Women and Christian Origins (review)

Ross Shepard Kraemer and Mary Rose D'Angelo, editors. Women and Christian Origins. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. x + 406. $55.00.

This work is a collection of fourteen essays by ten authors on women in antiquity and how gender played a role in the beliefs and lives of the early Christians. They are divided into four sections: the Jewish and Greco-Roman context(s), women in the Gospels, women in the Pauline tradition, and gender and authority in the early church. The editors describe this collection as "an anthology that would work well in the kinds of introductory courses we and many of our colleagues regularly teach" (6).

The first essay, "Women's Lives in the Ancient Mediterranean," by Judith Hallett, stresses the Greco-Roman depiction of the "sameness" of the genders, while acknowledging that this is in the context of the overwhelming emphasis on the "otherness" or differences between the genders in the Greco-Roman world. Although this may be an admirable corrective to balance the emphasis elsewhere, it falls short on several major points. First, in any of the examples given, is there anything resembling a real idea of "sameness" between the genders, or are there only females (human and divine) behaving in masculine ways? If the latter, then this would not be a real concept of gender "sameness," but only another example of gender "otherness," although an "otherness" that can be overcome: even cultures that regard the genders as radically and fundamentally different would still say that some men behave effeminately and some women behave in a masculine way. Secondly, in an analysis that relies so heavily on literary depictions of women, the absence of several of the strongest female characters from ancient literature is remarkable: Medea, Clytemnestra, and Antigone are barely mentioned, perhaps because in their stories, it is quite explicit that the genders are not the same, but that women are acting like men (usually with disastrous results). In short, it is not clear from the examples given that the Greco-Roman world had a concept of the "sameness" of the genders, and therefore emphasizing it this strongly does not seem pedagogically appropriate in an anthology intended for introductory classes. Any undergraduate would come away from this essay thinking that before Christianity, the Greeks and Romans primarily thought that women and men were the same. Finally, why is Augustine singled out for rebuke, so much so that he is the only named representative of "the male supremacist tradition" (18), except to lead students to draw the further conclusion that Christianity stamped out this kinder, gentler Greco-Roman gender egalitarianism?

Most of the other essays in this collection, however, are characterized by admirable subtlety and clarity. The two essays by Ross Kraemer, "Jewish Women and Christian Origins: Some Caveats," and "Jewish Women and Women's Judaism(s) at the Beginning of Christianity," effectively dismantle Christian claims of Jesus' uniqueness in his attitude towards women, as well as showing how Jewish women were similar in their status and treatment to contemporary non-Jewish women. She does this through the careful analysis of numerous texts; her reconstruction of the lives of Berenice and Babatha is especially thoughtful and suggestive. Lynn LiDonnici's essay, "Women's Religions and Religious Lives in the Greco-Roman City," is an elegantly written description of religious life in antiquity. It captures the variety and vitality of religious life by its several subtle distinctions: between public and private, pro-cultural and counter-cultural, and religious practices unique to women, versus those shared by both sexes.

The essays on the early Church are also useful and thorough. Anne McGuire's essay, "Women, Gender, and Gnosis in Gnostic Texts and Traditions," is an excellent introduction to Gnostic thought and texts that judiciously utilizes both antiheretical and primary texts; it is especially welcome in its attempt to get away from the naive (and frequent) reading of texts as direct reflections of social reality. In her...