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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Women in 1st century synagogues?
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Penny S
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# 14768
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Posted
As a spin off of the April book reading, I have been reading other books by Laurie R King, one of which addresses the issue of women in Judaism at the time of the early church. Apparently, there was firstly, no separation of men and women enabled by architecture, and further, women could serve as part of a minyan or as synagogue leaders. In the early period of the rabbinate, there was even a woman, Bruria, daughter of parents martyred by the Romans, whose teaching was respected and who is recorded as having argued successfully with her rabbi husband.
I've been able to confirm her in Wikipedia, but the sites discussing the position of women before the 3rd century CE, when they were restricted, that I have found seem to be of Messianic Jews, and therefore with a particular position on the subject.
If true, it does cast an interesting light on the position of women in the early church, suggesting that Christians retreated from the customs of contemporary Judaism for some reason, which, seeing Jesus' own behaviour with women, would be odd.
Does anyone have any good source on this matter? I was surprised not to have come across it before in discussion of women and ordination. It suggests, for example, that women like Lydia were doing something perfectly ordinary.
[ 07. May 2014, 17:18: Message edited by: Penny S ]
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Honest Ron Bacardi
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# 38
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Posted
We had a thread which covered parts of this not so long ago in Purg., Penny S. I can't immediately locate it, but a more detailed search might, in which case I'll post a link.
One of the problems is that enquiries run the risk of assuming a sort of monolithic entity called Judaism of the first century. Nobody really believes that existed now - first century Judaism was wildly heterogeneous as compared with its modern-day manifestations which all derive to a greater extent from the Pharisaic tradition of the time. So any search for a single authentic first century practice isn't going to work. And any convincing evidence of a contemporary practice still needs to be gauged according to how well accepted it was.
Some of these things do have evidence however. There's testimony of women debating with the rabbis in the rabbinical literature itself, so that certainly seems well enough founded.
Synagogue leadership is trickier. Synagogues fulfilled many functions. It's easy to see them as a sort of Jewish church, but they fulfilled many functions. They still do of course to a greater or lesser extent. I'm pretty sure you are right that there exists evidence of women in synagogue leadership roles, though I don't think we know in what respect exactly or what sort of communities they served. Though we could say the same for the men in most cases also.
Finally - conclusive evidence seems elusive, though I may have missed something obvious of course. And weighing its significance can be as problematic. Which isn't much help either way I know.
But I do seem to recall that the introduction of the separation of men from women in orthodox Judaism is of relatively recent origin - as a standardized practice that is.
There's one of the Oxford Dictionary of or Encyclopedia of Judaism that struck me as a reasonably detached source of reference. There is also quite a lot of stuff out there that seems to owe more to projection than hard fact, which you also seem to have picked up. There's more where that came from, and yet more from elsewhere.
All this off the top of my head without checking sources, so any errors would be mine. Good luck!
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Ricardus
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# 8757
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Posted
I've often been struck by Luke 8:1-3:
quote:
Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.
This suggests to me that at least some women had a fair degree of financial autonomy, being able to provide for the disciples as well as themselves - there is no suggestion that Chuza himself was a believer.
I am not suggesting that Jewish women had anything like equality with men but they do not seem to have been in purdah by any means.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
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stonespring
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# 15530
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Posted
Both Christianity and Islam got their earliest financial support from women. It seems that right down to the present, the up and coming in the spiritual field have sought the company and support of pious ladies of means. Not all early female disciples had money to spare, but many significant ones did.
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Penny S
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# 14768
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Posted
Thank you for starting me off.
Honest Ron: I realise that there was a lot of variation in Judaism at that time - the existence of a Temple down in Egypt bears witness to that, doesn't it - and it would be interesting if the early church decided to go down the more restrictive pathway of those available.
Ricardus: I knew that bit in Luke - or I thought I did. It was only reading your quote that I realised that it implied that all of the women had had some sort of psychiatric problem before attaching themselves as (lesser) disciples. That is rather odd, isn't it? Leaving aside their ability to wander round the countryside without male relative's protection, spending their money unchecked.
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Ricardus
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# 8757
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![[Eek!]](eek.gif) Despite having gone to the trouble of finding and cutting and pasting that passage, that aspect of the matter hadn't occurred to me before.
(ETA: I would guess that their contemporaries would have taken 'evil spirits' literally, but even so, I would have thought 'She used to have demons, and that's screwed her up a bit' would be a more natural assumption about someone than 'She used to have demons, but Jesus cast them out and now she has no problems whatsoever.')
[ 10. May 2014, 12:13: Message edited by: Ricardus ]
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
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Lamb Chopped
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# 5528
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Posted
It says "and infirmities," which would broaden the field to include physical problems as well. In fact, I suspect most of the problems were physical--much easier to convince your husband/father/son that the family needs to make extraordinary efforts to aid a healer's ministry when a) whatever he healed you from resulted in a visible, spectacular change, and b) you weren't known to be nuts beforehand.
To put it simply, I think a woman healed of a withered arm or recurrent miscarriage would have better luck getting the family to go along with her plans than a woman previously known for unusual behavior.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
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Penny S
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# 14768
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Posted
LC, fair enough, but what about women with no medical history? Didn't some of them want to go along? Not to mention Peter's wife and other perfectly healthy relatives. It remains odd.
One thing I've picked up from various places about Jewish scholarship is to query something that doesn't seem to sit easily in the general thread of the argument. This may not be one of the places it matters, though.
Ricardus, I was surprised by that leaping off the page at me, too. I don't know how many times I have heard it read or seen it contained within the rest of its context.
[ 10. May 2014, 17:47: Message edited by: Penny S ]
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SvitlanaV2
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# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
LC, fair enough, but what about women with no medical history? Didn't some of them want to go along? Not to mention Peter's wife and other perfectly healthy relatives. It remains odd.
I don't know how odd it is. Women who were relieved of some sort of heavy burden were perhaps more driven to participate than those who would have been leaving a perfectly comfortable existence to do so. Women travellers in those days were presumably putting themselves at great inconvenience to move around with the group, so only those who had a powerful reason for doing so would have taken that step.
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Lamb Chopped
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# 5528
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Posted
it doesn't say that ALL the women who supported him and/or travelled with him had been ill--just that some of them were, including some prominent names. The healthy ones may fit among the "many" mentioned a phrase later.
As for the idea of women in general traveling with him--I suspect that the social and biological pressures on women in those days meant that quite a few could not travel due to pregnancy or having young children, and others would doubtless have had a hard time persuading their male relatives, who held most of the power. Still, I could easily imagine an apostle's wife coming along, and we know that some of their mothers did. A woman who was widowed, divorced or never married might also have that kind of freedom.
What I want to know is why we don't have tons of first century scandal sheets alleging all kinds of sexual impropriety between Jesus' group and the women. When I consider the fertile imaginations of the culture we work in, I'd really love to know how Jesus managed to relate to women as human beings (as he clearly did) and yet avoid the horrific burn of the nasty-minded. Because innocence is no defense.
[ 10. May 2014, 23:50: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
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SvitlanaV2
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# 16967
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Posted
I imagine that many of them would have been outsiders in some way, though, even if they weren't all sick.
And maybe Jesus is accused of illicit behaviour, but not in the canonical gospels? Isn't there a gospel that hints at an unusually close relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene?
Or perhaps many of the very early followers were actually distantly related to each other rather than being complete strangers; these were fairly small communities by our standards. Some women might even have been there with brothers and sisters. It would have been hard to accuse a woman of indecency without having her brothers and cousins to contend with. Especially if she was a woman of means....
Maybe it wasn't unusual for women to join the bands of wandering religio-political prophets for a short period of time? A true harlot wouldn't have done good business with such a band of paupers.
I don't know, though. It's just conjecture.
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Net Spinster
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# 16058
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Posted
Marcus Minucius Felix sometimes in the 2nd or 3rd century defends Christians in the Octavius against various charges of fornication, incest, drunkenness, child murder, and cannibalization. I think some of that might lie behind Pliny's apparent surprise that the Christians' love feast seems to be benign. Pliny was dealing with Christians around 110 but the rumors could well be earlier.
Octavius IX
quote:
"Everywhere also there is mingled among them a certain religion of lust, and they call one another promiscuously brothers and sisters, that even a not unusual debauchery may by the intervention of that sacred name become incestuous: it is thus that their vain and senseless superstition glories in crimes."
He then goes into details.
And Pliny's letter (my emphasis)
quote:
They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food--but ordinary and innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden political associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition.
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spinner of webs
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Penny S
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# 14768
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Posted
Looking at the passage again, the punctuation is interesting. Before the women are listed, there is a colon in the versions I looked at. (Revised English, New Revised Standard Version, as well as Ricardus' quote.) Then the list is divided by commas, which is what suggested that all of them are included in the clause about demons and infirmities. But I don't know how this appears in the Koine - can't do Greek.
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Lamb Chopped
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# 5528
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Posted
There was no punctuation in the originals; that was all added later. So you can't safely draw any conclusions, even from punctuation that appears in modern critical editions of the Greek New Testament; the editors made punctuation decisions so we wouldn't be faced with a mass of unbroken text as the ancients would have been.
This post in ancient times would start something like this:
THEREWASNOPUNCTUATIONIN THEORIGINALSTHATWASALL
(a single space added to avoid breaking scroll lock; you'd not get spaces either)
[ 12. May 2014, 00:03: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
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Belle Ringer
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# 13379
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Posted
The mention of women with apparently control over significant amounts of money brings to mind discussions I've read arguing Martha (of Mary and Martha fame) had to be the madam of a house of prostitution because she invited Jesus to her home but no respectable woman would have her own house, it would be her husband's house, yet we see only two women and an unrelated man (Jesus) in Martha's house.
Perhaps we have misunderstood the nature of that society? Have we imposed on it a degree of male dominance (reflecting the male dominant Western culture in all but the most recent half-century of Bible interpretation) that was not in fact as true of them as we have been taught?
Humans often see reality through a filter of their own expectations, Bible scholars are probably no different.
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Lamb Chopped
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# 5528
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Posted
Sound like freaks to me (the arguers, I mean, not M and M). Why shouldn't a sibling group live together? And if Martha were either the eldest or the most dominant, it would be totally natural to refer to it as "her" house, regardless of where legal ownership was vested. For that matter, if Martha were a widow in possession of a house, she could easily bring her siblings to live with her.
The biggest problem with the prostitution theory is that the Jewish leaders show up in force at Lazarus' death--which argues that the family was socially prominent.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
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Honest Ron Bacardi
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# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Sound like freaks to me (the arguers, I mean, not M and M). ...
Me too, LC. That makes it sound like the Taliban on a bad day. Surely the evidence denies that. Which is not to say that we would deem the situation acceptable to us today, but it is at least illustrative of the nonsense that presentism can cause.
The "wife of noble character" at the end of Proverbs certainly is responsible for her own affairs and those of her family - not only that, but in doing so she brings glory to her family. Proverbs is part of the Wisdom tradition in which the wisdom of God is pictured as a virtuous woman, so she also serves a literary purpose, but we can equally infer that it would make little sense to speak of women in such a way if they were not able to behave as described. There's archaeological evidence that would tend to back that up BTW.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Penny S
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# 14768
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
There was no punctuation in the originals; that was all added later. So you can't safely draw any conclusions, even from punctuation that appears in modern critical editions of the Greek New Testament; the editors made punctuation decisions so we wouldn't be faced with a mass of unbroken text as the ancients would have been.
This post in ancient times would start something like this:
THEREWASNOPUNCTUATIONIN THEORIGINALSTHATWASALL
(a single space added to avoid breaking scroll lock; you'd not get spaces either)
I rather thought that might be the case. I knew about the absence of word spacing - which presumably imposed the necessity of reading out loud. I can't recall which Irish saint it was who amazed people by reading silently.
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Penny S
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# 14768
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Posted
Second post apology. If there were the possibility of accusing Jesus of bad behaviour with regard to women, wouldn't it have found its way into the Talmud? Apparently Rashi did that with Bruria, some time after her time.
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Chamois
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# 16204
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Posted
Originally posted by Penny S:
quote:
If there were the possibility of accusing Jesus of bad behaviour with regard to women, wouldn't it have found its way into the Talmud? Apparently Rashi did that with Bruria, some time after her time.
I would have thought so, too. If not the Talmud, some other Jewish literature. Wasn't there anti-Christian polemic in the 2nd and 3rd centuries based on the grounds that Jesus was illegitimate?
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The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases
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Lamb Chopped
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# 5528
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Posted
there are illegitimacy claims, yes, but I'm astonished nobody's come up with Jesus-himself-misbehaving-sexually slurs. Particularly with his propensity for treating women like human beings.
Frankly, I'm envious. If we only knew how he did it, imagine the greater peace we'd have in the parishes! Every pastor I've ever spoken to has stories to tell.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
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Ricardus
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# 8757
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Posted
IIRC quite a few of the apocryphal gospels have verses that are clearly intended to refute the illegitimacy claims.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
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Chamois
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# 16204
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Posted
Yes indeed, but the point I was trying to make was (as Lamb Chopped says) if opponents of the early church brought up Jesus' alleged illegitimacy it's astonishing that they didn't also bring up accusations of misbehaviour with women if there were any grounds at all for such accusations.
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Lamb Chopped
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# 5528
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Posted
Even if (as I'm sure) there were NO grounds for those kind of accusations!
I live in a culture which regularly makes up wholly unsupported fairytales about its leaders. I mean, seriously. You don't need to be caught talking to a woman alone to be accused--you don't even have to KNOW that woman, some idiot is going to get bored some morning and make up a story about how you're having a menage-a-trois with that woman and her mopstick, and spread it all over town. It's just what they do when they get bored. They make up gossipy shit about local "celebrities"--and in such a small community, every lowly teacher or pastor is fair game as a "celebrity" (Yes, I was shocked when I first realized this too.)
Now Jesus was and is certainly a far better known person than any of us. And he had, and has, enemies a-plenty. I can't figure out why they failed to pick up this incredibly easy slur on his character. Because all you have to say is "I saw Jesus with X"--no evidence required, and there will always be some fool to believe you. Even Jesus can't prove a negative.
I suppose there's a historical PhD dissertation in this somewhere.
[ 17. May 2014, 23:31: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
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Ricardus
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# 8757
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Posted
Chamois - I know, I was basically agreeing with Lamb Chopped, and also showing off what obscure texts I've read. ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
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Penny S
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# 14768
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Posted
I've been doing some nosing around in what have turned out to be some very nasty places, not what I was looking for, but who would have believed both Muslim and Christian (apply so-called to both of those, I think) sites using the same words in the same sentences, to "expose" the way the Talmud attacks a) God's prophet and b) God's Son?
So they've dredged up every reference they can to Jesus, someone else of the same name, someone else of a similar name, someone else of a completely different name, and someone else for whom no name is given, and explained them all as if they are clearly blasphemous about Jesus, when is some cases they have to explain in what way they are derogatory. (They've done the same for his mother as well.)
They have found sexual slights against Mary, or someone else of the same name (see above), in order to say that Talmud calls Jesus illegitimate.
They have not given one example of any action by any of the supposed Jesuses which could be interpreted as sexual immorality. Which is curious, because in some cases the introduction says that Talmud says that Jesus was immoral in that way, but then what follows gives absolutely no further quotes or references.
These are people, very nasty and anti-semitic people, who would love to find evidence for Talmud having accused Jesus in this way, and they haven't.
One source used the word seducer, another translation gave enticer, but in context, the word was clearly used of someone who was drawing people away from the proper belief and practice of Judaism, and it was to do with ideas, not bodies, and was recognised as such.
So, really easy to make this accusation, in view of Jesus' relations with women in general, and Lazarus' sisters and Mary Magdalene in particular, and yet it was not made, not then, and not now.
This is interesting.
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Ricardus
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# 8757
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Posted
A few centuries later, St Jerome seems to have spent a lot of time in Rome surrounded by unattached women, and even to have taken two of them with him into the Egyptian desert, without apparently causing a scandal.
According to the Vita Sancti Hieronymi secundum Vicipediam*:
quote:
In Rome he was surrounded by a circle of well-born and well-educated women, including some from the noblest patrician families, such as the widows Lea, Marcella and Paula, with their daughters Blaesilla and Eustochium. [...] In August 385, he left Rome for good and returned to Antioch, accompanied by his brother Paulinianus and several friends, and followed a little later by Paula and Eustochium, who had resolved to end their days in the Holy Land. In the winter of 385, Jerome acted as their spiritual adviser. The pilgrims, joined by Bishop Paulinus of Antioch, visited Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and the holy places of Galilee, and then went to Egypt, the home of the great heroes of the ascetic life.
* Life of St Jerome according to Wikipedia
[ 19. May 2014, 21:04: Message edited by: Ricardus ]
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
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stonespring
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# 15530
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
I've been doing some nosing around in what have turned out to be some very nasty places, not what I was looking for, but who would have believed both Muslim and Christian (apply so-called to both of those, I think) sites using the same words in the same sentences, to "expose" the way the Talmud attacks a) God's prophet and b) God's Son?
So they've dredged up every reference they can to Jesus, someone else of the same name, someone else of a similar name, someone else of a completely different name, and someone else for whom no name is given, and explained them all as if they are clearly blasphemous about Jesus, when is some cases they have to explain in what way they are derogatory. (They've done the same for his mother as well.)
They have found sexual slights against Mary, or someone else of the same name (see above), in order to say that Talmud calls Jesus illegitimate.
They have not given one example of any action by any of the supposed Jesuses which could be interpreted as sexual immorality. Which is curious, because in some cases the introduction says that Talmud says that Jesus was immoral in that way, but then what follows gives absolutely no further quotes or references.
These are people, very nasty and anti-semitic people, who would love to find evidence for Talmud having accused Jesus in this way, and they haven't.
One source used the word seducer, another translation gave enticer, but in context, the word was clearly used of someone who was drawing people away from the proper belief and practice of Judaism, and it was to do with ideas, not bodies, and was recognised as such.
So, really easy to make this accusation, in view of Jesus' relations with women in general, and Lazarus' sisters and Mary Magdalene in particular, and yet it was not made, not then, and not now.
This is interesting.
It makes perfect sense to me that if you want to malign a religion, you would attack the sexual purity of the women involved with its founding. Today people get just as furious about allegations about Jesus' sex life as they would about allegations about the Blessed Virgin Mary, but back in late Antiquity I would think female chastity was a much more inflammatory issue than male chastity - even the male chastity of Christ. Not that Christians wouldn't have been offended by accusations about Christ's sex life (and I think Christians in the early church were accused of having all kinds of orgies), but if you really want to get the blood boiling, what you would do back then is malign a group's women.
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Penny S
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# 14768
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Posted
But the only one maligned was Jesus' mother. All the others, and Jesus' relations with them, were ignored. Which, because, as you say, it's easy to attack the women, is odd.
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