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The role of women in the Christian churches of Paul’s day by Dr. Helmut Koester |
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This webpage contains
excerpts from Dr. Helmut Koester’s September 13, 1997 address entitled, “St.
Paul: His Mission to the Greek Cities & His Competitors,” which he
delivered at The Foundation for Biblical Research, Charlestown, NH, USA. (The
Foundation was later renamed the “Center for Scriptural Studies.”)
It was transcribed
by Robert Nguyen Cramer from an audio recording and used here by permission
of Dr. Koester and by permission of The Foundation for Biblical Research,
by whom all rights and copyrights are reserved.
Dr. Koester is a world
renowned New Testament scholar. He has published extensively, has taken part
in many archeological digs, and in 1998 retired as John H. Morrison Professor
of New Testament Studies and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard
Divinity School. You can explore more documentation on the role of women in
New Testament churches by referring to Dr. Koester’s two-volume Introduction
to the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982, and revised
in 1995), which is part of the Hermeneia series.
Please keep in mind that
Dr. Koester’s address included many extemporaneous remarks, so the flow of
thoughts is not as tight and carefully constructed as written prose, such
as that found in his many published books. His intimate familiarity with the
Greek texts, with the archeology, with the history, with the cultural contexts,
and with the many scholarly issues and views — both the more traditional
views and the more controversial views — makes his extemporaneity especially
valuable.
HELMUT KOESTER: …I’ll
say a few things about the Epistle to the Romans. First of all, I think there
are two letters. Romans 16 was not sent to Rome. Romans 16 has a long list of
several dozen names of people that Paul knows. He didn’t know several dozen
people in Rome. Moreover we know that these people are connected with Ephesus.
Prisca and Aquila were in
Corinth, and they came over to Ephesus when Paul started his mission there as
his assistants. That Prisca and Aquila had meanwhile moved to Rome is not quite
believable, because they were apparently still in Ephesus a few months earlier,
when Paul left there. So were many others…
Romans 16 is a letter of
recommendation, the earliest letter of recommendation for a Christian minister,
and it’s written for a woman, Phoebe, who is, in the beginning of the chapter,
said to have been a deacon, not a deaconess — but a deacon in the sense of
a preacher, a minister, because Paul uses the same word for himself. He calls
himself, in a number of instances, a deacon of the new covenant in 2 Corinthians.
It’s the male form not even
the female form that is used in Greek here. The other word that is used for
Phoebe is a Greek word “prostatis.” Now if you go into the general
dictionary of Greek, it will say “prostatis” has two meanings: “1.
president, and 2. patron.” Now an Old and New Testament dictionary which
is no longer in print said “prostatis” means “1. president, 2.
patron, 3. helper,” in parenthesis, “(only in Romans 16:1).”
And that’s the translation that has existed for a long time. I think it has
now disappeared from The New Revised Standard Version.
So, Paul writes this as
a recommendation for Phoebe who is probably the president of the Christian community
in Cenchreae and a deacon that is a preacher — not a helper and a deaconess.
(That’s the old translation.)
And this letter has one
other very interesting information about women, namely it contains greetings
to Junia and Andronicus, who both have been “well-respected apostles before
me.” Now Junia is a woman. I showed you the inscription for Junia for the
woman.1 And there’s an old debate that this should read, “Junias,”
which is a male name, with an “s” at the end, and that’s because it
was unthinkable that a woman was an apostle.
Now early in this century
a very famous German scholar, Hans Lietzmann, who was a superb philologian,
made an investigation into all surviving names of antiquity and came to the
conclusion that the name Junias did not exist — that the name Junianus existed
and that the name Junias is possible as a short form for the name Junianus,
but there was no evidence that it was ever used. So he says philologically you
cannot bring evidence that this was a man Junias rather than a woman Junia,
but he says that since it’s not thinkable that a woman was an apostle, we have
to read the male name Junias. And later commentaries say we have to read the
male name Junias, because Hans Lietzmann has brought the philological evidence.
Well,… he has done the evidence. He has done the opposite! So, no question
— scholars agree today that indeed Romans 16 contains reference to a female
apostle named Junia, whom Paul recognized as an apostle before him.
The other two dozen names
are not girlfriends and boyfriends of Paul, but they are, of course, collaborators,
and Paul writes this letter to Ephesus as a sort of final greeting to the Ephesian
community, with also greetings among others from Erastus, the city treasurer,
of which I showed you the slide of the pavement that he made.2 That
is Romans 16. Romans 1 through 15 is also a letter of recommendation, but a
letter of recommendation for himself, because he now goes to the community that
does not know him…
QUESTION FROM A SEMINAR
ATTENDEE: What should we finally make then of Paul’s position towards women?
I mean Ephesians has that passage, but it’s not by Paul — from his school.
How do you reconcile that with — of course the context is different — but
how do you reconcile that with what goes on in terms of equality of the genders…
Women in seminary are so down on Paul and his attitude towards women. What are
the ends that we should be making of Paul?
HELMUT KOESTER: I
think everything that has been said negative about Paul’s attitude — negative
attitude to women — is nonsense. I think I know the Pauline epistles very well…
I disagree with a number of feminists who sort of take Paul as their target.
If they want to take Paul as their target, well, forget it, then you have nothing
to stand on.
If Paul mentioned 40 names
in his letters — of individuals (and if we must assume that these individuals
are fellow workers) — and talked about the big missionary enterprise of which
there are dozens of people or participants, well, of those 40 people, 16 are
women. That’s a considerable proportion of women involved in the Pauline missionary
effort.
There was no problem. I
don’t think Paul had any problem with women. But the society had a problem with
women in leadership, and the problem with women in leadership in the society
became aggravated in the following generation, because there was one way in
which women could buy in the religious communities their freedom and independence
and leadership, and that was by giving up their roles as wives and mothers,
and that is clear in the second century controversy with gnosticism.
Even in the Marcionite church,
a Pauline-type church of the second century,… women are recognized as equal
to men as leaders, but they had to be virgins. The price of virginity is a very
heavy price to pay for the status of a woman in the community.
Here Christianity is drawn
into two very — I would say — in-a-way, destructive movements. One is the
maintenance of the old patriarchal system. And the other one is the growing
emphasis on asceticism and denial of the flesh and denial of sex. And the Christian
movement has had great difficulties and has not been successful to solve that
conflict.
Until today …, you have
… the question, “Will there ever be women priests in the Roman Catholic
Church?” And one answer, “Yes, perhaps, but they’ll have to be virgins.”
What answer would that be?” The recognition of the full humanity of male
and female existence in one’s worldly and fleshly function, antiquity has not
been able to recognize, and has therefore put up virginity as one of the obstacles
here. On the other hand, the Roman society was not a society that was ready
to give up its hierarchical patriarchal system. Now everything is not as black
and white, if one reads the history of the Christian community in antiquity.
It’s not the case that,
immediately after Paul, women were denied all their rights in the churches.
The Pastoral Epistles are an attempt to put women into their place, but it by
no means says that it was a successful attempt. Women played considerable roles
in Christian churches, and this comes particularly out again in the fourth century
with the great women leaders — ascetic women leaders — like Melania.3
So, but, there has never
been a successful attempt in Christian churches to solve this successfully,
to solve this as it ought to be solved, but that’s not the only conflict. The
ethnic differences and social differences harm Christian communities today just
as well as the gender differences. So my answer is that the question of the
equal status of women in the churches can only be solved, if we solve at the
same time the question of equal status in Christian communities of people of
different race and different gender and different social status. Those three
belong together, and the formulation of Galatians 3:28 is unequivocal. There’s
no question here.
It can also be as Dennis
MacDonald had argued that the older Christian formula – baptismal formula —
was “there is neither male nor female” and that it was Paul who added
“the Jew and Gentile” and “slave and free” — that is, Paul
expanded this — the social and political aspect — of this equality formula.
So I think that stands as a challenge… If we want a biblical basis, Paul is
the biblical basis for this, and not the stupid attacks on Paul, and then you
say Paul is eventually responsible for what the Pastoral Epistles had written.
This is nonsense. That was a hundred years later. How can Paul be responsible
for what they write?
QUESTION FROM A SEMINAR
ATTENDEE: Is it fair to say then that Paul wasn’t setting forth a theology
when he was saying about how women should be in the church at that time, but
he was just talking of the need of society at that point.”
HELMUT KOESTER: Paul
had a vision of what the society — the community — of the new age should be
like, and of the principles of the community in new ages. And that fulfills
old dreams from Greek philosophy. That’s not new — as old as the sophists of
the time of Socrates — that the new community should do away with social and
gender differences. And the concept of a new community that belonged to a new
age implied that as a charter…
1
Dr. Koester showed the inscription regarding Junia in his slide show presentation
to those attending the seminar.
2 Erastus, the
city treasurer, is one of the very few Christians mentioned in the New Testament
of whom there is verifiable archeological evidence of their place and time.
Dr. Koester showed a slide of a Erastus’ pavement, which described him as the
city treasurer. At that time and place, engraved pavements were used for the
same purpose that signs on the window, the door, the awning, or elsewhere on
the front of today’s stores and businesses. This is literally concrete proof
that Romans 16 was written to the Christians in Ephesus.
3 For more information
on Melania, see pages 87-88 and page 96 in Elaine Pagels’ Adam, Eve, and
the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988).