How then can women be excluded from the priesthood since they were thought fit by the founder of the religion and by one of his apostles to preach? That was the question, and the Commission of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York on 1 9 3 s] solved it by appealing not to the mind of the founder, but to the mind of the Church. That, of course, involved a distinction. For the mind of the church had to be interpreted by another mind, and that mind was St. Paul's mind; and St. Paul, in interpreting the oaths mind, changes his own mind.
--Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas 1
One of the more remarkable survivors from early Christianity is the collection of letters written by a, first-century Hellenize Jewish man turned Christian missioner and leader, the "apostle" Paul. The seven letters whose authorship are undisputed by scholars-Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 V Thessalonians, and Philemon-offer historians an unparalleled body of literature produced by a first-century Christian hand. These same letters offer contemporary readers of the text a complex and often confounding set of interpretative Challenges, the challenge is more trenchant than the one raised by the claims made about women and gender in these texts, as Virginia Woolf's provocative characterization makes clear. Not only are the ideologies of sex and gender derived from Paul's letters ambiguous, but the diaries, about practical questions of leadership and religious office in the letters have inspired strongly felt, if also conflicting, interpretations. Historically, Paul has occupied a privileged place as a persistent, if often uncomfortable, authority on matters of doctrine and practice among Christians in a range of institutional locations. Questions of sexuality and -gender are often referred to him, no less so than questions of women's liturgical and leadership-roles in congregations and religious communities. This chapter seeks to present a survey of the ongoing attempts by feminist scholars to meet the challenges these tests, rise.
Paul's biography has been the subject of many scholarly investigations as writers have combed through the sparse evidence preserved. In his own letters and have evaluated the usefulness of often-contested external evidence, searching for details to flesh out a portrait of the enigmatic first-century Christian leader. Paul himself offers his readers a few details, and perhaps the biographical approach is not the most useful one in reading these documents. It might be rare important and more fruitful to situate the texts within their own cultural mayhem and their social function as missionary letters.
Paul is clearly a Hellenize Jewish writer: he writes in Greek; he cites the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible when he quotes scripture; and he routinely borrows from a range of interpretative and rhetorical practices that would be available to him from first-century Judaism, as well as Greece-Roman, philosophical and rhetorical schools. Working within a context where different culture's values, practices, and languages met, clashed, and blended, Paul writes in the style of a cultural craftsman by the use of the tools that lie closest to hand. At times, he will interpret the Hebrew scriptures using the Jewish exegetical approach called Mid race-using exact quotations from the scriptures to elaborate his own arguments, interpreting the scripture in question in a nontraditional. (His use of the Abraham story and the quotation from Gen 15:6 and Rom 4:3 and Gal 3:6 are clear examples of this approach.) At other times, he will appropriate forms of arguments whose roots are clearly planted in the soil of Greek and Roman rhetoric and philosophy. His letters are occasional pieces, suit and partial. They do not present coherent, systematic explication of his theological project. Rather, they are letters written to address particular circumstances and local condition. P.s. As such, their later use by Christian communities as systematic and normative texts strains against the texts' own contingent histories.
It is also the case that the Pauline corpus has been read through the contemporary concerns and lenses of a wide range of communities, religious or otherwise. Hence, Paul's brief references to virginity and marriage have become cornerstones in the foundations of the towering edifices of institutional asceticism, as well as the basis for theologies of marriage.3Paul's resistance to the 'religious leadership of the women prophets in the first-century Corinth has been appropriated in other institutional locations where the male leadership of the church has questioned the legitimacy of women's claim to religious experience and to church leadership. 4 Paul's enigmatic references to homoerotic have fueled tile fires of homophobic intolerance and have produced complex counter-readings of the ideology of sexual difference at the heart of such texts.5Paul's often peculiar claims about women for a time fueled a complex debate as to whether indeed, Paul was a feminist. 6
The point is that Paul's texts have taken on a rich life of their own being reread and rewritten in a range of contexts that must have been quite emerged by their author. Although some will argue that "texts must speak for themselves," I argue with their texts, in fact I do that only- that they also speak for others, and (according to some ingenious feminist interpreters) they can speak to homoerotic or defensed women of history. If texts spoke simply for themselves, any act of interpretation woollies is superfluous. These particular texts continue to be read 2000 years after they were written, not because of some historical accident, but rather because of their critical position in the history of the dominant religious tradition in the West. Therefore, it is worth considering what these texts "speak" beyond "themselves”.
Shadows and Echoes of Women's Histories
One of the most critical project & of feminist-scholarship as it has been pursued over the last twenty-five years or so has been to reconstruct women's history or, in the words of Joan Kelly, "to restore women to history and to restore our/ history to women." 7 Feminist biblical interpreters and historians have contributed their part of larger provisioning project- by combing the material ream- faints of early Christianity for evidence of women’s participation in the early Christian movement. Paul's letters have played an important role in this reconstructive project.
Methodological Paul's letters present significant difficult as sources for all reconstruction Fig, these' letters are institutional and Methodological Paul’s letters present significant difficult as sources for stories, all reconstruction Fig, these' letters are institutional and that is they were written to particular communities, with those communities' peculiar circumstances in mind. To what degree can we generalize about "early Christianity" from these particular examples? Moreover, Paul's letters are, after all Paul's letters they represents perspective and point of view, not those of all early Christians. To what degree can we grasp an adequate image of the historical circumstances of the first century from this highly perspective group of texts? Finally, Paul's discussion of women-either in specific or in general-is sporadic and tantalizing, but poor on details. How do historians cope with the difficulties presented by such limited evidence that is, they were written to particular communities, with those communities' peculiar circumstances in mind. To what degree can we generalize about "early Christianity" from these particular examples? Moreover, Paul's letters are after all they represent perspective and point of view, not those of all early Christians. To what degree can we grasp an adequate image of the historical circumstances of the first century from this highly perspective group of texts? Finally, Paul's discussion of women-either in specific or in general-is sporadic and tantalizing, but poor on details. How do historians cope with the difficulties presented by such limited evidence?
With these concerns; there also exists the methodological difficulty of accounting for the blending of theology and history in much of the writing about the New Testament in general and about Paul in particular. Different scholars have approached this methodological problem in different ways. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, for example, has argued throughout her work that the work of historical reconstruction is a theological rodent that can be seen in the subtitle of the groundbreaking feminist historical reconstruction of Christian origins, 8 In Memory of Her, as well as-in her more recent isolation that the-feminist biblical interpreter is a "feminist theological subject." 9 Others, like Ross Sheppard have situated their work explicitly outside the theological realm, point out that theology can have a tendentious effect on historical writing. 10 BP: a has probably put the history-theology problematic in relation to Paul's writings most succinctly in her insistence that ideology, theology, and material claims are inseparably bound with one another and cannot be easily distinguished. 11
When scholars have turned their attention to the task of historical reconstruction, ideologically inflected or not, one fairly obvious strategy in reconstructing the history of early Christian women has been to examine the information made available about particular women actually named in the biblical texts. If this recuperative project is ultimately only the first step in the ongoing feminist negotiation with early Christian texts, it is nevertheless a critical one. Looking at Paul's letters from this vantage point, it becomes clear that the greetings that appear at the end of some of Paul's letters mention numerous women who were active in Christian communities in the mid-first century. These cursory references have become the ground for extensive historical reconstruction and re imagination (see also chapter 9).
Romans 16 is probably the most fruitful ground on this account, as well as some of the most contentious in the history of translation an d eradication. 2 This chapter begins as a letter of recommendation for Phoebe, who is called by Paul the- deacons of the churches in Cenchrea and the pro-static of many and of (Rom 1 6: 1-2 . Translators routinely render the Greek term diako~os as "minister" in English when the Greek term refers to one of the many Christian men who taught, preached, rendered a variety of spiritual services to newly formed Christian communities, and possessed an ample amount of authority and leadership status within such communities . These same translators, however, apex 41 ' rather less sanguine about according to Phoebe the same role that Paul assigns to Timothy, for example, in 1 Thess 3;2. Referring her title as “deaconess" (though the Greek term does not have a feminine ending) or deacon rather than "minister" transforms Phoebe from a leader of and minister to the churches of Cenchreae into a second-level functionary. (Why she would be carrying a letter of recommendation from Paul-a letter that would have been carried by a missionary as an introduction to communities not yet encountered-if she were not a person of considerable importance within the earliest Christian movements is not addressed by those who reduce her circumstances via translation.) Phoebe's second title, prostates, is less clear: attested only here in type of New Testament, this feminine form of the noun prostates suggests a public role of patronage' and protection. Translators obscure this public role by rendering the word "helper" (RSV). They do a bit better when they translate the term as "benefactor" (NRSV) as long as one emphasizes when reading this word the significance of the term within ancient systems, If so then they would highlight the likely financial sponsorship involved in Phoebe s role as benefactor to the Christian communities, a sponsorship that would require a significant level of both economic means of social independence.
Phoebe is by no means the only woman mentioned in this chapter of Romans. Paul includes greetings to various other women who played important roles in the work of the early church. Among these, Prisca is named with Aquila (Presented in Acts 18 as her husband) as a coworker of Paul. The Greek term used here is synergism, which Paul uses elsewhere in relation to both centrally important, colleagues like Timothy (Rom 16:21; 1 Thess 3:2) and 11(1 3:9) and less well known participants in the work of the early Christians’ 1. 10 (Rom 16:9; Phil 2:25; Phlm 1:24). Although it isn't entirely what it would mean for anyone to be a synergism, it is clear that it is a position to which Paul accords a significant amount of importance and respect. When Paul speaks, for example, of Apollo’s in 1Corinthians 3, he uses the notion of synergic to emphasize the shared characteristics of his own and Apollo’s' contributions to the missionary work in which they are both engaged. Prisca's presence among those who are called synergistic allows us to conclude that some women participated centrally in the framing and enactment of early Christian missionary activity. That Paul simply calls Prisca a synergistic without any. Further comment suggests that her presence is, in important respects, unremarkable.
If the text were only to identify these two women, we might be tempted to conclude that Phoebe and Prisca are singled out as relative exceptions. But Paul continues in the rest of' Romans 16 to pass along greetings to numerous other women Mary. "Who has worked hard among you" (16:6); Tryphaena and Tryphosa, "those workers in the Lord"•(16:12); the '"beloved" Persis (16:12); and Julia and Nereus' sister (16: 15). While the last three women who are named are not assigned particular roles, the first three are all described through the use of the verb, Kuopio, which likely possesses a near-technical sense that refers to missionary work. Although such evidence is far from complete, it all points in ‘1 a similar direction-toward the significant and sustained presence of women in the ranks of early Christian missionary work.
Romans 16 does not stop at the point of alerting careful readers to the reality that there were numerous women in the early Christian atonement who labored as ministers, patronesses, and coworkers with Paul. It goes on to offer a tantalizing (if unique) reference to Junia, who is called, along with her companion Andronicus, an apostle. As Bernaaette Brooten has shown this passage-unremarkable in earlier Centuries -became a troubling transitional problem for later interpreters. The circular argument ran like tilts: the text refers to "Junia ... outstanding among the apostles," but women (it is assumed) could not be apostles, so therefore Junia cannot possibly be a woman. Therefore, they solved the problem by changing the ordinary and well-attested name, "Junia," "into the nowhere-attested masculine name, "Junias.” 13
A handful of verses with references to a small group of women, some of whom are named nowhere else in early Christian literature, hardly constitute a major, archive of historical information to be mined by eager scholars who wanted to reconstruct women history from it. Indeed, these scanty references raise many more questions than they answer: If women were part of tile leadership of the early Christian movements, as Paul's greetings would seem to suggest. How did they experience this level of participation? What diet it means in terms of their relationships with their natal families or with the families they formed when (or if) they married? Are the women who are named without reference to male relatives living independently by choice or by circumstance? Would they do so whether or not they were part of Christian communities? What does it mean that Tryphaena and Tryphosa are not together, like Andronicus and Junia or Prisca and Aquila? 14what is the economic status of these women? Since Paul argues vociferously at one point for the importance of Christian leaders supporting themselves through work, how would these women have done all? What trades would they have plied? Why children are never mentioned in relation to any of these women?
It is unlikely that we will-ever find answers to many of these questions as the sources do not offer insight into such particularities. What is important about raising these questions is that they force us to confront the liberated nature of our sources and the imaginative demands that historical reconstruction can make on those who read with these questions in mind. Moreover, as with so much of women's history, the resounding silence that answers back to the questions we pose is itself part of the story of women's past and it is a silence that insists on being continually acknowledged.
While some scholars have reconstructed early Christian women's history from explicit references to particular women in Paul's letters, others have attempted to reconstruct the past through recourse to the presence of unnamed but critical players in the letters themselves. The most significant of such reconstructions may be found in Antoinette dark Wire's important rhetorical reading of 1 Corinthians,The Corinthian Women Prophets: A Reconstruction through Paul's Rhetoric. In this book, Wire begins with the recognition that we have no direct access to the women of the early Christian community in Corinth since no written sources, if they ever existed, still survive. Unwilling to allow that material silence to have the last word, Wire undertakes to reconstruct the theological positions and the religious lives of the prophetic women of Corinth. Under-girding her work is the operative premise that no argument is ever one-sided. Moreover, she asserts that no argument is made unless there is some compelling reason for it-that is, arguments point to the circumstances that produce them, and furthermore, strong arguments presuppose strong counterarguments. Therefore, it is possible to reconstruct the counterarguments and whole social and political backgrounds from the arguments for which one has direct evidence.
Reading Paul's arguments with the Christian community in Corinth over questions of sexual practice, religious observance, and the relative relationship of religious experience and religious authority, Wire offers a full-bodied rendering of the situation in Corinth-one in which Paul's fretful concern about authority and order is matched (and perhaps exceeded) by the ecstatic, ascetic, and inspirited life of prayer and prophecy embodied by the Corinthian women 1 prophets. In 1Cor 11 :2-16, for example, Wire sees a Christian theology that is a vibrant alternative to Paul's theology. In her view, the Corinthian women brace a particular notion of new creation in Christ that rejects conventional shame distinctions, notions of idolatry, and religious and sexual practice. Wire's project demonstrates the possibility that a tendentious and polemical text can nevertheless offer significant pieces of evidence for a historical reconstruction.
Sexuality, Ideology, and Gender Trouble
The rhetorical reading of Paul’s corpus can offer historical remnants and elements crucial to a retelling of the historical narrative of early Christian women's lives, as Antoinette Clark Wire's work ably demonstrates. Whereas Wire emphasizes what might be known about the historical circumstances that produced Paul's rhetoric, other feminist scholars have focused on what constructions of sex and gender are promoted by Paul's letters. Galatians, Romans, and 1 Corinthians are the most critical texts for this discussion. 1 Corinthians7 offers a complex reading by Paul of the nature and meaning of sexual relations within the context of marriage. Because the text addresses the specific question of women in the context of marriage, it has been the subject of much debate and interpretation among feminist and other scholars. The questions that the text engages are several: Under what circumstances is marriage desirable? What is the status of the spouse's body in marriage? What are the relative merits of celibacy, marriage, and widowhood? What is the status of marriage between a Christian and a non-Christian?
The passage's opening has been the subject of significant debate. According to the NRSV. 1 Cor 7: 1 reads: "Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: 'It’s well for a man not to touch a woman.' “The earlier RSV translation of the same passage is: "Now concerning the matters about which you wrote. It is well for a man not to' touch a woman." At issue, first, is whether it is the Corinthian community or Paul who has uttered the statement: It is well for a man not to touch a woman. Moreover, one might well ask what such a statement means in historical context, Is this a text that underwrites a stringently ascetic position? Is it an ethical norm or a practical proscription? Does it have a theological impetus? Is it a sentence that means the same thing to both men and women?
Paul occupies an uncomfortable middle ground in the midst of the debate over the status of marriage in Corinth. Whether he wrote the sentence under debate above or is simply responding to it as a slogan of his correspondents, he goes on to say that each man and woman should have their own spouse dia tas prone is (on account of "immoralities"), by which Paul means any sexual activity with a partner who is forbidden to one (c£ 1 Cor 5:1-11). He then goes on to assert that husbands and wives should give each other their conjugal rights (lit., their due or their obligation) because neither has authority (exoduses) over his or her own body, but the husband has authority over the wife's body, while the wife has authority over the husband's body. Expressing 3 'wish that all could be as he himself is, Paul acknowledges that people have different gifts from God, by which he implies that not all have the gift of celibacy. The passage continues to elaborate on the theme that marriage is good, but celibacy is better, and rationalizes the argument by pointing out that 1marriage diverts the attention of the believer away from the things of God.
A tremendous volume of ink has been spilled over analyses of tall’s passage.
Paul has been characterized on its basis as a radical apocalyptic (why marry when history will soon come to an end, rendering moot the need for procreation and reproduction?), a radical egalitarian (wives and husbands are equally bound in their obligations and the constitution of mutual authority over the other), and a radical misogynist (condemning women to submit their bodies to the authority of potentially abusive husbands). Whether any one of these characterizations is fully adequate, it remains the case that Paul, in this passage, seems to express the view that sexual expression is a matter of last resort not a good in itself, but a bulwark against evil "To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am. But if they are not practicing self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion" ( 1 Cor 7: 8-9). Moreover, Paul apparently does not discern any, particular difference in the social circumstances, physical conditions, or meanings derived from the experiences of marriage or sexual relations on the part of men and women. One might pose the following question, as many interpreters have: does the syntactical parallelism of 1Cor 7: 3-4 ("The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does") mirror social experience? That is, does the delivery of one's physical obligation to one's partner mean the same thing for women and men? Do the pervasive gender differences in social status, access to redress, and potential for violence make a: difference in how verse 4 might be read? As Sheila Briggs has put it in another context "In a patriarchal society the call for self-sacrifice toward others can take on gender-specific forms in which mutual giving way to one another is transformed into women's subordination to men." 15Furthermore, how might the call to celibacy be experienced differently among men and women?
The problematic of sameness and difference that this text raises makes a second appearance in 1Corinthians in chapter 11 , where Paul worries about the dress of women in the context of worship. "I want you to understand," he writes, "that Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of his wife, and God is the head of Christ. Any man who prays or prophesies with something on his head disgraces his head, but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled disgraces her head" ( 1 Cor 1 1 : 3-5). The verb that the NRSV translates here as "to disgrace" in Greek is kataischyno, which, by a more literal translation, would be rendered "to dishonor" or "to bring shame upon." That men and women bring shame upon themselves through non identity- 11 cal behavior-that is, men are shamed by covering their heads, but women are shamed by not covering their heads-suggests that Paul's potential egalitarianism (as it is discerned by some in chapter 7) is not as thoroughgoing as it might at first appear. Indeed, as the argument continues in 1Corinthians 1:1, it becomes clearer that Paul is quite concerned with the careful maintenance of gender differences in appearance (justified in part by the curious argument that "nature" affirms the conventional practice of men wearing their hair short and women wearing their hair long) not simply because he thinks it is a good idea, but because he thinks that the created order demands it. 16 He closes the argument with the observation that "if anyone is disposed to be contentious, we have no such custom nor do the churches of God" ( 1 Cor 1 1: 1 6) in other words, no one else suffers women to pray with their heads uncovered, and therefore such a practice is not recognized. 24
A historian would be quick to observe that this text must indicate that women were, in fact, in Corinth praying and prophesying with their heads uncovered otherwise, Paul would not need to make such a strong, if occasionally obscure, set of arguments against the practice. But in addition to this historical observation is the recognition that Paul is also concerned here with a particular set of ideological constructions, gender differences are barely the physical boil. They can be read by observers, they matter, and they function feigns that stand for deeper ethical essences. To blur the lines between male and female to imagine women’s prophecy with their hair short while men are professing with their heads covered long-violates some more 1asset of a differentiated33 late line honor to shame, Ana challenged affiance that has been established through Paul's theological render of tile.
Bernadette the Interconnection between Paul’s view of the nature of women in this passage in 1 Corinthians and his assertions concerning homo-eroticism in the opening chapter of his letter to the Romans. The only completely unambiguous passage in the New Testament on homo eroticism, as well as the only biblical passage that has anything to say about female homo eroticism, Rom 1: 18-32 provides another occasion for readers to evaluate Paul's ideology of gender.
The passage itself occurs in the broader context of a discussion of idolatry, which claims that human beings are punished by God because "they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator" (Rom 1 :25). Paul's characterization of idolatry is no innovation; biblical proscriptions against idolatry waited render this characterization ordinary, a cliche even. What is a bit unexpected is what• comes next in the passage: "For this reason [i.e., •because of idolatry], God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving .up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another'! (Italics added; Rom 1 :26-27).
Brooten connects this passage with 1Cor 11:2-16, in part, because the appeal to nature appears in both and because both describe practices that blur gender differences as being disgraceful (actinium; more literally, dishonorable). 1Moreover, like 1 Col' 11:2-16, Rom 1: 18-32 interweaves its indictment of a particular human practice with theological propositions. Both texts argue that the human behavior in question-whether it be abandoning conventionally gender linked appearance and dress (in general or in certain contexts) or engaging in certain apparently non-normative sexual practices-is a violation of a worldly order that is grounded in a cosmically, divinely-willed-order. Sender differences, according to these texts, are not the three fruits of social conventions, but are God given and divinely warranted.
Paul's response to the problem of gender trouble may have been time bound, as some commentators have suggested; it is undoubtedly linked to the responses of others writing at the same time and in related cultural circumstances as both Brooten and Margaret Davies have demonstrated. What sets Paul's ideas apart is their ongoing cultural reception and authority; the fact that his constructions-of sexuality and gender continue to operate as a foundation for the formulation of judgments on social relations .and identities in the contemporary setting. For those interpreters who dismiss Paul's positions on these matters as mere reflections of his own time and circumstances easily excised from a more universal and timeless message, the ongoing cultural impact of Paul's arguments is; at the very least, confounding. For those who accept the view of interpreters like Brooten, who argue that Paul's ideology of sexuality and gender is thoroughly interwoven with and, indeed, inseparable from his theology. The project of engaging Paul's arguments becomes rather more urgent.
Paul's Rhetoric of "Women" and "Gender"
Probably the most frequently quoted passage of Paul's letters in relation to questions of gender and women is the baptismal forbid-law that appears in the middle of the letter to the churches in Galatia: "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:28). 17Placing this formula and its usage within ancient Christian ritual practice and within Greece-Roman cultural context, Wayne Meeks has argued that these words function in essence as a speech-act or, in his words, a "per formative utterance:" They enact a new reality through the very process of being spoken. 18The question that such a formula raises, especially 'in light of the other passages discussed in this chapter, is what they lived, reality being enacted really, looks like.
Paul's use of this baptismal formula takes place within the broader context of his angry letter addressed to the churches in Galatia, a letter whose immediate goal is to interrupt the adoption by those churches of observances inscribed in Jewish law. The mode of argument within this text is relentlessly idealistic and opposition. Paul presents a series of binary oppositions whose repetition and amplification work rhetorically to persuade his readers to adopt his view of things and to reject alternative views. Slave and free, law and promise, flesh and spirit echo as irreconcilably separate in Paul's argument against the adequacy of the law for providing a framework for life in the new Christian creation.
The baptismal formula that Paul quotes resounds increasingly paradoxically in the broader context of this letter. What does it mean to invoke such a formula (which on its face seems to imply a radical dissolution of socially constructed differences) when the rest of the argument in whose service the formula is invoked is predicated on precisely the same oppositions one claims to be undoing through ritual? Moreover, how is one to read this formula within the broader context of Paul's collected writings, where, as we have just seen, gender difference bears the inscription of divine authority? How is one to think the complex relationship between sameness and difference that pulses through the writings of Paul?
Some of this ambiguity emerges quite clearly in a text that appears in the following chapter in Galatians. Since Paul argues against the law as a useful framework for Christian life, it is ironic to see him turning to the Torah for examples to under gird his argument that the law is not adequate. In doing so, Paul approaches familiar territory by taking up the story of Sarah and Hagaf in the Abraham cycle. 19 Not addressing the particularities of the narratives, but drawing on Sarah and Hagar as rhetorical figures, Paul proceeds to construct an allegory. For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and the other by a free woman. One, the child of the slave, was born according to the flesh; the other, the child of the free woman, was born through the •promise. Now this is an allegory: these women are two covenants. One woman, in fact, is Hagar, from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the other woman corresponds to the Jerusalem above; she is free, and she is our mother. (Gal 4:22-26)
In. this passage, the difference that Paul sees inscribed indelibly and irreducibly on his subjects is not that of gender, but that of social status and class. Categories of difference are here not rendered immaterial and meaningless, but rather come to stand for the radical differences between those who are born into slavery (life under the law) and those who are born into freedom (life under the promise). These are differences not only at the level of theological significance, but also at the level of essential nature. It is troubling that Paul derives his figurative imagery in this passage from the economic institution of slavery and from women's own particular relationship to that institution. 20It is also clear that the very notion of difference works in the passage as a conceptual 41 problem for Paul, something that his argument requires, and yet that his philosophic. All frameworks cannot sustain. Moreover, the logic of the passage requires that difference remain such a foundation contradiction for Paul's argument. As Hagar and Sarah are abstracted from their points of narrative origin into rhetorical figures of a theological allegory, the heady expectation that "there is no longer slave or free" dims and grows more remote and Utopian.
Paul's argument concerning the law turns to the Jewish practice “Of circumcision as the focal expression of religious identity and difference. It is clear that Paul chooses circumcision as a synecdoche (an abbreviated reference to a small part of something to signify the entire thing) for the law as a whole because it allows him to make connections with ideas about covenant and identity and because it is probably the most important of the several ways by which Jewish identity and difference were signaled in ancient societies-along with the observance of dietary laws, Sabbath-keeping, and separation. Circumcision is different from these other practice because, although it functions as an ongoing and abiding sign, it takes place only once in a life cycle and it is practiced orally on male bodies. It may be that the attention to circumcision in Paul's discussion is focused by the concerns of the community to which he writes-circumcision is controversial in the community. So he writes about it instead of about other things. It is also the case that circumcision intersects with ideas that concern gender and generation in ways that the other identifying practices of Jewish women and men in antiquity did not. Although scholars debate the meanings that accrue to circumcision, it remains a ritual of malting the male body as a sign of belonging to a particular group.
In the history of feminist interpretation of Paul, one more critical topic needs to be addressed: The prevalent tendency of many Christian interpreters to caricature purity ideas and practices (particularly those pertaining to women) in order to create a negative backdrop against which to project a Utopian and preconceived notion of "Christian freedom." 21 In this context, it is important to keep in mind that our evidence about how ancient Jewish women understood and observed the law (both as an abstract, ideological framework and as a practical guide for the trap formation of everyday life into an expression of holiness) is both fragmentary and ambiguous (see also chapters 2 and 3). Nevertheless the 1 tendentious view that Jewish women experienced singularly oppressive treatment within the context of their rail Jives and file. This oppression, escaping an egalitarian Christian context: most certainly be rejected as a simplistic and inadequate ventriloquism of the historical Jewish, how they open to multiple readings it may be. Gender ideologies and their enactments ill gives of historical women and men across the board ill the anoint world were infinitely more complex than .such caricatures can begin to allow. This is true for early Christianity and Judaism alike.
Women's Leadership in the Church, or Using Paul to Think With
Thus far, this chapter has dealt with a range of topics that concern women and gender in the Puffin corpus, questions of historical reconstruction, rhetorical interpretation, and ideological constructions. All of these concerns come together in one of the most contentious and debated passages ill the writings of Paul, the passage that asserts: As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent in the churches for they are not permitted to speak. But should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak, in church. (1 Cor 14:33b-35)
Interpreters, particularly those who hope to find scriptural warrants for women's full participation within the religious life of Christian churches, having long struggled with this particular passage. Some point to the apparent contradiction between this passage and the testimony of 1Cor 11 :2-16, which', although portraying Paul's displeasure with the gender-blurring practices of the Corinthian women, assumes without comment that women are praying and prophesying in worship. These interpreters argue that the passage must represent a latter scribal or editorial interpolation (addition) into the text. Others, such •as Antoinette Wire, argue for the authenticity of the passage and interpret its rhetoric within the broader context of Paul's argument about prophetic speech in the letter. Still others attempt to rationalize the two passages through reference to different classes of women or to different kinds of gatherings for worship. Some will raise the broader question of how Paul could possibly take such a position when there is the evidence, in Romans 16 and elsewhere, that Paul worked in close association with a number of women and perhaps maintained strong personal friendships with these women.16
One of the most ingenious accounting for this text may be found in a nineteenth- century autobiography written by an African American woman, who herself felt a deep call to undertake a life of preaching and ministry. Describing her own struggle to come to terms with the apparent contradictions she saw between her religious feeling, on the one hand, and the scriptures on the other, she wrote:
It is true, that in the ordinary course of Church arrangement and order, the Apostle
Paul laid it down as a rule that females should not speak in the church, nor be suffered to teach; but the Scriptures make it evident that this rule was not intended to limit the extraordinary directions of the Holy Ghost, in reference to female Evangelists, or oracular sisters; nor to be rigidly observed in peculiar circumstances.13
In a remarkable hermetical turn, Mrs. Zilpha Elaw saw clearly the problem presented by the biblical text and circumvented it by claiming to stand outside its purview-indeed, by asserting that the text itself authorized precisely the claim to stand outside.
What all of these assessments of Paul’s position on the question of women's role in worship have in common is the attribution to Paul of a thorough going authority to pronounce on such matters. Indeed, it is precisely in the context of such contentious passages that the whole question of scriptural authority raised with considerable urgency. What Paul says on such questions, even if contradictory or convoluted (as Virginia Woolf has characterized it), has frequently taken on a foundation kind of authority for Christian churches across the centuries. Consequently, the interpretation of these statements becomes a practice of significant institutional and political import.
The continual recourse to Paul's (and more generally, the Bible's) authority theologically and culturally invites further theoretical interrogation and elaboration. It is one thing for Christian communities to make the letters of Paul normative for their own communal organization, division of labor, and liturgical practice. It is another thing altogether when these same texts are used within secular contexts to rudder write 1 the authority of political or social claims, as occurs increasingly frequently in American civil discourse. Whether one agrees with a particular view expressed by Paul or any other biblical writer, one must ask what) is at stake when that view is deployed in a nonreligious context to support a particular stance. Feminist or otherwise, professional and ordinary readers of the Bible alike continue to undertake to understand what the intersecting lines among history. Theology, ethics, and ideology in a set of texts produced almost} ooo years ago might have to tell them about the past and the present.
Being able to assess critically this process of using Paul to think with will be crucial to the ongoing project (feminist or otherwise) of engaging with these rich and complex texts without necessarily capitulating to their own rhetorical operations, which insist that they should or will have the last word.
Footnotes:
1. Virginia Woolf. Three Guineas (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1938) r 22.
2. For detailed feminist readings of these texts, see Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza, ed.,
Starching the Scriptures: Volume 2, A Feminist Commentary (New York: Crossroad, 1994): Antoi nette Wire, "1 Corinthians" 153-95; Shelly Matthews, "2 Corinthians" 196-217; Sheila
Briggs, "Galatians" 218-36; Carolyn Osiek, "Philippians" 237-49; Lone Fatum, "1 Thessalonians"
250--62; Elizabeth A. Castelli, "Romans" 272-300; S. C. Winter, "Philemon"
301-12.
3. See pertinent essays in Richard Valantasis and Vincent L. Wimbush, Asceticism
(New York: Oxford UniVersity Press, 1995).
4. See esp. Antoinette Clark Wire, The Corinthian Women Prophets: A Reconstruction through
Paul's Rhetoric (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1990).
5. Bernadette J. Brooten, "Paul's Views on,the Nature of Women and Female Homoeroticism,''
in Immaculate and Powerful: The Female in Sacred Image and Social Reality, ed. Clarissa W.
Atkinson, Constance H. Buchanan, and Margaret R. Miles (Boston: Beacon, 1 9 8 5) 6 1-8 7;
John Boswell, Christianity. Homosexuality. and Social Tolerance: Gay People in Western Europe from the
Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1980) 335-53; Robert Goss, Jesus Acted Up: A Gay and Lesbian Manifesto (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco,
1993) 87-111. See now Margaret Davies, "New Testament Ethics and
Ours: Homosexuality and Sexuality in Romans 1 :26-27," Biblical Interpretation 3 ( 1995)
315-3 1; Dale B. Martin, "Heterosexism"and the Interpretation of Romans 1: 18-32,''
Biblical Interpretation 3 (1995") 332-55; and Bernadette J. Brooten, Love between Women: Early
Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
6. See the literature cited in Bernadette Brooten, "E~ly Christian Women and Their
Cultural Context: Issues of Method in Historical Reconstruction," in Feminist Perspectives on
Biblical Scholarship, ed. Adela Yarbro Collins (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985) 69, n. 6.
7. Joan Kelly, "The Social Relation of the Sexes: Methodological Implications of
Women's History," in Kelly. Women, History. and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1984) 1.
8. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of
Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983).
9. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation (Boston:
Beacon, 1992) 160.
10. Ross Shepard Kraemer, Her Share of the Blessings: Women's Religions among Pagans, Jews, and
Christians in the Greco-Roman World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) 133.
11. Brooten, "Early Christian Women" 9 1. For a lengthier discussion of these issues,
see my "Heteroglossia, Hermeneutics, and History: A Review Essay of Recent Feminist
Studies of Early Christianity." JFSR 10:2 (1994) 73-98, esp. 79-85.
12. For more extensive discussion of this text, see Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, "Missionaries,
Apostles, Coworkers: Romans 1 6 and the Reconstruction of Women's Early
Christian History,'' Word and World 6 (1986) 420--33; Schiissler Fiorenza, "The 'Quilting'
of Women's History: Phoebe of Cenchreae," in Embodied Love: Sensuality and Relationship as
Feminist Values, ed. Paula M. Cooey. Sharon A. Farmer, and Mary Ellen Ross (San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1987) 35-49; Castelli, "Romans" 277-80.
13. Bernadette J. Brooten, "Junia ... Outstanding among the Apostles (Romans 16:7)," in Women Priests: A Catholic Commentary on the Vatican Declaration, ed. Leonard S. Swidler
and Arlene Swidler (New York: Paulist, 1977) 141-44.
14. This question is addressed creatively and with insight by Mary Rose D' Angelo,
"Women Partners in the New Testament," JFSR 6/i (1990) 65-86.
15. Briggs, "Galatians" 230.
16. See Brooten, "Paul's Views" for an extended discussion of this argument. See also
Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets 220--23, for a summary of the scholarship on this passage.
17. See Briggs, "Galatians" 218-36.
PAUL ON WOMEN AND GENDER c:t 235
18. Wayne Meeks, "The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest
Christianity," History of Religions 13 ( 1974) 1'65-208, esp. 181-82.
19. See my essay. "Allegories of Hagar: Reading Galatians 4. 2 1-3 1 with Postmodern
Feminist Eyes," in The New Literary Criticism and t1ie New Testament, ed. Edgar V. McKnight and
Elizabeth Struthers Malbon (Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplements
[JSNTS] 109; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1994) 228-50.
20. See Briggs, "Galatians" 224, o~ this question.
21 For a concise collection and evaluation of this idea in scholarship, see Kathleen
Corley. "Feminist Myths of Christian Origins," in Reimagining Christian Origins. A Colloquium
Honoring Burton L. Mack, ed. Elizabeth A. Castelli and Hal Taussig (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity
Press International, 1996) 51-67.
22. Elizabeth A. Clark has discussed this same kind of paradox in the lives and ideas
of other early Christian men. See her "Friendship between the Sexes: Classical Theory
and Christian Practice," in Jerome, Chrysostom, and Friends: Essays and Translations (New York:
EdwinvMellen, 1979) 35-106; and Clark, "Theory and Practice in Late Ancient Asceticism:
Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine," JFSR 512 (1989) 25-46.
23. Zilpha Elaw, Memoirs of the Life, Religious Experience, Ministerial Travels and Labours of Mrs.
Zilpha Elaw, an American Female of Colour; Together with Some Account of the Great Religious Revivals in
America [Written by Herself], in Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Womens Autobiographies of the Late
Nineteenth Century. ed. William L. Andrews (Bloomington, IN: Indiana Universicy Press,
1986) 124
