women and culture in the new testament world
TRANSCRIPT
Leaven Leaven
Volume 4 Issue 2 Women and Ministry Article 8
1-1-1996
Women and Culture in the New Testament World Women and Culture in the New Testament World
Kindalee Pfremmer DeLong [email protected]
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24 Leaven, Spring, 1996
Wornau and Culture inthe Ne"\V 'Iesuamont
World
Social Values Related to Paul's Teachingin 1 Corinthians
by Kindalee Pfremmer DeLong
Whenever the church approaches the ques-tion of gender roles, the word "culture" quickly sur-faces as a tool for understanding scripture. This tool,however, is not a simple one. Rather, the word"culture" encompasses an extremely complex andoften unstated set of values and mores. It seems thatwe often have difficulty understanding our own cul-ture, let alone another from long ago. Nevertheless,the duet ofculture and timeless truth ring throughoutscripture, and the church constantly strains to hearthe distinct sounds of each voice. While we may bidfarewell to the "holy kiss" or women's headcoverings,we must continue to proclaim without wavering JesusChrist's life, death and resurrection until he comes.Thus, in the pursuit of truth, it serves the church wellto discover as much as possible about the social valuesand mores of the New Testament world. In the caseof women's roles, historians have unearthed muchabout Paul's culture that illuminates his teaching insuch passages as 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 and 14:34-36.Study reveals a culture which valued an unyieldingsocial structure requiring a particular mode ofbehav-ior for women. This behavior could vary depending onthe setting, whether public or private. Interestingly,it appears that religion represented a "private" set-ting, within which women had greater freedom ofexpression. Yet this freedom seemed to remain tem-pered with a concern for proper behavior, as reflectedby Paul's teaching in 1Corinthians.
Women in An Ordered WorldA cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic city,
Corinth of Paul's day was an important seaport forthe Roman Empire. Despite a reputation for rebel-liousness and immorality, the citizens of Corinthfound themselves subject to Roman law and societalstructures. The members ofthe Corinthian churches-both Jewish and Gentile-lived their lives in thecontext of the rigidly ordered world of first-centuryGreco-Roman culture. This world placed tremen-dous importance on order and classification; therewas a "place for everyone and everyone in his place."1A person's "place" was pre-determined by age, gen-der, level of freedom (slave, freed, freeborn), andcitizenship, and required a certain behavior in keep-ing with one's position.
Societal order centered on the family, whichwas envisioned as a microcosm ofthe state. Withinthe family household, a person was husband, wife,child, other relative, worker or slave. The paterfamilias, the father or oldest brother, ruled thefamily and held ultimate authority over all its mern-bers under Roman law. He enforced societal expec-tations within the family and could punish, at hisdiscretion, disobedient family members with death(although such an extreme was probably rare).
Whereas male children grew up to rule theirown households, slaves could be freed, and workersmight move on, women came under the guardian-
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ship of a male relative their entire lives.s When awoman married, her guardianship might be trans-ferred from her fatherlbrother to her husband-butnot necessarily. Roman marriages allowed for bothpossibilities. In either case, Roman law mandatedthat every woman remain in the custody of a male,who then made decisions regarding her marriageand was required to co-sign any legal transactions inwhich she might be involved. In addition, a womangenerally adopted the religion of her pater [amilias.
The behavior of a woman could bring eitherhonor or shame upon her family. The terms "honor"and "shame" in the Greco- Roman world encompassedsocial values that served to uphold the social order.Honor, a male concern, was a claim to worth whichwas publicly acknowledged. Shame, the opposite ofhonor, was the same claim publicly denied and repu-diated. In other words, a man was brought to shamewhen his claim to honor was rejected by his peers-when he lost worth in their eyes. In contrast toAmerican culture, however, an acceptable claim tohonor was never made with the intention of "climb-ing the ladder" of the first-century world. In fact,honorable behavior included obedience, faithfulnessand loyalty to tradition; individuals simply did notseek more for themselves than had been duly allottedthem in Iife.f Rather, within their "place" in society,they performed "honorably." Thus, honorable actsmight be defined very differently for a master and aslave, or for a man and woman. (We may findevidence of this social perspective in 1 Corinthianswhen Paul advises individuals to remain in thecondition in which they were called.)
In addition, honor in the first century was afamily affair. People inherited honor from theirancestors and were expected to maintain it. A mandid so through public claims-bold speech, boasting,exaggeration-and heroic acts. A woman, in contrast,maintained the honor of her pater [amilias by re-maining private, reserved, and pure. A prized pos-session of her husband or father, she was expected tomaintain a decorous demeanor that reflected wellupon her male guardian. Thus, a bold, public claimfor honor by a man was considered admirable; thesame claim by a woman would have brought shameupon her pater [amilias+
Women in Public and PrivateGreco-Roman people characterized honor-
able and dishonorable behavior for women accordingto the setting-that is, public or private. A privatesetting was defined as the presence of one's ownfamily or closest circle of friends. One was in publicwhen in the presence of associates or strangers.e Forthe most part, the public sphere was male; the pri-
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vate, fernale.f In private, a woman could hold tre-mendous responsibility, such as that of managing abusy and complex household-supervising children,slaves and employees. Venturing beyond this pri-vate world, however, required her utmost discretionand caution. For if she sought to enter the publicrealm, she risked bringing shame upon her family.
One way in which a woman entered theforbidden public realm was by "speaking" and, ac-cording to some ancient authors, "learning." Plutarchillustrated well the connection between speech andthe public arena when he wrote:
Theano [the wife of Pythagoras], in putting hercloak about her exposed her arm. Somebodyexclaimed, "A lovely arm." "But not for the pub-lic," said she. Not only the arm of the virtuouswoman, but her speech as well, ought to be not forthe public, and she ought to be modest andguarded about saying anything in the hearing ofoutsiders, since it is an exposure of herself; for inher talk can be seen her feelings, character, anddisposition."
Here, a woman was to guard her speech in public. Infact, the rare women who dared to engage in publicspeech were censured for inappropriate behavior. Awoman of the first century, Maesia Sentia, success-fully defended herself through oration against anunknown charge. However, the writer ValeriusMaximus described her as "androgynous." He seemedto mean that because she had entered the malesphere by speaking in public, her gender had becomeconfused. Similarly, Hortensia delivered a speech in42 B.C. on behalf of the women of the city of Rome.Though the crowd praised her oratory skill, Romanofficials were outraged that she had spoken publiclywhen "men were silent."8
In a speech by Livy, an "unnamed speaker"likewise argued that society was experiencing troublewith women precisely because the pater [amilias hadnot been exercising his authority. Instead, womenwere out in public, speaking with other women'shusbands and stir ring up trouble. Could they nothave asked their husbands the same thing at home,he asked. Thus, the speaker revealed the fear under-lying Roman objection to women's public oration:
They want freedom, nay license (if we are tospeak the truth) in all things ... As soon as theybegin to be your equals, they will have becomeyour superiors."
Women's public speaking threatened the structuresof the household upon which the society was built.
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C~hristian women in Corinth
(and elsewhere) operated withinthe church as if it were a privatesetting,
Learning and debate were also consideredmasculine traits and undesirable in women. Juvenal,writing in the latter part of the first century, arguedthat it was "exasperating" for a woman to discussVirgil and Homer at the dinner table. He thenconnected an interest in learning with an attempt toenter the sphere of education and eloquence reservedfor men. Such a wife, he argued, might as well beginto cross-dress and worship and bathe with men. Thephilosopher finally concluded:
Wives shouldn't try to be public speakers; theyshouldn't use rhetorical devices; they shouldn'tread all the classics-there ought to be somethings women don't understand. . . If she hasto correct somebody, let her correct her girl friendsand leave her husband alone.'?
We find echoes of these various attitudestoward women's speech and learning in 1Corinthians.At 11:2-16, Paul taught that women who spoke inprayer or prophecy were to be careful to look likewomen (with long hair and/or heads covered) ratherthan men. Similarly, at 14:34-35, he connectedwomen's speech with dishonor and directed womento ask questions of their husbands at home. Interest-ingly, in this same passage, Paul like Juvenal relatedwomen's speech to learning: "If there is anythingthey desire to know, let them ask their husbands athome." Unlike Juvenal, Paul encouraged men andwomen to talk "at the dinner table," so to speak. Yet,Paul nevertheless argued that women's speech re-lated to their learning in church brought dishonor insome way.
Women in ReligionFor both pagan and Jewish women, religion
generally served to uphold the rigid expectations forwomen of Greco-Roman society. Roman religionencompassed both political religion, which servedthe interests of the state, and domestic religion,which was practiced at home. In Roman politicalreligion-especially in cults devoted to issues offertil-ity and childbirth-women played an active role, butone in keeping with their assigned duties as wivesand mothers. In Roman domestic religion, the pater
[amilias sacrificed to household gods on behalf of thefamily. Little is known about what role womenplayed.U But both domestic and political religionappear to have reinforced the family hierarchy.
Jewish belief and culture also intertwinedreligion with social hierarchy. Authors such asJosephus and the rabbis (writing in the second cen-tury and later) related women's submission to .Jew-ish Law; God had explicitly given authority to men.A godly Jewish woman was to appear as little aspossible in public, cover her head, and take no publicrole in the synagogue. One rabbi summarized it thisway:
What [is a transgression of] the law of Moses andthe Jews? . .. If she goes out with her hairunbound, or spins in the street, or talks to every-one ... J2
Women who violated the "law" were subject to di-vorce without compensation.
On the other hand, women sometimes foundgreater freedom in connection with Eastern religionsand "religious associations" -both pagan and Jewish.Religious involvement thus provided some womenthe opportunity for more public roles. Eastern reli-gions offered these opportunities in abundance.l-One example, the oriental cult of Isis, gained greatpopularity among women during the Hellenistic era.Although Isis embodied wifely devotion and mater-nal care, she also was thought to have made thepower of women equal to that of men. In worship ofIsis, women prophets loosened their hair and showedgreat emotion, from weeping to exultation. In addi-tion, worshippers of all classes were accepted at alllevels of participation. Ross Kraemer, in a study ofIsis worship, concludes that the cult "sanctionedincreased autonomy and authority for women at anexplicit level not seen before (or after) in the religionsof the Greco-Roman world."14 Isis worship thus flewin the face of the conventional norms of Romansociety and met with governmental resistance andbiting criticism from traditional philosophers, as didother Eastern cults practicing similar equality. WhenPaul in 1Corinthians 11directed women's attentionto their heads, he surely would have been aware ofthese ecstatic Eastern cults known for their femaleprophets with wild, loosed hair, and he perhapssought to distinguish Christian freedom from thisless reputable form of freedom.
A number of wealthy women also found in-creased autonomy and power in pagan religiousassociations <Collegia) and Hellenistic synagogues(which were modeled on collegias.t> By taking ad-vantage of the Greco-Roman system of'benefactiori.t"
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women benefactors of pagan collegia provided fundsin exchange for honor, prestige, power and privilege.In the role of benefactor, these women made offer-ings, organized communal meals, managed finances,oversaw internal order and performed acts of admin-istration. Perhaps more surprisingly, there is evi-dence that this model was adopted by certain Helle-nistic synagogues; wealthy women benefactors occa-sionally served as synagogue presidents, elders and"founders't-despite the rabbis' condemnation of pub-lic roles for women.J? In these capacities they wouldhave taught, invited members to preach, managedfinances, maintained community relations, adminis-tered worship services and overseen communal deci-sion-making. This trend of female leadership ap-peared to be limited to synagogues in Asia Minor. Ithas been theorized that the large percentage ofGreekconverts-for whom the participation of women inreligious life would have been familiar from themodel of the pagan religious association--created thisphenomenon of synagogue "mothers."IB
Given the Greco-Roman requirement thatwomen remain in the private sphere, it is not surpris-ing to find that Roman law targeted the non-conform-ist Eastern religions. How can we explain, however,the acceptance of women benefactors of religiousassociations and Hellenistic synagogues? Some havesuggested that this trend resulted simply from aweakening of the family hierarchy in the years lead-ing to the first century. Women were gaining in-creased legal rights and opportunities for self-deter-mination.tf For example, marriages in which womenremained under the guardianship of their fathers orbrothers and consequently enjoyed more freedomhad become the most popular form of Roman mar-riage in the first century.w There is even someevidence that the guardianship system was losinghold by the first century.s- Nevertheless, firstcentury-society hardly welcomed women into thepublic sphere.
Ross Kraemer has pointed out another possi-bility: The acceptance of women benefactors-in bothreligious and civic settings-became legitimized pri-marily through the "privatization" of these institu-tions. The religious association became like an ex-tended family; female benefactors were then termed"mothers." Kraemer has summarized:
Women's religious office was acceptable in theGreco-Roman world precisely to the extent thatit legitimized and conformed to expectations aboutwomen's roles generally. [Their leadership] wasperceived as an extension of their domestic culticresponsibilities-the extrusion of the private intothe public-still a woman's realm.P
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In other words, when religion became a privateaffair, women could take a bolder role without creat-ing a scandal. 23
The Corinthian Church in an OrderedWorld
The New Testam en t portrays churches whichfostered surprisingly bold behavior by women. Theearliest churches, which met in households, weremodeled more upon the religious association thanthe patriarchal family.24 Yet like pagan religiou.sassociations and Jewish synagogues, the group ObVI-ously thought of itself as a family. The familialdesignation may have made a significant differenceto women by "privatizing" the church. If the churchwere considered private, then women could activelyparticipate and lead in a manner which would havebeen unacceptable in a more public setting. Indeed,Christian women in Corinth (and elsewhere) oper-ated within the church as ifit were a private setting.For example, respectable women generally did !1nl
dine in public. However, they shared regularly in ih»Lord's Supper and communal meals(l Cor 11:17-34).Similarly, Paul called Phoebe the prostatis (probably"benefactor") of the church of Cenchreae, the port ofCorinth (Rom 16:1). In addition, women prayed andprophesied (1 Cor 11:2-16) and engaged in some kindof speech related to learning (1 Cor 14:34-35). Con-sidering all the early churches portrayed in the NewTestament, one could summarize that, within theearly Christian movement, "women were among themost prominent missionaries and leaders."25
Nevertheless, the tension between public andprivate remained for women in the earliest churches,as evidenced by such elements in 1 Corinthians asPaul's emphasis on honor and shame in both in-stances in which he dealt with women's behaviorspecifically (1 Cor 11:2-26 and 14:33a-35). In addi-tion, his interest in "outsiders" and "unbelievers" inchapter fourteen may indicate that the Christianassembly became at certain times in some sensepublic. Thus, Christian women's bold service in theprivate circle of the church became tempered with aconcern for social propriety in order not to bringshame upon their "family."
... and TodayWhen approaching scripture we must re-
member that the culture of the first century was fardifferent from that of modern America-not just inmores related to behavior, but in deeply rooted,conceptions of space, honor and the nature of humanbeings. Writers of scripture sometimes rejectedthese values by reason of theology; most often, how-
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ever, they lived their faith within the context of theirworld. When Paul limited women's behavior, wemust ask whether he did so to accommodate culture.Living in a culture in which a woman's public behav-ior no longer brings shame to her family, we mustalso ask whether accommodations to a very differentculture remain central as we strive to live out ourfaith in God today.
Kindy Pfremmer DeLong holds a Master ofDivin-ity degree from Pepperdine University and is a mem-ber of the Conejo Church of Christ, Thousand Oaks,California.
Questions for Discussion1.What were the social values that characterized theworld of the New Testament? What are the socialvalues that characterize our own culture?
2. Why was the distinction between "public" and"private" so important in the first century? Howshould this distinction affect the way we read theNew Testament passages about women?
3. Do you think there still exists a distinction be-tween the public and private spheres? Why or whynot? Do you think such a distinction impedes in-creased participation and leadership for women inthe churches?
4. Do you think it is important to understand thecultural backgrounds of the Bible? Why or why not?How would you respond to this statement: "We can-not understand the Bible until we understand thecultural worlds which gave it birth, and until werecognize the cultural world which we ourselvesbring to the text?"
NotesIJohn J. Pilch and Bruce J. Malina, Biblical
Social Values and Their Meaning: A Handbook(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1993) 51.
2Pilch,151-55. There were rare exceptions, suchas wealthy women without
3Ibid., 47-49 and 95-104.4Bruce J. Malina, Windows on the World of
Jesus: Time Travel to Ancient Judea (Louisville,Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993) 34.
5Ibid., 107.6Interestingly, defining public and private ac-
cording to gender in American society began to change onlyduring the last century or so. Today, although the distinc-tion between public and private for women has brokendown in the wider society, it lingers in church discussionsof "women's roles." People often discuss the "public assem-bly" versus a more private devotional or class situation,assigning gender roles differently depending on the set-ting.
7Plutarch, Moralia 31.8Pilch, 176.9Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, In Memory of
Her: A Feminist Reconstruction of Christian Ori-gins (New York: Crossroad, 1985) 231-2.
10Pilch, 172.11Ross S. Kraemer, Her Share of the Blessings
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) 50-4.12Peter Tomson, Paul and the Jewish Law
(Van Gorcum: Fortress, 1990) 132-3.13Kraemer, 74-9; Pilch, 217-223.14Kraemer, 77.15Schussler Fiorenza, 89-90; Pilch, 125-6.16Acommon feature ofGreco-Roman society, bene-
factors-male and (less often) female-essentially "adopted"a person or group (clients), providing funds and materialhelp in exchange for honor, praise, and status. The bene-factor was sometimes caJled "father" or "mother;" theclients, "children." Pilch,37.
17It has been theorized that the increasing powerof women in some synagogues in fact brought about therabbis' strongly stated restrictions on women.
18Kraemer, 118-121.19Ibid., 126-130.20Sarah Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives,
and Slaves (New York: Schocken Books, 1975) 155.21Ibid., 151.22Kraemer, 89.23Wealth, of course, played a significant role in
creating opportunities for women, since a benefactor bydefinition possessed economic power.
24Ibid., 141-2; Schussler Fiorenza, 175-184.25Ibid., 133.
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