The Forgotten Women of Christ

What would Christianity look like today if the role of women had not been plundered by the misogynist and patriarchal men who have dominated most of Christian history?

Yesterday, I saw this from Heather Cox Richardson:

Last Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reposted a video in which Christian nationalist pastors express their opposition to the idea of women voting. “I would like to see this nation being a Christian nation, and I would like this world to be a Christian world,” said Christian nationalist Doug Wilson. In his repost of the video, Hegseth wrote “All of Christ for All of Life.”

Seems like a good time to dredge up one of the first posts I did on Substack (with a few minor changes) when I had very few readers. For those few of you who read it, thank you. For those of you who haven’t, happy Sunday reading! For my atheist friends: I love you, too! (and I don’t believe in a “hell,” so when you leave this world, you’ll get to party with the rest of us, if you want to).

The Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, diocesan bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, who spoke out strongly against Trump’s using the Bible and Church grounds as props for inciting violence against protesters in Washington D.C on June 2, 2020. Photo Credit: By NASA/Paul Alers (NASA Flickr account, Public Domain, URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21370561; More info at end of story

Note: This substack article is too long for email. I recommend clicking the title or "View entire message" and reading it on the web.

Imagine a world where a patriarchy hadn’t choked the life out of Christianity.

Would the United States, a largely Christian nation, be swarming with priestesses revered for their teachings and prayer services? What would such a Christianity look like overall?

A society that cherishes the role of its priestesses would probably not be capable of vomiting a presence such as Donald Trump onto a scorched earth of testosterone-fueled evangelism that promotes control over women’s bodies, because the scorched earth would not be there.

Women in Jesus’s Ministry Roared

The ancient world of early Christianity was almost the exact opposite of Pete Hegseth’s imaginings.

Women played a vital part in Jesus’ ministry and the development of the early church. This began as soon as Jesus emerged from the solitude of his carpentry work:

Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there.

— Mark 15:40–41

In biblical scripture, the apostle Paul refers to a pair of women, Euodia and Syntyche, who had a falling out that he felt was so important that he interceded in a letter to the Philippians:

I entreat Euodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord. Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women, who have labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.

— Philippians 4:2–3

Paul was an incredibly important figure in early Christianity. He traveled all around the Mediterranean spreading the gospel, often at great risk to his life. He clearly relished the ministering these women practiced.

Sadly, an ESV (English Standard Version) Study Bible note claims that Euodia and Syntyche probably ministered “mainly to women,”¹ demonstrating that even 21st-century Bible interpretations make assumptions about women in scripture with no factual evidence.

How can we know their role? We don’t even really know who they were, other than the fact that they were prominent enough to be declared an essential part of Paul’s emerging church.

The position taken by the study bible is even more precarious when considering that many women in the Church’s earliest days used their homes as churches to hold services, minister to people, and pray. These were not women setting out cookies and milk for their male superiors tending to their flock, but owners of the homes hosting these services and vital to the growth of the early church².

Paul’s Curious Attitude Towards Women or…?

Paul, who wrote most of the Epistles, is generally assumed to have been divinely inspired. But based on what we see of Christ’s behavior and attitudes towards women, it is unlikely Christ would have approved of such statements as:

As in the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says.

— 1 Corinthians 14:33

Or:

If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

— 1 Corinthians 14:34

There are two considerations here. One is that the quotes, especially when used by those who still demand patriarchy in religious services, are taken out of context of Christ’s general teachings, and as mentioned, even the reality of Paul’s ministering.

The words were written for Corinthians, Greeks who banished women from speaking roles in assemblies in general. It was common in those days when speaking to large audiences to acknowledge existing cultural patterns, if only to avoid getting stoned to death.

Secondly, it is contrary to Paul’s own message, in the form of action. Unless he was the type of fellow who said, “Do as I say, not as I do”, the words are simply irrelevant to any discussion about women’s role in the church.

As Solomon Ademiluka points out³ in his book on the role of women in the church:

Paul preached to women who later became part of his ministry. At Philippi, Lydia and some other women were converted and her house became the home of the new church (Acts 16:13–15, 40). We also read the work of Priscilla and her husband Aquila (Acts 18:26), and the four daughters of Philip who were prophetesses (Ac 21:9). Some of Paul’s letters indicate that there were women who were his fellow workers in evangelism. In Romans 16:1–2, Paul mentions specifically ‘our sister Phoebe’, who is a deacon of the church at Cenchrea (Romans 16:1–2)… it is more likely that Paul is identifying Phoebe as holding the office of deacon (cf. Stegemann & Stegemann 1999:396).

Paul refers to Phoebe as a Deacon in Romans 16:

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church at Cenchreae, that you may welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints, and help her in whatever she may need from you, for she has been a patron of many and of myself as well.

— Romans 16:1–2

And to Mary and Junia:

Greet Mary, who has worked hard for you. Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners. They are well known to the apostles, and they were in Christ before me.

— Romans 16:6–7

Paul was being literal here. He was a prisoner of Rome during his ministry, but apparently, so was Junia, who some scholars say Paul considered an apostle.⁴

The references to women in Paul’s ministry were frequent enough to make cynics like me wonder if third-century scribes commandeered parts of the Bible to silence the role of women in the Gospels and the acts that followed, grievously depriving humanity of important recorded moments of history.

Not only could a scribe have added Paul’s comments in 1 Corinthians 14:33, but he could have removed references to women elsewhere in letters attributed to Paul and others.

They Took All the Women

If you look at the flow of text in 1 Corinthians 14:26–40, any student of writing will tell you that the flow breaks completely at verses 34 and 35, as if they were thrown in there after a cranky scribe yelled at his wife for not wearing her head covering.

What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn, and let someone interpret.

But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God. Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged, and the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets. For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.

So far, so good.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

If you’re a writer, you’ll notice that the flow is nonsensically interrupted by this sudden invasion of misogyny. Strike it completely, and the flow makes much more sense. It adheres to its previous context:

Or was it from you that the word of God came? Or are you the only ones it has reached? If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. 38 If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized. So, my brothers, earnestly desire to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. But all things should be done decently and in order.

— 1 Corinthians 14:26–40

If you find it difficult to accept that someone with Paul’s wisdom and connection to God could either be wrong about women or somehow be out of sync with Christ’s teachings on the matter, so do I.

So, I’ll posit a theory I alluded to earlier: male scribes in ancient patriarchal societies interjected false teachings about the proper role of women as Paul’s letters found themselves transcribed in those earliest years.

Consider Philippians 4:3, where Paul writes of women who worked “side by side” with him. There is no subservience suggested there, and, contrary to some of his own alleged words, women were ministering with him in key roles.

Patriarchal interpreters try to suggest that these women were ministering primarily to women, but there is no evidence of this. Some fundamentalists will tell you that every word of the Bible is God’s word and that God wouldn’t let his word be sullied. Again, there is no direct evidence of this, either.

Worse than Plagiarism

Philippians 4:3 isn’t Paul’s only reverential mention of women in service to the church. Romans 16, for example, acknowledges women in Paul’s ministry. Acts 18:26 not only reports on Priscilla ministering to men but correcting one, Apollos, who was a preacher in those early days:

He began to speak boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.

— Acts 18:26

Was she in open defiance of Paul? Not based on how Paul speaks about her. If she were to follow the alleged dictates of Paul as described in 1 Timothy 2:12, she would have slunk away in shame like a good, subservient woman and let her husband, Aquila, correct Apollos.

Because, after all, didn’t Paul say in 1 Timothy, “I do not permit women to teach or exercise authority over a man, rather to remain quiet”? I don’t think he wrote that. Such is one of the consequences of the Reformation — simple lay people like me get to read the Bible and come to our own conclusions.

And my conclusion is that there is a clear contrast between what Paul supposedly wrote about women’s roles and how he acted.

The Apostle Mary Magdalene?

Christ, as we see repeatedly in scripture, gave great countenance to women. Women were the first to see Christ after his resurrection and played important roles in his ministry, roles that were possibly tamped down, from a publicity standpoint, by subsequent Bible scribes and church leaders, whose belief systems were crafted by archaic and primitive attitudes common to a highly patriarchic society.

Christ said to Mary Magdalene just after his resurrection:

“Go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

— John 20:17

Photo by British Library on Unsplash

Mary, of course, did so. If she had adhered to the quote attributed to Paul regarding the silence of women, she would have gone home to wash some clothes, and it’s possible Christ’s ascension would not have reached the ears of Christ’s other apostles.

Mary Magdalene was of such importance to Christ that some people have claimed they were married. Anything is possible, but a persistent review of scripture will probably lead you to a better conclusion — that their relationship was the perfect example of an intimate platonic relationship between a man and woman, something worthy of modeling in our 21st-century lives.

So why are women in general so poorly represented in the Bible, given the strong hints of their extreme importance?

Why, for example, was so little space devoted to Mary Magdalene given her obvious prominence in Christ’s ministry? The answer is almost surely because the Bible was written, transcribed, and translated by men.

The one denomination that reveres Jesus’s mother Mary has so polluted Christianity that it is almost disqualified from speaking to us about it.

I refer, of course, to the Roman Catholic church, which is full of idolatry through its grand displays of wealth, and further believes we mere mortals who are not part of the Catholic clergy are incapable of interpreting scripture, and won’t allow women to minister as priests.

So it isn’t surprising that New Age modalities are enthusiastically evangelized by women who might normally be attracted to the Christian message of love and redemption.

It isn’t surprising that atheists are enraged every time they see a mention of Jesus or God. Atheists understand hypocrisy.⁵ The vast majority of them are much closer to Jesus’ original teachings than fundamentalist lunatics like Hegseth.

Women’s roles in biblical scripture have been whittled away by men during the last 2,000 years, with the obvious Roman Catholic exception of a deep reverence towards the Virgin Mary that has no matching reverence towards any other women in Christ’s entourage.

Christ Revered Women

Jesus Christ had quite a different view towards women than the men who later built his church. And although none of his apostles were women (according to the male partriarchs who transcribed scripture), the roles of Mary Magdalene, and Mary and Martha were such that it is hard to consider them as less than apostles:

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving.

And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

— Luke 10:38–42

This sounds like the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but most likely by this time Jesus was already familiar with the two women (enough to pay a house call). Regardless, it was not their last encounter:

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. …

— John 11:1–6

Of course, Jesus loved everybody, but this case seems special. There is more, but the final scene between them says it all, with Jesus dying on the Cross:

There were also many women there, looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

— Matthew 27:55–56

These women weren’t just part of a gawking crowd. They were ministering to a dying Jesus. This conveys an intensely personal relationship.

More Fishy Business. Smell a Rat?

It is worth noting that several ancient manuscripts of the Book of Mark don’t include the story of Mary Magdalene’s encounter with Christ, whereas others do.

Modern interpreters can’t know if this exclusion on the part of ancient Bible scholars, translators, and distributors was intentional, or even whether the story was added by some later scholars to keep in sync with the other three Gospels: Matthew, John, and Luke, the latter of which reports on an incredulous reaction on the part of the other apostles when she, the other Mary, and several other women reported on Jesus’s empty tomb.

Another important piece of scripture that is left out of some manuscripts is the famous, “Who hath not sinned throw the first stone” chapter of John (double brackets indicate that text is missing from some manuscripts⁶:

[[They went each to his own house, but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them.

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery.

Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”

And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”]]

— John 7:53–8:11

Call me paranoid, but it seems to me that back in those days, there was significant conflict among biblical scribes on whether women should be mentioned at all.

What kind of a world would we be living in today if women’s roles in scripture had not been suppressed by men, as all this evidence seems to suggest? What other roles did women play that we will never discover?

Women played an important enough role in Jesus’s life and teachings that it became ultimately impossible for the patriarchy of his times to hide them from view.

Women were so hidden from view by the patriarchy of early Christianity that discovering the names of Jesus’ sisters is a great challenge. Aha. You didn’t know that Jesus had two sisters (at least), did you?

Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?”

— Matthew 13:55–56

We know that two of Jesus’s brothers, Judas (as Jude and not to be confused with the Judas who betrayed Christ) and James, wrote Epistles.

We can never truly be certain that neither of his sisters did, unless some lucky archaeologist uncovers one, probably looking for something else in the archaeological riches of the Holy Land.

I am going to go out on a limb and guess that if one of them had the audacity to write an epistolary note of some kind, ancient Christian men would have scrambled to hide or destroy it. That may seem like a cynical statement, but it is no more cynical than were the patriarchal attitudes of second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth century Christians.

Anna and the King

If the fact that Mary Magdalene was the first to see Christ after his resurrection doesn’t impress upon you the importance of women in Jesus’s ministry, then perhaps it’s time to look at the prophet Anna, who was, as far as we can tell in the Bible, the very first to proclaim to Jews waiting for the Messiah that, in Jesus’s birth, their prayers had been answered:

She spoke of him to all those who looked for redemption in Jerusalem.

— Luke 2:38

So. Of the two most illustrious roles given to witnesses of Jesus, two out of two of these witnesses were women.

These were women of steadfast faith. Anna was in Jerusalem, at the temple, and had lost her husband at an early age after having been married to him for only seven years. When Jesus was born, her devotion to her faith had accumulated many years and she was quite old. She had endured widowhood through her faith,⁷ and her stature and the influence of Roman law probably helped her retain significant influence, so, according to scripture, God chose her to be a public mouthpiece for Christ’s appearance and messianic delivery.

Much, if not all, of the Bible’s transcription occurred during a period of extreme patriarchy. There is no possible way to discover how many reports on the role of these various women were removed by the men who put the early pieces of the New Testament together.

Based on how often 21st-century men attempt to silence women, I’d wager that significant passages written by women were stripped out of the Bible we are familiar with.

Where Oh Where Has My Mary Gone?

The references to Mary Magdalene are shockingly few. Did the apostles who mention her leave out key passages, or did the scribes who transcribed various versions of the Bible do that (that’s my vote)? We have no way of knowing, beyond prayer, and that still small voice within, the Holy Spirit, who seems to tell me that the original Gospels told more than what we see, but were “edited” to reflect the times.

Photo credit: J Stimp: A Faith in God; Creative Commons license

These references would be more frequent if Mary Magdalene’s gospel, known as The Gospel of Mary,⁸ had made it into the biblical canon. The book is a fascinating look into the history of the battle waged by men against women as the church emerged. Like dozens of other early Christian writings, it didn’t make it into the Bible (books that make it into the Bible are part of what is referred to as canonical scripture).

There are two big reasons why some books aren’t considered canonical:

One, they were discovered after much of the Bible was compiled. Most denominations are loath to make changes to the Bible. The Gospel of Mary, for example, wasn’t discovered until 1896, and key parts are lost (because of course they were).

The other reason centers around authenticity.

In the case of Mary Magdalene’s gospel, nobody knows who wrote it. It was written between 120 and 180 A.D., so it could not have been written by Mary. It is called the Gospel of Mary because it tells of Mary’s experience from her perspective, so it was possibly written by someone close to her, first as oral history, then transcribed.⁹

Typically, “gospels” also tell the story of Jesus Christ, not of his apostles. But what is interesting about this ancient book is that the author takes the position that not only was Mary Magdalene an apostle, but possibly the most important.

The Courage of a Woman

Few disciples had Mary’s courage. She stayed near Jesus’s tomb after his death, unlike the male apostles. She was the first to encounter Jesus after he rose from the dead and she commiserated with angels at his tomb. Of the 11 male apostles, only John watched Jesus die on the cross:¹⁰

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!”

— John 19:26

Mary gathered other women to anoint Jesus’s body while hostile Roman soldiers looked on:

When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?”

And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back — it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed.

And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

— Mark 16:1–8

Most remarkably, after her chat with the angels at Jesus’s empty tomb, Jesus himself appeared to her. He had risen from the dead.

He could have picked anyone to talk to first. It wasn’t like it was just more convenient for him to choose her because she happened to be in the neighborhood. This was an incredibly significant event, but barely touched upon in the Bible, which was scribed by men presiding over, and protecting, a patriarchal order.

This isn’t a criticism of the New Testament. It is instead a criticism of the patriarchy that saw fit to, probably, commit the sin of deleting parts of God’s word from human history.

The consequences of Christendom’s patriarchal beginnings are extreme. Today, there are still few women preachers, pastors, reverends, or priests. This seems to me to be a shameful loss, not just in view of the massive sexual corruption within the Catholic and Baptist churches, not just in the carnage brought to us by fundamentalists who helped deliver the White House to Trump, but in the more general lack of spiritual messaging from a woman’s perspective.

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Thanks for reading!

Footnotes

1. “ESV Study Bible.” 2020. Crossway. 2020. https://www.crossway.org/bibles/esv-study-bible-case/. page 2286 Note on Philippians 4:3.

2. “The Roles for Women | From Jesus To Christ — The First Christians | FRONTLINE | PBS.” 2014. Pbs.Org. 2014. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/roles.html.

3. Ademiluka, Solomon O. 2017. “1 Corinthians 14:33b–36 in Light of Women and Church Leadership in Nigeria.” Verbum et Ecclesia 38 (1). https://doi.org/10.4102/ve.v38i1.1672.

4. Wikipedia Contributors. 2020. “Junia (New Testament Person).” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. March 22, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junia_(New_Testament_person).

5. I’ve written more about that here:

Have Atheists Set the Standard for Morality?

6. Some biblical scholars, based on translation nuances and language use, believe this passage was inserted considerably after John wrote the book, and some even dispute that John wrote the book at all (“Gospel According to John | Description, Authorship, & Facts | Britannica.” 2020. In Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gospel-According-to-John).

7. “Widows in the New Testament Period | Bible Interp.” 2018. Arizona.Edu. 2018. https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/widows-new-testament-period.

8. “Gospel of Mary.” 2020. Earlychristianwritings.Com. 2020. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/gospelmary.html.

9. Another reason patriarchal Christians hate the Gospel of Mary is that it refutes the concept that we are born to sin:

“There is no such thing as sin, you only make it appear when you act according to the habits of your adulterated nature: that is how what you call 'sin' manifests. This is why the Good has come into your midst, pursuing [the Good] which is in everyone’s true nature, to restore it inward to its root.”

This teaching will be familiar to anyone who has studied A Course in Miracles, which is another long tome loathed by most modern Christians, but whose authors claim was channeled through Christ.

“The Gospel of Mary - Full Text & Free Downloadable Pdf.” 2024. Thegospelofmary. 2024. https://www.thegospelofmary.org/the-gospel.

10. “Disciple with Mary at the Cross: University of Dayton, Ohio.” 2020. Udayton.Edu. May 2020. https://udayton.edu/imri/mary/d/disciple-with-mary-at-the-cross.php.