A Modest Apostle: Thecla and the History of Women in the Early Church
Susan E. Hylen
Abstract
The New Testament and other early Christian writings point to leadership roles for women at the same time that they affirm cultural norms of women’s modesty and silence. A Modest Apostle offers a new way of understanding this contradictory evidence for women’s lives. Challenging the view that women leaders were exceptions to the rule or evidence of heretical communities that encouraged women’s participation, the book argues that modesty and leadership were ideals that Roman culture held together. Women were expected to take active roles in the pursuit of familial and community interests, even ... More
The New Testament and other early Christian writings point to leadership roles for women at the same time that they affirm cultural norms of women’s modesty and silence. A Modest Apostle offers a new way of understanding this contradictory evidence for women’s lives. Challenging the view that women leaders were exceptions to the rule or evidence of heretical communities that encouraged women’s participation, the book argues that modesty and leadership were ideals that Roman culture held together. Women were expected to take active roles in the pursuit of familial and community interests, even as they embodied traditional gendered virtues like modesty. Thecla is the book’s central example of how the evidence for Christian women’s leadership may be read against this cultural background. Instead of contrasting Thecla’s story in the Acts of Paul and Thecla with 1 Timothy, the book reads both texts as reflections of complex cultural norms that both restricted and enabled the participation of married and unmarried women in civic and religious life. In its devotion to Thecla, the later church continued to embrace her leadership alongside the modest elements of her character. The book’s approach points to a new way of understanding women in the early church that insists upon the historical reality of women’s leadership without neglecting the effects of the culture’s gender biases.
Keywords:
women,
early church,
Thecla,
1 Timothy,
modesty,
marriage,
women’s leadership
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190243821 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2015 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190243821.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Susan E. Hylen, author
Associate Professor of New Testament, Candler School of Theology, Emory University
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