in popular
consciousness. In my classes, whenever students are supposed to elaborate the
positive aspects of the Jesus movement they always resort not to Jewish faith
and life but to general philosophical principles and theological universal
arguments. However, when speaking about the "opponents" of Jesus
and his movement they virtually never mention the Romans. Instead they always
mention the "Jews"—without the slightest recognition that Jesus and
his followers were Jews.
One of my friends spoke about Jesus, the
Jew, to an adult education class in her parish. She encountered vehement
objections to such a notion. Finally, after a lengthy discussion a
participant expressed
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the religious sentiment underlying it:
"If you are so insistent that Jesus was Jewish, then you are probably
right. But the Blessed Mother for sure is not ..." My friend told me
this story after I had come exasperated from a college class, where I had
been unable to convince a student that Saint Paul was a Jew. In a Protestant
college class a Jewish friend attempted to show that the miracle stories of
Jesus have the same literary form as those told by the rabbis. At the end
when he tried to draw the conclusion from this form-critical exercise for
understanding the Gospel stories, the students objected: the Jewish tales are
just stories, but those in the Gospels have really happened. Everyone is aware
of such anti-Jewish sentiments among Christians and easily could supply more
such stereotypes.
Feminist Jewish scholars such as Judith
Plaskow have pointed out that Christian feminist literature and popular reasoning
perpetuate these anti-Jewish notions when extolling Jesus, the feminist, over
and against patriarchal Judaism, or when pointing to the extinction of
goddess religion by Israelite patriarchal religion. Plaskow has argued
correctly that the rabbinic statements often adduced for the reconstruction
of the time of Jesus should be appropriately read alongside the statements of
the so-called Fathers, whose misogynism is widely acknowledged. She warns
that Christian feminists' radical image of Jesus
depends on an
extremely negative depiction of the Jewish background, because the only way
to depict him as a radical—that is as overthrowing tradition—is to depict the
tradition as negatively as possible. Because despite the evidence that he in
no way reinforced patriarchy, there's also no evidence that he did anything
radical to overthrow it. So the only way you can make that argument is by
depicting Judaism negatively.
Christian feminists cannot take such a
Jewish feminist warning seriously enough. At the same time it puts Christian
feminists into a serious quandary. Can they—in order to avoid being labeled
anti-Jewish—cease to analyze critically and denounce the patriarchal
structures and traditions of Christian faith and community whenever it
becomes obvious that they share in the dominant patriarchal Jewish structures
of the first centuries? In other words, can feminists relinquish their
search for the liberating elements of Christian vision and praxis that are
formulated over and against the dominant patriarchal
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structures of Judaism? Would that not
mean also an abandonment of feminist Jewish roots and of our Jewish
foresisters who entered into the movement and vision of Jesus of Nazareth?
Because of the long anti-Semitic history
of Christianity and the anti-Jewish presupposition of much Christian
(including feminist) scholarship and popular preaching, one cannot insist
too much on the historical insight that Jesus belongs first of all to Jewish
history. Similarly, his first followers in the Jesus movement and in the
missionary Christian movement were Jewish women as well as men. Christian
feminist theology, therefore, can reappropriate the earliest Christian beginnings
of the discipleship of equals only if and when it understands and explicates
that Christian roots are Jewish and that the feminist Christian foundational
story is that of Jewish women and their vision.
To rediscover "Jesus, the
feminist," over and against these Jewish roots of the early Christian
movement can only lead to a further deepening of anti-Judaism. Equally, to
rediscover Jesus, the feminist, over and against Jewish but not over and
against Christian patriarchy would only mean a further strengthening of
Western religious patri-archy^-T-o rediscover Jesus, the feminist, over and
against Jewish life and beliefs would involve relinquishing the history of
those Jewish foresisters who entered into the vision and movement of Jesus.
The discipleship of equals called forth by Jesus was a Jewish discipleship.
But in seeking not to be anti-Jewish we
cannot cease analyzing and identifying the dominant patriarchal structures of
the Greco-Roman world into which Christianity emerged. In doing so we must
also examine the patriarchal structures of Judaism in order to see why Jewish
women entered into the vision and movement of Jesus. To relinquish the
critical impact of their story within the patriarchal context of their own
culture would entail relinquishing women's Jewish and Christian heritage.
Therefore, to reconstruct the Jesus movement as a Jewish movement within its
dominant patriarchal cultural and religious structures is to delineate the
feminist impulse within Judaism. The issue is not whether or not Jesus
overturned patriarchy but whether Judaism had elements of a critical feminist
impulse that came to the fore in the vision and ministry of Jesus. The
reconstruction of the Jesus movement as the discipleship of equals is
historically plausible only insofar as such critical elements are thinkable
within the context of Jewish life and faith. The praxis and vision of Jesus
and his movement is best understood as an inner-Jewish renewal movement that
presented an alternative option to the dominant patriarchal structures
rather than an oppositional formation rejecting the values and praxis of
Judaism.
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Rather than reading the texts on women in
Judaism as accurate historical information about the status and role of women
in actual life, I would suggest that we subject them to a feminist
methodological approach. As yet no Jewish feminist critical reconstruction
of first-century Judaism exists, nor are feminist critical analyses of Jewish
literature between the Bible and the Mishnah available. Moreover, Jewish feminist
theology is still in the process of developing a feminist understanding of
Torah and tradition which, while declining to take theological statements of
Jewish men at face value, nevertheless spells out its allegiance to Jewish
women of faith. In the meantime, feminist theology as a critical theology of
liberation cannot cease to do the same for Christian Scriptures, traditions,
and women's heritage. However, insofar as the Christian past is bound up
intrinsically with its roots in prerabbinic Judaism, we must seek to
reconstruct the historical experience of those Jewish women who stand at the
beginnings of Christianity. Such a historical experience is, as we have
seen, available only in and through Jewish or Christian male texts and historical
sources.
The following methodological rules for a
feminist hermeneutics of suspicion also apply, therefore, to the
interpretation of texts speaking about women in Judaism.
Texts and historical sources—Jewish as
well as Christian—must be read as androcentric texts. As such they are
reflective of the experience, opinion, or control of the individual male
writer but not of women's historical reality and experience. Such isolated
statements should not be construed as the negative and positive tradition
about women in Judaism. For example, it is methodologically not justified to
declare, on the one hand, Rabbi Eliezer's infamous statement that "if a
man teaches his daughter Torah it is as though he taught her lechery" as
representing the normative negative tradition, while, on the other hand,
explaining that the example of Beruria, who was held up as an example of how
to study Torah, is "the exception that proves the rule."
The glorification as well as the
denigration or marginalization of women in Jewish texts is to be understood
as a social construction of reality in patriarchal terms or as a projection
of male reality. While J. Neusner has elucidated such an approach for the
rabbinic literature, the same could be shown for wisdom and apocalyptic
literature. It must, however, not be overlooked that
"intellectuals" who often belonged to the middle class were
responsible for these literary expressions.
The formal canons of codified patriarchal
law are generally more restrictive than the actual interaction and relationship
of women and men and the social
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reality which they govern. Although in
rabbinic Judaism women are categorized with children and slaves for legal
religious purposes. the biblical stories about women indicate that women were
not perceived as minors or slaves in everyday life. Biblical women such as
Ruth, Esther, Hannah, or the mother of the seven sons mentioned in 2
Maccabees are characterized with typical female roles and behavior, but they
are not minors or imbeciles. Although the "praise of the good wife"
in Prov 31:10-31 is given from a male point of view, her economic initiative
and business acumen are taken for granted.
Women's actual social-religious status
must be determined by the degree of their economic autonomy and social roles
rather than by ideological or prescriptive statements.u As a rule,
prescriptive injunctions for appropriate "feminine" behavior and
submission increase whenever women's actual social-religious status and power
within patriarchy increase. Moreover, women's independence and autonomy are
generally limited not only by gender roles but also by social status and
class membership. We can therefore assume that Jewish women shared the
privileges and limitations placed on women in the dominant culture of their
time. For example, in the Jewish colony at Elephantine women^sfeared full
equality with men; they were enlisted in the military units, were
conspicuous among the contributors to the temple fund, and shared in all
other rights given to women by Egyptian law. Like the Seleucid or Ptolemaic
princesses, Queen Alexandra16 reigned for nine years in the fashion of
Hellenistic queens, and the sister of the last Maccabean king, Antigonus,
defended the fortress of Hyrcania against the military onslaught of Herod the
Great.
Furthermore, the historical-theological
reconstruction of the Jesus movement as an emerging inner-Jewish renewal
movement and its attractiveness to women not only faces difficult
hermeneutical problems, it must also contend with a serious lack of sources,
especially for the pre-70 period. Therefore, Jewish and Christian scholars
are prone to reconstruct early Judaism and Christianity not only in terms of
what has survived as "normative" in their own respective traditions
but also as two distinct and oppositional religious formations. Since
"rabbinic" Judaism18 and patriarchal Christianity were the historical
winners among the diverse inner-Jewish movements, such a reconstruction
insinuates that only these represent pre-70 Judaism in general and the Jesus
movement in particular.
Yet such reconstructions are
questionable: in the period before the siege and destruction of Jerusalem,
"normative" Judaism was not yet in existence, and the Jesus movement
was still a renewal movement embedded in its Jewish social-religious matrix.
A person could under-
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stand herself as a faithful member of
Israel and a follower of Jesus at one and the same time. Moreover, the little
information about pre-70 Judaism which survived in apocalyptic-esoteric
sources and in the writings of Philo and Josephus, was selected, edited, and
transmitted by early Christians. Finally, most of the Jewish-Christian
sources are lost which affirmed the continuity between Judaism and
Christianity, not only with respect to the Scriptures but also with respect
to Jewish ethical and liturgical traditions.
If, however, our general picture of
pre-70 Judaism is blurred, and • that of early Christian origins is equally
vague, then the picture of the position and function of women in the
multifaceted Jewish movements at the beginning of the common era must remain
even more in historical darkness. Yet the available material still gives us
some clues to such a picture. The following must therefore not be
misunderstood to be even a partial reconstruction of women in pre-70 Judaism.
It only points to some "shades" that allow us to see the overall
colors in a somewhat different light.
Although Exod 19:6 is only very rarely
quoted in the literature of the first century c.e.. the common ethos or life
praxis of Israel as the "kingdom of priests and holy nation"
determined all groups of first-century Judaism. All Jewish groups and
factions of Greco-Roman Palestine were concerned with Israel's life and
existence as God's holy people who were entrusted with the commandments of
the covenant, a whole system of mitzvot, the revealed rules for salvation.
Temple and Torah were therefore the key symbols of first century Judaism.
Indeed the worldview of the Jew . . .
depended on his [sic] understanding of Torah. But a fixed written scripture
requires interpretation, and in that world the authority to interpret Torah
meant power; it meant control of redemptive media. . . . But the terms of
Torah serve as symbols in their sacrality ... for the realities which they
expressed were the realities of living men [sic] in living groups who
experienced their present situations in the light of the realities of
tradition.
The foremost witness and testimony to
Israel's enduring covenant with God was the sacred Temple in Jerusalem. Its
rites and liturgies testified to Israel's loyalty to the commandments and
stipulations of this covenant which made the whole land and nation of Israel
a "kingdom of priests" which could not properly be governed by pa-
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gans. Although the Romans sought to avoid
offenses against the religious beliefs and sacred rites of the Jews, their
presence in and occupation of Palestine was the greatest offense to God's
rule and empire established in the covenant with Israel. Therefore, the
various Jewish movements and groups in Palestine were convinced that the
imminent departure of the Romans was certain and God's intervention on
behalf of Israel was immediate.
Exegetes generally agree that the central
perspective and "vision" of Jesus is expressed by the tensive
symbol basileia ("kingdom," "empire") of God. Jesus and
his movement shared this symbol, and the whole range of expectations evoked
by it, with all the other groups in Palestine. Jews expected either the
restoration of the Davidic national sovereignty of Israel and abolition of
Roman colonialism or an apocalyptic universal kingdom of cosmological
dimensions with the holy city and Temple as its center. Many groups hoped for
both at the same time.
An expectation, of such an intervention
in the not too distant future based on belief in a revelation of its
imminence creates the apocalyptic consciousness. Clearly all jews, perhaps
most Jews, were not apocalypticists . . . but apocalypticism . . .was within
the range of normal viewsjjfjwhat could happen. It was an integral part of
the social-psychic repertory.
Such an apocalyptic hope for both
national liberation and sovereignty, as well as for transformation of the
whole creation by God's intervention, is articulated in the first-century
apocalypse the Assumption of Moses:
And then his [God's] kingdom shall appear
throughout all his creation.
And then Satan shall be no more
and sorrow shall depart with him. . . .
For the Most High will arise, the eternal God alone
and he will appear to punish the gentiles.
Then Thou, O Israel, shall be happy . . .
and God will exalt thee
and he will cause thee to approach the heavens of the
stars. . .
The Kiddush, a prayer used in Jewish
synagogues at the beginning of our era, testifies how widespread was such a
hope for God's immediate intervention:
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Magnified and sanctified be his great name
in the world that he has created according to his will.
May he establish his kingdom in your lifetime and in your day
and in the lifetime of all the house of Israel,
even speedily and at a near time.
Similarly the followers of Jesus prayed:
Father, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come.
The different groups within Judaism
answered the burning question of every Jew—What must
I do to enter the kingdom of
heaven?—quite differently, precisely because no single "orthodox"
answer existed at the time. The priestly establishment and aristocracy
sought to preserve Israel's national existence as the people of God by
preserving the Temple and the capital through collaboration with the Romans.
The Essenes established separate communes in towns and cities throughout the
country, held everything in common, employed a different ritual of
purification, devoted themselves to agricultural labor, and were very strict
in their interpretation of Torah. The community of Qumran, for example,
withdrew into the desert to create a "holy people" to replace the
Temple with its illegitimate rituals and priesthood until the Temple's
sacredness would be restored and Israel would be liberated in the final
"holy war." The Sicarii gathered for military rebellion the
impoverished and disenfranchised, the people of the countryside plagued by
high Roman and Jerusalem taxes, to liberate Jerusalem and Israel from Roman
occupation and desecration. The Pharisees did not separate from the people
but sought to realize their vision of a "holy people of priests" by
transferring cultic purity and priestly holiness to everyday life. Their
chief concerns were for the preservation of the cultic purity of the table
community and especially for the observation of the dietary laws. In contrast
to the common people they were meticulous in paying their Levitical and
priestly tithes, in keeping the sabbath observance and purity laws. Some
formed urban religious communities (havuroth) whose members ate their food in
rigorous levitical cleanness and kept company only with those who observed
such strict observance of the priestly purity laws. Politically they were
split, some participating in the revolutionary unrest, others advocating a
politics of pacification.
The apocalyptic prophets who, according
to Josephus, appeared in pre-70 Judaism sought to reenact the Exodus by
leading people into
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the desert. John the Baptizer announced
God's wrath and judgment and called the people to undergo a baptism of
repentance. Apocalyptic scribes and wisdom teachers not only collected
prophetic oracles and the sayings of the fathers but also wrote and collected
whole new books of revelation and wisdom. The Sadducees, who were most
influential among the upper classes, the landholders, and merchants, claimed
to be the legitimate heirs of Israel's covenant and therefore insisted that
since only the written Torah had the authority of revelation, it had to be
strictly adhered to. They rejected as innovation the Pharisaic insistence on
both written and oral Torah, and rejected all claims to revelatory authority
alongside the written Torah as deception.
All these diverse Jewish renewal
movements of the time28 were strongly concerned with how to realize in every
aspect of life the obligations and hopes of Israel as the kingly and priestly
people of God. They sought to hasten God's intervention on behalf of Israel
by scrupulously doing the will of God as revealed in Temple and Torah. Some
stressed and strongly utilized the cultic priestly traditions, some claimed
prophetic authority, some reenacted the Exodus, and still others integrated
wisdom teachings with an apocalyptic perspective. Regardless of differences
in lifestyle and theological outlook, however, all these groups were united
in their concern for the political existence and holiness of the elected
people of Israel. The proclamation of the basileia of God by Jesus and his
movement shared this central theological concern for the renewal of the
people of Israel as God's holy elect in the midst of the nations. However,
the Jesus movement refused to define-tfre-holiness of God's elected people in
cultic terms, redefining it instead as the wholeness intended in creation.
Regarding the role women had in these
different groups and movements of the. time, one finds no direct
information, either in our sources or in the scholarly elaborations of these
sources. Since the Sadducees and priestly aristocracy acknowledged only the
written Torah as Scripture but not its oral traditions and subsequent
interpretations, they presumably defined the role of women according to the
written Torah. Probably this was the case, especially with respect to the
cultic purity rules for worship and with reference to marriage legislation.
Our information about the group around
John the Baptizer is scant. Matt 21:32 states that "tax collectors and
harlots" believed John. However, the parallel in Luke 7:29f does not
mention harlots as "having been baptized with the baptism of John."
The account of John's
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beheading in Mark 6:17-29 certainly has a
historical basis but has been filled out with historically less reliable
lurid details. Herod was not a king, and he was totally dependent on Rome.
Moreover, a young women with Salome's high social status would not have been
a "dancing girl" at Herod's parties. Finally, the characterization
of Herodias as "his brother Philip's wife" is ambiguous because
Herod had two brothers named Philip.
The Qumranites in turn were inspired by
the ethos of the holy war and true Temple, and therefore established a male
military camp of priests with strict purity rules and social stratification
for full members of the group. Whether or not they engaged in short-term marriages
for the sake of the procreation of children, however, is debated. Women's
and children's skeletons have been found, but it is not clear what role they
had in the community. According to the Manual of Discipline, "All that
present themselves are to be assembled together, women and children included.
Then all the provisions of the Covenant are to be read out loud to them, and
they are to be instructed about all its injunctions" (lQSa l:4f). The
Damascus Rule also mentions "women and children" several times.
According to Josephus the Essenes declined to bring wives or slaves into the
community because they believed "that the latter practice contributes
to injustice and that the former opens the way to a source of
dissension" (Antiquities XVIII.21). Philo's presentation of the Essenic
attitude toward marriage and women is colored by his own derogatory perspective:
They eschew marriage because they clearly
discern it to be the sole or principal danger to the maintenance of the
communal life, as well as because they particularly practice continence. For
no Essene takes a wife, because a wife is a selfish creature, excessively
jealous and adept at beguiling the morals of her husband and seducing him by
her continued impostures. . . . For he who is either fast bound in the love
lures of his wife or under the stress of nature makes his children his first
care ceases to be the same to the others and unconsciously has become a
different man and passed from freedom into slavery. [Hypothetica 11.14-17]
That Philo's description is anti-marriage
rather than anti-woman, however, can be seen from his description of the
ascetic Therapeutrides who are just as committed to their vocation and the
study of the Scriptures as the men.
Wisdom and apocalyptic literature also
developed a negative understanding of women. They were the occasion of sin
for angels as
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well as for men, especially for the wise.
Middle-class intellectual men, thus, were warned to be very cautious and
suspicious in their dealings with women. However, feminist analysis has
shown that such an attitude of middle-class men is not typically "Jewish"
but can be found in different ages and various societies. The negative statements
of Philo and Josephus might have the same sociological roots. Although the
attitude the various groups of "revolutionaries" had toward women
is unknown, according to Josephus the women of Jerusalem defended the city
against the Roman army, and Romans considered Damascus unsafe because too
many women of the city had converted to Judaism. Since these groups recruited
their support from the common people and the impoverished of the countryside,
their attitude toward women might not have been as strict as that of other
groups.
We do not know for sure whether the
Pharisees admitted women to their ranks and especially to the table community
of the havuroth. but then we know very little about these Pharisaic
associations on the whole. As we have seen, according to Neusner, the system
of Mish-nah came to its conclusion only toward the end of the second century,
while the system's generative ideas must have emerged some time before the
turn of the first century. These generative ideas.are basically congruent
with those of the Damascus Rule and the Manual of Discipline in Qumran.
According to Neusner this Mishnaic system is thoroughly androcentric, because
"in the nature of things" women— like the earth, time, fruits, bed,
chair, table, and pots—"are sanctified through the deeds of men."
At the same time, the book of Judith,
which was not accepted in the rabbinic canon, must have appealed to the
theological imagination of various Jewish' groups of the time. As a fictional
account written sometime during the firstlcentury b.c.e., the book espouses
not only wisdom, Exodus, pharisaic, and zealotic motifs but also calls upon
God as the "God of the lowly, the helper of the oppressed, the protector
of the forlorn, the savior of those without hope" (9:11). Its theology
is consciously modeled after the Exodus narrative where by "the hand of
Moses" Israel is liberated (Exod 9 and 14). Its review of Israel's
history serves as a remembrance of God's previous interventions in hopeless
situations. Such a remembrance engenders the hope that God will again act on
behalf of the covenant people. Just as according to Wis 11:1 Sopfaza-Wisdom
"made their affairs prosper through the hand of the holy prophet"
so the Lord will again take care of Israel "through the hands" of
Judith (8:33; 9:10; 12:4; 13:14, 15; 16:6). Her scrupulous observation of the
dietary prescriptions
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(10:5) helps her to win the victory over
the enemy. Judith's victorious act and faith are modeled after Moses, who
liberated his people from Egypt's oppressive power, after Jael's victory over
Sisera (Judg 4:21) and David's beheading of Goliath (1 Sam 17:51).
The heroic biography of Judith tells us
several things about the position and role of women at the time when the book
was written and read. Judith had inherited her husband's considerable estate
and had managed it through a woman steward (8:10). She was free to reject
remarriage and, like the Therapeutrides, to dedicate her life to prayer,
ascesis, and the celebration of the sabbath. She had the authority to summon
the elders of the town and to rebuke them. She censured their theological
misjudgment and misconduct in the face of the enemy: "Listen to me,
rulers of the people of Bethulia! What you have said to the people today is
not right" (8:11). No mention is made that she was veiled when leaving
her house. To the contrary it is stressed that all who saw her were struck by
her beauty:
"When they saw her, and noted how
her face was altered and her clothing changed, they greatly admired her
beauty." [10:7]
In a similar fashion Holofernes and all
his servants said: "There is not such a woman from one end of the earth
to the other, either for beauty of face or wisdom of speech!" [11:21]
At the news of her victory the high
priest and the senate of Israel come from Jerusalem "to see" Judith
and to greet her in blessing: "You are the exaltation of Jerusalem, you
are the great glory of Israel, you are the great pride of our nation!"
[15:9]
The victory march to Jerusalem is
described as a "victory dance" of the women of Israel crowned with
olive wreaths and following Judith. Like Miriam, Judith sings a "new
song" leading all the women in the dance. "And she went before all
the people in the dance, leading all the women, while all the men of Israel
followed, bearing their arms and wearing garlands and with songs on their
lips." [15:13]
Judith continued to feast with the people
in Jerusalem for three months, before returning home to her estate. She set
her maid free, but remained unmarried, although "many desired to marry
her." Like the patriarchs of old she lived as a famous woman to the ad-
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vanced age of 105 years. Before her death
she made a will and distributed her property to her husband's and her own
kin and was mourned for seven days by the house of Israel. Such final acts of
largesse and features of greatness were typical of the ending of heroic biography.
It would be a serious mistake, however,
to read such heroic biography in moralistic terms. True, Judith is a woman
who fights with a woman's weapons, yet far from being defined by her
"femininity," she uses it to her own ends. Far from accepting such
circumscription by feminine beauty and behavior, she uses it against those
male enemies who reduce her to mere feminine beauty and in so doing seriously
misjudge her real power. Intelligent wisdom, observant piety, shrewd
observation, and faithful dedication to the liberation of her people are
Judith's true definition and personal assets. Her guileful remarks, her
enticing beauty, and her treacherous planning are highlighted in the story
in an ironical fashion.
And Holofernes said to her, "God has
done well to send you before the people, to lend strength to our hands and to
bring destruction upon those who have slighted my Lord. You are not only
beautiful in appearance but wise in speech." [11:22-23]
The male enemies walk into her trap because
they are beguiled by her attractiveness and femininity, but have not the
faintest idea of her religious and national self-identity and strength. In
taking her just as "woman"—and no more—they walk into the trap and
their own destruction, which they want to avoid by all means:
Who can despise these people, who have
women like this among them? Surely not a man of them had better be left
alive, for if we let them go they will be able to ensnare the whole world.
[10:19]
Because the male enemies see women only
as appendages and assets to men, they do not recognize that their true foes
are not the men of Israel who are characterized as weak and timorous.
Holofernes and his servants rightly assume that they will have a major part
in the dramatic story, but, because of their masculine arrogance and stupidity,
they do not recognize that their part is the "villain's role." Only
when one sees the "feminist" irony of the story can one perceive
Judith's greatness and appeal to the Jewish imagination of the time:
Judith is no weakling. Her courage, her
trust in God, and her wisdom—all lacking in her male counterparts—save the
day for Israel. Her use of deceit and specifically of her sexuality may
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seem offensive and chauvinistic. For the
author it is the opposite. Judith wisely chooses the weapon in her arsenal
that is appropriate to her enemy's weakness. She plays his game, knowing
that he will lose. In so doing she makes fools out of a whole army of men.
However, Judith's dramatic victory is
seen as the victory of all the people. It reveals the God of the oppressed
and hopeless as the "God with us" (13:11). The risk, wisdom, and
courage of a woman have saved the people of God, once more. The woman Judith
does not become a victim and does not allow her people to accept the role of
victim. In the name of God she struggles against the political power of
oppression successfully. Wisdom has prevailed over brute power; the military
helplessness of Israel over the military prowess of the oppressor;
persistence and the faithful, intelligent courage of a woman over the timid
resignation and the stupid boasting of powerful men. Anyone who read this
story at the beginning of our era must have immediately understood it as a
mirror image of Israel's situation under Roman occupation. In such a
hopeless situation the image of a wise and strong woman could incite Israel's
imagination and engender hope and endurance in the religious-national
struggle. This story of a woman could have appealed to the Essenes, the
Pharisees, and to the revolutionary-prophetic groups. The first Christian
writer to mention it is Clement of Rome, who points to the example of the
"blessed Judith" in order to show that "many women, empowered
by God's grace, have performed deeds worthy of men" (1 Clem 55.3.4). It
seems greatly misleading, therefore, to picture Jewish women of the first
century in particular, and Jewish theology in general, in predominantly
negative terms. The book of Judith—whether written by a woman or by a man—gives
us a clue to a quite different tradition and situation in first-century
Judaism.
The book of Judith mediates the
atmosphere in which Jesus preached and in which the discipleship of equals
originated. Jesus and several of his first followers were at first disciples
of John the Baptizer and received his baptism of repentance. Jesus, however,
seems to have separated from the group around John because of a
prophetic-visionary experience which convinced him that Satan's power was
broken, the eschatological war was won (Luke 10:18). Where John announces,
"The axe is laid to the root of the trees" (Matt 3:10),
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Jesus proclaims: "the basileia of
God is in the midst of you" (Luke 17:21). The difference between John
and Jesus is not a "break" but a shift of emphasis. While John
announces God's judgment and wrath preceding the basileia and eschatological
restitution of Israel, Jesus stresses that, in his own ministry and movement,
the eschatological salvation and wholeness of Israel as the elect people of
God is already experientially available. His reply to John's question,
"Are you the one who is to come? . . ." underlines this experiential
aspect of, the basileia by evoking a whole range of Isaianic images:
Go and tell John
what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk,
lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have
good news preached to them. [Luke 7:22 (Q)]
This section of Q about the relationship
between John and Jesus not only emphasizes that Jesus restores the humanity
of people but also stresses that different interpretations of the
eschatological situation result in very different lifestyles. John's
lifestyle is that of an apocalyptic ascetic while Jesus is seen by people as
"a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners"
(Luke 7:34 [Q]). The pre-Markan collection of controversy dialogues
explicitly mentions that the disciples of John and the Pharisees were fasting
while the disciples of Jesus did not do so (Mark 2:18ff). The oldest stratum
of the story argues that guests at a wedding feast do not fast. The experience
of the basileia's salvation in the presence and ministry of Jesus does not
allow for traditional ascetic practices. Only at a later time does the
Christian community reintroduce the practice of fasting, justifying it with
reference to the absence of Jesus.
It is the festive table-sharing at a
wedding feast, and not the askesis of the "holy man," that
characterizes Jesus and his movement. Its central image is that of a festive
meal. The parables speak of the basileia of God in ever-new images of a
sumptuous, glorious banquet celebration. Just as the Essenes and Pharisaic
associations, the Jesus movement gathered around the table and shared their
food and drink. Yet while the Pharisees sought to realize Israel's calling as
a "nation of priests" by carefully observing the ritual purity of the
"holy table" and by eating their meals "like priests,"
Jesus and his movement did not observe these purity regulations and even
shared their meals with "sinners." The central symbolic
actualization of the basileia vision of Jesus is not the cultic meal but the
festive table of a royal banquet or wedding feast. This difference in
emphasis was
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probably one of the major conflict points
between the Jesus movement and the Pharisaic movement. None of the stories
told by or about Jesus evidences the concern for ritual purity and moral
holiness so typical of other groups in Greco-Roman Palestine. While Jesus
shares their vision of Israel as the "elect people and nation of
Yahweh" (Exod 19:5f), he does not share their understanding that the
"holiness" of Temple and Torah is the locus of God's power and
presence.
Although Jesus and his movement shared
the belief of all groups in Greco-Roman Palestine that Israel is God's elect
people, and were equally united with the other groups in the hope of God's
intervention on behalf of Israel, they realized that God's basileia was
already in their midst. Exegetes agree that it is the mark of Jesus'
preaching and ministry that he proclaimed the basileia of God as future and
present, eschatological vision and experiential reality. This characteristic
tension between future and present, between wholeness and brokenness is
generally acknowledged, even though it is interpreted or resolved
differently. In my opinion, however, this tension can only be perceived and
maintained when the reference point of the tensive symbol basileia is the
general Jewish ethos of the time, and when the history and community of
Israel is its focus. The Jesus movement in Palestine does not totally reject
the validity of Temple and Torah as symbols of Israel's election but offers
an alternative interpretation of them by focusing on the people itself as the
locus of God's power and presence. By stressing the present possibility for
Israel's wholeness, the Jesus movement integrates prophetic-apocalyptic and
wisdom theology insofar as it fuses eschatological hope with the belief that
the God of Israel is the creator of all human beings, even the maimed, the
unclean, and the sinners. Human holiness must express human wholeness, cultic
practice must not be set over and against humanizing praxis. Wholeness
spells holiness and holiness manifests itself precisely in human wholeness.
Everyday life must not be measured by the sacred holiness of the Temple and
Torah, but Temple and Torah praxis must be measured and evaluated by whether
or not they are inclusive of every person in Israel and whether they engender
the wholeness of every human being. Everydayness, therefore, can become
revelatory, and the presence and power of God's sacred wholeness can be
experienced in every human being.
Since the reality of the basileia for
Jesus spells not primarily holiness but wholeness, the salvation of God's basileia
is present and experientially available whenever Jesus casts out demons (Luke
11:20), heals the sick and the ritually unclean, tells stories about the lost
who are
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found, of the uninvited who are invited,
or of the last who will be first. The power of God's basileia is realized in
Jesus' table community with the poor, the sinners, the tax collectors, and
prostitutes—with all those who "do not belong" to the "holy
people," who are somehow deficient in the eyes of the righteous. It is
like dough that has been leavened, but not yet transformed into bread, like
the fetus in .the womb, but not yet transformed in birth to a child. The
future can be experienced in the healings, the inclusive discipleship, and
the parabolic words of Jesus, but Jesus still hopes and expects the future
inbreaking of God's basileia, when death, suffering, and injustice finally
will be overcome and patriarchal marriage will be no more (cf. Mark 12:18-27
and parallels). Jesus' praxis and vision of the basileia is the mediation of
God's future into the structures and experiences of his own time and people.
However, this future is mediated and
promised to all members of Israel. No one is exempted. Everyone is invited.
Women as well as men, prostitutes as well as Pharisees. The parable of the
"Great Supper" (cf. Matt 22:1-14; Luke 14:16-24 [Q]; Gosp. Thorn,
log. 64) jolts the hearer into recognizing that the basileia includes
everyone. It warns that only those who were "first" invited and
then rejected the invitation will be excluded. Not the holiness of the elect
but the wholeness of all is the central vision of Jesus. Therefore, his
parables also take their images from the world of women. His healings and
exorcisms make women whole. His announcement of "eschatological
reversal"—many who are first will be last and those last will be first
(Mark 10:31; Matt 19:30; 20:16; Luke 13:30)—applies also to women and to
their impairment by patriarchal structures.
That the wholeness and well-being of
everyone reveals God's presence and power comes to the fore especially in
those basileia sayings that are considered most "authentic": the
beatitudes and eschatological reversal sayings, the table community of Jesus
with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus' "breaking of the sabbath
law," and his authoritative reinterpretation of the Torah in the
antitheses. It must be noted here that I am not seeking to
"distill" the most "authentic" tradition of Jesus-sayings
in such a way as to separate Jesus from his own people, Israel, and his first
followers. The Jesus movement is not conceivable without Jesus, of course,
but it is also inconceivable without Jesus' followers. Since I am interested
in laying open the tension points of the Jesus movement with the dominant
patriarchal culture in which it took shape, it is important to see who the
people are for whom the basileia is claimed. Such tension points should not
be misconstrued as anti-Judaism, however, since Jesus and his followers
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were Jews and claimed their election as
the Israel of God. Of course the alternative basileia vision of Jesus and his
movement created tensions but so did those of Amos and John the Baptizer,
for that matter. The earliest gospel strata assert again and again that Jesus
claimed the basileia for three distinct groups of people: (1) the destitute
poor; (2) the sick and crippled; and (3) tax collectors, sinners, and
prostitutes. 1. Jesus announces that the basileia is given to the
impoverished, while Q already claims the "beatitudes" for the Jesus
community. That the first beatitude promises the basileia to the socially
impoverished of Israel is underlined by the second and third: "Blessed
are those that hunger, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are those who
weep now, for they shall laugh." How dire the poverty of women was may
be illustrated by the story of the poor widow who "gives her whole
living" to the Temple treasury. "Her whole living" was
"two copper coins which make a penny" (Mark 12:41-44).M Most of
those who are poor, who do not know where they will get food to still their
hunger, who cry and hear the crying of their children, then as now, are women
and children dependent on women. It is not clear whether or not
the "woe" sayings against the rich (some of whom are women), which
parallel the beatitudes in Q, are original or were added later. Nevertheless
they underline the eschatological reversal brought about by the basileia. The
pre-Markan reversal saying Mark 10:25 also emphasizes that such an
eschatological warning was addressed to the rich very early: It stresses
that it is impossible for someone who is rich to enter the basileia of God.
This eschatological reversal is also announced in the pre-Lukan song of
Mary, the Galilean:
God has put down
the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; God has
filled the hungry with good things, and has sent the rich empty away. [Luke
l:52f]56
Thus the oldest traditions elaborate
concretely Jesus' reply to John that "the poor have good news preached
to them." Those who are dying of starvation and are desperate because
they see no way out of their poverty into the future are promised the
basileia. The promise of the basileia to the beggared and destitute affirms
that God will make their cause God's own concern. God is on their side
against all those who trample down their rights. The understanding that God
is on the side of the impoverished has its roots in the covenant of God with
Israel. Even though in antiquity—as today—poverty was seen as a persona]
failure (thus justifying despisal of the poor), in Israel pov-
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erty was understood as injustice. Since
Yahweh is the owner of the land and has given it into the care of all the
people, the poor of Israel are cheated out of their rightful inheritance.
Therefore, the prophets never tire of announcing that God is on the side of
the poor and will take up their cause (Deut 15:7-18; Amos 2:6-8). The promise
of the basileia to the poor, among whom are also women, should therefore not
be misconstrued as a future consolation prize but as proclamation of the
poor's rights and of God's justice. In other words, the poor do have a share
in God's future, while the rich and prosperous do not because they are
consuming their inheritance now. Neither the magnificat of Mary nor the
beatitudes speak of punishment for the rich but rather of eschatological
reversal. This life and the life of the basileia are seen as a continuous
whole.
The Q community added a fourth beatitude
that refers all the beatitudes to the Christian community. It pronounces
blessing for those members of the Jesus movement who are persecuted, reviled,
hated and excluded from their Jewish communities. Those who have been
declared as no longer belonging to the elect people of Israel are told that
they will share in the eschatological salvation. However it is clear at this
stage that the members of the Jesus movement are still socially poor,
destitute, and starving. Only Matthew's beatitudes expand the concept beyond
social poverty to a religious attitude that can be shared by poor and rich.
2. The basileia of God is experientially
available in the healing activity of Jesus. While there is much discussion
as to whether miracles are scientifically possible and whether the miracle
stories are historically "authentic," there is insufficient
attention paid to the vision of being human that is realized by the power of
God active in Jesus. The basileia vision of Jesus makes people whole,
healthy, cleansed, and strong. It restores people's humanity and life. The
salvation of the basileia is not confined to the soul but spells wholeness
for the total person in her/his social relations. The exorcisms of Jesus
acknowledge that there are dehumanizing powers in this world that are not
under our control. However, Jesus is not so much concerned with their
polluting power as with their debilitating dehumanizing power. What we today
call oppressive power structures and dehumanizing power systems, apocalyptic
language calls "evil spirits," "Satan,"
"Beelzebul," demons. Therefore, if Jesus in the power of God casts
out evil spirits and overcomes the evil powers that keep people in bondage,
then the liberating power of God, "the basileia [,] has come (ephthasen)
upon you" (Luke 11:20). If the pre-Lukan tradition identifies Mary of
Magdala as a woman "from whom he has cast out seven
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demons" (cf. Mark 16:9 and Luke
8:2), then she is not thereby characterized as a "sinner," but as
someone who has experienced the unlimited (seven) liberating power of the
basileia in her own life.
Those who were maimed, crippled, and sick
were either poor or became impoverished through death and illness. The story
of the woman "who had a flow of blood for twelve years" (Mark 5:25-34)
shows this dramatically. "She had spent all that she had" by consulting
"many physicians" but "she was not better but rather grew
worse." These few terse words narrate forcefully the economic impoverishment
of the incurably ill. However, this woman's predicament was not just
incurable illness but also permanent uncleanness. She was not only unclean
herself, but polluted everyone and everything with which she came in contact
(Lev 15:19-31). For twelve years this woman had been "polluted" and
barred from the congregation of the "holy people." No wonder she
risked financial ruin and economic destitution to become healthy, and
therefore cultically clean, again. Jesus calls her "daughter" of
Israel and announces: Go in peace, that is, be happy and whole (shalom). You
are healed.
This story was probably interlinked with
the story of the daughter of Jairus, one of the rulers of the synagogue, not
only because of the catchword twelve but also because it proclaims the same
understanding of wholeness and holiness. Jesus touches the dead girl and
thus becomes "unclean" (cf. Num 19:11-13). Yet the power of the
basileia does not rest in holiness and cultic purity. The girl gets up and
walks, she rises to womanhood (Jewish girls became marriageable at twelve).
The young woman who begins to menstruate, like the older woman who
experiences menstruation as a pathological condition, are both
"given" new life. The life-creating powers of women manifested in
"the flow of blood" are neither "bad" nor cut off in death
but are "restored" so that women can "go and live in
shalom," in the eschatological well-being and happiness of God.
The synoptic sabbath healings of Jesus
present a special difficulty to exegetes, because they seem to narrate
occasions where Jesus "willfully" breaks the sabbath commandment
of the Torah. Exegetes are at pains to explain that the pre-Markan (Mark
3:1-5) and pre-Lukan (Luke 14:1-6) sabbath healings attempt to elucidate
Jesus' general theological principle that "to do good," "to
heal," and "to save life" overrules the sabbath Torah. Yet
such a principle would have been conceded by all the other Jewish
interpreters of the law who agreed, more or less, that one is allowed on the
sabbath to "save the life" of either humans or animals. Moreover,
the healing stories do not support the general theological maxim implied in
the question of the
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controversy dialogue. The man with the
withered hand as well as the man who had dropsy were not critically ill and
easily could have waited one day longer to be healed. The offensiveness of
the sabbath healings lies precisely in the fact that Jesus breaks the sabbath
law even though it is not called for at all. To have him do so merely to
teach his opponents a lesson appears to me to be later Christian interpretation.
I would suggest that Luke 13:10-17, the
story about the "double bent woman," rather then Mark 3:1-5,
represents the oldest tradition of the sabbath healings. Exegetes rule this
assumption out on form-critical grounds when they argue that the
controversy-dialogue in this story is not interwoven with the controversy of
the scholastic teaching dialogue, but only later appended to it. Yet it is
possible that the healing story (Luke 13:10-13) was originally independent
and was expanded to a dialogue at a later stage. The dialogue does not argue
that "in order to save life" Jesus broke the sabbath Torah—the
woman was bent double for eighteen years—but it argues that he did so in order
to make her whole and "free her from her infirmity." The reference
point is not that one was allowed to save an animal in danger on the sabbath
but that it was necessary to water ox and ass on the sabbath. To be sure,
some Jews might have disputed such a "lax" interpretation of the
sabbath Torah although it must have occurred. However, what is
"disturbing" here is not a "lax" or "strict"
interpretation of the law, but the fact that Jesus' response seems not to
have heard the objection of the "ruler of the synagogue," whose
precise point was that there were six days on which one could come to be
healed, leaving no need to "come on the sabbath day to be healed."
The dialogue startles and leads us to seek for another "clue" to
understand the story. It forces us to ask, why did Israel observe the sabbath?
Sabbath observance was the ritual
symbolization of Israel's election as a holy people since the exile. In the
pre-Christian book of Jubilees, which also had great influence in Qumran, the
sabbath is kept in heaven and on earth as a sign that the Jews are God's
people and Yahweh is their God. Israel keeps sabbath by abstaining from all
work, and so "to eat and to drink, and to bless Him who has created all
things as he has blessed and sanctified unto Himself a peculiar people above
all peoples" (Jub 2:20f). While his opponents insist on a complete
"rest from work" on the sabbath day (cf. Luke 13:14), Jesus made it
possible for the woman and the people to fulfill the purpose of the sabbath
rest from work: the praise of God, the creator of the world and the liberator
of this people. The woman who "was made
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straight" "praised God,"
while the common people (ochlos) were happy (echairen) about all the
"glorious things that came into being through him. Therefore, the woman
can truly be called "a daughter of Abraham" (cf. Luke 3:8 [Q]:
children), a full member of the sanctified people of Israel.
A last aspect of this healing story is
significant. The illness of the woman was caused by Satan. This daughter of
Israel was in a bondage that deformed her whole bodily being for eighteen
years. In helping her, Jesus freed her from Satan's power and restored God's
creation. Jesus acted according to the intention of the sabbath Torah.
Therefore, joy and praise are appropriate. Jesus' sabbath healing is not an
offense against the sanctified people of Israel, but rather enables the
daughter of Abraham, together with the community of angels, to celebrate
God, the creator of all people and the liberator of the chosen people of
Israel.
This interpretation is confirmed by the
pre-Markan controversy dialogue Mark 2:23-28. The statement that "the
Human Being [Son of Man] is lord even of the sabbath" (2:28) probably is
a later addition by the church that transmitted this story. The saying that
"the sabbath was made for human persons but not humans for the
sabbath" is most likely an original saying of Jesus that is the climax
of the whole story. In this story it is not Jesus but his disciples who are
accused of breaking the sabbath. It is not illness but hunger that leads them
to do so. Jesus points to David and his followers who not only broke the
sabbath law but ate sacred bread (although they were not priests). While the
reference to Scripture reasons with the Pharisees, Jesus' word in v. 27
stresses the deepest intention of the sabbath law: it is created so that
people can praise, in festive eating and drinking, the goodness of Israel's
creator God. The disciples of Jesus, who, like the very poor, have no food
but the ears of grain that they pluck and eat, do fulfill the intentions of
the Torah. They keep the sabbath, that is, they eat to the praise of God,
although they have almost nothing with which to do so. The story then tells
what it means that the "sabbath came into being for human beings, and
not humans for the sake of the sabbath." It would be misleading to
insist on only one half of the sabbath commandment—the command not to
work—while perverting the other—eating and drinking in honor of God—by
letting people starve.
3. While the sick and possessed are
easily seen as belonging to the poor and starving to whom the basileia is
promised, exegetes usually see the moral but not the social predicament of
tax collectors, sinners, and prostitutes. They almost unanimously agree that
the historical
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Jesus and the earliest Jesus movement in
Palestine associated with tax collectors, sinners, and prostitutes, although
we have only scant traditions for this information. Yet we can still trace
redactional tendencies in the traditioning process and in the Gospels that
seek to make this accusation against the Jesus movement more understandable
and acceptable. Jesus' movement and praxis included everyone. Even prostitutes
and tax collectors shared in its community gathered around the table. This
historical praxis is still reflected in the Markan (2:15) and Lukan (15:2b)
redactional overlay as well as in the Q tradition (Matt 11:19; Luke 7:34).
It also comes to the fore in the provocative saying: "Truly I say to
you, the tax collectors and harlots go into the basileia of God before
you" (Matt 21:31).
Usually the designations tax collectors,
sinners, and prostitutes are understood in a moralizing sense. Yet sinner is
not an inclusive concept for tax collectors and prostitutes. The tradition,
especially in Luke, shows the tendency to identify the prostitute with
sinner, but these two notions are not interchangable. It is also important to
recognize that in a patriarchal society prostitution is the worst form of
"pollution" (sin) for a woman, although prostitution is an
essential function of patriarchy. Since prophetic times the notion
"prostitute" had acquired religious theological overtones in
Israel, insofar as the "harlot" was the paradigm of the
"unfaithful people Israel" and of their "whoredom" with
other gods in pagan idolatry. That the harlots will enter into the basileia
ahead of the faithful and righteous Israelite is outrageous, to say the
least.
The phrase "tax collectors, sinners,
and prostitutes," however, characterizes not just a morally
reprehensible group of people but even more a class so destitute that they
must engage in "dishonorable" professions in order to survive.
Although because of Luke 19 we have an image of tax collectors as
"rich," most of the tax collectors who did the actual work were
impoverished, or were slaves employed by a "tax agency," and
quickly dismissed if problems arose. Palestine was plagued by a very
oppressive tax system: Roman tax agents gathered, as direct taxes, the
produce and toll tax; servants of the high-priestly aristocracy of Jerusalem
collected the tithes as their direct share in the harvest, leaving very
little for the country priests and levites; indirect taxes, import and export
taxes, and taxes on all produce and leases in Jerusalem were farmed out to
the highest bidders. Since the custom and toll taxes could be collected,
even when one was merely going from one village to the other, harassment by
tax collectors was not only annoying but also very expensive, especially
since tax collectors had to take in more than the official fee if
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they wanted to make a living. Levi was
probably such a subordinate tax collector because he actually sat at the
tollbooth (Mark 2:14). Throughout antiquity tax collectors were likened to
robbers and thieves, and treated with contempt for their coarseness. Their
harassment and extortion were notorious. In Judaism tax collectors were, in
a special way, "unclean," and often hated as agents of Rome's colonial
power.
As is the case today, so in antiquity
most prostitutes were impoverished unskilled women. Found mostly in the
cities, they often lived in brothels or houses connected with a temple.
Prostitutes usually were slaves, daughters who had been sold or rented out by
their parents, wives who were rented out by their husbands, poor women,
exposed girls, the divorced and widowed, single mothers, captives of war or
piracy, women bought for soldiers—in short, women who could not derive a
livelihood from their position in the patriarchal family or those who had to
work for a living but could not engage in "middle"- or
"upper"-class professions. In Palestine, torn by war, colonial taxation,
and famine, the number of such women must have been great.
The notion of "sinner" can have
a whole range of meanings. It can characterize people who did not keep the
Torah, whether in the stricter Sadducaic or the wider Pharisaic senses; those
who, in our terms, were criminals (in Israel, political and religious law
were one and the same); or those who worked in disreputable jobs such as
fruit-sellers, swineherders, garlic peddlers, bartenders, seamen, public
announcers, tax collectors, pimps, prostitutes, servants, and other service
occupations, all of which were deemed "polluting" or "unclean"
by theologians and interpreters of the Torah i All categories of sinners were
in one way or another marginal people who were badly paid and often abused.
The few "rich" tax collectors or prostitutes were exceptions and,
as such, proved the oppressive character of the societal-religious system.
The story of the woman who washed Jesus'
feet (Luke 7:36-50) has a very complex tradition-history that is far from
being adequately resolved. It seems that already at a pre-Lukan stage of the
tradition, some elements in the story of the "woman anointing Jesus'
head" (Mark 14:3-11; John 12:1-8) had been taken over into the
narrative. Such elements are probably the "alabaster flask of
ointment" (7:37c), the anointing (7:38c), and the name of the Pharisee,
Simon. Moreover, the parable might originally have been told independently,
but if such was the case it must have been taken into the story at a very
early stage. It seems, however, that the contrast between the Pharisee
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and the woman,.as well as the emphasis on
the forgiveness of sins, is the work of redaction, since later Christian
authors emphasize the enmity between the Pharisees and Jesus' disciples. Luke
especially stresses over and over again that "Jesus called sinners to
repentance." Therefore, it was probably he who characterized the woman
as "a woman of the city, a sinner," that is, a prostitute.
The original story is neither a story
about a rich prostitute nor about a prostitute at all. The relationship
between Jesus and the Pharisee is that between friends and colleagues, and
Jesus is assumed to be "a prophet" as we see in the earliest Q christology.
I would therefore suggest that the original story may have read as follows:
One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat
with him and Jesus went to the Pharisee's house and sat at table. And behold
a woman having learned that he was sitting at table in the Pharisee's house,
and standing behind him at his feet weeping, began to wet his feet with her
tears and wiped them with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet. Now when
the Pharisee who had invited him saw it he said to himself: "If this
man were a prophet, he would have known what sort of a woman this is who is
touching him; that she is a sinner." In response Jesus said to him:
"I have something to say to you," and he answered, "What is
it, Teacher?" "A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five
hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay he remitted
their debt, graciously. Now which of them will love him more?" And
turning to the woman he said to her: "Your sins are forgiven. Go in
peace (shalom)."
Some such story must have circulated very
early among the Jesus disciples, probably claiming Jesus himself for its
message. The story does not say what kind of sinner the woman was—she could
have been a criminal, a ritually unclean or morally bad person, a prostitute,
or simply the "wife of a notorious sinner." That the early
Christian movement soon saw both this story and the story of the woman with a
flow of blood as "baptismal" stories is evident from the formulaic
statement "your faith has saved you" which alludes to early
Christian baptismal tradition. That this statement is a later addition in
both stories is obvious, however, since "the faith" of the women
was not mentioned previously. The stories assert, then, that Jesus and his
movement invited into their table community not only women but even notorious
and well-known sinners. Sinners, prostitutes, beggars, tax collectors, the
ritually polluted, the crippled, and the impoverished—in short, the scum of
Palestinian society—constituted the majority of Jesus' followers. These are
the last who have become the
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first, the starving who have been
satisfied, the uninvited who have been invited. And many of these were women.
But how could Jesus have been a prophet
of God, and his movement a prophetic movement in Israel making the basileia
experien-tially available, when this inclusiveness ran counter to everything.
previously thought to be the will of God revealed in Torah and Temple? Was
it not Beelzebul/Satan in the guise of God's prophet who was at work? That
the praxis of Jesus and his disciples offended the religious sensibilities
not only of their fellow Jews but also of later Christians is apparent when
one examines the understanding of sin and forgiveness. While the earliest
Jesus traditions eschew any understanding of the ministry and death of Jesus
in cultic terms as atonement for sins, it was precisely this interpretation
which soon took root in some segments of the early Christian movement. Yet
such an interpretation of Jesus' death as atonement for sins is much later
than is generally assumed in New Testament scholarship. The notion of atoning
sacrifice does not express the Jesus movement's understanding and experience
of God but is a later interpretation of the violent death of Jesus in cultic
terms. The God of Jesus is not a God who demands atonement and whose wrath
needs to be placated by human sacrifice or ritual. C. Ochs has elaborated
that the patriarchal God of Abraham and of Christians is judgmental and
demands the sacrifice of the only son. Although such an interpretation of the
death of Jesus is soon found in early Christian theology, the death of Jesus
was not a sacrifice and was not demanded by God but brought about by the
Romans.
The Jesus movement articulates a quite
different understanding of God because it had experienced in the praxis of
Jesus a God who called not Israel's righteous and pious but its religiously
deficient and its social underdogs. In the ministry of Jesus God is experienced
as all-inclusive love, letting the sun shine and the rain fall equally on the
righteous and on sinners (Matt 5:45). This God is a God of gracious-ness and
goodness who accepts everyone and brings about justice and well-being for
everyone without exception. The creator God accepts all members of Israel,
and especially the impoverished, the crippled, the outcast, the sinners and
prostitutes, as long as they are prepared to engage in the perspective and
power of the basileia. Con-
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versely, it is stressed: "No one is
good but God alone" (Mark 10:18b; Luke 18:19b).
1. This inclusive graciousness and
goodness of God is spelled out again and again in the parables. It has
already been shown that the parable of the creditor who freely remits the
debts of those who cannot pay articulates this gracious goodness of God by
stressing that women, even public sinners, can be admitted to the Jesus
movement in the conviction that "they will love more." The double
simile of the shepherd searching for the lost sheep and of the woman
searching for her lost silver coin, in all likelihood was already taken over
by Luke from Q in its present form. The Q community used these similes to
reply to the accusation that "Jesus receives sinners and eats with
them" (Luke 15:2; cf. Mark 2:16b for a similar accusation), justifying
it with the application that "in heaven there is joy over the sinner who
repents." The original form of the double story was probably parable
rather than simile, since it did not include this explicit
"application" to the situation of the community. Like the original
story, this application stresses the joy of "finding the lost" but
no longer emphasizes the search. As Jesus might have told this parable, it
would have jolted the hearer into recognition: this is how God acts—like the
man searching for his lost sheep, like the woman tirelessly sweeping for her
lost coin. Jesus thus images God as a woman searching for one of her ten
coins, as a woman looking for money that is terribly important to her. In
telling the parable of the woman desperately searching for her money, Jesus
articulates God's own concern, a concern that determines Jesus' own praxis
for table community with sinners and outcasts. The parable then challenges
the hearer: do you agree with the attitude of God expressed in the woman's
search for her lost "capital"?
The basileia parable of "the
laborers in the vineyard" (Matt 20:1-16) articulates the equality of all
rooted in the gracious goodness of God. Its Sitz im Leben is similar to that
of the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin, namely, the Jesus
movement's table sharing with outcasts. The social world of the parable is
that of a first-century Palestinian landowner who, in order to save money,
hired laborers day by day and hour by hour during the harvest. To a
contemporary hearer of this parable the householder would clearly be God, and
the vineyard, Israel. The contrast between the parable's world and the actual
labor practices and exploitation of the poor laborers—daily or
hourly—underlines the gracious goodness and justice of God. Those who are
last receive a whole day's payment. Yet the story does not end here, for it
also expresses the offense taken by some of the first
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hired. The householder had treated them
justly in giving them the promised payment for the day's work. If the last
had received less they would have been satisfied. But instead of arguing for
"just wages" and labor practices for all, those first hired grumble
because the householder "has made the last equal to themselves."
Jesus' parable thus startles his hearers into the recognition that God's
gracious goodness establishes equality among all of us, righteous and sinner,
rich and poor, men and women, Pharisees and Jesus' disciples. It challenges
the hearer to solidarity and equality with "the last" in Israel.
The all-inclusive goodness of Israel's God calls forth human equality and
solidarity. The tensive symbol basileia of God evokes in ever new images a
realization of the gracious goodness of Israel's God and the equality and
solidarity of the people of God. A very similar understanding of equality is
expressed in one of the earliest statements of the contemporary women's liberation
movement:
We define the
best interests of women as the best interests of the poorest, most insulted,
most despised, most abused woman on earth. . . . Until Everywoman
is free, no woman will be free.
Radical feminism has rediscovered the
"equality from below" espoused by the Jesus movement in Palestine
without recognizing its religious roots.
The earliest Jesus traditions perceive
this God of gracious goodness in a woman's Gestalt as divine Sophia (wisdom).
The very old saying, "Sophia is justified [or vindicated] by all her
children" (Luke 7:35[Q]) probably had its setting in Jesus' table
community with tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners, as well. The
Sophia-God of Jesus recognizes all Israelites as her children and she is
proven "right" by all of them. The Q community qualifies this
saying by stressing that the most eminent of the children of Sophia are John
and Jesus. Only Matthew identifies Sophia with Jesus. It is now Jesus-Sophia
who becomes justified by her deeds.
Jewish wisdom theology developed in
Egypt, but it also permeated apocalyptic literature and can be found in
Qumran theology. From the third century b.c.e. on, Jewish wisdom theology
celebrated God's gracious goodness in creating the world and electing Israel
as the people among whom the divine presence dwells in the female Gestalt of
divine Sophia. Although Jewish (and Christian) theology speaks about God in
male language and images, it nevertheless insists that such language and
images are not adequate "pictures" of the divine, and that human
language and experience are not capable of behold-
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ing or expressing God's reality. The
second commandment and the unspeakable holiness of God's name are very
concrete expressions of this insistence. To fix God to a definite form and
man-made image would mean idolatry. Classical prophetic theology, often in
abusive language, polemicized against the pagan idols and thus rejected goddess
worship, but it did not do so in defense of a male God and a patriarchal
idol. By rejecting all other gods, prophetic theology insisted on the
oneness of Israel's God and of God's creation. It therefore rejected the myth
of the "divine couple," and thus repudiated masculinity and
feminity as ultimate, absolute principles. But in doing so, it did not quite
escape the patriarchal understanding of God, insofar as it transferred the
image of the divine marriage to the relationship of Yahweh and Israel who is
seen as his wife or bride.
Unlike classical prophecy, wisdom
theology is not characterized by fear of the goddess in its apologetic
"defense" of monotheism. Rather, it is inspired by a positive
attempt to speak in the language of its own culture and to integrate elements
of its "goddess cult," especially of Isis worship, into Jewish
monotheism. As such it does theology as "reflective mythology,"
that is, it uses elements of goddess-language in order to speak of the
gracious goodness of Israel's God. A well-known prayer to Isis proclaims that
all the different "nations and peoples use divine names familiar to
them. They call on the goddess, doing so because they know that Isis, being
one, is all.
Divine Sophia is Israel's God in the
language and Gestalt of the goddess. Sophia is called sister, wife, mother,
beloved, and teacher. She is the leader on the way, the preacher in Israel,
the taskmaster and creator God. She seeks people, finds them on the road,
invites them to dinner. She offers life, rest, knowledge, and salvation to
those who accept her. She dwells in Israel and officiates in the sanctuary.
She send prophets and apostles and makes those who accept her "friends
of God." "She is but one but yet can do everything, herself
unchanging. She makes all things new" (Wis 7:27). Wisdom sought a
dwelling place among humanity, but found none. Therefore she has withdrawn
again and "has taken her seat among the angels" (1 Enoch 42:1-2).
Sophia is described as "all-powerful, intelligent, unique" (Wis
7:22). She is a people-loving spirit (philanthropon pneuma, 1:6) who shares
the throne of God (9:10). She is an initiate (mystis) of God's knowledge, an
associate in God's works, and emanation of the God of light, who lives in
symbiosis with God (8:3-4), an image of God's goodness (7:26). One can sense here
how much the language struggles to describe Sophia as divine (without falling
prey to ditheism). Goddess-language is employed to speak about the one God
of
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Israel whose gracious goodness is divine
Sophia. Jewish wisdom theology, as distinct from gnostic theology, has
successfully struggled against the danger of divine dimorphism. It did not,
however, avoid anthropological dualism, as the negative characterization of
women in wisdom and apocalyptic writings indicates. It thereby opened up the
possibility for projecting such anthropological dualism into divine reality
and for rejecting the creator God of Judaism.
While cosmological wisdom mythology has
influenced the earliest christological expressions of the Christian
missionary movement, its traces—though significant—are scant in the
traditions of the Jesus movement. The earliest Palestinian theological
remembrances and interpretations of Jesus' life and death understand him as
Sophia's messenger and later as Sophia herself. The earliest Christian
theology is sophialogy. It was possible to understand Jesus' ministry and
death in terms of God-Sophia, because Jesus probably understood himself as
the prophet and child of Sophia. As Sophia's messenger he calls "all who
labor hard and are heavy laden" and promises them rest and shalom. He
proclaims that the discipleship (the "yoke") of Sophia is easy and
her load light to bear (Matt 11:28-30). Such a sophialogical context also
makes more comprehensible the difficult saying of Q (Matt 12:32; Luke 12:10)
that blasphemy against Jesus, the paradigmatic Human Being, will be
forgiven, but not blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. A statement against
Jesus can be forgiven, but a statement against the "child" or
messenger of Sophia-Spirit cannot, because it means a rejection of the
gracious goodness of God.
This theological reflection understood
John and Jesus as the prophets and apostles who stand in the succession of
Sophia's messengers. Like these others, they are persecuted and killed:
"Therefore also the Wisdom of God said: T will send them prophets and
apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute'" (Luke 11:49 [Q?]).
In a moving passage Sophia laments the murder of her envoys, her prophets,
who are sent in every generation to proclaim the gracious goodness and
justice of God to the people of Israel:
O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, you slay the prophets and stone those who are sent to you. How
often have I wanted to gather your children as a mother bird collects her
young under her wings, but you refused me. [Luke 13:34 (Q)]80
This saying likens the ministry of
Sophia-Jesus to that of a hen gathering her very own brood under her wings.
But the gentleness and care of Sophia is rejected.
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To sum up, the Palestinian Jesus movement
understands the ministry and mission of Jesus as that of the prophet and
child of Sophia sent to announce that God is the God of the poor and heavy
laden, of the outcasts and those who suffer injustice. As child of Sophia he
stands in a long line and succession of prophets sent to gather the children
of Israel to their gracious Sophia-God. Jesus' execution, like John's,
results from his mission and commitment as prophet and emissary of the
Sophia-God who holds open a future for the poor and outcast and offers God's
gracious goodness to all children of Israel without exception. The Sophia-God
of Jesus does not need atonement or sacrifices. Jesus' death is not willed
by God but is the result of his all-inclusive praxis as Sophia's prophet.
This understanding of the suffering and execution of Jesus in terms of
prophetic sophialogy is expressed in the difficult saying which integrates
the wisdom and basileia traditions of the Jesus movement: "The basileia
of God suffers violence from the days of John the Baptist until now and is
hindered by men of violence" (Matt 11:12). The suffering and death of
Jesus, like that of John and all the other prophets sent to Israel before
him, are not required in order to atone for the sins of the people in the
face of an absolute God, but are the result of violence against the .envoys
of Sophia who proclaim God's unlimited goodness and the equality and election
of all her children in Israel.
2. This reality of God-Sophia spelled out
in the preaching, healings, exorcisms, and inclusive table community of Jesus
called forth a circle of disciples who were to continue what Jesus did.
Sophia, the God of Jesus, wills the wholeness and humanity of everyone and
therefore enables the Jesus movement to become a "discipleship of
equals." They are called to one and the same praxis of inclusiveness and
equality lived by Jesus-Sophia. Like Jesus, they are sent to announce to
everyone in Israel the presence of the basileia, as God's gracious future,
among the impoverished, the starving, the tax collectors, sinners, and
prostitutes. Like Jesus, his disciples are sent to make the basileia
experientially available in their healings and exorcisms, by restoring the
humanity and wholeness of Sophia-God's children. The majority of them were
not rich, like the Cynic philosophers who could reject property and cultural
positions in order "to become free from possessions." Rather, they
were called from the impoverished, starving, and "heavy laden"
countrypeople. They were tax collectors, sinners, women, children, fishers,
housewives, those who had been healed from their infirmities or set free from
bondage to their evil spirits. What they offered was not an alternative
lifestyle but an alternative ethos: they were those without a future, but
now they had
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hope again; they were the
"outcast" and marginal people in their society, but now they had
community again; they were despised and downtrodden, but now they had dignity
and self-confidence as God-Sophia's beloved children; they were, because of
life's circumstances and social injustices, sinners with no hope to share in
the holiness and presence of God, but now they were heirs of the basileia,
experiencing the gracious goodness of God who had made them equal to the
holy and righteous in Israel. As such they came together in the discipleship
of equals and shared their meager bread with those who came to hear the
gospel. (The stories about the miraculous feedings of the multitudes not only
have eucharistic overtones but also speak of the worry and concern of Jesus'
disciples that they had so little food to share.) They stand in the
succession of Sophia-prophets, announcing shalom to Israel. As the disciples
of Jesus-Sophia they continue what Jesus did, namely, making the reality of
God's basileia and the all-inclusive goodness of the Sophia-God of Jesus
experientially available.
Whereas the Q traditions limit the
prophetic ministry of Jesus and his movement to the people of Israel, the
Galilean Jesus movement seems to have accepted gentiles at a very early date.
The pre-Markan controversy dialogues Mark 2:1-3:6, as well as the pre-Markan
miracle collection utilized in Mark 4:35-8:10, seem to address the question
of inclusive table community with gentiles as an inner-Christian problem. The
Galilean "missionaries" stress that many sinners were sitting down
at table with Jesus and his disciples "for there were many who followed
him" (Mark 2:15). Sinners now meant not those Jews who in one way or the
other had committed an offense against the Torah, but, as is often the case
in Jewish discourse, it meant "pagans." Thus at an early stage some
members of the Galilean Jesus movement justified their inclusive table
community with pagans by reference to Jesus' own praxis and the fact that
many non-Jews had become disciples of Jesus.
They do this, not so much as a defense
against the Pharisees but rather against the criticism of other Christians,
since the controversy collection evidences an inner-Christian debate. That
such an inclusive table sharing of both Jews and gentiles was very
controversial among Christians is obvious from Paul's statement (Gal 2:11-14)
that Peter the Galilean had table community with gentile Christians in
Antioch but ceased to do so when he was attacked. He and other Jewish
Christians reversed themselves when they were under attack by some followers
of James from Jerusalem. The conversion of the centurion Cornelius in Acts
10:1-11:18 reflects the same debate about ritual
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uncleanliness. After Peter had baptized
the Roman's whole house he went up to Jerusalem and was attacked by the
"circumcision party" (Acts ll:2f): "Why did you go to the
uncircumcised [i.e., pagans] and eat with them?" Peter justifies his
table sharing with gentile Christians by citing a heavenly vision in which
he was directed to eat unclean food.
The pre-Markan story about the healing of
the Gerasene demoniac (Mark 5:1-20) makes the same point but with a different
theological-historical argument: it was Jesus himself who liberated the
gentiles from their "unclean" spirits. Jesus did not ask him to
stay "with him" but commanded him to proclaim to his friends the
"great mercy" of the Lord (5:18-20). The Sitz im Leben of
this strange exorcism story is, therefore, not the missionary preaching to
gentiles but the inner-Christian debate over the mission to pagans and table
sharing between them and Jewish Christians.
The same difficult problem is discussed
theologically in the pre-Markan miracle story in Mark 7:24-30. Surprisingly,
the major theologian and spokesperson for such a table sharing with gentiles
is a woman. As distinct from all other controversy dialogues, Jesus does not
have the last word. Rather, the woman's argument prevails over that of Jesus.
The parabolic saying of Jesus against the admission of gentiles to the
community of Jesus provokes the intelligent retort of the woman. She takes up
Jesus' parabolic image of the "table-children-housedogs" and uses
it to argue against him. The woman "wins" the contest because
Jesus, convinced by her argument (dia touton ton logon), liberates her
daughter from the demon.
Except for the introduction in v. 24a and
the addition in v. 27 (the children first), the story is a unified pre-Markan
composition. If it was told together with the exorcism story of the unclean
Gerasene demoniac, then these stories use the example of Jesus against those
who use a saying of Jesus to justify a strict prohibition against the gentile
mission. Thus the enigmatic saying in Matt 7:6 warns not to give food
offered in sacrifice (and therefore holy) to dogs, and not to give pearls to
swine. Since dogs and swine were considered unclean animals they could be
used figuratively to characterize pagans. This saying ascribed to Jesus,
then, argues that the gospel of the basileia which is compared to a pearl in
Matt 13:45 (and the "holy" table sharing among Christians) should
not be given to gentiles for fear they might misuse it.
If Mark 7:24a is Markan redactional
introduction, then the original story is located in Galilee. The woman is
characterized ethically and culturally as a gentile. Her daughter (her
future?) is in bondage to evil
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and she expects liberation from Jesus.
The Greek verb chortasthenai ("become satisfied") connects the
story with the two messianic pre-Markan feeding miracles, insofar as this
verb is only found in Mark here and in 6:42; 8:4, 8).M The feeding miracles
have strong eucharis-tic overtones which are toned down by Mark. The
argument, then, that the children (Israel) should be fed and that their food
should not be taken from them and given to the dogs (gentiles) is countered
by the woman by referring to the messianic abundance of Christian table
community. The gracious goodness of the God of Jesus is abundant enough to
satisfy not only the Jews but also the gentiles. The power of the basileia
liberates not only the "children" of Israel but also the
woman-child who, as a female and as a gentile, is doubly polluted and subject
to the "bondage" of ritual impurity.
If John 4:1-42 reworks a traditional
mission legend about a woman's primary role in the beginnings of the
Christian community in Samaria, then there is evidence from two different strata
of the gospel tradition that women were determinative for the extension of
the Jesus movement to non-Israelites. Women were the first non-Jews to become
members of the Jesus movement. Although the Syrophoenician respects the
primacy of the "children of Israel," she nevertheless makes a
theological argument against limiting the inclusive messianic table
community of Jesus to Israel alone. That such a theological argument is
placed in the mouth of a woman is a sign of the historical leadership women
had in opening up Jesus' movement and community to "gentile
'sinners'" (Gal 2:15b).
This historical development was of utmost
significance for the beginnings of Christianity. Women who had experienced
the gracious goodness of Jesus' God were leaders in expanding the Jesus movement
in Galilee and in developing a theological argument from the Jesus traditions
for why pagans should have access to the power of Jesus' God and a share in
the superabundance of the messianic table community. By challenging the
Galilean Jesus movement to extend its table snaring and make the basileia's
power and future experien-tially available also to gentiles, these women
safeguarded the inclusive discipleship of equals called forth by Jesus. The
Syrophoenician woman whose adroit argument opened up a future of freedom and
wholeness for her daughter has also become the historically-still-visible
advocate of such a future for gentiles. She has become the apostolic
"foremother" of all gentile Christians.
3. Galilean women were not only decisive
for the extension of the Jesus movement to gentiles but also for the very
continuation of this movement after Jesus' arrest and execution. Jesus'
Galilean women
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disciples did not flee after his arrest
but stayed in Jerusalem for his execution and burial. These Galilean women
were also the first to articulate their experience of the powerful goodness
of God who did not leave the crucified Jesus in the grave but raised him from
the dead. The early Christian confession that "Jesus the Nazarene who
was executed on the cross was raised" is, according to the pre-Markan
resurrection story of Mark 16:1-6, 8a, revealed in a vision first to the
Galilean women disciples of Jesus.
In all likelihood, the Galilean disciples
of Jesus fled after his arrest from Jerusalem and went back home to Galilee.
Because of their visionary-ecstatic experiences, the women who remained in
the capital came to the conviction that God had vindicated Jesus and his
ministry. They, therefore, were empowered to continue the movement and work
of Jesus, the risen Lord. They probably sought to gather together the
dispersed disciples and friends of Jesus who lived in and around
Jerusalem—women disciples like Mary, Martha of Bethany, the woman who had
anointed Jesus, the mother of John Mark who had a house in Jerusalem, or
Mary, the mother of Jesus, as well as such male disciples as Lazarus,
Nicodemus, or the "beloved" disciple. Some of these women probably
also moved back, very soon, to Galilee, their native country. Such a
reconstruction of the events after the death and resurrection of Jesus is
historically plausible, since it might have been easier for the women of the
Jesus movement to go "underground" than the men. By keeping alive
the good news about the manifestation of God's life-giving power in Jesus of
Nazareth, among the followers and friends of Jesus, the Galilean women continued
the movement initiated by Jesus. Mary of Magdala was the most prominent of
the Galilean disciples, because according to tradition she was the first one
to receive a vision of the resurrected Lord.
Two different pre-Gospel traditions
transmit names of Galilean women disciples. Although their names differ, Mary
of Magdala seems to have been the leader among them, since she is usually
mentioned first. The names vary in both the Palestinian (?) pre-Lukan and
pre-Markan lists. However, Hengel has observed the tendency to group the
women's names into groups of three, similar to the special groups of three
among the twelve (Peter, James, John) and the leaders of the Jerusalem
community (James the brother of the Lord, Cephas, and John). The membership
in such a group of three, and the sequence of the names in it, indicates a
preeminence in the latter community. In Luke 8:3 the special Lukan source
mentions Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward, who is characterized as a woman
with higher social standing. How important she was for Luke is evident
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from his insertion of her name into the
Markan list in Luke 24:10. Yet it is likely that Luke added her name to the
orginal list because of his interest in wealthy women, as evident in Luke
8:1-3 and Acts.
Hengel concludes his article by noting
that "the message of Jesus must have had a special impact on the women
in Israel/'89 but he does not explain why this was the case. We have seen
that the Sophia-God of Jesus made possible the invitation of women to the
discipleship of equals. However, one could object that the Q traditions not
only image the gracious goodness of the God of Jesus as divine Sophia but
also call this God "father." Do they thereby indirectly legitimize
patriarchal structures and the "second class" status of women in
such structures, or does their androcentric language have a critical impulse
that radically denies any religious authority and power for the structures of
patriarchy? To raise such a question is not to raise a modern question alien
to the New Testament text, but to explore the Jesus traditions in terms of
social-political structures. We have seen that, in the first century,
patriarchy was well established as a social institution but also that it was
undermined by religious practices and legal conventions that gave women more
freedom and economic powers.
Previously I attempted to show that the
early Christian movement was inclusive of women's leadership and can
therefore be called "egalitarian." As a conflict movement within
Palestine, Syria, Greece, Asia Minor, and Rome, it challenged and opposed the
dominant patriarchal ethos through the praxis of equal discipleship. Luise
Schottroff has objected, however, that since "liberation from patriarchal
structures" was not of primary interest to the Palestinian Jesus
movement it was never articulated as a "major theme." The emancipation
or liberation "from patriarchal structure—if these still play a role for
impoverished people in such dire social situations—stems from their hope for
the kingdom of God." Such an argument does not intend to be antifeminist
but to do justice to the historical-social context of the women's passages in
the Jesus traditions. As much as I share the concern for underlining the
social Sitz im Leben of the Jesus traditions, I do not share the implied
presupposition, namely, that patriarchal structures and poverty are two
different issues and not two sides of the same coin. Therefore the common
bases and different
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emphases of "social-historical"
and "feminist-historical" interpretations need to be clarified
further.
Only if one conceptualizes economic
exploitation and patriarchal oppression as two different social-economic
systems can one assume that liberation from patriarchal structures was
probably not of much concern to destitute people. Yet such an assumption
tends to overlook the reality that in the first century—as today—the
majority of the poor and starving were women, especially those women who had
no male agencies that might have enabled them to share in the wealth of the
patriarchal system. In antiquity widows and orphans were the prime paradigms
of the poor and exploited. Yet in Christian consciousness and theology
"poor Lazarus" but not the "impoverished widow" has
become the exemplification of poverty. Therefore, we have neglected to spell
out theologically Jesus' hope for women who are poor and destitute.
Moreover, I do not think that the social
category of "the poor" is sufficient to describe the inclusive
character of the Jesus movement. Added to this category must be that of
"the marginal," because the healing stories, as well as the
descriptions of other persons in the Jesus traditions, indicate that Jesus
and his movement were open to all, especially to the "outcast" of
his society and religion. Although the majority of the tax collectors,
prostitutes, and sinners might have been poor, some of them probably were
not.
The assertion that liberation from
patriarchal structures was not of primary concern to Jesus and his movement
overlooks not only the androcentric tendencies that can be detected in the
tradition and redaction of the Jesus materials, but also the
"intrusion" of Jesus and his movement into the dominant religious
ethos of the people. The prescription of the Holiness Code, as well as the
scribal regulations, controlled women's lives even more than men's lives, and
more stringently determined their access to God's presence in Temple and
To-rah. Jesus and his movement offered an alternative interpretation of the
Torah that opened up access to God for everyone who was a member of the elect
people of Israel, and especially for those who, because of their societal
situation, had little chance to experience God's power in Temple and Torah.
Underlining this renewal aspect of the
Jesus movement does not imply anti-Judaism. Rather, overlooking it would mean
subtle "downgrading" of first-century Judaism's most compelling
religious avenues for salvation. The charismatic prophet Hanina ben Dosa, a
near contemporary of Jesus, showed a similar Galilean attitude of
independence toward "theology." Such a
Galilean resistance to
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scribal proselytizing is summed up by a
saying ascribed to Johannan ben Zakkai, who became one of the key figures in
the reorganization of Judaism after 70: "Galilee, you hatest the Torah.
Your end shall be destruction." If Neusner is correct in his delineation
of the trajectory of the Holiness Code, then this code was the heart of
patriarchal middle-class Jewish religion. The mere fact that the Palestinian
and Galilean Jesus traditions not only speak of the liberation of women as
well as of men from disease and illness but also "reflect" the
objections against Jesus permitting himself to "be touched" by the
sick and the sinners—this fact indicates how much the inclusive discipleship
and praxis of the Jesus movement "intruded" upon the dominant
ethos. It distinguishes the Jesus movement from other religious groups
seeking to control access to the presence and power of God.
Finally, we must not oppose Jesus'
"concern for the poor" to "emancipation from patriarchal
structures." The Jesus traditions show both his stance on behalf of the
poor as well as his concern for women, but they do not explicitly
"articulate" in either case a strategy for "structural
change." Jesus' proclamation does not address critically the structures
of oppression. It implicitly subverts them by envisioning a different future
and different human relationships on the grounds that all persons in Israel
are created and elected by the gracious goodness of Jesus' Sophia-God. Jesus
and his movement set free those who are dehumanized and in bondage to evil
powers, thus implicitly subverting economic or patriarchal-androcentric
structures, even though the people involved in this process might not have
thought in terms of social structures.
The differences between a
social-historical and a feminist-historical reading comes to the fore not so
much in the interpretation of historical texts but in the perspective
brought to such a reading. The following assertion of Schottroff can
illustrate this: "A poor woman has become the mother of Israel's
Messiah, in whose name the messengers proclaim the beginning of the kingdom
of God. She represents the hope of the poor—men and women—not just solely the
hope of women." I completely agree with this interpretation, but I would
qualify it with: she represents this hope as a woman. Only such a
qualification would authenticate such a statement as feminist. I am not
quibbling here merely with words, but am arguing against a whole direction of
Christian theology, which has allowed women "to identify" with
general (male) categories and groups, for example, the poor, the lonely, the
brothers, the priests, but has not allowed them to identify themselves as
women in solidarity with other women. The self-alienation of women promoted
by Christian generic language will
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continue an exegetical and theological
tradition that keeps poor women as women invisible.
Nevertheless, we find some texts in the
pre-Gospel Jesus traditions that clearly address patriarchal structures, even
if indirectly. These are: (1) the pre-Markan controversy stories in which
Jesus challenges patriarchal marriage structures (Mark 10:2-9 and 12:18-27);
(2) the texts on the a-familial ethos of the Jesus movement; and (3) the
saying about domination-free relationships in the community of disciples.
1. The two pre-Markan controversy
dialogues on patriarchal marriage are usually considered under the headings
"divorce" and "the resurrection." However, these headings
cause us to overlook the real issue in the debate. Mark 10:2-9 must be
interpreted not only as separate from the saying on divorce in 10:10-12 but
not even in light of it. The question put before Jesus is totally
androcentric (can a man dismiss his wife) and presupposes patriarchal
marriage as a "given." The first exchange between Jesus and the
Pharisees makes it clear that divorce is necessary because of the male's
"hardness of heart," that is, because of men's patriarchal mind-set
and reality. As long as patriarchy is operative, divorce is commanded out of
necessity. One is not allowed to abolish it within the structures of
patriarchy. However, Jesus insists, God did not create or intend patriarchy
"but created persons as male and female human beings. It is not woman
who is given into the power of man in order to continue "his" house
and family line, but it is man who shall sever connections with his own
patriarchal family and "the two shall become one sarx." Sarx
("flesh") has a broad meaning: body, person, human being, everyone,
human nature, human descent, that which is natural or earthly, human life in
general, social relationships, earthly history. As opposed to spirit, flesh
can also mean earthly, sinful human attitudes and behavior, but it never has
solely sexual connotations. Therefore, the passage is best translated as
"the two persons—man and woman—enter into a common human life and
social relationship because they are created as equals." The text does
not allude to the myth of an androgynous primal man but to the equal
partnership of man and woman in human marriage intended and made possible by
the creator God. What, therefore, God has joined together in equal
partnership (yoked together; cf. the yoke of Sophia-Jesus as a symbol of
discipleship), a human being should not separate.
The second text, Mark 12:18-27,
critically questions patriarchal structures not with reference to creation
but rather with reference to that eschatological future often seen in
apocalyptic theology as a restitution of the original creation. The
difficult legal-theological problem
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is raised by the Sadducees who object to
the unwritten belief in the resurrection on the grounds that it is not found
in the Pentateuch. They point out that belief in the resurrection cannot be
harmonized with the Torah's commandment of "levirate marriage"
(Deut 25:5-10). Such a belief would imply incest and abomination in heaven,
since the resurrection would entail the simultaneity of persons who lived at
historically different times. The woman who had been married to seven
brothers serially, would, after the resurrection, be married to all of them.
As the Sadducees of the story formulated it, the theological difficulty
consists in the belief in an afterlife, since they cannot imagine that
levirate marriage could be the theological issue at stake. The law of levirate
marriage served the purpose of continuing the patriarchal family, by securing
its wealth and the inheritance within it, a concern important to the
Sadducees, many of whom were upper class and priests, rich landowners living
in Jerusalem—thus profiting doubly from the fees due them as priests and
those due them from the tenants who worked their land. For them the levirate
law protecting and perpetuating the patriarchal structures of the
"house" was of utmost importance. Although this law sometimes
created more hardship for the brother of the deceased husband, while
protecting the financial security of the widow, it nevertheless served the
continuation of the family line and the maintenance of patriarchal
structures.
Jesus' response states flatly that they
are wrong. They do not know either the Scriptures or the power of God,
because they do not recognize that "in the world" of the living
God patriarchal marriage does not exist either for men or for women. They
neither marry nor are given in marriage but are "like the angels in
heaven." The last expression is often understood to mean that their
"being as angels are" implies asexuality or freedom from sexual
differentiation and sexual intercourse. There is no doubt that this
interpretation has claimed a long tradition but it has no basis in the text.
The eschatological being of men and women "like the angels or heavenly
messengers" must be understood with reference to the first part of the
sentence. It is not that sexual differentiation and sexuality do not exist in
the "world" of God, but that "patriarchal marriage is no
more," because its function in maintaining and continuing patriarchal
economic and religious structures is no longer necessary. This is what it
means to live and be "like the angels" who live in "the
world" of God.
The transitional sentence, "as for
the dead being raised," (v. 26a) seems to be a secondary insertion by
the later community since it is not interested in the debate but in the
"proof" for the resurrection.
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The reference to the revelation of God to
Moses in the burning bush that follows does not address this question and
interest. It must be artificially twisted in order to refer to the
resurrection (e.g., the patriarchs of Israel are now alive—but that is not
said!). However, this reference replies directly to the question of the
continuation of the patriarchal family: in the burning bush God is revealed
to Moses as the God of the promise and of the blessing given to the
patriarchs and their posterity. The "house" of
Israel is not guaranteed in and through patriarchal
marriage structures, but through the promise and faithfulness of Israel's
powerful, life-giving God. While the God of the patriarchal systems and its
securities is the "God of the dead," the God of Israel is "the
God of the living." In God's world women and men no longer relate to
each other in terms of patriarchal dominance and dependence, but as persons
who live in the presence of the living God. This controversy, which reflects
the social world of Palestine and of the Jesus movement, ends therefore with
the flat statement that the Sadducees have "erred much" in assuming
that the structures of patriarchy are unquestionably a dimension of God's
world as well. So, too, all subsequent Christians have erred in maintaining
oppressive patriarchal structures.
2. Gerd Theissen has pointed to the
a-familial ethos of the Jesus movement in Palestine. However, by choosing
Luke 14:26 (Q) as the oldest text for this contention he turns the Jesus
movement into a movement of itinerant charismatic men who have left not only
house and children but also wives, while local communities of "sympathizers"
did not live such a radical ethos. Although he never clearly spells out the
assumption that the wandering charismatics were male, nevertheless he
unreflectively suggests that this was the case: "Probably many families
had the same feelings about their sons who had joined the Jesus movement as
did the family of Jesus. . . . the tradition says nothing about the way in
which the families who have been abandoned are to find a substitute for the
earning power which they have lost."
However, a more careful scrutiny of the
synoptic texts, which speak about leaving one's house and family for the
kingdom or Jesus' sake, clearly shows that it is not the Q traditions (but
rather Lukan redaction) which count the wife among those family members who
are to be left behind in following Jesus. The same saying occurs again in Luke
18:29b (a revision of Mark 10:29b). Here Luke shows the same redactional
tendency to include the "wife" among those family members left
behind, whereas Mark and Matthew mention only "house, brothers,
sisters, mothers, fathers,
children, lands." Thus Luke
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presents the only textual basis for
assuming that the Jesus movement was a charismatic movement of wandering men,
sons and husbands, who shirked family responsibilities in the discipleship of
Jesus. By not including the wife among those left behind, the Q and
pre-Markan traditions do not restrict entrance into the radical discipleship
of Jesus to men.
The text preceding this discipleship
saying in Q (Matt 10:34-36 and parallel Luke 12:51-53) also announces that
Jesus brings to the patriarchal household not peace but rather the
"sword," the symbol for bitter enmity between members of the same
household. The message and claim of Jesus "destroys" natural
family bonds, setting son against father and father against son, daughter
against mother and mother against daughter, daughter-in-law against
mother-in-law and mother-in-law against daughter-in-law (cf. Micah 7:6). This
saying stresses that children are set over against their parents and parents
against their children, thus emphasizing strongly that the problem occurs
among female members of the household. Yet it does not make the same
statement about wife and husband. The apocalyptic destruction and
dissolution of the family announced for the cataclysmic last days before the
end of the world in Micah 7:6 and Mark 13:12, characterize, according to the
Q traditions, the present time of discipleship. Without question the
discipleship of Jesus does not respect patriarchal family bonds, and the
Jesus movement in Palestine severely intrudes into the peace of the
patriarchal household. To claim that such a radical a-ramilial ethos is asked
only of the male wandering charismatics but not of the local sympathizers is
a serious misreading of the texts.
A similar critique of "natural"
family claims and bonds is expressed in the double corrective macarism
or beatitude in Luke 11:27— a text which Luke derived either from Q or his
special source (SL). A woman in the crowd cries out: "Happy [or blessed]
the womb that bore you, and the breasts you sucked." But (corrective) he
said, "Happy rather those who hear the word of God and keep it."
Faithful discipleship, not biological motherhood, is the eschatological
calling of women. That the saying includes Mary, the mother of Jesus, among
his faithful disciples, can only be derived from the Lukan redactional
context (cf. Luke 2:19, 51), not from the older tradition. The parallelizing
of the two macarisms and their connection with a Greek adversative particle98
indicates that the original saying opposes religious claims made on grounds
of motherhood but not on grounds of discipleship.
Such an interpretation is supported by
the pre-Markan tradition
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which contrasts the patriarchal family
with the community of equal discipleship. The pronouncement story in Mark
3:31-35 defines the circle of disciples around Jesus as his true family. The
saying of Jesus in v. 35, "Whoever does the will of God is my brother
and sister and mother," which could have been circulated originally
without the narrative context of vv. 31-34, is similar to Luke 11:28. Those
who live the gracious goodness of God are Jesus' true family, which includes
brothers, sisters, and mothers, but, significantly enough, no fathers. The
exclusion of fathers from the "true family" of Jesus cannot be
explained by biographical references or by reference to God as the true
father of Jesus, since Mark 10:30 also omits fathers. However "mothers
and sisters," that is, women, are clearly included among the followers
of Jesus. This is underlined by the tension between the narrative context and
the saying of Jesus. Whereas the narrative context stresses twice (Mark
3:31, 32) that "Jesus' mother and brothers were outside calling
him," the saying of Jesus refers to brothers, mother, and sisters.
Moreover the narrative context makes it
clear that those who "do the will of God" come together in
discipleship to form a new "household." Jesus is
"inside" the house, "at home" (cf. 3:19). He points to
those who "sat around him" and declares them to be his true family
(v. 34). The discipleship community abolishes the claims of the patriarchal
family and constitutes a new familial community, one that does not include
fathers in its circle.
The same understanding of the
discipleship of equals is expressed in Mark 10:29-30, a pre-Markan. Jesus
saying introduced by Peter's question to which Mark has added "with
persecutions." The traditional saying maintains that those who have
left their patriarchal "households" and cut themselves off from
their familial relationships in order to join Jesus and his movement will
receive everything back a "hundredfold" already, now, in this time.
The Jesus movement was the messianic community which brought together
impoverished and marginal people, as well as "houseowners" and
"farmers," and bound them together in a new kinship and family
based on radical discipleship.
3. This new "family" of equal
discipleship, however, has no room for "fathers." Whereas "fathers"
are mentioned among those left behind, they are not included in the new
kinship which the disciples acquire "already now in this time."
Insofar as the new "family" of Jesus has no room for
"fathers," it implicitly rejects their power and status and thus
claims that in the messianic community all patriarchal structures are
abolished. Rather than reproducing the patriarchal re-
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lationships of the "household"
in antiquity, the Jesus movement demands a radical break from it. The "house
churches" in Galilee that might have transmitted these sayings are not
divided into radical itinerant disciples and more bourgeois sympathizers, nor
do they espouse love patriarchalism.
The child/slave who occupies the lowest
place within patriarchal structures becomes the primary paradigm for true
discipleship. Such true discipleship is not measured on the father/master
position but on that of the child/slave. This can be seen in the paradoxical
Jesus saying: "Whoever does not receive the basileia of God like a
child (slave) shall not enter it" (Mark 10:15). This saying is not an
invitation to childlike innocence and naivete but a challenge to relinquish
all claims of power and domination over others.
Just as this saying in its original
setting reached beyond the circle of disciples to present a discipleship
challenge to all of Jesus' hearers, so the saying about the first and
greatest (among you) who is (or will be) your child or slave originally
challenged all those in Palestine who were prominent in their society to be
in "solidarity" with the slaves and powerless in Israel. This Jesus
saying does not speak of eschato-logical reversal (the last will be first or
the lowly will be exalted and vice versa), but about the "solidarity from
below" required by the basileia of God. It clearly presupposes a society
in which masters and slaves exist, and challenges those in positions of
dominance in a feudal society to become "equal" with those who are
powerless. Masters should relinquish domination over their slaves and
tenants, and "serve" them in the same total fashion as a slave had
to serve her/his master.
The importance of this saying for the
Jesus movement is indicated by its inclusion in the synoptic tradition in a
sevenfold combination, and in its transmission in very different forms and
situations. The ecclesial process of interpretation applied a saying
originally addressed to the socially well-to-do in Israel to its own
relationships within the discipleship of equals. Mark 10:42-45 and 9:33-37— adapted
by Matt 20:26-27 and Luke 22:24-27 to their own situations and theological
perspectives—contrasts the political structures of domination with those
required among the disciples. Structures of domination should not be
tolerated in the discipleship of equals, but those who "would be"
great or first among the disciples must be slaves and servants of all. True
leadership in the community must be rooted in solidarity with and in work for
those who are "slaves and servants" in the community. But where Mark
and Matthew acknowl-
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edge no "great" or
"first" members of the community at all, Luke does. His only
requirement is that their style of leadership orient itself according to the
example of Jesus.
A second series of these sayings
emphasizes that "the little child" should be the primary object of
the community's care and service (Mark 9:35-37; Matt 18:1-4; Luke 9:48),
because Jesus himself is present to the community in those children whom the
community has accepted in baptism ("in my name"). This form of the
tradition would seem to reflect a very concrete situation in which the community
took care of its baptized children. However, such child care must already
have caused problems, since the "great" and the "first"
in the community seem not to have sought after it very much. According to
Mark 9:35 (cf. Mark 10:13-16) the "twelve" male disciples
constitute the circle of the "great" who are specifically addressed
here. In this situation, where child care appears to have been a community
problem, the saying insists that the discipleship of equals must be inclusive
of children and serve their needs, if the community wants to have Jesus—and
God—in their midst.
A third form of the sayings against
"wanting to be" "great" and "first" in the
community is found in Matt 23:8-11 (SM). Matthew— or his tradition—has
combined the saying about the "greatest who shall be the servant of
all" (v. 11) on the one hand with the eschato-logical reversal saying
about those who exalt themselves being humbled and vice versa (v. 12). On
the other hand, he has combined it with an injunction against
"patriarchal" roles and titles within the community of disciples
(vv. 8-10). Although it is very difficult to situate these injunctions within
the pre-Matthean tradition because Luke does not have such prohibitions, it
is apparent, nevertheless, that the last prohibition, "Neither be called
spiritual masters" (v. 10), restates v. 8 in explicitly Christian terms,
insofar as the "absolute phrase 'the Christ' " is used. This
saying, therefore, seems to be a secondary redaction of v. 8.
In all likelihood the original form of
the saying in v. 8 read "disciples" rather than
"brothers," since the former is the usual antonym to teacher, while
the latter, an antonym to "father," would better fit the second
saying. Since it is a favored Matthean designation for the members of the
Christian community, Matthew might have placed it here in order to be able to
redact the second saying in terms of his own theology. The original
prohibition, then, juxtaposes the terms "not to be called rabbi,"
"one teacher," "all disciples," in the form of an
inclusion:
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But you are not to be called rabbi
for you have one teacher
and you are all disciples.
Either Matthew's tradition, his source,
or Matthew's redaction combined this saying with a second prohibition (v. 9)
which, in its present form, is not quite parallel to the first.
Call no one father among you on earth
for you have one heavenly father.
The parallelism of this saying contrasts
earth and heaven, with the prohibition formulated in the active sense.
However, the phrase "heavenly father" indicates the redactional
hand of Matthew, who also added "on earth." Thus the more original
form of the saying may have read:
Call no one father
for you have one father
(and you are all siblings).
This short injunction, "Call no one
father, for you have one father," thus maintains the same relationships
as the saying in Mark 10:29-30 did. The new kinship of the discipleship of
equals does not admit of "fathers," thereby rejecting the
patriarchal power and esteem invested in them.
In sum, regardless of what the original
form of the sayings in Matt 23:8-9 may have looked like, the content of the
sayings remains the same: the discipleship of equals rejects teachers because
it is constituted and taught by one, and only one, teacher. Similarly, the
kinship relationship in the discipleship of equals does not admit of
"any father" because it is sustained by the gracious goodness of
God whom the disciples and Jesus call "father" (Luke 11:2-4 [Q];
12:30; cf. Mark 11:25). The "father" God is invoked here, however,
not to justify patriarchal structures and relationships in the community of
disciples but precisely to reject all such claims, powers, and structures.
Since the social world evoked by these two sayings is that of Palestine and
since they correspond to the theological emphasis found in the Q traditions,
these sayings could have belonged to Matthew's source Q. The
self-understanding and praxis of Jesus and his movement in Palestine are
especially reflected in v. 9.
The address "father" used by
Jesus and his disciples has caused many Christian feminists great scandal
because the church has not
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obeyed the command of Jesus to "call
no one father," for you have "one father," and because it has
resulted in legitimizing ecclesial and societal patriarchy with the
"father" name of God, thereby using the name of God in vain. But
"the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain"
(Exod 20:7). The saying of Jesus uses the "father" name of God not
as a legitimization for existing patriarchal power structures in society or
church but as a critical subversion of all structures of domination. The
"father" God of Jesus makes possible "the sisterhood of
men" (in the phrase of Mary Daly) by denying any father, and all
patriarchy, its right to existence. Neither the "brothers" nor
"the sisters" in the Christian community can claim the "authority
of the father" because that would involve claiming authority and power
reserved for God alone.
However, we must also see that the
original logion did not merely address the Christian community and its
relationships. It also enjoined the disciples of Jesus from recognizing any
father authority in their society, because there is only one father. The
social-critical potential of this saying with respect to all patriarchal
structures has yet to be brought to bear upon societal-political change. The
monotheistic fatherhood of God, elaborated in the Jesus traditions as the
gracious goodness usually associated with a mother, must engender liberation
from all patriarchal structures and domination if it is to be rescued from
the male projection of patriarchy into heaven. Thus liberation from
patriarchal structures is not only explicitly articulated by Jesus but is in
fact at the heart of the proclamation of the basilcia of God.
I have sought in this chapter to enter
the "world" of Jesus and those who followed him. In doing so I have
asked what it was like for a woman in Palestine to hear and be involved with
Jesus and his movement. I have insisted on the importance of recognizing this
"world" of Jesus as the Jewish "world" of Palestine and
of seeing those who followed him as Jewish women. Even though Christianity
and Judaism only subsequently became two distinct religions, I have not
resorted to the term Judaeo-Christian tradition to describe the common
history of Jewish and "Christian" women. Rather, for the most part,
I have employed the term Israel in naming the people of Jesus and his Jewish
followers who became our Christian foresisters. I am well aware of the
problem raised by this characterization as well, but I have decided in favor
of it on the grounds that it was positively
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used by the rabbis and by early Christian
writers to announce the gracious goodness of God in electing and caring for a
historical oppressed people. I am well aware that this choice does not solve
the problem, but it does open it up for a feminist discussion. Thus a
feminist reconstruction of the world of first-century Jewish women,
especially one undertaken by a Christian, while remaining very tentative and
preliminary, nevertheless may serve to foster a feminist
historical-theological exploration.
In reconstructing the world of Jesus and
his movement, I have presupposed the methods and results of historical-critical
exegesis, for example, the two-source theory for the synoptics, form-critical
delineation of the most "original" stratum of the Jesus traditions,
etc. However, any reader conversant with these scholarly results will recognize
that my "reading" of these texts and traditions is often quite
different. The difference is methodological. Where form criticism and
tradition history stress the "word" component of a story or
tradition, often favoring it as more original than the narrative, I have
focused on the narrative text and the historical actors involved, because
women are found in the story of Jesus and his movement. In stressing the
narrative aspect I am not trying to eliminate the sayings and words of Jesus
and his disciples. Rather, my purpose lies in modifying the view so widely
held in form criticism that a miracle story or a controversy-dialogue
setting is just an illustration or exemplification of the relevatory
"word" or pronouncement of Jesus. If the revelatory word is a word
in which God's praxis with respect to Israel is disclosed, the
"word" is a story, and the story may not be reduced to an
"ideological" statement. This insight has revolutionized parable
interpretation in recent years and will do the same for the other Gospel narratives.
The story, in turn, also should not be reduced to "text" as an
ideologically fixed ontological structure, but rather be understood in the
context of the social-historical world that it evokes. Only when we place the
Jesus stories about women into the overall story of Jesus and his movement in
Palestine are we able to recognize their subversive character. In the
discipleship of equals the "role" of women is not peripheral or
trivial, but at the center, and thus of utmost importance to the praxis of
"solidarity from below."
The story of the anointing of Jesus by a
woman articulates this insight. In its final form it is told by a community
that already envisions a world-wide mission: wherever the gospel—the good
news of the basileia—is announced, in the whole wide world, the praxis of
this woman will be remembered. Like the prophets anointing the kings of
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Israel on the forehead, so the woman
anoints Jesus. She publicly names him in a prophetic sign-action. She has
spent much money to do so and is reprimanded sanctimoniously by the male
disciples of Jesus. Those disciples who have projected their messianic dreams
of greatness and dominance on Jesus use "the poor" as an argument
against her. But Jesus defends her: "For you always have the poor with
you, and whenever you decide to do so you can do good ['to them' is not found
in all manuscripts], but me you do not always have." The community that
tells this story knows that Jesus is no longer present in their midst. They
do not "have" Jesus anymore with them. However, the poor (not just
the impoverished Christians) are still very much present among them. Now is
the time to decide to do good. Thus in remembering that a nameless woman
prophet has anointed Jesus as the messianic inaugurator of the basileia, the
community also remembers that the God of Jesus is on the side of the poor
and that God's future, the basileia, belongs to the poor. The communal
remembering of the woman's story always evokes the remembrance of the
basileia promised to the impoverished and starving. Conversely, wherever the
good news of the basileia—the gospel—is preached in the whole wide world,
what the woman prophet has done will be remembered.
Luke no longer understands this powerful
story as the story of a woman prophet, and therefore replaces it with the
story of "the repentant sinner." At the same time, he no longer
understands the "solidarity from below" that inspired Jesus and his
first followers. The poor have become an object of almsgiving and charity,
while poverty is seen as an ascetic challenge and "practice for special
religious people." Although the eucharistic formula "in
remembrance of me" (1 Cor 11:24, 25) is verbally similar to the gospel
proclamation "in remembrance of her," the later church has not
ritualized this story of the woman prophet, using it instead to assert as
God's will that poverty cannot be eliminated. The "church of the
poor" and the "church of women" must be recovered at the same
time, if "solidarity from below" is to become a reality for the
whole community of Jesus again. As a feminist vision, the basileia vision of
Jesus calls all women without exception to wholeness and selfhood, as well as
to solidarity with those women who are the impoverished, the maimed, and outcasts
of our society and church. It knows of the deadly violence such a vision and
commitment will encounter. It enables us not to despair or to relinquish the
struggle in the face of such violence. It empowers us to walk upright, freed
from the double oppression of societal and
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religious sexism and prejudice. The woman-identified man,
Jesus, called forth a discipleship of equals that still needs to be
discovered and realised by women and men today.
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"The Church in Her House"
Missionaries
The House Church
Theological Self-Understanding of the Missionary
Movement
Conclusion
The beginnings of the early Christian missionary
movement are shrouded in historical darkness. As was the case with
the Jesus movement in Palestine, sources for the early Christian missionary
movement in the Greco-Roman world are lacking for the crucial time
between 30 and 50 c.e., since the Pauline letters were written in
the 50s and 60s, while Acts belongs to the last decade of the first
century. The historical picture that emerges when information from
the Pauline letters and from Acts is pieced together is very sketchy
and far from comprehensive.
All too often we are only left with
traces: names of people without specific details, isolated events, sporadic
accounts or obscure legends—as from the Talmudic literature, except where suddenly
larger fragments emerge, resting on individual lucky discoveries. We
constantly come up against gaps and white patches on the map; our sources are
uncertain and we have to content ourselves with more or less hypothetical
reconstructions. All this is true of ancient history in general and even more
of the history of early Christianity in particular, above all during its
first 150 years.1
Since, in all probability, the author of
Acts does not know the genuine Pauline letters, the Acts account must be
supplemented and corrected by the information about early Christian
developments found in the Pauline literature. Paul's letters, however, are
occasional pastoral writings. They are not primarily interested in conveying
information on the beginnings of early Christian mission. Their references to
per-
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sons, places, or disputes are incidental,
not comprehensive. Acts, in turn, intends to present not a history of the
early Christian movement and the Christian communities, but a recounting of
the "deeds" of the leading apostles Peter and Paul. The author
refers to other persons, events, or communities of the missionary movement
only insofar as they shed light on or are connected with the dominant heroes
of the book. Lacunae, contradictions, and loose ends in the narratives allow
us to perceive the tension between Luke's traditional materials and his own
redactional theological interests. Even Hengel, who pleads for the historical
trustworthiness of Acts, must concede:
He certainly knew a good deal more than
he put down; when he is silent about something, there are usually special
reasons for it. Only by this strict limitation of his material can he
"put his heroes in the right perspective."3
When we ask which historical information
about the involvement of women in the very beginnings of the Christian
missionary movement has survived the "Lukan silence," the answer
seems at first glance completely negative. No women are mentioned among the
original apostles, the Jerusalem Hellenists, or in the. Antiochene
church. Moreover, the occasional Pauline references to women's names and leadership
titles appear insignificant when read within the redactional framework of
early Christian beginnings provided by Acts. Nowhere in his work does Luke
picture women as missionaries and preachers. Rather he stresses that women,
as wealthy proselytes or godfearers, support or oppose Paul's missionary
work. The center stage of Acts is occupied by Paul, the great apostle and
missionary to the gentiles. Women appear on this stage only as auxiliary
supporters or influential opponents of Paul's mission.
However, when we read the
occasional Pauline references to women in their own setting, we
recognize that the Pauline and the post-Pauline literature know of women not
merely as rich patronesses of the Christian missionary movement but as
prominent leaders and missionaries who—in their own right—toiled for the
gospel. These women were engaged in missionary and church leadership activity
both before Paul and independently of Paul. Without question they were equal
and sometimes even superior to Paul in their work for the gospel. As Jewish
Christian missionaries, these women might have belonged to the Christian
communities in Galilee, Jerusalem, or Antioch which stand at the very
beginnings of the Christian missionary movement. As I have shown, the Gospel traditions
still
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reflect the fact that women were, on the
one hand, instrumental in continuing the movement initiated by Jesus after
his execution and resurrection and, on the other hand, involved in expanding
this movement to gentiles in the adjacent regions. The tensions in Luke's
account of the first Christian community in Jerusalem and the expulsion of
the Hellenists indicate that women were also active in the Christian
community of Jerusalem.
This chapter seeks to reconstruct the
beginnings and the institutional, organizational forms of the early
Christian missionary movement; to elaborate its overall theological
perspective; and finally to situate its pre-Pauline baptismal self-expression
(Gal 3:28) within the structural and theological framework of the movement.
It appears that very soon after the
execution and resurrection of Jesus the community of so-called Hellenists
gathered alongside the Aramaic-speaking community of Jerusalem. These
Hellenists were probably Greco-Palestinians who, whether as families or as
individuals, had resettled in Jerusalem. Archaelogical finds have shown that
Greek-speaking synagogues existed in Jerusalem and that many of their members
were women. Josephus tells us about Queen Helena of Adiabene who returned to
Jerusalem to live out her life in the holy city. Most of these
Greco-Palestinians were probably very observant Jews since they or their
families had returned to Jerusalem. However, some of them might have been
disappointed by the actual everyday life of Jerusalem and the Temple because
it did not correspond to their expectations.5
Although the account of the Hellenists
(Acts 6:1-8:3) is strongly overlaid by the redactional interests of Luke, it
is still possible to reclaim some historical information from the Lukan
redactional tendencies, as the following aporias in Luke's account6 show.
Although Acts claims that the believers
were "one heart and one soul" in the Jerusalem church, a conflict
between the so-called Hebrews and Hellenists arises. In Luke's terms this
conflict is resolved by a clear-cut division between the work of the apostles
(the diakonia of the word) and that of the seven Hellenists (the diakonia of
the tables). However, the subsequent narrative pictures the seven as powerful
preachers and missionaries who were expelled from Jerusalem after the death
of Stephen, while the church which gathered in Jerusalem around the apostles
and James, the brother of the Lord, did not suffer expulsion. Moreover, Stephen
was lynched because of his
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critique of the Temple, while James and
the apostles are characterized by Luke as faithful observants of the Torah
and the Temple rituals. Luke tries to gloss over these differences among the
leadership in the Jerusalem church (or churches), but the facts were probably
available not only to him but also to his readers, and he was compelled to
incorporate some of the available historical information into his own
account, although this information seems to have undermined his theological
interest in picturing the mother community of Jerusalem as of one heart and
one soul, sharing everything.
"Those who were scattered went about
preaching the word" (8:4) to Samaria, Caesarea Damascus, and "as
far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch" (11:19). According to Luke, it
was Peter who first admitted "gentiles" because he had received
God's directive in a vision to do so. However, the remark of Acts, that some
people from Cyprus and Cyrene preached "the Lord Jesus" (ll:20f) to
the "Greeks" in Antioch first and that "a large company was
added to the Lord" (11:24) indicates that a larger group of missionaries
stands at the beginning of the gentile mission. Among them was Barnabas, a native
of Cyprus who, like many Jews of the Diaspora, had moved to Jerusalem.
According to Acts he was an emissary of the church in Jerusalem who
approved the gentile mission—though this
"approval" may have been emphasized mainly to support Luke's
centralist image of early Christian beginnings. He appears to be the leader
of the Antiochene church, who not only brought Paul
to Antioch (ll:25f) but also seems to have introduced him to Peter (Gal
1:18; cf. Acts 9:27). Barnabas, then, was the teacher of Paul, an apostle and
missionary to the gentiles before and later with Paul (cf. 14:4, 14), and a
prophet (13:1; cf. Acts 11:24).
Whether Barnabas belonged to the
Hellenists or not, however, is unclear, since according to Acts, he was not
expelled from Jerusalem. Again, this information might reflect Lukan
redactional interest in making the Jerusalem church central to early
Christian missionary beginnings. The description of Barnabas as a Levite born
in Cyprus (4:36), as well as his initiative in the gentile mission and his
leadership of the Antiochene church, speaks for his being one of the
"Hellenists." On the other hand, he could also have represented a
direction in the Jerusalem church distinct from either the Hellenists or
James and the circumcision party. These theological circumstances would
explain why it was so difficult for Paul, on the one hand, to distinguish
his own theological emphasis from that of other Christian missionaries
(Hellenists?) in Corinth and, on the other hand, to defend his
"law"-free mission and apostleship to the gentiles in Galatia over
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and against the circumcision party of
James. Paul's situation was further aggravated when both Peter and Barnabas
retrenched on their earlier practice of table sharing with the gentile
Christians (Gal 2:11—21). After this conflict with Peter and Barnabas, Paul
seems to have lost all connection with and influence on the church in
Antioch. It is Barnabas, therefore, who seems to have forged the links not
only between the two major communities of Jerusalem and Antioch but also
between Antioch and the so-called Pauline missionary field. Thus Barnabas,
and not his disciple Paul, was the most prominent and influential leader in
the beginnings of the Christian missionary movement, with its center in
Antioch, a cosmopolitan urban center of the Greco-Roman world and the third
largest city in the Roman Empire after Rome and Alexandria. Yet we know very
little about either the teaching of Barnabas or the beginnings of the
Christian community in Antioch, Alexandria, or Rome, since the Pauline
mission was centered in Greece and Asia Minor. We know from Paul's letter to
the Romans that Paul had not founded the community there. If the
Jewish-Christian pseudo-Clementine writings contain some historical
reminiscences, then it was Barnabas who brought the gospel to Rome. He
is characterized as belonging "to the circle of disciples" of Jesus,
an expression that, interestingly enough, emerges for the first time in Acts
in connection with the Hellenists (cf. Acts 6:1, 2, 7).
Although Barnabas might not have visited
Rome personally, it is more probable that members of the Antiochene church
first evangelized in the capital. The peculiar role assigned to Antioch in
the redac-tional plan of Acts, however, as well as the silence about Barnabas
and the Antiochene church in other early Christian writings, indicates how
difficult the reconstruction of the early Christian movement is, on the
whole, if one of its most influential centers remains so elusive to
historical inquiry. Such a reconstruction therefore must proceed like the
restoration of an old painting which has been painted over again and again.
Although no women are mentioned among the
seven Hellenists appointed to devote themselves to the diakonia at table,
Luke mentions the daughters of Philip as well-known prophets in early Christianity.
The prominent prophet leader of Thyatira mentioned in Revelation 2 also
appears to be associated with the followers of Nico-laus, who was one of the
seven. Women are also involved in the original conflict which, according to
Acts, led to the separation of the ministry into that of the apostles and
that of the seven.
Acts' description of the incident and its
resolution is clearly colored by the Lukan theological-historical interest in
covering up a serious
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conflict that arose in the very
beginnings of the Christian movement. This conflict resulted in the expulsion
from Jerusalem of the Hellenists, who then initiated the Christian
missionary movement to the gentiles. Although Luke seeks to subordinate the
Hellenists to the apostles in Jerusalem and to reserve the ministry of the
word to the latter, the Hellenists come to the fore as powerful missionary
preachers and founders of communities.
The division of the one diakonia into
two, namely, the ministry at table and the ministry of the word, probably
reflects a later practice of the Christian missionary movement, while the
subordination of one to the other and the ascription of these ministries to
certain groups clearly express Luke's own situation. This situation is
remarkably similar to that in the Pastorals, which also distinguish between
ministers who "labor in preaching and teaching" (1 Tim 5:17) and
those who "serve" (1 Tim 3:8ff). Although the term diakonos does
not occur in Acts, it is likely that the readers of Acts saw in Acts 6 the
institution of the diaconate (cf. also Acts 19:22), since they were familiar
with the office of the deacon. Luke's interest in subordinating one ministry
to the other also comes to the fore in the story of Martha and Mary in Luke
10:38-42, where Martha is characterized as "serving at table",
while Mary like a rabbinic disciple, listens to the word of Jesus.
Exegetes usually explain the conflict in
Acts 6 with reference to the plight of widows and orphans in the ancient
world. The Hebrews, so it is argued, had neglected the improverished widows
of the Hellenists during the daily distribution of goods or food to the
needy of the community. No doubt the plight of poor widows, especially those
with small children, was very great, and the possibility of starving or of
becoming a slave was very real. Yet nothing is said in Acts 6 to indicate
that the widows of the Hellenists were poor.
"Serving at table" (Acts 6:2;
cf. Acts 16:34, also Luke 10:40; 12:37; 17:8) does not mean administration of
funds but table service at a meal. According to 1 Cor 10:21 the "table
of the Lord" was the eucha-ristic table. Table ministry, therefore, was most
likely the eucharistic ministry, which included preparation of a meal,
purchase and distribution of food, actual serving during the meal, and
probably cleaning up afterwards. Such eucharistic table sharing, according to
the Lukan summary statement in 2:46, took place "day by day":
"And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in
their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts." Moreover,
the context of this statement in 2:45 as well as Acts 4:32-37, which speaks
of the distribution of goods to the needy in the community, does not use the
expression "serving at table," although, in the
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beginning chapters of Acts, the apostles
are in charge of the community's economic welfare and financial administration.
It is possible, therefore, that the
conflict between the Hellenists and the Hebrews involved the role and
participation of women at the eucharistic meal. The expression that they were
"overlooked" or "passed over" in the daily diakonia or
ministry could indicate either that they were not assigned their turn in the
table service or that they were not properly served. Whatever the problem
was, it seems to have been of a nature similar to the problem of table
sharing among Jewish and gentile Christians in Antioch. Since Greco-Roman
women were used to participating in symposia and festive dinners, the
"Hellenistic" women and men in Jerusalem or Antioch probably took
for granted the participation of women in the "breaking of bread"
in the house church, while the "Hebrews" might have had problems
with such a practice.
That the Hellenists—but not the group
around James—gathered in the house of a woman in Jerusalem is clear from Acts
12:12-17. Peter tells those who were gathered in the house of Mary, that they
should tell "James and the brethren" about his miraculous release
from prison. Thus they were not present at the meeting. Moreover, Mary is
identified as the mother of John Mark, who, according to Col 4:10, was the
cousin of Barnabas. The Hellenistic nature of this house church might also be
indicated by the Greek names Rhoda and Markos. Mary, thus, was a kinswoman of
Barnabas and in charge of the (or a) house church of Hellenists in Jerusalem.
The mere fact that her name is mentioned, since it would have been easy to
characterize the house as that of John Mark, testifies to her importance in
the Jerusalem community of
Hellenists. Like Barnabas she
would have been independently wealthy, since the house seems to have been
large and to have had servants. Hengel has pointed out that, relatively
speaking, women's names are mentioned quite often in Greek or bilingual tomb
inscriptions found in Jerusalem. Helena, the queen of
Adiabene, was the paradigm of such
well-placed women. Like Helena, many of these women probably were proselytes
who had come to the holy city for religious reasons. Such women would have
been attracted especially by the preaching of the Hellenists that accorded
them full membership in the community. Mary might have been one of them. One
can only.speculate whether she was among the Greco-Palestinian
"widows" who were passed over by the Hebrews in the daily
eucharistic ministry, even though she had devoted herself "to the
diakonia of the saints" (e.g., 1 Cor
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16:15f which indicates what honor and
respect would have been due her if she had been a man).
Acts probably reflects historical
experience in stressing that women were involved in the Christian missionary
movement at every stage of its expansion. Tabitha of Jaffa represents the
first stage of expansion, while Lydia is the first convert of Europe (Acts
16:14). Godfearing women of high standing at Antioch in Pisidia drove Paul
and Barnabas out of their district (13:50ff), while many prominent Greek
women, who were attracted to Judaism in Thessalonica (17:4), and the Greek
women of Beroea, listened to the Christian preachers and some were converted.
A woman convert, Damaris, is mentioned in Athens (17:34), and Prisca
evangelized in Corinth (18:2ff). The son of Paul's sister informs the tribune
of Jerusalem about a plot to ambush Paul (23:16). Drusilla, the wife of the
governor Festus, and Bernice, the wife of King Agrippa, are present at Paul's
defense and privately agree with each other that "this man has done
nothing to deserve death or imprisonment" (26:31). Although these last
remarks clearly evidence Lukan coloration, the whole narrative underlines the
fact that many prominent and well-placed Greco-Roman women were attracted to
the Christian movement. That more prominent women than men became Christians
is especially reflected in the second- and third-century attacks against
Christians, which speak of the problem of these women often being forced to
marry pagans or to live with Christian slaves in a kind of "common-law
marriage." Since this was prohibited in Roman civil law, it was
acknowledged by the church only by Callistus, who was himself a slave before
becoming bishop of Rome at the beginning of the third century.
Acts is one-sided, however, in its
presentation of the Christian missionary movement and of women's involvement
in it. By stressing their status as prominent and wealthy, the author
neglects their contribution as missionaries and leaders of churches in their
own right. We are able to correct this one-sided picture to the degree that
additional information derived from the Pauline literature allows us to
question Acts' historical accuracy. Yet women's actual contribution to the
early Christian missionary movement largely remains lost because of the
scarcity and androcentric character of our sources. It must be rescued
through historical imagination as well as in and through a reconstruction of
this movement which fills out and contex-tualizes the fragmentary information
still available to us. The historical texts and information on women's
involvement in the beginnings of the Christian missionary movement,
therefore, must not be taken
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as descriptive of the actual situation.
Once again, they are the tip of ah iceberg in which the most prominent women
of the early Christian missionary movement surface, not as exceptions to the
rule but as representatives of early Christian women who have survived androcentric
redactions and historical silence. Their impact and importance must not be
seen as exceptional, but must be understood within the structures of the
early Christian missionary movement that allowed for the full participation
and leadership of women.
This chapter, therefore, proceeds by
reconstructing a model of that movement whose constitutive institutional
elements were the missionary agents, on the one hand, and the house church
and local associations on the other. The forms of religious propaganda and
the reciprocal patronage system of Greco-Roman society, not the patriarchal
structures of the Greco-Roman household, were constitutive organizational
elements of this movement. Such a reconstruction of the Christian missionary movement
in terms of organizational structures provides the social framework that
makes women's leadership not only plausible but also intelligible. Traveling
missionaries arid house churches were central to the early Christian mission
which depended on special mobility and patronage, and women were leaders in
both areas.
The remarkable expansion of oriental
mystery religions in the western Mediterranean has not lacked scholarly
attention. Many preceded the Christian missionaries to Greece and Rome,
thereby creating the climate in which a new Eastern cult such as Christianity
could be propagated. The wandering preachers of that day manifest a whole
range of missionary propagandists, from philosophers, prophets, itinerant
preachers, mendicants, and sorcerers to the traveling merchants, state
officials, immigrants, slaves, and soldiers. Common to all were mobility and
dedication to their philosophy or religion. Jewish proselytism of the first
century must be seen in this context of Eastern cults. In Rome and throughout
the Mediterranean, large numbers—many of whom were women—were attracted to
the monotheism and high moral standards of Judaism. Among Godfearers and
proselytes many women, often of high social status, are mentioned.
Like Judaism the Christian gospel was
spread by traveling missionaries, trade and business people, who depended on
the hospitality and support provided by house churches. Thus, the charismatic
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missionaries were not necessarily
itinerant beggars. Barnabas seems to have been wealthy enough to support the
community of Jerusalem by selling land. Paul was one of the distinguished
circle of foreign Jews, who belonged to the privileged Hellenistic families
in Tarsus ahd who had received Roman citizenship in turn for services rendered.
E. A. Judge's conclusion, therefore, seems appropriate: "Christianity in
its canonical form, then, is not so much the work of Galileans', as of a very
cultivated section of internationalized Jewry; they were at any rate its
principal sponsors." The exceptional contribution of prominent women of
wealth and social status to the Jewish as well as Christian missionary
movements is more and more acknowledged in scholarship.
The practice of missionary partners in
the Jesus movement seems to have been followed by the Christian missionary
movement as well. This allowed for the equality of women and men in
missionary work. It is likely that these missionary partners were at first
couples. By the time of Paul, however, sexual ascesis and celibacy were being
urged as preferred preconditions for missionary work. Whether or not some
form of "spiritual marriage," in which two ascetics lived together
as a couple, has its roots in this missionary practice of partnership is
unclear, but possible. Pauline references to women missionaries, however, do
not reflect on their sexual status and gender roles, or classify them as
widows or virgins.
The Pauline letters mention women as
Paul's coworkers, but these women were not the "helpers" of Paul or
his "assistants." Only five of Paul's coworkers, all of whom are
male (Erastus, Mark, Timothy, Titus, and Tychicus), "stand in explicit
subordination to Paul serving him or being subject to his instructions."
The genuine Pauline letters apply missionary titles and such
characterizations as co-worker (Prisca), brother/sister (Apphia), diakonos
(Phoebe), and apostle (Ju-nia) to women also. They usually equate co-workers
and "those who toil." In 1 Cor 16:16ff Paul admonishes the
Corinthians to be "subject to every co-worker and laborer" and to
give recognition to such persons. 1 Thes 5:12 exhorts the Thessalonians to
"respect those who labor among you, and are over you in the Lord, and
admonish you." It is significant, therefore, that Paul uses the same
Greek verb, kopian, "to labor" or "to toil," not only to
characterize his own evangelizing and teaching but also that of women. In Rom
16:6, 12, he commends Mary, Tryphaena, Tryphosa, and Persis for having
"labored hard" in the Lord.
Paul also affirms that women worked with
him on an equal basis. Phil 4:2-3 explicitly states that Euodia and Syntyche
have "con-
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tended" side by side with him. As in
an athletic race these women have competed alongside Paul, Clement, and the
rest of Paul's co-missionaries in the {cause of the gospel. Paul considers
the }authority
of both women in the community at Philippi so great that he fears that their
dissension could do serious damage to the Christian mission. The Philippians
had entered with Paul into an equal partnership, a partnership endangered by
the disagreement of these two outstanding women missionaries. J. P. Sampley
has pointed out that, according to Roman legal traditions, consensual legal
partnership "is operative as long as the partners are in eodem sensu, as
long as they are 'of the same mind' about the centrality of the purpose
around which the partnership was formed in the first place." When,
therefore, Paul admonishes the two women "to be of the same mind"
he re^ minds them of their original shared partnership and commitment to the
same gospel. At stake here, then, are not personal disagreements or quarrels
but the shared ground and the purpose of their equal partnership in the
"race" for the gospel.
Although Phoebe (Rom 16:lff) is the only
person in the Pauline literature to receive an official letter of
recommendation and although she is given three substantive titles—sister,
diakonos, and prostatis— her significance for the early Christian mission is
far from acknowledged. Exegetes tend to denigrate these titles, or to
interpret them differently, because they are given to a woman. Whenever Paul
uses the title diakonos to refer to himself or another male leader, exegetes
translate it "minister," "missionary," or
"servant." In the case of Phoebe they usually translate it
"deaconess." After characterizing Phoebe as an "obviously
well-to-do and philanthropic lady," Lietzman goes on to say: "Even
at that time there had long been women deacons in the Christian church whom,
when their sex made them especially suitable, came forward and gave
significant help in caring for the poor and sick, and at the baptism of
women." Similarly Michel notes: "It is possible that Phoebe
'served' women, the sick, or friends and perhaps gave also assistance at
baptism of women." Unconsciously these exegetes are projecting back into
the first century the duties of deaconesses in later centuries. However,
Phoebe's "office" in the church of Cenchreae is not limited by prescribed
gender roles. She is not a deaconess of the women, but a minister of the
whole church.
The use of diakonos in Rom 16:1 is not
identical to its use in Phil 1:1, where no named person receives this title,
since saints, overseers, and ministers (diakonoi) are ascriptions of the
whole community. The term is not used here in a formal, titular, and official
way. Paul uses
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the same title as a characterization of
himself, Apollos, and his opponents in 2 Corinthians but appears to modify
it with synergos ("co-worker"). In 1 Cor 3:5, 9 he uses the
expression to emphasize that it is God who has called Apollos and himself and
given them a common ministry. In 2 Cor 6:1 he refers to the whole community
"as working together with God," while he commends himself as a
diakonos who suffered much in his missionary work. In 1 Thessalonians, Paul
sends Timothy "our brother" and "co-worker of God" in the
gospel of Christ (3:2). According to 1 Cor 16:15 the co-workers and laborers
are those who have "devoted themselves to the diakonia of the
saints." The diakonos, like the synergos, therefore, is a missionary
entrusted with preaching and tending churches. Since the term is also used in
extrabiblical sources to refer to preaching and teaching, it seems clear that
the diakonoi of the Pauline mission served in the recognized and
"official" capacity of missionary preachers and teachers. It can be
concluded, therefore, that Phoebe is recommended as an official teacher and
missionary in the church of Cenchreae.
This conclusion is justified by the
affinity of her standing to that of the so-called superapostles mentioned in
2 Corinthians. Friedrich has pointed out that the word group diakonos,
diakonia, diakonein is mostly found in 2 Corinthians and that the rivals of
Paul might have been missionaries similar to the Hellenists of Acts 6-8. They
were charismatic missionaries and impressive preachers, visionary prophets
and true apostles, filled with Spirit and Sophia. Paul does not attack their
preaching and theology but is concerned to prove himself the true pneumatic
apostle of Christ. They seem to have attacked him for his lack of support by
the community, for his weak personal appearance, and for his lack of letters
of recommendation.
The opponents in II Corinthians are not
isolated teachers but, as their letters of recommendation (3:1) and their
self-designation as "apostles," "ministers" and
"workers" show, they are part of a larger group of missioners.
The characterization of Phoebe is similar
to that of these charismatic preachers and effective missionaries. However,
she stands in a friendly relationship to Paul and his missionary circle,
since she receives from him a letter of recommendation and, like Timothy who
is called "brother," receives the title "our sister."
Unlike the diakonoi who worked as
missionaries in Corinth, Phoebe is not characterized as an
"apostle." However, this can probably be traced to Paul's desire to
avoid a misunderstanding that she was an
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apostle of the church at Cenchreae, since
the "apostles of the churches" were commissioned only for a
definite and limited function. Another woman in Rom 16:7, however, does
receive this title. Like Prisca and Aquila, Andronicus and Junia were
missionary partners—Jewish Christians, perhaps from Tarsus. Since they had
become Christians before Paul, they seem to have worked together with Paul
in Antioch and even shared imprisonment with him. It can be conjectured that
they belonged to the circle of apostles in Jerusalem who, together with
James, received a vision of the resurrected Lord (see 1 Cor 15:7). Paul even
stresses that they were outstanding members of the circle of the apostles.
Since they were in Rome, they—like Paul
and the community in Antioch—seem to have been engaged in the gentile
mission. Like Barnabas and Paul (Acts 14:4, 14), they are itinerant
missionaries engaged in the work of the gospel. In the discussion with his
rivals in Corinth and Galatia, Paul stresses that he is a true apostle
because he has received a resurrection appearance, has a call to missionary
work,. and has proven himself an outstanding missionary. For Paul, however,
the mark of true apostleship does not consist in mighty speech and pneumatic
exhibitions but in the conscious acceptance and endurance of the labors and
sufferings connected with missionary work. (1 Cor 4:8-13; 2 Cor 11-12).
Andronicus and Junia fulfill all these criteria of true apostleship. They
were apostles even before Paul and had suffered prison in pursuit of their
missionary activity.
However, in one signal aspect they are
different from Paul, who worked mostly in tandem with male co-workers like
Barnabas, Silvanus, or Timothy. As noted above, partnership or
couple-mission, not individual missionary activity, seems to have been the
rule in the Christian movement just as in the Jesus movement. In 1 Cor 9:5
Paul maintains that he, like the other apostles, had the right to support and
the right to be accompanied by a female co-missionary. The other apostles,
the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas were accompanied on their missionary
journeys by "sisters" as "wives" (lit., "as
women"). Since the term brother can also characterize a member of a
particular group of missionary co-workers (cf. Phil 4:21ff)41, it can be
surmised that "sisters" refers to the women as missionary co-workers.
The difficult double accusative object ("sister,"
"woman") is best explained in this way.
Thus the missionary couples Prisca and
Aquila and Andronicus and Junia were not exceptions. Such pairs are probably
also mentioned in Rom 16:15, as we have already seen. When Paul stresses
celibacy as the best state for missionary work (1 Cor 7:24ff), he is
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expressing his own opinion, an opinion
that does not square with the practice of the missionary movement. However,
it must be noted that neither Prisca nor Junia are defined as
"wives." Their traditional status and role as wives does not come
to the fore, but rather their commitment to partnership in the work of the
gospel. Moreover, we have no indication whatever that the work of these women
missionaries laboring in tandem with their partners was restricted solely to
women, as patristic exegetes suggest.
The Acts of Paul and Thecla is a
second-century writing devoted entirely to the stppy of a woman missionary.
In many regions this book was regarded as canonical in the first three
centuries. It mentions a great number of women, besides the apostle Thecla.
Thecla is converted by Paul. She takes a vow of continence and is persecuted
for this by her fiance and her family. Condemned to death, she is saved by a
miracle and goes with Paul to Antioch. A Syrian falls in love with Thecla, is
rejected, and takes revenge. When Thecla is condemned to fight with wild
beasts, she baptizes herself in a pit full of water, whereupon, since the
beasts do not harm her, she is set free. Her protectress, Tryphena, together
with a part of her household, is converted to Christianity. Thecla proclaims
the word of God in the house of Tryphena, then follows Paul to Myra. After
only a short while with him, she receives the commission "to teach the
word of God" and goes to Iconium and from there to Seleucia, where she
enlightens many with the gospel.
Since Paul does not stand in the
foreground of the narrative, the author of the Acts of Paul and Thecla
appears to have incorporated independent traditions about Thecla. The image
of the woman missionary depicted here is striking. Thecla is commissioned by
Paul to "go and teach the word of God." Women in Carthage at the
beginning of the third century still appealed to the apostle Thecla for women's
authority to teach and to baptize.
In other ways the picture of Thecla
reflects usual feminine stereotypes. She falls in love with Paul, follows
him, and is dependent on him. But her rejection of marriage brings her into
conflict with the patriarchal values of her society. Motifs of the
Hellenistic novel or romance are here taken over for missionary purposes. We
find the motif of "love at first sight," the separation motif, the
theme of the "devoted couple," and faithfulness despite great
pressures. Of course, in the Christian work the apostle and the woman are not
sexual partners but live in absolute continence. Obviously these legends and
stories could present women as preachers and missionaries only in romantic
disguise. Women renounce traditional family ties,
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not for the sake of mission but for a
spiritual love relationship with the apostle. In the genre of romantic love,
the woman is infatuated, follows the apostle, and remains faithful to him.
However, despite the romantic style of
the Hellenistic novel, which is also found in Joseph and Aseneth, the image
of Thecla retains reminiscences of the power and authority of women
missionaries at the beginning of the Christian movement. As W. Ramsay has
pointed out: "Thecla became the type of the female Christian teacher,
preacher and baptizer, and her story was quoted as early as the second
century as a justification of the right of women to teach and to baptize."
In time, however, "the objectionable features of the tale could be
explained away," and those more in accordance with the prevailing
women's image could be emphasized, until, finally, the objectionable features
were totally eliminated, or—for those too well established in the
tradition—reduced to a minimum. Thus we hear the short command that Thecla
should preach the word of God, but none of her speeches is cited while
several of her prayers are quoted. Similarly, we see her baptizing herself,
but "in the extant MSS not a single trace remains of Thecla's
administering the rite of baptism to others."
Nevertheless, despite ecclesiastical
redactions and romantic, erotic novelistic overlays, the Acts of Paul and
Thecla still views women as followers of Paul and as celebrating an agape.
Thecla's story as a follower of Paul takes shape on the model of the
apostle's own, even in the extant manuscripts.
Thecla is the disciple growing up to take
the place of the Master. ... In addition to many specific acts in her life
which parallel or exceed Paul's exploits, Thecla is finally acclaimed as
Paul's counterpart by Paul himself. Paul, on the contrary, assumes in the story
an increasingly less important and less heroic role; in the end he exists
only to be Thecla's inspiration and the apostolic validator of her mission.
Thecla is not pictured as an isolated
heroine, but is surrounded by a number of supportive women. The rejection by
her own mother and the abandonment of her family are counterbalanced by the
acquisition of "a new mother" in Queen Tryphaena and a new home in
her "household." The "new family" promised in the Gospels
to those who have left everything in the discipleship of Jesus, is here
identified as the supportive community of women. Not only the women of the
city but also two fierce lionesses contribute to Thecla's deliverance and
support her in her travails. When she is finally freed, "all
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the women cried out with a loud voice,
and as with one voice gave praise to God, saying, 'One is God who has
delivered Thecla' so that all the city was shaken by the sound" (3:38).
Although the Acts of Paul and Thecla might
have had their original setting in a community of women, the redactional
tendencies and overlays suggest that their present form is the work of male
ecclesiastical writers, who could tolerate women as ascetics persevering in
contemplation and prayer but not as itinerant missionaries preaching the
gospel. This is apparent, for example, from the way the author of the Acts
treats Priscilla, the great woman missionary of early Christianity. He
mejrtions that Paul at Ephesus stayed in the house "of Aquila and
Priscilla." The second time their house is mentioned, it is referred to
only as the "house of Aquila." Paul addresses only "the
brethren and men"; Priscilla is here reduced to the lady of the house of
Aquila and therefore soon forgotten. It is not very likely that a woman
author would have developed so little interest in the great missionary of
Paul's time.
While Paul eloquently preaches about the
building up of the community, he himself seems to have moved from missionary
center to missionary center. By contrast, Prisca and Aquila founded and supported
a "church in their house" wherever they moved. In their missionary
endeavor the diakonia of the word and table was not yet divided. The house
church was the beginning of the church in a certain city or district.-"*
It provided space for the preaching of the word, for worship, as well as for
social and eucharistic table sharing. The existence of house churches
presupposes that some rather well-to-do citizens—who could provide space and
economic resources for the community—joined the Christian movement.
It is not clear whether whole households
converted to the new religion when the master or mistress of the house became
a member of the church. Since the Greco-Roman household included not only the
members of the immediate family, slaves, and unmarried female relatives, but
also freed persons, laborers, tenants, business associates, and clients,
this is not very likely. But a study of the house church not only sheds light
on the social status of the leading members of the household but also
explains why the members of such a community came from different groups and
ranks of society associated with the household. As the household of faith
(Gal 6:10) the
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community had to find new ways of living
together, since the customary rules of behavior no longer applied.
The house church, b{y virtue of its
location, provided equal }opportunities for women, because traditionally the house was
considered women's proper sphere, and women were not excluded from activities
in it. This is recognized by Stephen B. Clark, even though he argues in the
opposite direction:
The men assume a
more prominent place in the public life of the early Christian community than
the women. This is understandable in terms of what we have observed about
family life and the overall structure of the Christian community. The women
had more responsibility within the household. This does not mean that women
had no responsibility in the community, nor that men had no responsibility in
the household. Men, however, had greater responsibility in community life
outside of the household than did the women.
Clark adopts the division between public
and private sphere, community and household, which was as typical for
Greco-Roman society as it is for our own. However, in doing so he overlooks
the fact that the public sphere of the Christian community was in the house
and not outside of the household. The community was "in her house."
Therefore, it seems that the domina of the house, where the ecclesia gathered,
had primary responsibility for the community and its gathering in the house
church.
Moreover, wealthy women were notorious in
the first century for opening their premises and houses to oriental cults and
their ecstatic worship celebrations. The Christians were neither the first
nor the only group to gather together in house communities for religious
worship. A treatise on chastity attributed to members of a Pythagorean
community in Italy in the second or third century b.c.e. warns women:
They keep away from secret cults and
Cibyline orgies in their homes. For public law prevents women from
participating in these rites, particularly those rites which encourage
drunkenness and ecstasy. The mistress of the house and head of the household
should be chaste and untouched in all respects.
An inscription from the first century
b.c.e.—with rules for a house cult in Philadelphia, Phrygia—has been
recovered, which stresses that both women and men, slaves and free, could
participate in this cult whose guardian and mistress was Agdistis. In a
satire Juvenal derides rich women who host oriental cults:
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And watch out for a woman who's a
religious fanatic: in the summer she will fill the house with a coven of
worshippers of strange oriental deities. Their minister will be a weird
apparition, an enormous obscene eunuch, revered because he castrated himself
with a jagged hunk of glass. He'll use his prophetic powers and solemnly intone
the usual warning. . . . He claims that whatever dangers threaten will be
absorbed by the cloak [that he wears as a gift] and promises protection for
the coming year."
The rites of the Bona Dea, the
Good Goddess, were confined to women. But whereas Juvenal describes these
rites as those of sex-crazy women burning with lust, Plutarch's picture of
the cult is probably more accurate:
It is not lawful
for a man to attend the sacred ceremonies, nor even to be in the house when
they are celebrated; but the women apart by themselves, are said to perform
many rites during their sacred service which are orphic in character.
These sacred rites took place in the
house of the consul or praetor, who must leave "while his wife takes
possession of the premises." Interesting, too, is the mystery cult of
Dionysos, which Pompeia Agripinilla founded in Rome in the middle of the
second century c.e., and in which she herself functioned as priestess.
Similarly, synagogues in the Dispersion were often house cults. The founder
of the synagogue of Stobi, for instance, reserved for himself and his descendants
the right to live on the upper floor of the synagogue. Women are honored in
tomb inscriptions with the titles mater synagogae, pres-byteres, and
archisynagogos, but we do not quite know what the influence and power of
these women was in the life and worship of the Jewish community.
House churches were a decisive factor in
the missionary movement insofar as they provided space, support, and actual leadership
for the community. The house churches were the place where the early
Christians celebrated the Lord's supper and preached the good news.
Theologically, the community is called the "house of God," the
"new temple" in which the Spirit dwells. Since women were among the
wealthy and prominent converts (cf. Acts 17:4, 12), they played an important
role in the founding, sustaining, and promoting of such house churches. The
following texts which speak of women as leaders of house churches
demonstrate this: Paul greets Aphia "our sister," who together
with Philemon and Archippus was a leader of the house church in Colossae to
which the letter to Philemon was written (Phlm 2). Paul also mentions twice
the missionary couple Prisca and
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Aquila and "the church in their
house" (1 Cor 16:19; Rom 16:5). In a similar fashion, the author of the
letter to the Colossians refers to Nympha of Laodicea and the "church in
her house" (Col 4:15). According to Acts the church of Philippi began
with the conversion of the business woman Lydia from Thyatria who offered her
house to the Christian mission (Acts 16:15). Lydia might have been a
freed-woman, since she came from the East and sold purple goods which were
luxury items. She was not necessarily, therefore, a wealthy, high-born woman.
Three women were thus initiators and leading figures in the church at
Philippi, with whom Paul had entered into a "consensual
partnership" (societas). Naturally, women also belonged to the household
conversions and house churches, which are named after men (cf. Acts 10:lff;
16:32ff; 18:8ff; 1 Cor 1:14; 1:16; 16:15ff [Stephanas]; Rom 16:23 [Gaius]).
One of the most eminent missionaries and
founders of house churches is Prisca or Priscilla who, together with her companion
Aquila spread the gospel supported by their trade, and independent of any
local church. Like Barnabas and Apollos, Prisca was a missionary co-worker
with Paul but she was independent of the apostle and did not stand under his
authority. Paul is grateful to Prisca and Aquila because they have risked
their lives for him. Not only he but the entire gentile church have reason to
give thanks to these outstanding missionaries (Rom 16:4). Their house
churches in Corinth, Ephesus, (2 Tim 4:19; Acts 18:18ff), and Rome (if Rom 16
is addressed to that community) were missionary centers. 1 Cor 16:19 has
greetings from the couple. Even though she is mentioned here after her
husband, it is remarkable that she is referred to by name at all, since
normally the husband alone is named in such greetings. However, it is
significant that whenever Paul sends greetings to the couple (Rom 16:3f), he
addresses Prisca first, thus emphasizing that she is the more important of
the two (cf. also 2 Tim 4:19).
Corresponding to the information of the
Pauline letters, Acts also mentions Prisca and her husband (cf. Acts 18:2-4,
18, 26). Since Luke concentrates in the second part of the Acts on the
achievements of Paul, he refers to the couple only in passing. Even these
brief remarks, however, indicate the great influence of the couple. We can
be assured, therefore, that Luke possesses much more information about them
than he transmits to us. Like Paul, Priscilla and Aquila were tent makers by
trade and supported their missionary activity through their own work. Like
Paul they were Jewish Christians and financially independent of the churches
they served. Like Paul they traveled to spread the gospel and suffered for
their missionary activ-
{179}
ity. When Claudius banished the Jews from
Rome the couple no longer could stay there and so moved on to Corinth, where
they accepted Paul as co-worker in their trade and their house church. In
Ephesus they took in Apollos, one of the most erudite and eloquent
missionaries of the early Christian movement. Prisca, in particular, became
the teacher of Apollos, whose Sophia and Spirit theology might have been
derived from her catechesis.
However, as noted earlier, Prisca and
Aquila had adopted a different missionary method and practice from that of
Paul. Insofar as they—like the "other apostles" (1 Cor 9)—traveled
as a pair and gathered converts in__house churches, they did not divide the
apostolic diakonia into the eucharistic table sharing that establishes community
and the word that aims at conversion of individuals. Insofar as Paul felt
called "not to baptize but to preach the gospel," he did not
concentrate on community building. Many of his subsequent problems, for
example, with the community at Corinth, probably arose precisely because he
had "baptized" so few, while such problems seem not to have emerged
with the community in Philippi, with whom he had established koinonia.
Moreover, the example of the house churches of Prisca and Aquila suggests that
the early house church is not constituted solely by the "family" of
the paterfamilias or materfamilias, but also by converts who belonged to
other families— since it is not likely that Prisca and Aquila were
accompanied by children, former slaves, kinsfolk, or clients in their
travels. Their house church, therefore, most likely was structured like a
religious association rather than a patriarchal family.
If Prisca and Aquila already had presided
at a church in Rome before being expelled in 49 c.e., they might have had
contact or connections with some of the first Christians coming from the
Hellenists of the Jerusalem or the Antiochene church. We have no reason to
assume that the Roman community at first met solely in synagogues and then
organized itself into house churches only after the persecution under
Claudius. The practice in Rome might have been similar to that in Jerusalem,
in which the Christians did not, at first, sever their ties with the rather
powerful Jewish community of Rome, thus remaining members of the synagogue in
addition to a house community. The persecution, however, might have forced a
separation of both communities for political reasons, and at the same time
generated a greater influx of gentile Christians into the Roman church. The
Roman church seems to have been organized in house churches well into the
third century. The participation of women in this church must have been
remarkable. Among the twenty-five persons greeted
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by name in Romans 16> approximately
one-third (eight) are women. Two more women, the mother of Rufus and the
"sister" of Nereus, are mentioned without proper names. In
addition, women must also have been among those who belonged to the people of
the house of Aristobulos and of Narkissos, as well as among the
"brethren" or "saints" mentioned in 16:15. Interestingly
enough, two pairs are mentioned here as well, Philologus and Julia, as well
as Nereus and his sister. These seem to have been missionary couples like
Prisca and Aquila, if adelphe is here, as elsewhere, an official title, since
the woman is not mentioned as "wife" but in her significance for
the community. As the movement spread, several house churches could come
together as the ekklesia of a city like Corinth. Many dissensions and
disagreements which are usually interpreted theologically or ideologically
might have their concrete roots in the diversity of house churches within a
city or region. However, basic for their organizational structure was that
as a religious cult or private association the local church conceded an equal
share in the life of the association to all its members. Membership in such
an association of equals, therefore, often stood in tension to the
traditional partriarchal household structures, to which Christian members of
pagan households still belonged.
While some of the religious clubs and
associations admitted slaves, members of the lower classes, and women
indiscriminately, others were reserved specifically to persons of high
status, to certain ethnic groups, to lower-class people, or to women alone.
On the whole, their social structures were socially less diversified and more
homogeneous than those of the Christian groups. Many of the associations
came together not primarily for religious but for social-economic purposes.
Such clubs usually had not more than fifty and not less than three members.
Unlike Judaism, they were local organizations and did not have international
connections.
The Builders and Carpenters, the
Patchwork-Rug-Makers, the Porters, the Purple-dyers of the 18th Street met as
did their counterparts bf many other names to eat a meal, perhaps a bit
better than usual, drink some pretty good wine, supplied by the member whose
turn it was, celebrate the birthday of the founder or patron or the feast of
Poseidon or Hermes, or Isis, or Silvanus, and to draw up rules to make sure
that the members would all have a decent burial when their times came. The
ekklesia that gathered with the tentmakers Prisca, Aquila, and Paul in
Corinth or Ephesus might well have seemed to the neighbors a club of the same
sort."
{181}
Those who joined the Christian house
church joined it as an association of equals. It was especially attractive
to those who had little stake in the rewards of religion based either on
class stratification or on male dominance. Although we have little evidence
for all-women associations, women joined clubs and became founders and
patrons of socially mixed associations. They endowed the club with funds for
specific, defined purposes and expected public honors and recognition in
return for their benefactions. The officers of a club were usually elected
for a specified term of one to five years and had much less influence than
the patron of the club, to whom the members often stood in a client
relationship.
The rich convert to Christianity,
therefore, probably understood herself/himself as entering a club, and
expected to exercise the influence of the patron on this club. Without
question the house church, as a voluntary organization, was structured
according to this patron-client relationship. Moreover, Christians like
Phoebe also must have acted as guardians for the community or for individual
Christians in dealings with the governments and the courts. With their
network of connections, friendships, and influence, Christians from the upper
strata eased the social life of other Christians in Greco-Roman society.
However, we have no evidence that the Christian community bestowed
particular honors and recognitions on its rich members.
The importance of Phoebe's position as
minister in the church at Cenchreae is underlined by the title prostatis,
usually translated "helper" or "patroness," although in
the literature of the time the term has the connotation of leading officer,
president, governor, or superintendent. Since Paul claims that Phoebe was a
prostatis of many and also of Paul himself, scholars reject such a meaning
here. However, in 1 Thess 5:12 the verb characterizes persons with authority
in the community and in 1 Tim 3:4f and 5:17 it designates the functions of
the bishop, deacon, or elder.
In the context of Rom 16:2 such
leadership must be understood in the more juridical, technical sense of
patrona, although Ernst Kasemann has again recently argued against such an
understanding. He maintains that the word cannot have the juridical sense of
the masculine form, which connotes the leader and representative of an
association. He declares categorically:
There is no reference, then, to a
"patroness". . . . Women could not take on legal functions, and
according to Revelation only in heretical circles do prophetesses seem to
have had official ecclesiastical powers of leadership. . .
. The idea is that of the personal
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care which Paul and others have received
at the hand of the deaconess.
This assertion overlooks the fact,
however, that the motif of reciprocity stressed by Paul speaks for a
juridical understanding of the title. Phoebe's patronage was not limited to
the community in Cenchreae but included many others, even Paul himself, who
stood with Phoebe in a patron-client relationship. Such patronage did not
consist merely in financial support and hospitality on behalf of clients but
also in bringing her influence to bear and in using her connections for them.
According to the "exchange law" of Greco-Roman patronage, therefore,
Paul asks that the community of Rome repay Phoebe for the assistance and
favors, which Paul owed her as her client.
Why would rich persons like Phoebe join
the Christian movement? The answer to this question might explain the
relatively high participation of well-to-do women in the Christian
missionary movement. Although rich women, like rich men, received no honors
in the Christian community in return for their patronage, nevertheless they
did receive influence and standing they did not otherwise have in patriarchal
society or in the official Roman patriarchal religion. Well-educated women
in particular, with independent resources of wealth, could develop leadership
and have influence in this movement— options denied them in society at large.
Roman law—and apparently Jewish-Hellenistic custom as well (see, again,
Judith)—permitted women to own and administer their own property and houses.
Thus a wealthy woman "might enjoy the prestige or at least the financial
resources usually reserved to a paterfamilias." Such status discrepancy
or status dissonance compelled women to break through the traditional
patriarchal patterns entrenched in law and custom. Not only upper-class women
but also women of lower standing had the opportunity to follow their trade
and to accumulate some wealth of their own. Women were active in finance,
trade, and commerce, and could use their capital for patronage in order to
gain recognition and public honor in return for their benevolence.
Archeological evidence indicates that the women of Pompeii were actively
involved in business as well as in civic and religious life during the last
two centuries of the city's existence. Eumachia, who lived during the first
quarter of the first century, donated a huge building as local club center
for all business people. She was a public priestess of Venus or Ceres, a
religious office surely facilitated by her wealth and business connections.
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Such status dissonance probably was also
experienced by women who joined the Christian movement, founded house
churches, and developed leadership. Their leadership in the missionary movement
allowed those who were socially and politically marginal—because they were
women—to gain new dignity and status. Their marginality was not—as Ross
Kraemer has suggested—the result of childlessness or widowhood. Greco-Roman
women were chided by moralists for not wanting children and for getting rid
of their husbands in easy divorces. Clearly, childlessness no longer bore
such odium that it would relegate to marginal status women of wealth and high
status. Yet Greco-Roman women had gained wealth, or at least moderate
economic independence, without achieving comparable political influence and
power. It is true, that by joining religious associations, clubs, or the
Christian movement women did not achieve such political influence; they did
gain religious influence and power, however. By joining the Christian
movement and by building up the church in her house, a woman could derive
religious authority and personal self-worth, both of which compensated well
for the fact that the Christian community did not honor her as a rich person.
As mentioned earlier, Gerd Theissen has
argued that_ the early Christian missionary movement outside Palestine was
not in conflict with its society but was well integrated into it. The
radicalism of the Jesus movement was assimilated by the urban Hellenistic
communities into a family-style love patriarchalism, which perpetuated the
hierarchical relationships of the patriarchal family in a softened, milder
form. He overlooks the fact, however, that the egalitarian community structures
of private collegia or cultic associations provided the model for the early
Christian movement in the Greco-Roman world, not the patriarchal family! This
movement not only accorded women and slaves equal standing and the
possibility of patronage, but—as a religious cult from the Orient—was suspect
to the Greco-Roman authorities. Consisting of equal associations it stood in
conflict with Greco-Roman society just as the Jesus movement did with
respect to that of Palestinian.
In conclusion: The Pauline literature and
Acts still allow us to recognize that women were among the most prominent
missionaries and leaders in the early Christian movement. They were apostles
and ministers like Paul, and some were his co-workers. They were teachers,
preachers, and competitors in the race for the gospel. They founded house
churches and, as prominent patrons, used their influence for other
missionaries and Christians. If we compare their lead-
{184}
ership with the ministry of the later
deaconesses, it is striking that their authority and ministry were neither
restricted to women and children, nor exercised only in specific feminine
roles and functions. True, we have only occasional remarks in Acts or the
letters that allow us to glimpse the leadership and ministry of women in the
Christian movement. Yet, the same is true for male leadership and ministry,
as we have seen in the example of Barnabas. One could say that the more
independent a woman missionary was from the Pauline mission the less chance
she had to be remembered in history, since only the Pauline letters break the
silence about the earliest beginnings of the Christian missionary movement.
However, our sources still allow us to see that this movement was not
structured after the Greco-Roman patriarchal household and did not espouse
the love patriarchalism by which the later church adapted itself to the structures
of its society.
Difficult as it is to trace the
beginnings and organization of the Christian missionary movement, the
reconstruction of Hellenist and Antiochene church theology is even more so.
By carefully peeling away the Pauline, and Lukah overlay, however, we
tentatively can uncover its main features. This theology, first, is rooted in
the experiences of the Spirit; second, christologically, it understands the
ministry and life of Jesus in terms of Sophia; and therefore, third, it develops
a prophetic-critical attitude to the Temple as the locus of the presence of
God.
1. While the experience of God's gracious
goodness in the ministry and life of Jesus is fundamental for the Jesus
movement and its vision, the experience of the power of the Spirit is basic
for that of the Christian missionary movement. The God of this movement is
the God who did not leave Jesus in the power of death but raised him "in
power" so that he becomes "a life-giving Spirit" (1 Cor 15:45,
pneuma zoopoioun). Christ is preached to Jews and Greeks as "the power
of God" and "the sophia of God" (1 Cor 1:24). Therefore he is
the Lord of glory, the Lord is the Spirit (Sophia) and the liberator
(wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom; cf. 2 Cor 3:17). The
basileia of God does not consist in "mere talk" but in "power"
(1 Cor 4:20).
Like Jesus (Luke 4:1), those who are
"in Christ" are "filled with the Holy Spirit," possessed
by God's Spirit. The expressions "full of the Holy Spirit" or
"full of the Holy Spirit and of faith" or "full of the Spirit
and of wisdom" all appear in Acts, either with respect to the
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Hellenists (6:3, 5, 10; cf. also 6:8,
"full of grace and power"), with respect to Barnabas (11:24), or
with respect to all Christians (13:52). Those who "have called on the
Lord" (Acts 2:21) or who have been "baptized into Christ,"
live by the Spirit (Gal 5:25)—they are pneumatics, Spirit-filled people (Gal
6:1). Women and men both have received the Spirit. Thus, in the second
century, Justin—in his Dialogue with Trypho, chap. 88—still can assert that
among the Christians all, women and men (kai theleias kai arsenas), have
received charisms from the Holy Spirit. This "equality" in the
Spirit is summed up by the early Christian movement in the words of the
prophet Joel (Acts 2:17f):
I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh
arid your sons and your daughters shall prophesy
and your young shall see visions
and your old shall dream dreams
Yes, and on my male and female slaves (in those days)
I will pour out my spirit and they shall prophesy.
The new community of believers living in
the "force field" of the resurrected Lord is understood here in
prophetic terms a's the messianic community. What was promised in Isa 43:18
or 65:17f is now realized in the community of the baptized:
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, they are a.new creation.
The old has passed away, behold the new has come. [2 Cor 5:17]
In Gal 6:15 the expression "new
creation" characterizes the Christian community de facto as a "new
religion." For those who have become a part of this new creation, Jewish
concepts and rituals (circumcision or uncircumcision) "have lost their
meaning. Faith in Christ has become the decisive basis for salvation."
The expression "new creation"
must already have been taken over by Paul because he uses it in an almost
formulaic way and only twice in all his letters. This expression probably
belongs to the language of Jewish Christian missionary preaching. A similar
understanding is also found in the Jewish missionary novel Joseph and Aseneth.
The prayer of Joseph praises God for the transforming power of conversion:
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Most High, Powerful
Who makes all things to live
Who calls out of darkness into light
and from error to truth
from death to life
You indeed are the Lord
who made alive and blessed this virgin
Renew her by your Spirit
Reform her by your hidden hand
Restore her to your life
and let her eat the bread of life
and drink the cup of Blessing
She whom I chose before her birth
and let her enter into your rest (katapausis)
which you prepared for your elect ones. [8:9]
In Aseneth's prayer her conversion
experience is described as being cut off from her family; she has become an
"orphan and alone" (12:11) and feels abandoned (13:1). She asks God
to rescue her "from the hand of the enemy," "from those who
harass her," and for deliverance from the devil, the father of the gods
whom she has rejected (12:8f). As an initiate, Aseneth is given a new
lustrous garment and a new name (14:4-15:5). She is granted permission to
participate in the sacred meal shared with the angelic beings (15:14) and is
promised that she will be the bride (15:5) in the sacred marriage (21:lff).
Aseneth thus becomes the prototype of all those proselytes of whatever race
who turn to God in repentance.
At their baptism Christians are told:
"You were buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised with
him through faith in the working (energy) of God who raised him from the
dead" (Col 2:12). Those who have entered the force field of the resurrected
Lord, the liberating Wisdom (2 Cor 3:17), have been set free "to share
in the glorious freedom of the children of God" (Rom 8:21). The
life-giving power of the resurrected Lord has called forth a new creation, in
the midst of this death-ridden world, the sarx. Therefore Paul can proclaim,
"Behold now is the day of salvation" (2 Cor 6:2), and define the
gospel "as God's power for salvation to everyone who has faith"
(Rom 1:16).
When Paul proclaims that "the end of
the ages has come" (1 Cor 10:11), he does not intend to nullify time. He
does not speak of the "newness" in Christ Jesus as an atemporal or
transtemporal event. God's sending of Christ-Sophia qualifies time and
history in such a way that it inaugurates eschatological newness. "Fullness
of time" is not the end of time but the beginning of a new epoch, while
the end of time is still to be expected. The newness that has broken into
this time and world with Jesus Christ does not abolish time and history
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but seeks to transform them. Therefore,
Paul admonishes the Christians "to walk in the newness of life"
(Rom 6:4) and not to adapt to the "old aeon" (Rom 12:2). Christians
are the avant-garde of the new creation under the conditions of the old world
and history. They have died with Christ to the power of sin, to the old
humanity, the old ways of being human, but they have not yet shared in the
resurrection of Christ in baptism (Rom 6:1-11). Therefore, Paul can speak of
dying to the "old humanity" but, in distinction to the
deutero-Paulines, he does not speak of "the new human being" that
the Christians have become in baptism (Col 3:10; Eph 4:24). The baptized have
entered the era of the new but still must daily realize their being "in
Christ" anew.
Since the baptized "were washed,
sanctified, and justified" in the name of Jesus and in the Spirit of God
(1 Cor 6:11), they were "set free from the law of sin and death"
(Rom 8:2). They are "the first fruits of the Spirit," but they still
wait eagerly for "the adoption as children," "for the
redemption of our bodies." Although the baptized have died to the power
of sin and death, the power of sin and death are not yet completely overcome.
The newness of the era of the Spirit has entered history in Jesus Christ and
the Christians, but has not yet completely transformed history. Therefore
Paul insists: "Do" not be conformed to this world but be
transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will
of God, what is good and acceptable, and perfect" (Rom 12:2).
"Newness" of God's new creation, according to Paul, should
transform the "mind," but he does not stress that it should change
the social-political relationship of Christians.
Christians have been crucified with
Christ, they have been united in baptism with the suffering and death of
Christ. Yet Paul does not understand the crucifixion in concrete political
terms as the outcome of the conflict of Jesus' vision with that of the
established powers of this world. This fact has far-reaching consequences for
Pauline theology, which attempts to spell out the newness of Christian life
in the context of history in order to prevent the evaporation of the
Christian vision into a mere dream or fanciful ideology. However, whereas
Jesus died on the cross because of his deviance from, and opposition to, the
religious-social order of his time, the cross of Jesus becomes, in Paul's
thought, so universalized that it applies to all human frailty and mortality.
The Pauline school uses the cross as a
symbol to justify religiously the suffering of those oppressed by the present
order of slavery or patriarchy (thus 1 Peter and Colossians). Cross and
suffering are no
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longer understood as the necessary
outcome of the tension between the newness of God's vision and new creation
in Jesus Christ on the one hand and the old oppressive order of this world,
which rules through suffering, sin, and death on the other. While Paul
insists on the transforming power of the new for Christian personal life and
practice, especially within the household of faith, he does not pay
sufficient attention to the political concreteness of Jesus' crucifixion.
Therefore, he does not insist that the power of the new must be brought to
bear equally on Christian social-political relationships.
2. The theology of the Christian
missionary movement identifies the resurrected Lord not only with the Spirit
of God but also with the Sophia of God. (This was possible because in Hebrew
and Aramaic both terms are grammatically feminine and can also be
interchanged with the Shekinah, the presence of God.) The term Sophia in Acts
is used only in relation to Stephen—and always in conjunction with Spirit—to
characterize his ecstatic giftedness and proclamation. That the pre-Pauline
Christian missionary movement understood the resurrected Christ in terms of
Sophia-Spirit is evident in Paul's polemical argument in 1 Corinthians, and
more emphatically in the so-called pre-Pauline christological hymns as well
as in some traditional materials of the deutero-Pauline Colossians and
Ephesians.
Whether or not Apollos, in particular,
developed and preached this Sophia christology is debated. The debate will
probably never be resolved, for in the words of F. F. Bruce:
For one short
spell Apollos flashes across the New Testament sky and then disappears into
darkness as profound as that from which he emerged. But when we speak of
darkness, we refer to our own ignorance, not fo the historical facts. Apollos
played probably a public part in early Christian life far longer than we
realize but no further recprd of it has survived.
We know from Paul's remark that Apollos
fostered the church in Corinth after Paul's departure (1 Cor 3:6), and that
some members of the community understood themselves as followers of Apollos.
Paul stresses the friendly relationship prevailing between the two apostles,
but he also must concede that (at least for the moment) Apollos chooses his
own way in the missionary work (16:12).
Apollos was a cultured Jew from
Alexandria, a theologian well versed in the Scriptures, who had been baptized
with the baptism of John and had learned of the teaching of Jesus (Acts
18:24-19:1). We do not know whether he was converted in Alexandria, or who
preached the gospel to him. It is possible he heard the story of Jesus
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from members of the Jesus movement who
might have preached the baptism of repentance and the ministry and words of
Jesus, as the communities in Galilee and those behind Q seem to have done. Be
that as it may, Acts stresses that Priscilla, together with her husband (?)
Aquila, instructed Apollos more accurately in the way of God.
Again what this more accurate instruction
entailed is not certain, since "the way of God" is a stereotypical expression
of Luke to characterize Christian preaching and life. In Acts 19:1-7,
however, we encounter other disciples who, though baptized into John's
baptism of repentance, had not heard of the Holy Spirit. In distinction to
John's baptism of repentance, baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus mediates
the Holy Spirit in ecstatic experiences. The more accurate teaching of
Priscilla, then, would have entailed the gospel of the resurrected Christ,
who is understood as cosmic Lord and life-giving Spirit-Sophia. If this
assumption is correct, then Priscilla and Aquila not only provide the
historical link of the Roman church to the Pauline missionary movement but
also to the Christian movement in Alexandria—assuming Apollos was a
missionary there. The content of this more accurate instruction might have
been similar to the christological formula used in 1 Cor 1:24 which calls
Christ "God's Power and Sophia" or to the characterization of
Christ Jesus in 1 Cor 1:30, which also refers to baptism:80
You however are in Christ Jesus, who has
become for us Sophia from God; not only justice (righteousness) but also
sanctification and liberation (redemption). [Note the change in pronoun.]
While the Jesus movement, like John,
understood Jesus as the messenger and prophet of divine Sophia, the wisdom
christology of the Christian missionary movement sees him as divine Sophia
herself. Such a Sophia-christology is expressed especially in the pre-Pauline
hymns Phil 2:6-11; 1 Tim 3:16; Col 1:15-20; Eph 2:14-16; Heb 1:3; 1 Pet 3:18,
22; John 1:1-14, delineated in form-critical studies. These hymns proclaim
the universality of salvation in Jesus Christ in language derived from
Jewish-Hellenistic wisdom theology and from contemporary mystery religions.
The ministry and significance of Christ the Lord is seen in terms of wisdom
theology, for example, in 1 Tim 3:6 and Phil 2:6-11. The way of Jesus Christ
was the same as that of Sophia:
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Sophia found no place where she might dwell
Then a dwelling place was assigned her in the heavens
Wisdom went forth to make her dwelling among the children of humans
And found no dwelling place Wisdom returned to her place And took her seat
among the angels. [Enoch 42:1-2]
Through his exaltation and enthronement Christ-Sophia
has received his-her rulership over the whole cosmos, over heavenly and
earthly powers. This is proclaimed in Phil 2:6-11 in language alluding to the
Old Testament (Isa 45:23) and the contemporary Isis cult. Like Isis,
Christ-Sophia is given a name "which is above all names" and worshiped
by all the powers in the cosmos. Just as Isis's true acclamation is
"Isis the Lord," so the true Christian acclamation is "Jesus
Christ is the Lord."
This proclamation of the universal
lordship of Christ-Sophia is addressed to people of the Hellenistic world
who believed the world to be ruled by merciless powers, and above all by
blind fate. It addresses the desires and longings of Hellenistic persons
seeking liberation from the powers of.this world and participation in the
divine world. In this religious milieu of the mysteries, Christians proclaim
Christ-Sophia as the ruler of the principalities and powers which have previously
enslaved the world. In this milieu, where the hymns and areta-logies to Isis
and other gods are sung, the Christian community sings hymns in praise of
Jesus Christ the Sophia of God who appeared on earth and is now exalted as
the Lord of the whole cosmos. These Christians believe they are already
liberated from the bondage of death and freed from the cosmic evil spirits.
They believe they already participate in the power and "energy" of
Christ-Sophia, that they are the new creation because they have received the
power of the Spirit in baptism.
This proclamation of Jesus Christ as the
Sophia of God and the cosmic Lord functions in the Christian community as the
founda-tional myth which engenders its own cult. The exaltation and enthronement
of Christ to cosmic reconciliation and sovereignty are the central symbols of
this myth. The understanding of Christ in terms of Sophia as the mediator in
creation and as the power of the new creation underlines the cosmic
significance of Christian faith, but also keeps alive the knowledge that this
cosmic Lord is the same Jew, Jesus, who sought a "resting place" in
Israel. This knowledge is expressed in the categories of humiliation,
incarnation and death. The mythical features of these hymns are so strong,
however, that there is a danger that this knowledge about the human life of
Jesus Christ and the historical existence of Christians may be neglected.
This raises the fundamental theological question: how were Chris-
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tians able to proclaim the historical
person—Jesus of Nazareth—in terms of myth and with mythological language?
This was made possible not only by the ecstatic experience of the Spirit and
the resurrection but also by a Jewish-Hellenistic wisdom theology which had
already provided the modes and language for a Sophia christology. The pre-Pauline
christological hymns—already part of a trajectory of "reflective
mythology" in Hellenistic Judaism and Jewish gnosticism—employ the
language and motifs of various contemporary myths with a view to apologetic
or missionary goals. This "theology expressed in mythological
language" appears to have become dependent primarily on the myth of
Isis-Osiris, and secondarily on myths of other oriental gods. The trajectory
originated in the theology of post-exilic wisdom schools and moved through
Hellenistic Judaism, gnosticism, and, in different ways, through early
Christianity.
The conjunction of this wisdom trajectory
with the pre-Pauline Sophia christology and the pre-Johannine Logos hymn
seems to have been prepared for by Philonic theology, where the female figure
of Sophia had already become identified with that of the masculine Logos.
Philo also had identified the Logos with historical figures such as Moses,
Isaac or Israel. Philo, however, uses cosmological-mythological language,
derived from the Isis-Osiris cycle to. clarify psychological-mystical
realities. The Logos as priest and king of the cosmos becomes the priest of
the soul. The historical figures of Moses or Isaac are transformed into
archetypes or symbols of virtues. The history of Israel is a
psychological-mystical paradigm.
Similarly, the mythic material concerning
Sophia found in gnostic texts evidences clear connections with Jewish wisdom
literature and theology. The cosmic Sophia myth is psychologized and
internalized here as well. Sophia and her fate exemplify the true gnostic,
whose self can be set free from imprisonment in this world and restored to
its divine nature through knowledge of its fall and redemption. It develops
into metaphysical dualism constituted by masculine and feminine archetypes.
This spiritualizing and psychologizing danger in gnostic dualism and
Hellenistic wisdom speculation was already sensed by Paul who seeks to
counter it by emphasizing the physical death of Christ and by stressing the
historical reality of Christians. Yet this danger does not consist in taking
over "female" language and "goddess" expressions, but in
the dehistoricizing of Jesus Christ, our Sophia and Kyrios, as well as in the
devaluating of Christian historical practice.
In counteracting the dehistoricizing
tendencies of the Christ myth, Paul transfers it from its hymnic setting to
that of moral exhortation.
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In Phil 2:1-15 Christ becomes the example
to be imitated by those who have to "work out" their "own
salvation with fear and trembling." In this context Paul elaborates
Christian equality. He points to Christ-Sophia who, according to the hymn,
did not hold onto his "equality" with God, but "emptied
himself" or "lowered himself," taking on the existence of a
slave and becoming "obedient unto death." Paul explicitly qualifies
the death of Christ as his violent execution on the cross. Yet, as noted, he
does not reflect more deeply on the political significance of the death of
Jesus, stressing instead, his obedience. Paul quotes the hymn in order to
validate his admonitions: "Do nothing from selfishness or deceit, but
in humility count others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not
only to one's own interests but also to the interests of others (Phil 2:3f).
Equality for Paul, then, consists in
looking out not only for our own interests but also for those of others. This
understanding is borne out also by 2 Cor 8:13f, the second passage in which
Paul speaks about equality. Paul appeals to the Corinthians to contribute
their share to the collection for the community of Jerusalem. He does not
mean to burden the Corinthians, "but that as a matter of equality"
their "abundance at the present time should supply their want, so their
abundance might supply" the Corinthians' want, "that there may be
equality." Equality, then, consists in the reciprocal sharing of abundance
with those Christians who are in need.
However, Paul does not elaborate what
such a sharing of abundance would mean in social terms, although the key
word slave in the hymn Phil 2:1-11 could have provided the occasion to do so.
Paul's treatment of the death of Jesus also fails to spell out the
political-social implications of this death. We can only speculate why Paul
neglected to do this, and focused instead on the moral and ecclesial behavior
of the individual Christians irrespective of their social status. Since he
does not ground his theology of mutual love in the theology of the new
creation and the social-political reality of the death of Christ and the
existence of Christians, he necessarily privatizes Christian love and
interiorizes it. His attempt to ground the new creation and the story of
Christ in history, therefore, does not fully develop its historical-critical
impetus.
3. According to Acts 6:13f, Stephen is
accused of having spoken. against Temple and Torah, the central mediations of
God's presence for all Jewish groups of the time. The identification of the
Torah with Sophia and her localization in the Jerusalem Temple made the mediatory
function of Temple and Torah authoritative, because both institutions thus
became the preexistent, eternal, and final expression of
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God's presence. The confession of Christ,
the Lord, "who has been made our Sophia from God," thus challenges
the theological claim of Temple and Torah. This seems to have been
theologically articulated and recognized by the Hellenists and especially by
Stephen. In his defense he argues not only that—throughout Israel's
history—the divine presence was never confined to one place but also that
"the Most High does not dwell in houses made with hands" (7:48).
The same Greek expression "made with hands" is also found in Mark
14:58 and Heb 9:11, 24. Its semantic and theological context is the
missionary preaching of Hellenistic Judaism, which uses the term in its
polemics against pagan idols. The Jerusalem Temple is seen here and in Mark
14:58 as being on one level with idolatry, and therefore as .belonging to the
old aeon. Yet, while the speech of Stephen does not positively say what will
replace the old Temple in mediating the presence of God, according to Mark
its replacement will be the Christian community.
We find already in the pre-Pauline
tradition the understanding that the Christian community is the temple of
God. The texts 2 Cor 6:14-7:1; 1 Cor 3:16; Eph 2:22, and perhaps 1 Pet 2:4-10
transfer the notion of naos to the Christian community, while Paul adapts
this tradition in 1 Cor 6:19 to refer to the body of the individual Christian.
Since Hellenistic and Jewish-Hellenistic literature considers not the human
body but the soul or mind as the temple in which God or the Spirit dwells,
and often understands the body as the prison of the soul, the transference of
the notion of temple to the human body reflects typical Pauline theology and
was, therefore, probably accomplished by Paul. In calling the body a temple,
Paul warns against a "spiritualizing" of Christian
self-understanding which considers the soul as the only essential divine part
of the human person. In distinction to Paul, the pre-Pauline "temple
tradition" understands the Christian community as "temple" of
God in order to distinguish it from the unbelieving world. Its Sitz im Leben
is not a "moral-anthropological discussion" but a missionary
situation, interested in drawing the boundaries between the Christian
community and the world. 1 Cor 3:16f uses the language complex
"building, house, temple" in order to characterize the community.
The form of the saying could indicate a baptismal tradition that is quoted
here by Paul in order to counter Corinthian divisiveness. He warns the
Corinthians that whoever destroys the unity of the community destroys the
temple of God. This warning seems to be formulated by Paul for his own theological
purposes and inserted into the traditional formula expressed in two
parallelisms:
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You are God's temple
and the Spirit of God dwells in you ....
For the temple of God is holy (hagios),
which you all are.
The traditional (baptismal) formula
expresses the self-understanding of Christians that the community is the new
temple and, therefore, that they all are sanctified. The missionary context
of the temple motif transferred to the Christian community also appears in
the passages of the Pauline school, Eph 2:18-22 and 1 Pet 2:4-10. Ephesians
uses this motif in order to stress that Jews and gentiles are "made into
one" people or race. Through Jesus Christ gentiles are no longer
foreigners who are excluded from the inner sanctum of the temple, but have
access in one Spirit to the Father. They have become full members of the
temple community, the household of God, and are one with the holy angels.
1 Pet 2:4-10 transfers not only the
images of temple but also those of priest and sacrifice to the Christian
community, the household of God, in the interest of missionary theology. The
Christians as the household of God are the new eschatological temple in which
not just a special group but all members offer sacrifices worked by the
Spirit. They have left their former cultural-religious milieu and form a new
nation, new priesthood, and holy people. They are, therefore, characterized
in Old Testament and political-cultic language as "a chosen race, a
royal house, a priesthood, a holy nation, the true people of God," who
proclaim the saving and mighty power of God. These latter passages have
combined the tradition of the community as temple with that of the community
as household, and their epistolary contexts strongly stress that life in the
community must be lived in terms of the patriarchal household of antiquity.
This is not the case in the pre-Pauline
(but not necessarily anti-Pauline) fragment 2 Cor 6:14-7:1, which most
exegetes consider a segment of tradition inserted into the letter. It is
debated, however, whether Paul himself could have used this tradition here,
or whether it interrupts, and therefore does not fit into, the present
Pauline context.
Do not get misyoked [or mismatched] with unbelievers.
For what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness
or what community has light with darkness?
What harmony is there between Christ and Belial?
Or what common lot a believer with an unbeliever?
What agreement is there between God's temple and idols?
For we are the temple of the living God; as God has said,
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"I will dwell in them and walk among them;
and I will be their God
and they shall be my people.
Therefore come out of their midst
and separate, says the Lord,
and touch nothing unclean.
Then I will receive you,
and I will be a father to you,
and you shall be to me sons and daughters,"
says the Lord Almighty.
Since we have these promises, beloved,
let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of flesh and spirit,
making holiness perfect in the fear of God.
Hans Dieter Betz has made a strong case
that this paraenesis applies to the "theological position of the 'false
brothers' at Jerusalem (see Gal 2:4f) and the 'men from James' (see Gal
2:11-14). . . . They would call 'misyoking' what Paul has done in bringing
the Galatians into the church without subjecting them to the Torah covenant."
He points to Paul's understanding of freedom as opposed to the yoke of the
Torah, "the yoke as of slavery" (Gal 5:1). However, while this
litertary analysis has again proven that the vocabulary and theological
perspective is non-Pauline, it must be questioned whether this generalized
understanding of "misyoking" is appropriate.
The Greek word for mismatch is a metaphor
deriving from Lev 19:19 where the LXX reads the same Greek word for
crossbreeding. The same figure is also used in Deut 22:10 which forbids
plowing with an ox and ass together. The whole complex of sayings prohibits
the mingling of two different types of things, for example, seeds, animals,
or woolen and linen stuff. It does not speak, however, of two different
yokes. On the whole, the figure of the yoke seems to be different from what
is in this context insofar as it usually refers to burdens imposed,
especially by foreign oppressors (Isa 9:4; 10:27; 14:25; Jer 27:8, 11, 12;
Gen 27:40; 1 Kgs 12:4). Therefore, the traditional translation and
interpretation, which has generally taken the imperative "be not
mismated," or "unevenly yoked together" as a warning against
marriage between believers and unbelievers, appears more appropriate. This
is not a general Jewish Christian prohibition against mixing socially and
religiously with gentile Christians but a warning to avoid marriages with
gentiles. The difficulty a woman would encounter in such a marriage is still,
even in the second century, vividly described by Tertullian:
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For who would
suffer his wife for the sake of visiting the brethren, to go around from
street to street to other men's and indeed to all the poorer cottages? Who
will willingly bear her being taken from his side by nocturnal convocations,
if need be?. . . Who will, without some suspicion of his own, dismiss her to
attend that Lord's Supper, which they defame?
The warning in 2 Cor 6:14 is therefore
similar to that in 1 Cor 7:39, but much more emphatic. It is based upon the
theological self-understanding of the community as temple and holy people of
God, and it is argued with a string of scriptural texts.
The most striking adaptation of
scriptural texts to the Christian situation is the alteration of 2 Sam 7:14
to show that God's promise of sonship given to David, the king of Israel,
includes the male and female members of the church. The daughters as well as
the sons are full members of the temple of the living God. Therefore, all
Christians are called hagioi, "holy ones." Several exegetes have
observed the "sexual egalitarianism" and even "feminism"
that comes to the fore in this alteration. Robert Jewett underscores it but
concludes: "It certainly speaks against either Qumran or Jewish
Christian provenance, because these groups favored patriarchal views of
women." He further argues "this verse must be interpreted in light
of the androgyny campaign in Corinth." Yet both contentions are
unproven. Certainly, the passage is not of Qumran provenance, although it
has some affinities to Qumran theology.
However, nothing speaks against its Jewish Christian provenance,
since we have no evidence for such alleged patriarchal views of women in
Jewish Christianity. To the contrary, it seems this passage "fits"
into the theology of the predominantly Jewish Christian missionary movement
which conceives of itself as the new creation, filled with Sophia-spirit,
embracing the sons and daughters, the male and female slaves who have
received the Spirit and share in ecstatic experiences. This movement stresses
that women and men are the children of God, the holy people, the temple
community among whom the Spirit dwells. The boundaries here are not drawn
between men and women, Jewish and gentile Christians, but between believers
and unbelievers. Faith in Christ Jesus, and not religion, race, or sex, draws
the line between the holy community and the domain of Belial, the temple of
God and idol worship.
The Epistle of Barnabas, a Jewish
Christian midrashic hortatory letter, probably written after the destruction
of the Temple in 70 c.e., also combines the motifs of the holy people, the
temple not made of hands, and the new creation in its theological outlook
(16:3-5), The
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letter evidences a later stage of Jewish
Christian theology, insofar as the Christian community is already understood
as the new people of God in opposition to and as the replacement for the old
covenant people. Nevertheless, parts of the epistle seem to reflect the same
social and theological milieu as the Hellenistic-Jewish Christian movement.
It is therefore difficult to decide whether these materials go back to
Barnabas, or to one of his students and followers, or whether the letter
simply uses Barnabas's name, without reflecting his theology at all. It
appears likely, however, that the author stands in the same Antiochene
theological tradition of which Barnabas was a part.
Although the epistle stresses salvation
as a future event and reward, it seeks to pass along to its readers special
insight or gnosis, as a gift that God bestows on all of God's children
enabling them to interpret the course of the history of salvation—past,
present, and future (1:7; 5:3).
Such gnosis is available to all members
of the community, whom the writer addresses as "sons and
daughters," who have received "an implantation of the pneumatic
gift" (1:1). The author understands himself as a teacher and calls the
recipients, men and. women, his children of love, joy, or peace and his
"brethen." "He hopes that they too will become 'good
lawgivers' and 'faithful advisers' (21:4) meditating on his teachings, which
are the Lord's teachings (21:7f; see 1:4)." He admonishes them not to
seek solitary lives but to assemble together in order to search for the
mutual good (see 4:10). They are admonished to love as the apple of their eye
all those who proclaim the word to them. They themselves ought to pursue gnosis
each day either by toiling and traveling to spread the word, to admonish, and
to save a soul by the word, or by working with their hands and sharing all
things with their neighbors since they cannot "claim that anything is
exclusively" theirs (19:8-11). Except for the high estimation of those
who teach and meditate on the "subtleties" of the word (10:11),
there is no reference to any leadership in this community which celebrated
Sunday as a "day of rejoicing" at Jesus' resurrection, and
practiced baptism by immersion (11:8b, 11) for the forgiveness of sins
(11:1b).
According to pseudo-Barnabas, Jesus
appeared on earth in order to prepare "the new people" (5:7); he
taught in Israel, worked great wonders and signs, and chose his own apostles
to "preach his gospel." These apostles were "sinful beyond
measure so that he might prove that he came not to call righteous but
sinners" (5:9). The last emphasis indicates that pseudo-Barnabas sees
the apostles as proto-
{198}
types of every Christian who is called
and baptized, while the few references to the ministry of Jesus picture him
like one of the Hellenists or "the other apostles" mentioned in 2
Corinthians.
God's holy people, the members of the
Christian community, are the true heirs of the Lord's covenant. As the new
creation they are the new eschatological temple. The text is ambiguous as to
whether the whole community, or only the individual, is the new temple. Yet
in distinction to Paul it is not the body but, as in Jewish theology,
"the heart" in which Christ dwells (6:11-14).
When we receive the forgiveness of sins
[in baptism] and place our hope in the Name, we become new, created again
from the beginning. Wherefore God truly dwells in our 'dwelling place'— in
us. In what way? The word of his faith, the invitation of his promise, the
wisdom of his righteous ordinances, the commandments of his teachings;
himself prophesying in us, himself dwelling in us. . . . This is the
pneumatic Temple built for the Lord. [16:8b, 9ab, 10b]
The call of pseudo-Barnabas: "Let us be pneumatics,
let us be the perfect Temple of God," sums up the theological
self-understanding of the pre-Pauline missionary movement. As the
prophetic movement of the "sons and daughters of God," it
gathers in house churches and spreads the gospel in missionary partnership.
As the new temple, its members are "full" of Sophia and
Spirit; they are the new creation and the new creatures of God. As
a "new people" they gather together in house churches for
the breaking of the bread and table sharing. Just like all other types
of Greco-Roman associations— the professional collegia, the funeral
associations, the mystery cults, or the Jewish-Pharisaic havuroth—the
Christian house churches had the same unifying center: the communal
banquet or meal which regularly gathered together all members of
the group for table companionship. Eating and drinking together was
the major integrative moment in the socially diversified Christian
house community. The diakonia at tables was crucial for early Christian
community.
However, this diakonia was not yet
separated from that of the word. The Christians gathered together for the
breaking of the bread and the praise of God. They meditated on the promises
of God in Scripture and sang new songs to Christ, the Lord. Like Isis, the
Queen, who made "women and men equal," so Christ-Sophia has
appeared in the midst of this old world of death and alienation in order to
fashion a new people, "the sons and daughters of God."
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In baptism Christians enter the force field of the Spirit,
share in ecstatic experiences, and are "sent" to proclaim
the gospel in the power of the Spirit, attested to by miraculous signs
and persuasive eloquence. They have become "a new creation,"
the Spirit-filled people, those who have been purified, sanctified,
and justified. They all are equal, because they all share in the Spirit,
God's power; they are all called elect and holy because they are adopted
by God, all without exception: Jews, pagans, women, men, slaves, free
poor, rich, those with high status and those who are "nothing"
in the eyes of the world. The household of God concretized in the
house church constitutes the new family of God, where all without
exception are "sisters and brothers." Gal 3:28 belongs to
this theological setting and missionary environment. It is not a
Pauline "peak formulation" or a theological breakthrough
achieved by Paul. or an occasional, isolated statement of Paul that
is outnumbered by the subordination passages. Gal 3:28 is a key expression,
not of Pauline theology but of the theological self-understanding
of the Christian missionary movement which had far-reaching historical
impact.
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