Who Was Mary Magdalene? The Wife of Jesus? A Whore? How Did Mary's Reputation Evolve?

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Was Mary Magdalene Wife of Jesus?

Was Mary Magdalene a Prostitute?

How did her reputation evolve “From Saint to Sinner?”

http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/people-in-the-bible/was-mary-magdalene-wife-of-jesus-was-mary-magdalene-a-prostitute/

Was Mary Magdalene a prostitute?

Was Mary Magdalene wife of Jesus?

Her being a repentant whore was not part of the biblical text.

Biblical Archaeology Society Staff

November 16, 2014

Read Birger A. Pearson’s article “From Saint to Sinner” as it originally appeared in Bible Review,

Spring 2005. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily in October 2011.—Ed.

As Pearson notes, there’s no substantial evidence to either of these theories. As for her being named in the New Testament, none of the Gospels hints of her as being Mary Magdalene, wife of Jesus. Three Gospels name her only as a witness of his crucifixion and/or burial. All four Gospels place her at the scene of Jesus’ resurrection (though Luke does not list her as a witness). Only in the Gospel according to Luke is there even the slightest implication that she might have had a past life that could raise eyebrows and the question: Was Mary Magdalene a prostitute? Luke 8 names her among other female followers and financial supporters and says that she had been released from the power of seven demons:

Luke 8 (ESV) 1 Soon afterward he [Jesus] went on through cities and villages, proclaiming

and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him,

2 and  also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary,

called  Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, 3 and Joanna, the wife of

Chuza, Herod's household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for

them[a] out of their means.

Theologians in later centuries consciously tried to downplay her role as an influential follower of Jesus. She became identified with the “sinful woman” in Luke 7 whom Jesus forgives as she anoints his feet, as well as the woman “taken in adultery” whom Jesus saved from stoning. In the sixth century Pope Gregory preached of her being a model penitent.

Only the Western church has said that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. The Eastern church has always honored her as an apostle, noting her as the “apostle to the apostles,” based on the account of the Gospel of John which has Jesus calling her by name and telling her to give the news of his resurrection to the other disciples.

As Birger A. Pearson sets forth in “From Saint to Sinner” below, a noncanonical Gospel of Mary enhances her role to a greater proportion. Her ongoing role in the early church is subject to speculation, but she is indeed getting more respect in theological circles, not for being Mary Magdalene wife of Jesus nor for being Mary Magdalene a prostitute but for being a faithful follower of her Rabboni—her teacher.

The recent discovery of a Coptic papyrus fragment reignited the discussion on Jesus’ marriage.

Read more about this early Christian text featuring the words “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife …,’”

as well as new tests conducted on the papyrus fragment’s authenticity.

Jesus washes the feet of his apostles

A sinful woman (not Mary Magdalene) washes the feet of Jesus with her hair

From Saint to Sinner

by Birger A. Pearson

Dan Brown, William Phipps, Martin Scorsese—when looking for a lover or wife for Jesus, they all chose Mary Magdalene. It’s not surprising. Mary Magdalene has long been recognized as one of the New Testament’s more alluring women. Most people think of her as a prostitute who repented after encountering Jesus. In contemporary British artist Chris Gollon’s painting of The Pre-penitent Magdalene (at right), Mary appears as a defiant femme fatal adorned with jewelry and make-up.

Yet, the New Testament says no such thing. Rather, in three of the four canonical Gospels, Mary Magdalene is mentioned by name only in connection with the death and resurrection of Jesus. She is a witness to his crucifixion (Matthew 27:55–56; Mark 15:40–41; John 19:25) and burial (Matthew 27:61; Mark 15:47).1 She is one of the first (the first, according to John) to arrive at the empty tomb (Matthew 28:1–8; Mark 16:1–8; Luke 24:1–12; John 20:1–10). And she is one of the first (again, the first, according to John) to witness the risen Christ (Matthew 28:9; John 20:14–18).

Only the Gospel of Luke names Mary Magdalene in connection with Jesus’ daily life and public ministry. There, Mary is listed as someone who followed Jesus as he went from village to village, bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. “And the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means” (Luke 8:1–3).

To learn more about Biblical women with slighted traditions, take a look at the Bible History Daily

feature Scandalous Women in the Bible, which includes articles on Jezebel and Lilith.

The epithet “Magdalene,” used in all the Gospels, indicates that Mary came from the mercantile town of Migdal (Taricheae) on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee.2 She must have been a woman of some means, if Luke’s account can be trusted, for she helped provide Jesus and the twelve with material support. She had also experienced Jesus’ healing power, presumably involving an exorcism of some sort.3 It should be noted, though, that the author of the Gospel of Luke has a tendency to diminish Mary Magdalene’s role, in comparison with her treatment in the other three canonical Gospels. For example, Luke is alone among the canonical Gospels in claiming that the risen Lord appeared exclusively to Peter (Luke 24:34; cf. 1 Corinthians 15:5). No appearance to Mary is recorded in Luke.4 Accordingly, his reference to seven demons may be tendentious.5

So how did Mary become a repentant whore in Christian legend?

Critical scholarship has provided the answer to this question: It happened as a conscious attempt on the part of later interpreters of the Gospels to diminish her.a They did this by identifying her with other women mentioned in the Gospels, most notably the unnamed sinful woman who anoints Jesus’ feet with ointment and whose sins he forgives (Luke 7:36–50) and the unnamed woman taken in adultery (John 7:53–8:11).6This conflation of texts was given sanction in the sixth century by Pope Gregory the Great (540–604) in a famous homily in which he holds Mary up as a model of penitence. Pope Gregory positively identified the unnamed anointer and adulteress as Mary, and suggested that the ointment used on Jesus’ feet was once used to scent Mary’s body. The seven demons Jesus cast out of Mary were, according to Gregory, the seven cardinal sins, which include lust. But, wrote Gregory, when Mary threw herself at Jesus’ feet, “she turned the mass of her crimes to virtues, in order to serve God entirely in penance.”7

Thus was invented the original hooker with a heart of gold.

Interestingly, the legend of Mary the penitent whore is found only in the Western church; in the Eastern church she is honored for what she was, a witness to the resurrection. Another Gregory, Gregory of Antioch (also sixth century), in one of his homilies, has Jesus say to the women at the tomb: “Proclaim to my disciples the mysteries which you have seen. Become the first teacher of the teachers. Peter, who has denied me, must learn that I can also choose women as apostles.”8

Mary’s historical role as an apostle is clearly tied to her experience of an appearance of the risen Christ. As noted above, in the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene goes alone to the tomb, where she is the first to see the risen Jesus. He tells her to tell his “brethren” that he is ascending to God the Father. She then goes to the disciples and tells them what she has seen and heard (John 20:1, 11–19).9 Later that same day Jesus appears to the disciples gathered behind closed doors. He thus confirms in person the message Mary had given them. In contrast to Luke’s picture of Mary, in John she emerges as an “apostle to the apostles.”10

The Galilee is one of the most evocative locales in the New Testament—the area where Jesus was raised and where many of the Apostles came from. Our free eBook, The Galilee Jesus Knew, focuses on several aspects of Galilee: how Jewish the area was in Jesus’ time, the ports and the fishing industry that were so central to the region, and several sites where Jesus likely stayed and preached.

The positive role played by Mary Magdalene in the Gospel of John was considerably enhanced in Christian circles that honored her memory. The Gospel of Mary, quoted in the accompanying article, is the product of one such early Christian community. In her recent book The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene, Jane Schaberg presents the following nine-point “profile” of Mary:

(1) Mary is prominent among the followers of Jesus; (2) she exists as a character, as a memory, in a textual world of androcentric language and patriarchal ideology; (3) she speaks boldly; (4) she plays a leadership role vis-à-vis the male disciples; (5) she is a visionary; (6) she is praised for her superior understanding; (7) she is identified as the intimate companion of Jesus; (8) she is opposed by or in open conflict with one or more of the male disciples; (9) she is defended by Jesus.11

All nine characteristics are prominent in the Gospel of Mary, although many of these nine points are found in other noncanonical texts.

But does this portrait of Mary Magdalene as an early Church leader reflect historical reality? Perhaps. One scholar has suggested that Mary may even be mentioned along with a few other female leaders whom Paul sends greetings to in Romans 16:6, where he writes: “Greet Mary, who has worked very hard among you.”12 But this must remain speculative. It is true that we have no reason to suspect Mary was a prostitute or lover or wife of Jesus. But it is also true that if she was an apostle to the apostles, the evidence for her role has successfully been suppressed—at least until now. As a result of the recent work of a number of scholars, Mary Magdalene’s apostolic role in early Christianity is getting a new hearing.

That, in my view, is more important than viewing her as Jesus’ wife.

“From Saint to Sinner” by Birger A. Pearson originally appeared in the Spring 2005 issue of Bible Review.

Birger A. Pearson is professor emeritus of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is one of the world’s leading experts on the Coptic gospels and has written hundreds of articles and books on Gnosticism and the Nag Hammadi codices. Since 1968, he has been involved in Claremont University’s Coptic Gnostic Library project.

Notes

1 Luke 23:55 refers to “the women who had come with him from Galilee” without naming any of them.

2 On that town, see esp. Jane Schaberg, The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament (New York: Continuum, 2002), pp. 47–64.

3 Reference to seven demons may mean that she was totally possessed. On the seven demons see Esther de Boer, Mary Magdalene: Beyond the Myth (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1997), pp. 48–55.

4 See esp. Ann Graham Brock, Mary Magdalene, the First Apostle: The Struggle for Authority(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), pp. 19–40.

5 In a secondary ending to the Gospel of Mark, it is said that Jesus “appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons” (Mark 16:9). The secondary ending is probably dependent upon the Gospel of Luke. As the best manuscripts attest, the earliest versions of Mark end at 16:8.

6 Mel Gibson makes that identification in his movie, The Passion of the Christ. On the tendentious conflation of traditions, see esp. Schaberg, Resurrection of Mary Magdalene, pp. 65–77, 82.

7 Quoted in Schaberg, Resurrection of Mary Magdalene, p. 82.

8 Quoted in de Boer, Mary Magdalene, p. 12.

9 Vv. 2–10 are probably a later interpolation into a more original account and interrupt the flow of the narrative.

10 On this term see Brock, Mary Magdalene, the First Apostle, p. 1. Brock’s book is a valuable discussion of the apostolate in early Christianity and Mary’s role in it.

11 Schaberg, Resurrection of Mary Magdalene, p. 129.

12 de Boer, Mary Magdalene, pp. 59–60.

a See Jane Schaberg, “How Mary Magdalene Became a Whore,” Bible Review, October 1992.

Who’s Who Among Biblical Women Leaders

Who’s Who Among Biblical Women Leaders

http://rachelheldevans.com/mutuality-women-leaders

by Rachel Held Evans

June 6, 2012

Comments

This is the fifth post in our series, One In Christ: A Week of Mutuality, dedicated to discussing an egalitarian view of gender—including relevant biblical texts and practical applications. The goal is to show how scripture, tradition, reason, and experience all support a posture of equality toward women, one that favors mutuality rather than hierarchy, in the home, Church, and society.

The reason I want to highlight the “who’s who” among biblical woman leaders today is this: Later, we will be discussing 1 Timothy 2:11-15, the passage in which Paul forbids Ephesian women from teaching in church. Unfortunately, when it comes to womanhood, many Christians tend to read the rest of scripture through the lens of 1 Timothy 2:11-15 rather than the other way around. By highlighting the many female leaders and teachers in scripture, I’m hoping to set the stage so that we see 1 Timothy 2 for what it is—an anomaly. It’s hard to argue that Paul’s statements there are meant to be universally applied when so many women from scripture are honored by God and praised by their community for teaching and exercising leadership.

But before we begin, a disclaimer: There is no doubt that the Bible was written in a patriarchal culture. As a result, men are named significantly more often, men serve as protagonists in the biblical stories more often, and men hold positions of leadership more often. In addition, there are stories and laws found in scripture regarding women that are profoundly troubling: women are identified as property (Exodus 20:17, Deuteronomy 5:21, Judges 5:30), rape laws require fathers to be paid for damages and the female victim to marry her rapist (Deuteronomy 22:28-29), virginity expectations focused almost exclusively on girls, women are valued less in vow redemption (Leviticus 27:1-8), the birth of girls represents a greater impurity assessment in the Levitical Purity Codes (Leviticus 12:2-4), women are considered spoils of war (Numbers 31:32-35, Deuteronomy 20:14, Deuteronomy 21:10-15, Judges 5:30, Judges 21:11-23), adultery laws subjected women to more scrutiny and punished them more severely than men, polygamy was common, owning concubines was common, and impregnating slave women was common. Furthermore, stories surrounding women like Tamar of Genesis, Dinah, Hagar, the dismembered concubine of Judges 19, Jephthah's daughter, Tamar of the Davidic narrative, and so on reveal the profound inequity that characterized day-to-day life for women living in the ancient Near East.

Sometimes egalitarians, in their enthusiasm for advancing the equality and dignity of women in the Church, gloss over such passages or try to explain them away. I’m not interested in doing that. I can’t do that. I’ve tried, and frankly, it feels like I am dishonoring the suffering and the bravery of these women by pretending their oppression wasn’t really so bad. (I spend a lot more time discussing and wrestling with the “texts of terror” in A Year of Biblical Womanhood.) Still, it’s astounding that, in the midst of such a patriarchal culture, so many women are honored as leaders and teachers in scripture. This speaks volumes about the remarkable wisdom, resourcefulness, courage, and godliness it would take to teach and lead in such times, and says a lot about the value God places on women even when the world does not.

What follows is not a comprehensive list by any stretch. There are far too many women of valor found in the Bible to list in a single blog post, so I’ve tried to focus specifically on teaching and leading.

Deborah

In the midst of the violent and turbulent aftermath of Joshua’s conquest of Canaan, “the Lord raised up judges” to provide leadership for the kingless people (Judges 2:16). One such leader was Deborah. At the beginning of Judges 4, the text reports that “Deborah, a prophet, the wife of Lappidoth, was leading Israel at that time.” As both prophet and judge, Deborah exercised complete religious, political, judicial, and militaristic authority over the people of Israel. She was essentially Israel’s commander-in-chief, said to issue her rulings from beneath a palm in the hills of Ephraim. Judges 4-5 famously recounts Deborah’s successful military campaign against Sisera. With the help of Deborah’s doubtful military commander, Barak, and another very gutsy woman named Jael (who exhibited her “gentle and quiet spirit” by driving a tent peg through Sisera’s skull), the Canaanite armies are defeated. Israel’s victory is punctuated in scripture by the Song of Deborah—one of the ancient Near East’s oldest military poems. Under Deborah’s continued leadership, the people of Israel enjoyed forty years of peace before the cycle of violence began again.

Miriam

The prophet Micah identifies Miriam as one of the three leaders sent by God to bring Israel out of Egypt (Micah 6:4). Like Deborah, Miriam is identified as a prophetess, and she seemed to have held special responsibilities in leading the Israelites in worship. Her song, in Exodus 15 is especially beautiful. Ironically, there are complementarian churches that forbid women from reading Scripture aloud in church, even Scripture like Miriam’s song, Deborah’s song, the reflections of the Shulamite girl in Song of Songs, the Prayer of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2:1-10, and, of course, the Magnificat—all of which reflect the thoughts and ideas of women.

Huldah

Described as Israel’s last good king, Josiah reigned for thirty-one years during a final period of peace before the Babylonian exile. About halfway through his reign, Josiah learned that the long-lost Book of the Law—the Torah—has been discovered in the temple. Upon hearing the words of the Torah read aloud, Josiah tore his robes in repentance and summoned a prophet, for he saw how far Israel had strayed from God’s ways. It’s important to note that contemporaries of Josiah included the famed prophets Jeremiah, Zephaniah, Nahum, and Habakkuk. But Josiah did not ask for help from any of those men. Instead he chose Huldah, a woman and prophet who lived in Jerusalem. “Huldah is not chosen because no men were available,” writes Scot McKnight in The Blue Parakeet, “She is chosen because she is truly exceptional among the prophets.” Huldah first confirmed the scroll’s authenticity and then told Josiah that the disobedience of Israel would indeed lead to its destruction, but that Josiah himself would die in peace. Thus, Huldah not only interpreted, but also authorized, the document that would become the core of Jewish and Christian Scripture. Her prophecy was fulfilled thirty-five years later (2 Kings 22).

Other Prophetesses:

The Bible identifies ten female prophets in the Old and New Testaments: Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Noadiah, Isaiah’s wife, Anna, and the four daughters of Philip. In addition, women like Rachel, Hannah, Abigail, Elisabeth, and Mary are described as having prophetic visions about the future of their children, the destiny of nations, and the coming Messiah.

When the Holy Spirit descended upon the first Christians at Pentecost, Peter drew from the words of the prophet Joel to describe what had happened, saying, “Your sons and daughters will prophesy...Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy" (Acts 2:17–18). Thus, the breaking in of the new creation after Christ’s resurrection unleashed a cacophony of new prophetic voices, and apparently, prophesying among women was such a common activity in the early church that Paul had to remind women to cover their heads when they did it. While some may try to downplay biblical examples of female disciples, deacons, leaders, and apostles, no one can deny the Bible’s long tradition of prophetic feminine vision. And I believe this prophetic vision is as important today as it was in the days of the early church. We would do well to heed the words of Jesus: “Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward” (Matthew 10:41). For more on this, see “...Your daughters will prophesy...”

Ruth

I remember attending a conservative Christian conference as a twenty-something, where a speaker told a room full of teenagers that a girl initiating a friendship with a boy was a violation of biblical principles that require men to be the leaders in a relationship. (One of the other girls in attendance started crying because she had invited a boy to prom!) I didn’t realize it then, but that speaker really needed to re-visit the book of Ruth, in which Ruth and Naomi hatch the plan to get Boaz’s attention, and in which Ruth is the one to approach Boaz under the cover of night and essentially ask for his hand in marriage.

Other women who showed leadership in their personal relationships with men include Sarah (God told Abraham to “listen to your wife Sarah”), Rebecca, Rachel, Tamar, Leah, Abigail, and Bathsheba.

The Shulamite Girl

Another great example of a woman exhibiting leadership in her marriage is the Shulamite girl of Song of Songs. There’s too much to say about her here—I spent much more time on Song of Songs in my book—but suffice it to say, this girl knows exactly what she wants, and isn’t afraid to tell her lover to make it happen!

The Shulamite girl is the first to speak in the poem, declaring, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth” (1:1). She actively seeks out the handsome shepherd in his fields, saying “Why should I be like a veiled woman beside the flocks of your friends?” (v. 7). When the two are separated, she goes out into the streets, looking for him, and at one point is accosted by the city guards. When she finds him, she brings him into a private room. There, she says, “I held him and would not him go” (3:4). It is she who initiates a sexual encounter in a vineyard in the countryside, and it is she who offers her lover a frank invitation to drink her wine and to enter her “garden” to taste its choice fruits. Indeed some of the most beautiful lines of the poem—and arguably of the Bible—are hers: “Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death” (8:6).

Alise Wright wrote a great post for our Week of Mutuality about the inconsistency of preaching mutuality in the bedroom, but not in other areas of life. (See “You don’t have to take your clothes off to be egalitarian.”)

Esther

Esther was something of an unwitting biblical leader, but an incredibly brave and wise one nonetheless. She was forced, along with perhaps thousands of virgin girls from Susa, into King Xerxes harem, where she became one of the king’s favorites. Despite some recent (and truly horrendous) complementarian interpretations that say Esther’s story is about godly submission in marriage, it is Esther’s defiance to her husband in speaking to him without being summoned (at the risk of death), that ultimately saves the Jewish people. (I wrote more about Esther and complementarianism in a post entitled “Esther and Vashit: The Real Story”)

Rizpah

Rizpah a sort of Old Testament Antigone, who protested the massacre of her sons by publicly mourning, night and day, at the site where their bodies had been left to the elements. She cried out for months, “from the beginning of the harvest till the rain poured down from the heavens on the bodies,” keeping watch over her sons and fending away wild animals and birds (2 Samuel 21:10). Her unrelenting despair won the solidarity of a war-weary people and finally moved King David to grant the men a proper burial, thus ending the famine that had swept the land. She serves as an amazing example of the effectiveness of prophetic protest.

Mary of Nazareth

I loved what Mike Zosel wrote about Mary in his response to John Piper’s call for a “masculine Christianity”:

“God did not consider woman’s flesh as something to be despised or ignored or covered up. No. God selected it to be the very vessel of our salvation in Jesus Christ. God saw fit to honor women by entering the world through one of them. God partnered with a woman, in her flesh, to become flesh... So, all of this talk about the Church’s ministry being a ‘masculine ministry’, as if women are primarily ‘alongside’ men (read: nonessential)? Please. In order to bring salvation to all men, even God needed the help of a woman. In fact, God could never have done it without her!” (Read the rest here.)

In addition to being charged with the task of bringing the Son of God into the world, Mary exhibited great leadership in the formation of Christianity. In the Magnificat, we see that Mary boasted a strong familiarity with scripture as well as a striking prophetic vision for what it meant (Luke 1:16-55). Mary’s clear passion regarding justice for the poor and marginalized undoubtedly influenced the teachings of not only Jesus, but also his brother James. (I realize Catholics will disagree with me on this!) It was Mary who urged Jesus to perform his first miracle, and it was Mary who must have provided information to the writers of the gospels concerning Jesus’ birth.

Martha

Martha was one of Jesus’ closest friends and disciples. According to the gospels of Luke and John, she opened her home to Him, shared meals with Him, and stood by His side as He raised her brother, Lazarus, from the dead. John reports that “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus” (John 11:5). That Martha’s name appears before her brother’s suggests that this woman garnered considerable respect among the earliest followers of Jesus.

Mary of Bethany

Rabbi Eliezer wrote in the first century that, “Rather should the words of the Torah be burned than entrusted to a woman...Whoever teaches his daughter the Torah is like one who teaches her obscenity.” (JT Sotah 3:4, 19a)

Jesus unabashedly defies this tradition by teaching the Torah to women, perhaps most notably Mary of Bethany. The fact that Mary is described by Luke as “sitting at the feet of Jesus” clearly identifies her as a disciple. And when Martha challenges Mary to get back to the more traditional role of serving from the kitchen, Jesus gently admonishes Martha to allow her sister to stay put.

“Martha, Martha,” he said, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” This is one of many, many examples of Jesus defying social norms to welcome women into his ministry. Any woman who is a follower of Jesus should remind herself now and then that, no matter what others may say, our esteemed status in Christ’s Kingdom cannot be taken away from us.

“The Women” (female disciples of Jesus)

When referring to the earliest followers of Jesus, the Gospel writers often speak of two groups of disciples: the Twelve and the Women. The Twelve refer to the twelve Jewish men chosen by Jesus to be his closest companions and first apostles, symbolic of the twelve tribes of Israel. The Women refer to an unspecified number of female disciples who also followed Jesus, welcoming him into their homes, financing his ministry, and often teaching the Twelve through their acts of faithfulness and love. Just as Jesus predicted, most of the Twelve abandoned him at his death (John 16:32). But the women remained by his side—through his death, burial, and resurrection. (For more on why Jesus’ choosing of the twelve male disciples should not exclude women from leadership see Daniel Kirk’s post, “On Jesus Choosing Twelve Males”)

Mary Magdalene

According to the gospels of Mark and Luke, Jesus cleansed Mary Magdalene of seven demons, after which she became a devoted disciple. She is mentioned by Luke in the same context as the Twelve as one who traveled with Jesus and helped finance his ministry. All four gospel accounts identify Mary Magdalene as among the first witnesses of the empty tomb. She is the one to breathlessly describes what she has seen to the male disciples, who initially discount her declaration, “I have seen the Lord!”, as the babblings of a foolish woman.

It has been noted that Mary’s announcement, “I have seen the Lord,” is the same credential used by Paul to insist on his own authority as an apostle:” 'Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lored?” (1 Cor. 9:1). For her valor in twice sharing the good news to the skeptical male disciples, the early church honored Mary Magdalene with the title of Apostle to the Apostles. That Christ ushered in this new era of life and liberation in the presence of women, and that he sent them out as the first witnesses of the complete gospel story, is perhaps the boldest, most overt affirmation of their equality in his kingdom that Jesus ever delivered. (For more, see “Women of the Passion, Part 4: Mary Magdalene – Apostle to the Apostles)

Tabitha

A stalwart force in the first-century effort to restore the dignity of widows was a woman named Tabitha. Likely a widow herself, but with means, Tabitha lived in the port city of Joppa at the time when Peter and Paul were busy spreading the gospel throughout Asia Minor. She was a renowned philanthropist, known throughout the land for “always doing good and helping the poor” (Acts 9:36). She was also a master seamstress, making robes and other clothing for the many widows in her care, presumably imparting on them the skills of the trade.

When first we hear of her in Luke’s book of Acts, she has succumbed to an illness, her body washed and prepared for burial. So critical was Tabitha’s ministry to the early church that Peter himself was summoned to her bedside, and when he arrived, he found widows from all across Joppa weeping together in Tabitha’s home. They showed him all the clothes she had made for them. Peter sent everyone out of the room and fell on his knees to pray. Apparently, God agreed that Tabitha was indeed indispensable, for Peter turned toward the body and said, “Tabitha, get up” (v. 40). Tabitha opened her eyes and sat up. Peter took her by the hand and helped her to her feet. Then he called for the widows, who ran into the room to find Tabitha alive. It is one of just two resurrection stories in the book of Acts. To Tabitha belongs the worthy distinction of being the only woman in the New Testament identified with the feminine form of the word “disciple”—mathetria. The word literally means “pupil,” or “apprentice,” which may suggest that at some point, Tabitha studied directly under Jesus, like Mary of Bethany.

Junia

Although her name appears just once in Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, the Apostle Junia is perhaps the most silenced woman of the Bible.

“Greet Andronicus and Junia,” Paul wrote in Romans 16:7, “my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.” Junia is the first and only woman in Scripture to be explicitly identified as an apostle. (Mary Magdalene’s status as apostle is debatable.) Apostles in the New Testament were disciples of Jesus devoted to spreading his teachings abroad. In addition to the original twelve apostles, the Bible speaks of apostles who served as traveling missionaries, teaching and leading the early church as it endured persecution and struggled through religious growing pains. Paul, Timothy, Barnabas Silas and Apollos were all apostles, as were Andronicus and Junia.

The fourth-century bishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom, said of Junia, “To be an apostle is something great. But to be outstanding among the apostles—just think what a wonderful song of praise that is! . . . Indeed how great the wisdom of this woman must have been that she was even deemed worthy of the title of apostle” (emphasis mine).

But as time went on, the mention of a female apostle in Scripture became inconvenient for the increasingly hierarchal Church, so a medieval theologian found a creative solution to the problem: he turned Junia into a man. "Andronicus and Junia" became "Andronicus and Junias." This was no small error. The masculine name Junias does not occur in a single inscription, letterhead, work of literature, or epitaph in the Greco-Roman world, while the feminine name Junia is everywhere. None of the Greek manuscripts suggests that a masculine form of this name should be used, and for the first thousand years of church history, Christian theologians ranging from Chrysostom to Origen to Jerome all identified the apostle Junia as a woman. But the myth caught on, especially after Martin Luther used Junias, rather than Junia, in his German translation of the Bible and identified the pair of former prisoners as male. To this day, one can find English translations of the Bible that turn the apostle Junia into a man. She’s just a little too inconvenient. (For more on this crazy story,check out Junia is Not Alone by Scot McKnight and Junia: The First Woman Apostle by Eldon Jay Epp.)

Phoebe

In Romans 16:1-2, Paul writes, “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon in the church in Cenchreae. I ask that you receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and give to her any help she may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me.”

Phoebe was one of many women in the early church to play an important role in directing the churches that met in their homes. Phoebe is not mentioned alongside a husband, so there’s a good chance she was single or a widow. She is identified as a deacon, which in the New Testament referred to a teacher and leader in the church, whether that person was a man or woman. (Yep, a “deaconess” is something we made up much later on.) In Paul’s letters, deacons are connected to ministry and service of the word (1 Corinthians 3:5-9).

In The Blue Parakeet, Scot McKnight notes that “it is possible that Phoebe, a benefactor or wealthy patron of Paul’s ministry of bringing the gospel to the Roman Empire, was responsible for getting his letter to the right people. Most today think Phoebe was Paul courier for the letter to the Romans. Since couriers were charged with responsibility to explain their letters, Phoebe probably read the letter aloud and answered questions the Roman Christians may have had...Phoebe, to put this graphically, can be seen s the first ‘commentator’ on the letter to the Romans.”

Again, how ironic that some complementarian churches forbid women from reading Scripture aloud in church when a woman may very well have been the first person to read the book of Romans aloud!

Priscilla

I was once asked if there was a marriage in scripture that I especially admired and would want to emulate in my own relationship with Dan. I immediately thought of the marriage between Priscilla and Aquilla. Complete with rhyming monikers, Priscilla and Aquila were the it couple of the early the church, always described as doing something interesting together— traveling, planting churches, teaching new converts, running a business. It’s unusual to find texts from the ancient world in which a woman’s name precedes her husband’s, but in the letters of Paul, Priscilla is often named before her husband, Aquila. Really, the two names appeared to be somewhat interchangeable in the minds of the early Christians. What a team these two must have made!

When Paul set out on a mission trip across Asia Minor, he took the couple with him, leaving them in Ephesus so they could minister to the church there. In Ephesus, Priscilla and Aquila met Apollos, “a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of Scripture” who was preaching in the synagogues. They invited him into their home and together “explained to him the way of God more adequately,” making them some of the earliest known teachers of Christian theology. Apollos would go on to be one of the most influential apostles of the day. It appears the couple then planted a church in the region, for when Paul writes back to the Christians in Corinth, he passes along greetings from “Aquila and Priscilla and the church that meets in their house.” (It’s hard to imagine that Priscilla, a gifted teacher, would have been prevented from speaking in her own home!)

Paul always spoke affectionately about Priscilla and Aquila, calling them his “co-workers in Christ Jesus,” and noting in Romans that the two “risked their necks” for him. “Not only I, but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them,” he writes (Romans 16:3-4). Some scholars are convinced that Priscilla wrote the mysterious, anonymous letter to the Hebrews found in the New Testament. They’ve got some interesting evidence to support that conclusion, but the jury’s still out. My personal theory is that Priscilla and Aquila wrote it together.

* * * * * * * * * *

Additional Resources: Women of the Passion Series, Women of the Torah: Matriarchs and Heroes of Israel (Ancient-Future Bible Study: Experience Scripture through Lectio Divina) by Stephen J. Binz, Women of the Gospels: Friends and Disciples of Jesus (Ancient-Future Bible Study: Experience Scripture through Lectio Divina) by Stephen J. Binz, Junia is Not Alone by Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible by Scot McKnight, Women's Bible Commentary: Expanded Edition by Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe, The Gospel of Ruth: Loving God Enough to Break the Rules by Carolyn Custis James, Women in Scripture: A Dictionary of Named and Unnamed Women in the Hebrew Bible, the Apocryphal/Deuteroca... Books, and the New Testament by Carol Meyers, Toni Craven and Ross Shepard Kraeme.)

Imaginatively Re-Inventing the Stories of Women in the Bible

Esther and Vashti: The Real Story

http://rachelheldevans.com/esther-and-vashti

by Rachel Held Evans

January 9, 2011

Comments

When I was a kid, I imagined Esther to be something of a beauty pageant contestant.

I figured that, in addition to her twelve months of beautification, she must have performed a talent and answered questions from a glass bowl before winning the heart of a love-struck King Xerxes.

I never learned in Sunday School that Esther, whose Jewish name was Hadassah, was forced, along with perhaps thousands of virgin girls from Susa, into King Xerxes harem. Or that the king had banished his first wife, Queen Vashti, for refusing to publicly flaunt her body before his drunken friends. Or that, in response, he had issued a ridiculous kingdom-wide decree that “all the women will respect their husbands, from the least to the greatest” and that “every man should be ruler over his own household.” Or that under the care of the royal Eunuchs, Esther and the women of the king’s harem each took a turn in the king’s bed to see who would please him best. Or that the women received just one night with the king, after which they were transferred to the eunuchs in charge of the concubines, with the instruction not to return to the king’s chamber unless summoned by name, under the penalty of death.

They left those details out of the flannel graphs.

Recently, some Christians have conjured a reinterpretation of the story of Esther that is equally as imaginative as my beauty queen version—one that casts Vashti as an ungodly wife for refusing to submit to her husband and Esther as a model of godly submission for respecting her husband.

In Real Marriage, (which I reviewed last week), Grace Driscoll writes that, “[Esther’s] example illustrates the repeated command across all Scripture that wives respectfully submit to their husbands and removes any excuse we have for disrespecting our husbands... Amazingly, when she had an extremely urgent request, she respectfully waited outside [her husband's] room to be heard. She didn't barge in and demand that he do what she wanted …She didn't disregard his need for respect."

And Dorothy Patterson, an editor of the new Evangelical Women’s Commentary, notes, “Most people don’t think about submission as being a topic in the book of Esther, but it is clearly in the text. I think our readers will find it interesting to see how you take the Old Testament roots for something that is very heavily discussed in the New Testament.”

Both of these authors fail to mention the fact that the reason Esther waited outside her husband’s room was because she would have been executed by Xerxes if she hadn’t!

Or that the very act of summoning her husband was an act of defiance, not submission, that could have gotten Esther killed. Or that the dynamic between Esther and Xerxes is decidedly not the picture of a healthy marital relationship, what with the harem and death threats and all.

Driscoll and Patterson’s bizarre interpretations of Vashti, Esther, and Xerxes represent yet another example of how the modern biblical womanhood movement isn’t as concerned with returning to biblical womanhood as it is with returning to 1950s, pre-feminist America.

Rhonda Kelley, co-editor of the New Evangelical Women’s Commentary, said this of young Christian women today: “Not only do they not have a framework, but in many situations our women students have been raised by mothers who were a product of the feminist movement. And so even their Christian mothers didn’t fully understand what it meant to be biblical women and they were rebelling with the world, with the culture, against a role that they thought women were being forced into.”

But it’s not those young women who misunderstand biblical womanhood; it’s Patterson and Kelley and Driscoll. In their attempts to try and bend the stories of an ancient near eastern culture to fit into the dynamics of a modern-day, Western, nuclear family, they have dismissed the actual story of Vashti and Esther and replaced it with one of their own making.

Whether we like to admit it or not, the Bible was written at a time in history when most women were owned by their husbands.

Technically speaking, it is biblical for a woman to be sold by her father to pay off debt (Exodus 21:7), biblical for her to be forced to marry her rapist (Exodus 22:16-17), biblical for her to remain silent in church (1 Corinthians 14:34-35), biblical for her to cover her head (1 Corinthians 11:6), and biblical for her to be one of many wives (Deuteronomy 21:15-17).

With this in mind, I don’t know anyone who is actually advocating a return to biblical womanhood. What most in the “biblical womanhood” movement are advocating instead is a return to the June Cleaver culture of pre-feminist America, a culture that looked nothing like that of Vashti and Esther, Leah and Rachel, Tamar and Bathsheba, Mary and Martha.

But here’s the good news: The fact that these women lived in a time and a culture much different than our own makes them no less heroic and no less significant to modern-day women hoping to learn from their stories.

Part of learning to love the Bible for what it is, not what we want it to be is resisting the temptation to either gloss over or glorify the culture in which these women lived and to instead allow their stories to speak for themselves. Only in the midst of the true contours and colors of the text do the characters of the Bible find their depth.

As I’ve spent the last two years reading the stories of women from the Bible, I’ve been moved by the courage and grace with many of the biblical women lived, despite their unjust circumstances.

Faced with an impossible situation that would have left her destitute and vulnerable, Tamar worked the patriarchal system to ensure that her father-in-law owned up to his responsibility to observe the law of levirate and provide her with a husband.

Despite being widowed, poor, and a foreigner, Ruth managed to exhibit just the right amount of virtue and moxie to become one of the most celebrated women in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Even Jephtah’s daughter, who was brutally sacrificed by her father in the name of God, inspired the women of Israel to honor her in a ceremony every year.

And it ultimately took the defiance of both Vashti and Esther to save the Jewish nation.

The real story, it seems, is much more interesting than the ones we invent.

And "...your daughters will prophesy"

http://rachelheldevans.com/daughters-will-prophesy

by Rachel Held Evans
December 13, 2011

“Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. - Jesus, Matthew 10:41

Josiah became king of Israel when he was just eight years old.

Described as Israel’s last good king, he reigned for thirty-one years during a final period of peace before the Babylonian exile. About halfway through his reign, Josiah learns that the long-lost Book of the Law—the Torah— has been discovered in the temple. Upon hearing the words of the Torah read aloud, Josiah tears his robes in repentance and summons a prophet, for he sees how far Israel has strayed from God’s ways.

Contemporaries of Josiah included the famed prophets Jeremiah, Zephaniah, Nahum, and Habakkuk—all of whom have books of the Bible named after them. But Josiah did not choose any of those men. Instead he chose Huldah, a woman and prophet who lived in Jerusalem. “Huldah is not chosen because no men were available,” writes Scot McKnight, “she is chosen because she is truly exceptional among the prophets.”

Huldah first confirms the scroll’s authenticity and then tells Josiah that the disobedience of Israel will indeed lead to its destruction, but that Josiah himself would die in peace. Thus, Huldah not only interpreted but also authorized the document that would become the core of Jewish and Christian scripture. Her prophecy was fulfilled thirty-five years later (2 Kings 22).

The Bible identifies ten such female prophets in the Old and New Testaments: Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Noadiah, Isaiah’s wife, Anna, and the four daughters of Philip. In addition, women like Rachel, Hannah, Abigail, Elisabeth, and Mary are described as having prophetic visions about the future of their children, the destiny of nations, and the coming Messiah.

When the Holy Spirit descended upon the first Christians at Pentecost, Peter draws from the words of the prophet Joel to describe what has happened:

Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
Your young men will see visions,
Your old men will dream dreams.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
And they will prophesy (Acts 2:17-18)

The breaking in of the new creation after Christ’s resurrection unleashed a cacophony of new prophetic voices, and apparently, prophesying among women was such a common activity in the early church that Paul had to remind women to cover their heads when they did it. While some may try to downplay biblical examples of female disciples, deacons, preachers, leaders and apostles, no one can deny the Bible’s long tradition of prophetic feminine vision.

I believe that right now, we need that prophetic vision more than ever.

Right now, 30,000 children die every day from preventable disease.

Right now 3 million women and girls are enslaved in the sex trade.

Right now a woman dies in childbirth every minute.

Right now, women age 15-44 are more likely to be maimed or to die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined.

Meanwhile, the evangelical church has busied itself with endless debates about the “appropriate roles” of women in the church and complaints about the supposed “feminization of the Church,” as if women are no longer needed for the Kingdom, as if we’ve stepped outside our bounds. Meanwhile, churches are spending years debating whether a female missionary should be allowed to speak on a Sunday morning, whether students older than ten should have female Sunday school teachers, whether women should be allowed to read from Scripture in a church service, whether girls should be encouraged to attend seminary, whether women should be permitted to collect the offering or write the church newsletter or make an announcement. Those of us who are perhaps most equipped to speak and act prophetically in response to the violence, poverty, and inequality that plague our sisters around the world are being silenced ourselves.

Folks who see the leadership of women like Huldah and Junia as special exceptions for times of great need are oblivious to the world in which we live. Those who think the urgency of Pentecost has passed are deluding themsleves. They “have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear.”

Women around the world need the voices of all their sisters to cry out in one accord.

I’m with Sarah on this one. We cannot afford to wait for permission to make change; women themselves must be the change.

So, ladies—speak out.

Preach.

Prophecy.

Stand with your sisters.

Change the world.

And if a man ever tries to use the Bible as a weapon against you to keep you from speaking the truth, just throw on a head covering and tell him that you’re prophesying, just like the Bible says you can do.

To those who will not accept us as preachers, we will have to become prophets.