Within Reason - #111 Helen Bond - The Forgotten Female Disciples of Jesus

Episode Date: July 6, 2025

Helen Bond is Professor of Christian Origins at the New College, University of Edinburgh, and former head of the School of Divinity there. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2023, she co-authored a book with Joan Taylor called Women Remembered: Jesus’ Female Disciples. Watch the documentary version here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You co-authored a book with Joan Taylor called Women Remembered about the early female followers of Jesus of Nazareth. Women remembered as a project implies women forgotten. So my question is this, to start with. Jesus famously had 12 followers, and they're named in the Gospels, although it's not always exactly clear if those names were decided upon by the gospel authors. But one thing that we're pretty sure about is that they were all men. And throughout the history of Christianity, people have looked at this and thought Jesus chose only male followers. And that gives us some indication of how we should treat gender relations within the church. Why were all of Jesus's principal 12 followers men?

I think it depends what the purpose of these 12 people were. So Jesus, yes, you're right. There's a clear memory that Jesus had 12 male disciples. Though, as you say, the exact makeup of who is included. in the group is a bit uncertain in some of the lists. But the important thing is that everyone remembered that there were 12 of them, even if they didn't remember exactly who made up that 12. The important thing about 12, when you look at sort of Jewish history, is that 12 is a number of the tribes of Israel. And I think an important thing about what Jesus is doing is preaching

about the restoration of Israel. So originally there were 12 tribes. By the time of Jesus, so there's only two tribes left. The others have been swept away by the Assyrian invasion. And so I think part of this is a symbolic value of Jesus saying, you know, open your hearts, come back to God, and there will be a 12ness again. There will be 12 tribes. And so I think what these 12 male disciples are doing is harking back to this time when you have, you know, Israel as a whole. It's reconstituted Israel. And that's a completely separate. thing from who was a disciple who followed him. And it's very clear from the Gospels actually that there were women following him too, even if sometimes they're a bit slow to tell us. So in Mark's

gospel, for example, which most people think is the earliest gospel, it's right at the end by the time you get to the crucifixion that Mark suddenly says, oh, you know, there were a few women too. And many women, actually, he says, and they had followed him from Galilee. So actually they've been on the road with him all this time. So this mental picture we often have that's reinforced by films and documentaries of Jesus striding out across the country with 12 strapping lads with him really does need to be kind of changed a little bit to include these women as well. Yeah, it's fascinating how even some of the more iconic women within the sort of Jesus ministry, many people will be familiar with certain names. Mary Magdalene is perhaps the most famous, except for maybe

the Mary the mother of Jesus. And reading Mark's gospel, as you say, the earliest gospel, it might strike you when you get to very near the end, and it's the crucifixion. This is in Mark chapter 15, all the way down in verse 40, we finally see, after Jesus dies, some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, the younger of Joseph, and Salome. And this is the first mention of Mary Magdalene. And I think people reading Mark's gospel think to themselves, oh God, I totally forgot about her. And then they're like, wait, hold on, is this, is this it? Is this really all we get? It's really interesting how a lot of noise is made, particularly by like Christian apologists about the importance of the women discovering the empty tomb. It is of course the women who find the tomb empty on Easter morning. And yet, it's like they only show up there where they're narratively necessary. And yet we're told, like you say, that these were women who had been following Jesus for some time. And there's even an indication that they were doing more. than just following Jesus, but also kind of helping out a little bit in terms of funding the

ministry, right? Yeah, this comes from Luke. So what you've been describing so far is Mark's gospel, where the women suddenly appear at the end. In Luke's gospel, though, and Luke is rewriting Mark. Mark is his major source. So Luke actually moves these women much earlier. He has them in chapter 8 already. So if you're reading Luke's gospel, you do have this different mental picture. You've got the 12 male and he says, you know, and there were many women, too. But the interesting thing, as you say, about Luke, well, a couple of interesting things. One is that he changes the women. Mary Magdalene is common to both lists, but he has different women. He mentions Joanna, the wife of Chooser, who's only found in Luke's Gospel. But he

also adds a line to say that the women were paying for either them or him out of their own resources or they were funding, they were ministering to them out of their own resources, is the exact Greek. So, of course, people have, you know, asked, what does this mean? What does ministering to them out of their own resources imply? And it does seem to be something financial. So Luke does seem to be suggesting that these women are women of a certain wealth. They're well-to-do women who are somehow bankrolling this movement. I mean, of course, That then raises a question, is that historically likely or not? You know, does Jesus have a load of wealthy women in tow with him?

And some have said, yeah, well, why not? Maybe they're older. Maybe they've sort of inherited. Maybe they're wealthy widows. Another possibility, though, is that Luke is very keen all the way through both the gospel and the acts of the apostles, which is probably the second sort of volume of the gospel of Luke, he's very keen throughout all of that to suggest that Christianity, whilst it sort of attracts women, only attracts women of a certain type. So it's elite women. It's respectable

women. It's wealthy women. And so it would sort of fit Luke's purposes to sort of imply that these were well-to-do women. They're not, you know, they're not rough fisher women. They're not kind of poor beggar women. They're elite, you know, well-to-do women. So that does put some queries over certainly that aspect of what Luke is saying. Right. And also, as you say, Luke changes the women or perhaps includes a different set of women, one of whom is Joanna, the wife of Choozer. And it's specified that Chuser, the husband of Joanna, is a steward to Herod Antipas, who will be the king of Judea at the time, so an incredibly powerful man. So a steward to Herod has a wife called Joanna, and that wife is one of the women who is potentially bankrolling Jesus' ministry.

So we have this further indication that at least one of these women might have come from the court of Herod in some or to some degree, which would mean that she probably had a bit of money under her belt. And, you know, although they were just sort of wandering around in the desert, they will have had to, you know, find some kind of way of sustaining themselves. It's not all sort of miraculous bread from heaven, after all. And so it's an interesting indication, but the thing that strikes most readers is that it's so sparse. It's like you get this very, very brief mention. As with so much of biblical scholarship, you get a tiny little line in Greek, and you have to sort of get everything you can out of that. And reading your book, Women Remembered, which you co-authored with Joe, and I mentioned that in the, and I'll put that in the description.

One of the things that struck me was just how much you were able to pull out of some quite sort of, quite short, quite sparse references to the various women in the New Testament. And it doesn't feel like sort of stretching. It doesn't feel like pulling out more than you should in the way that, you know, people parody English teachers for doing. in every single line of a poem or something and really reading into it. It really seems like there's a lot that we can know about these women. So, of the most important women in the New Testament, who do you think we can know the most about? Because I think it would be interesting to start there and talk about who we can actually

really get a grip on. Well, thank you for saying that it doesn't sound stretched. I mean, you know, both of us are, I have spent a lot of time looking at first century Judea, not just the women, but, you know, the archaeology and the history and everything connected with that. So hopefully, even when we're sort of filling in gaps, we have a, you know, we have a pretty good idea of what was likely and what was unlikely in that period. And yes, I mean, that is a tantalizing thing. We get, you know, Joanna, the wife of Chusa is so interesting because almost every word in that description is really, really interesting. I mean, who was

the manager of Herod Antipass's estates? I mean, you know, that's. That's really exciting in itself. But we know so little about some of these women. Sometimes it's just a name, you know, Salome, who's she? But, you know, people clearly knew who she was because she's not described as the wife of someone or the daughter or, you know, oh, Salome. Yeah, yeah, Salome, we know who she is. But I think the person we know most about, the woman we know most about is probably Mary Magdalene, despite the fact that, as you rightly say, you know, you can look through the whole gospels and you're not finding all these references. to her being a prostitute or all of the things that have been added to besmirch her over

the years, she really does appear at the end. And her role is very much to be sort of the witness to the cross and then to the empty tomb later on. But I think even though there's a literary relationship between the Gospels, the fact that all of them, even when they change the names of women, always include Mary Magdalene, does suggest that that there's something sort of preeminent about her. When it comes to sort of female disciples, Mary Magdalene is always the one that you mention. And I think it does make sense to see her in some way

as an authority figure or a sort of a leader of a group of women, women disciples who then become women missionaries. And when you think about the situation at the time, It is a deeply patriarchal society, and women wouldn't have simply been able to go up to Peter, or Peter couldn't have just gone to a group of women, for example, washing clothes and say, you know, let me baptize you. That would have really been quite scandalous. You would have needed a chaperone.

You couldn't have been alone with a man. And I think to get the message out to women, you needed women to act as intermediaries. And so I think in the same way that you have this sort of, you know, that the mission to other people, to largely men in the Gospels, you've also got this sort of equal and opposite sort of mission to women. And I think probably Mary Magdalene was the equivalent to Peter in that. There's a lot to say about Mary Madeline, of course. You've already mentioned the idea that she's a prostitute, who is repentant, who is. you know, may or may not have had some kind of romantic interest or relationship with Jesus, depending on which musical you watch or which apocryphal gospel you read.

But before talking about Mary Magdalene, who I think most people will be interested in hearing about, you talked about this idea just then of Jesus sending out his disciples. And this hadn't crossed my mind until I saw the documentary that you and Dr. Taylor made on this same subject material, which I'll also link in the description, because that's a great watch too. And just thinking about it, yeah, they're going out and they're converting people to Christianity. And what are they doing? They're anointing people with oils and they're baptizing people, like immersion in water, which is probably not done like totally fully clothed or if so would be quite a sort of intimate thing to do with someone that you didn't really know. Yeah, very intimate. And especially given, like you say, the cultural circumstances, it's difficult to imagine Peter and Paul walking into a room full of women and saying, right, ladies, you know, let's all jump in the river together. And so just on an intuitive level, you think there must have been some women involved. But there is also this.

this textual indication, which is that if you look at Mark chapter 6, when Jesus sends out the 12 to minister the word and spread it as far and wide as they can, he calls the 12 to himself and begins to send them out in the Greek duo duo. That is two by two. He sends them out two by two. And there's an interesting implication about the usage of this term because that duo duo two by also shows up in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, when Noah is bringing the animals on board the ark. So what might this tell us about what's going on here? Yeah, well, this is one of the great ideas of Joan Taylor, who I wrote the book with, as you've mentioned. And she spotted that, too, that it's normally assumed that when Jesus is sending

out the 12 male disciples two by two, that that just means, you know, six groups of two male disciples. But because of this link with the Noah story two by two, where the animals are always, you know, they're a gendered pair, she suggested that each of these male disciples is sort of buddying up with a female disciple too, and that they are going out as a male and female. And what's particularly interesting about that, too, I think, is that very quickly we see this as the standard pattern of ministry within the early church. So already in Paul's letters and acts, you know, the idea that you have missionary pairs. And sometimes they're married, but sometimes they're not necessarily married. They're, you know, what they call a sister wife. They're,

their two missionaries who go out together. And there's obvious advantages of that, as we've already said because of the cultural setting, it enables a missionary pair to go into a house or a town or a village and to sort of divide up their energies. And if we write that two-by-two does hark back to the Noah story and does imply that it's a gendered pair, then that whole sort of method of ministry then goes right back to the time of Jesus. What did your ancestors really do all day? What were their lives like? With Ancestry's global historical records,

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Yeah, that's interesting too. It's not just this callback to the... to the two by two of Noah, but also the fact that in the letters of Paul, in acts, we see these male-female pairs, so like in Romans 16, where we meet Jr. and Andronicus, I think is how you tell his name, as this pair. That is indeed if Junius is a woman. We'll get on to that in due course. And Prisca and Aquas and another disciples. So all the way through, you know, once you start looking for these kind of gendered pairs, they do seem to be everywhere. Yeah, and so it's not, and again, this is on the more speculative side, but it's not

out of the question that when Jesus sends out the 12 disciples two by two, he's sending them out with their, with their sister wives, or perhaps their real-life partners. So there's some indication on an intuitive level, and maybe on a textual level, that women are more involved here than their first given credit for. But yeah, let's talk about Mary Magdalene. So when people are named in the Bible, it's important to realize that second names will, weren't really a thing in the same way that they are today. Instead, these second names might be thought of as what we could call a disambiguaator because there were so many people with the same name that it was ambiguous who you were talking

about. Mary was the most common name in the ancient world in this area. And so there would need to be some distinction. That's why it's not just Mary. It's Mary the mother of Jesus. It's Mary the mother of James. It's Mary the son of this person. Mary the wife of this person.

So the disambiguator for this Mary is Mary Magdalene. Is Magdalene like the name of her husband or something? Well, no, this is also really interesting. And this, again, is largely Jones idea, so I can't claim any credit here. But I think what's really interesting about Mary Magdalene is that she's not known as the daughter of, the wife of, you know, there is no male associated with her at all. the standard interpretation of Hey Magdalene, which is what it says in the Greek, is that it means Mary from Magdalas. And Magdala is thought to be a place that's identical with another, well, with a place called Tarichaea in the Greek, which is a sort of thriving fishing town on the west side of the Sea of Galilee. In fact, I mean, you can go to Magdala today and see all these excavations.

and there's all kinds of stuff happening there. They've unearthed synagogues and a really interesting altar stone and all kinds of things like that. The difficulty, though, is that the word magdala just means, or migdal means a tower in Aramaic, and there's lots and lots of towers in Israel. Often they're associated with fishing, so they're by the sea and obviously somebody goes up the tower and looks for shoals of fish.

So Magdala on its own isn't much of a descriptor. It just means, you know, the tower. And so a lot of places are called migdal something. So it's possible that migdal is another name for Tarikaya, as the traditional view says. But it's also possible that Mary the Magdalene actually has nothing to do with her place, but is to do with a nickname. And we certainly know that Jesus liked to give people. people nicknames. Peter is, well, Simon is called Peter, which we're told means the rock. There's the James and John are called the Sons of Thunder, Bowenegis. So it's not impossible that Jesus also gave Mary a nickname. And going back to this meaning of migdal in Aramaic, meaning a tower, this would then mean something like, you know, tower woman, tower lady. And maybe it's because she's a tower of strengths, a beacon of face, or maybe there's a kind of a double entendre here. Maybe she does come from a place called McDowell something, and, you know, Jesus is kind of playing on this in terms of giving her this nickname.

But I think that, again, would tend to underline the idea that she is something special. She's picked out to be the leader of this mission to women. Yeah, the thing that's really interesting to me there is that, the commonality of Jesus giving nicknames to people and the importance of these nicknames and the fact that is it a coincidence that the most important female follower of Jesus might be called something like the tower, you know, like the theological implications of that are huge. And especially given that it is the use of the definitive article that really gets me going. It's Mary the Magdalene, you know. And I suppose that could mean like Mary of Magdalene as well, but like the word is is the definitive article, right? It's whenever she's mentioned, it's Mary the Magdalene. There are cases of that being used of people coming from a particular area. So it's not unknown.

But in other cases, so Joseph of Arimathea, for example, it uses the preposition APO, so Joseph from Aramathia. So there's no doubt about that. And you can use the definite article to mean, you know, in the same way that you might talk about Jesus, the Nazarene. meaning he comes from Nazareth, you could use, I mean, so there is an ambiguity there, but it's equally possible. And I think given the fact that there doesn't seem to be an obvious place called Magdala, despite the modern excavations in Tarikaya, it's, I think it's a very interesting idea that Mary has been given this, this honorific title really. You know, it's a nickname, but it's also putting her on a bit of a pedestal, I would imagine, you know, like you say, to say she's a tower, it implies strength, it implies faith, it implies someone you can rely on someone who's going to do what you ask them to do. So all good things, really.

Yeah, so many of these names are mystifying. I often think of Thomas also called didomus, which means the twin, you know, and why on earth. Win of who? Not only why Thomas is known as the twin, but why. the gospel author thought it's so important to let us know that he was called the twin. And there might be something like this going on too with Mary the Magdalene because perhaps like it gets to the end of the gospel account and the author of Mark's gospel is like, ah, right, we need Mary. Oh, you should know, you know, this was Mary the tower. Like she, she wasn't just anybody. She's the person who discovered, who discovered Jesus or discovered the empty tomb. However, one thing we do know about Mary Magdalene,

if we are to believe the artistic media that has surrounded her in recent decades is that she was a repentant prostitute, that she was sexually immoral. Jesus came and sent these demons of prostitution out of her, and now she's repentant and possibly even in a romantic relationship with Jesus himself. What does the media depiction or the sort of popular culture depiction of Mary Magdalene get wrong or at least present that isn't, that doesn't have any biblical justification? Well, pretty much everything that you just said is wrong, really. I mean, the idea that she's a repentant prostitute just is not there. And it goes back to this idea that there are so many Mary's. As you said, Mary and Salome are the most common names in the first century, something like a third of women, were called. one or other of those names. So if you shout Mary, you know, half of the room kind of turns round.

So, and that's reflected in the Gospels, too. There are lots of Mary's. And what's happening with Mary Magdalene is that she gets conflated with other Mary's. So she gets mixed up with Mary and Martha, who in John's Gospel, it's Mary who, who anoints Jesus's feet, yeah, Jesus' feet in that gospel. And then that gets sort of mixed up with, the anointing woman in Luke's gospel, who is specifically said to be a sinful woman from the city. So what else could she be, apart from a prostitute? And so that's kind of mixed up and sometimes, you know, ideas of the woman caught in adultery and all of these women sort of somehow swarmed together to produce this composite picture. And this goes back to the

very early church, actually. They started sort of conflating these Mary's, but it's particularly linked with Pope Gregory the Great in the early 6th century, who very much kind of used this composite Mary as a symbol of penitence. And in that guise, she was a very useful symbol for the church. You know, she was this fallen woman who repented and, you know, we should all take inspiration from Mary. But, I mean, in terms of this being anything like the historical Mary Magdalene, or even the Mary Magdalene, or even the Mary Magdalene, or even the Mary Magdalene we get in the Gospels, it's a far cry. But of course, Christian art over the centuries has really sort of doubled down on this picture and, you know, lots of artistic representation.

Mary's kind of like this belly dancer character with, you know, veils and cold eyes and all the rest of it. I mean, in recent years, we have had this change in direction with the Dan Brown Da Vinci Code, Mary Magdalene, and suddenly now she's no longer the prostitute, but she's the sort of the love interest. She's there with the boys. She's sleeping with the boss. And I'm not sure that that's any better from a feminist point of view. You know, she's only there because of her relationship to Jesus. But it is at least a different picture. And she's sort of given this privileged position. So she's the one woman who's sort of allowed in on the boys' gaze. And but without the other women that the Gospels clearly mention are there too.

So, I don't know, it's an interesting thing. And I think these representations kind of reflect society's difficulties with women in leadership positions. And it's amazing, I think, how far behind the rest of society our picture of Mary Magdalene is. You know, we've got to the idea this sort of made Mary. an idea that she can be there because of her relationships to the boss, but we're not quite there yet in terms of saying she's actually just there because she's good at her job and she's got a lot of women who are following her direction and going out and being very effective missionaries. Yeah, and she is quite important. As we've already mentioned, whenever she does

show up in these lists of names, which sometimes change the women mentioned, she's always there. She's always mentioned first as well. Yeah, exactly. Like she's the important one or the one that people will have heard of or be familiar with, perhaps. But as we've said, she shows up at the crucifixion of Jesus and also at the tomb. But there are other women there too, right? And so we have these other names that do crop up. You've already said that the second most common name in the ancient world was Salome for women.

There is a follower of Jesus called Salome, who is also one of the women who discover this empty tomb. what can we know about Salome? She's another person that you have a chapter of and a chapter on in this book. But again, it's quite scant, right? So who is this Salome person? I wish we knew. Yeah, I mean, we have almost nothing about her. She's just called Salome. And people seem to know who she is. You know, she's not the mother of. She's not the wife of. She's just Salome. In some traditions, she's Jesus's sister. So there is a tradition that Jesus has a sister called Salome. And I wouldn't necessarily kind of, you know, dismiss that. I think a lot of these women were probably related to the 12 male. disciples. They may well have been recruited from these sort of fishing villages that Jesus spends a lot of time amongst. So it's not impossible. She's a relative, but we just don't know. I mean, she could equally be a wife of one of the other disciples. We don't know anything more about her, unfortunately. Other than that she's there, she travels on the road with Jesus. she's there at the cross and the empty tomb

and she's one of these very first witnesses to the resurrection. One interesting thing that I wanted to ask you about and see what you think about this, and you mention it in the book as well, is that when Salome is mentioned, for example, so she first shows up in Mark chapter 15, we've already talked about this verse where suddenly we're told some women were watching from a distance.

Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph and Salome it seems to me that although this naturally reads as one Mary Magdalene two Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph three and Salome isn't there like some ambiguity here like it could for example the text could mean to say because there are no commas here like there are in the English it could mean to say, among them were one, Mary Magdalene, and two, Mary the mother of James the Younger and of Joseph, and Salome, as if to say that this second Mary was the mother of Salome as well. That's possible, yeah, and there's big discussions of how many women there are

at the crossing all the Gospels. I mean, John's Gospel is particularly problematic, whether there are three or four. I suppose the difficulty is that you wouldn't normally say somebody is the mother of a woman, though obviously you could if the woman was very well known, as in this case, perhaps. I mean, she does appear later on. There's the sort of three mentions of these women. I think in one of them, Salome isn't mentioned. But I think when you look at all of them together, it does suggest that there's three women. But you're absolutely right. It is very, without commas and without anything else, it is difficult to know exactly how many women we're dealing with here.

There's also the added complication that some people suggest that Mary, the mother of James and Josas, could be Jesus' mother because those are the names of two of Jesus' brothers. And if you lumped Salome in with that, then that could also be Jesus' sister, if that tradition is correct. But that just seems odd to me. I think if Jesus' mother was there, they would have said, you know, his mother. They wouldn't have gone in this roundabout way and picked out two sort of random brothers and said, you know, the mother of these two.

I think the reason people like that interpretation is that it then sort of harmonizes with John's gospel, which does have the mother of Jesus at the cross. I think Mark's gospel and the synoptic gospels generally don't. Yes, we've got at the cross here in Mark's Gospel, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, the younger and of Joseph, and Salome. One interesting feature is that in Matthew's Gospel, and of course Matthew is using Mark as a source, Matthew also lists three women and says many women were there, watching from a distance, they'd follow Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs. among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee's sons, which is another sort of clunky way of saying it, I suppose. But interestingly, Mark's Gospel has three names. Matthews has the same, except that last name, Salome, is now rendered as an anonymous mother of Zebedee's sons. So again, a lot of exegetes look at this and say, well, that's

because Matthew knew that Salome was the mother of Zebedee's sons. That is like the apostles of Jesus who are Zebedee's son. So we've also got this indication that Salome might have been like Zebedee's wife, I suppose. Yeah, that is another possibility and one that the commentaries take seriously. I mean, another sort of slight problem with that is that Matthew has already he created a character around Zebedee's wife. So in Mark's Gospel, the sons of Zebedee, James and John, come to Jesus with this really embarrassing question. They say, when you come in glory, can we sit on the left and right?

And Jesus says, oh, guys, you know, you really don't understand. And so in Matthew's Gospel, when you get to that, Matthew's clearly a little bit uncomfortable with the disciples really not getting it. So he says that it was their mum who went and asked Jesus, can my boys have the best seats? And so, you know, that gets over that, that sort of problematic thing about the boys not really getting it. So he has already made her into a character.

So it's possible on one level that he has better historical information or he just sort of knows something here, but equally possible that he just doesn't know who Salome is. and because he's already created this character around the wife of Zebedee, maybe he just kind of adds her for that reason. It's so difficult to know with these random names. You know, it's like the Simon of Sireini in Mark 15, where in Mark's gospel he says Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus.

Who are these guys? Why put them in? Unless perhaps, you know, people in the audience know them. I mean, that's the obvious thing, isn't it? Oh, remember Alexander and Rufus? This is their dad. So, again, you know, it's not unreasonable to think that the evangelists change the women according to just women that they know, particularly when Mark says there were many women. So there's maybe a lot to choose from.

You put in the ones that you are aware of or that you know some traditions about, your group kind of has some affinity with this particular woman. It's hard to know. And it is important to point out that, like, a lot of people will say, for example, you know, the gospels contradict each other because is it, you know, one woman or two women or three women and which women are they? And we know, for a fact, because Mary Magdalene, for example, only shows up in Mark 15, and we're told retrospectively, oh, by the way, she was like with Jesus the whole time.

We just didn't mention her. we know that the gospel authors didn't exhaustively list everyone who was present and oftentimes only mentioned the people who were specifically relevant to what they were talking about and so it's impossible to know the number of women that we're talking about here one one tiny other indication of this Salome as not a third name in the list but also one of the one of the one of the daughters is that when Jesus rises when they discover the empty tomb. Mark's Gospel says in March chapter 16 that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome brought spices to anoint Jesus's body. So it seems like three

women there. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome. But it could read as Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome. Be a little bit clunky, but it is interesting how when you get to Matthew's Gospel, the same story is reported. And Matthew, just has two women, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. So if this second Mary really was the mother of James and Salome, as if to say the mother of James and the mother of Salome, there's some indication here from the fact that Matthew interprets this or reword this part of the story as just saying Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. However, it is important to point out that maybe he just didn't mention Salome.

Maybe he didn't think she was relevant. Maybe he's just getting a bit confused with all these. And, you know, he's not too bothered, maybe by the time he's writing, these women are largely forgotten already in these communities, these sort of reading groups that he's writing for. And he just sort of says, you know, and a Mary. There's always a Mary. Yeah, it's always hard to know whether you're reading too much into things, you know, how deliberate are some of these changes. I mean, because they're fascinating. And often, often you can sort of run with changes and you see the same type of changes being made. And I think that's often a good indication that you're on to something. But when you've only really got one or two things, it's difficult to know, you know, did he just write it because he just thought, oh, that doesn't really matter much. Hey, Richard, great to speak to you.

That moment right there. That's what it feels like to step into a bureau booth. Our soundproof office pods bring deep focus to even the loudest offices. And the bureau booth, no construction, no distractions, just clarity. Search bureau office booths or visit withbure.com. Yeah. It does seem like women show up in the New Testament narratives only when they are strictly necessary to the stories. Like we can't help but bring them up.

Yeah. And the sort of corollary of that is to think. think that there are instances where the women were present and perhaps doing something that was important, but were just not told about it because of a sort of narrative erasure. One indication of this, for example, is the fact that as we've already discussed at length, the women were crucial to the discovery of the empty tomb. Mary Magdalene is said in John's Gospel to be the first person who sees the risen Jesus. Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene in some detail. And these traditions of Jesus appearing to the women and the women running and telling the men, and of course the male disciples

don't believe them and have to go and check for themselves. But one interesting feature is that if you look at Paul's first letters to the Corinthians, which is one of the most, it's definitely an authentic Pauline letter. It's one of our earliest New Testament sources. It's written before the Gospels. In chapter 15 of 1st Corinthians, Paul famously lists off, lists off this sort of schema, these people that Jesus appeared to. He says, for what I have received, I pass on to you.

of first importance, as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised, and that he appeared to Cephas, that's Peter, and then to the 12th, after that he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep, then he appeared to James, then the apostles, and last of all, he appeared to me. Well, hold on a second. He's just listed a bunch of names in trying to sort of celebrate how wonderful it is that Jesus has appeared to all of these people, neglected to mention who our gospel narratives tell us are some of the most important early first witnesses to Jesus' resurrection. Why wouldn't Paul mention that?

It's bad. I mean, there are various reasons. And this is, you know, one of those huge, intractable problems. Why does Paul not mention the women? I mean, one common suggestion, actually, is that he doesn't mention the women simply because this story has not. not yet been made up, you know? Paul is writing in the 50s. The earliest gospel is Mark's gospel, probably early 70s or so. Mark just doesn't know about this tradition. Sorry, Paul just doesn't know about this tradition. I mean, that's possible. And I think there may be, there's probably something to that. But I think, you know, stories about, if there was an empty tomb at all, then stories about it must have been sort of, you know, known to people. I mean,

for Paul, it's all about visions, you know, who has seen the resurrected Jesus? And he, he doesn't mention an empty tomb at all. He doesn't seem interested in that. And so what some people say is that the whole empty tomb tradition is a later invention designed to kind of give the resurrected Jesus more of a bodily raising, you know, to really graphically underline the fact that he has been raised from the dead because the tomb is empty. His body is no longer there. And so the argument goes, Paul doesn't really buy into that whole thing. He's just thinking, who has actually had a vision of that raised Jesus. So, I mean, I think, I suppose the question is, where does the whole story about resurrection come from in the first place? Is it simply a question

of people seeing visions and being convinced in some way that Jesus is alive again, is there an element of people going to the tomb and finding it empty or not being able to find the tomb or being a bit confused about where the tomb is? I mean, you know, Mark is making a lot of effort here to say that women saw, women who knew Jesus saw him die and they saw where the tomb was and they gave. came back to the same place later on. He's really trying to emphasize that. And that does make me think that there must have been people around who say, yes, but nobody knows, you know, nobody knew where Jesus was buried. Nobody, you know, he was buried by people who weren't followers.

You know, the whole thing was just, you know, nobody had any facts and any information. So he's very clear to make this link. I think for Paul, he's just not interested in any of this. He's just talking about people who've seen resurrection appearances. But I think it's also significant that the women make their first appearance in Mark's gospel. And one of the things about Mark is that he doesn't have any appearances. And he ends on this very uncertain note. So, you know, he has the women run away. They've seen this angel who says, you know, he's not here. He's been raised and the women are seized with fear and run off. And so that's a very strange place to leave your gospel. There's no tidy endings. There's no visions. There's no hurrah. He's raised from

the dead. Instead, it's this strange story of women going down to the grave, finding it empty and not being sure about what to do about it. And so I think if anybody is going to pass on traditions about women finding sort of graves and not knowing what to do about it. It's going to be Mark because he's just, that's the kind of ending he wants. He wants this ambiguous ending and you have to then kind of supply your own faith. And then of course that gets retold in all the other gospels because they're retellings of Mark. Whereas I think Paul's project is just very different. Even if he did know that women went down to the tomb and they couldn't find the tomb or they found it empty or there was just some uncertainty about where Jesus's remains were, he's not going to tell you that because in that passage in 1 Corinthians 15, it's almost like a sort of a creedal sort of going back to, you know, this is our founding story, these people, these important people, you know, Peter and the 12 and Jesus's brother, 500. brethren and last of all, Paul.

So it's people whose word can be trusted, and he's wanting to nail it down. He's not wanting to leave you with a certain ambiguity like Mark is. So I think you can sort of work out reasons why Paul may not have mentioned the women, even if he had heard that there were stories about women going to the tomb and not being sure about what they were finding. Well, one option is also that Paul was a sexist. Although maybe we can talk about that a bit too. But even if Paul himself is not a sexist, given the culture that he was writing in, if Paul had, if for Paul the importance was telling the message of Jesus, he might have thought to himself, well, you know, if I tell everyone that it was women who discovered the tomb, like, man, they might not.

So let's just not mention that because they might not trust the women. Whereas the gospel authors, unavoidably, they have to mention the women because everybody knew it was women who discovered the empty tomb. So it's possible that Paul left it out, not because of his own. sexism, but because he realized it wouldn't sort of work in the project that he was trying to do. Yeah, no, I think that's undoubtedly right. It would have added nothing to his sort of great sort of story of the resurrection and people seeing visions to say, well, some women went down and they couldn't find the body. That's, you know, nothing about that account is going to be useful for him. And, you know, this is this is a society where the voices of women were not

necessarily trusted in a court of law. So, you know, there's nothing kind of adding to his argument to say that, you know, we can trust these women. I think, you know, he's, he's sexist in the same way that, you know, everybody in that culture was sexist to a degree, you know, it's the men, the men's voices that you want to trust here. Yes. Don't we have, I come to when it's from, but some, like, somebody writing about, like, trying to dismiss Christianity as sort of, oh, the tomb was discovered by these delirious women or something? Yeah. What am I thinking?

Yeah, it's Selsus, second century pagan philosopher who's actually very, very up on the Gospels and sort of goes through the Gospels and critiques them. And one of his many critiques is that the empty tomb was discovered by, as you say, a delirious woman. And he constantly says that Christianity is full of the worst type of beggar women, you know, uneducated people and women. And that's very much a sign for him that this is a degenerate movement that really has no place and shouldn't be trusted. Yeah, which gives you an indication as to the psychology of the people Paul was writing to and why he might have been hesitant to mention the women.

Yeah, I think that's right. And also, I mean, I think, you know, again with the Gospels, why they perhaps wouldn't over-emphasize the role of women in this story. I mean, partly, I think they're telling a story of, you know, the Jesus movement and then as you get into acts, it's the spread of the movement across the Roman world. And they're very much shining the light on what the men are doing because that's what feels natural to them, as it would have done to most authors up to, you know, about the last few days. decades. But at the same time, I think they probably realized subconsciously, if not consciously, that including too many women in this was not a good idea because most people in the Roman world would have thought that a new religious movement that had too many women in it was not a good thing. Yes. Although, regardless of what somebody wants to say, we do have some indications of the presence of women in the early church, even though they're not really mentioned. in the Gospels, in some sense, when we turn to Paul, who is famously the problem for women in Christianity, because he's the one that says women should be silent in churches, that Adam was

formed first, then Eve. He's the one that basically brings all of the sexism to Christianity. It's also in Paul's letter to the Romans that we find a strong indication of the reverence which he had for at least some women. So I want to sort of put a pin in the way. the sexism stuff because we've been talking about a video that I'm hoping to produce soon about these sexist verses in Poole and my ultimate analysis of most of these really hard-hitting cases is that Poole didn't actually write those words. There's a famous line in First Corinthians where Paul is saying that women should be silent in churches and if they've got a question they should go home and ask their husbands. But it's the only part of Poole's letter which moves around in

early manuscripts. It also says they should be in submission as the law also says, which is very un-puline. It's a very un-puline thing to say. He's also just said in First Corinthians that women should cover their hair when they prophesy and then telling them that they can't speak at all. So there are lots of reasons to think that Paul didn't actually write those words. So I just want to sort of acknowledge the fact that there's a lot of sexism in Paul's letters, but say that there's good reason to suggest that pool, the historical pool, didn't write those words. First Timothy 2.12 was another example, but most scholars think that Paul didn't write the book of First Timothy altogether. However, we do know that Paul did write the letter to the Romans. And at the very

end of the epistle to the Romans, we find a pretty interesting indication of the position of women in early Christianity. Yeah, I mean, it's an incredible chapter. And for me, it's the most interesting chapter in the whole thing. I mean, which is terrible. Poor old Paul would be absolutely. flabbergasted, that people find his list of people he knows in Rome, far more interesting maybe than his great theological ideas in the rest of Romans. But this is a really important letter for Paul. He's writing to a church that he didn't found. And he's sort of laying out his theological understanding of, you know, the importance of Jesus and the place of Gentiles in this movement. So it's an incredibly important letter. And then he ends it by sort of adding on a

list of names. I mean, he basically, he says, first of all, I commend this person. Then he says, you know, greet this person, greet this person, greet this person. And so in a way, I mean, obviously it's a very carefully manufactured list of people. But it's as close as we're ever going get to a snapshot of people in the early Roman church. And what's fascinating about it is a third of those women are, so a third of those people are women. And they're women who are described as leaders of house churches. He kicks off with Prisker and Aquila. Prisca's name is always first before her husband Aquila. They are members of a house church, or they're leaders of a house church. He says that they've risked their necks for him.

You know, I would love to know what that was. You know, what was that story? What's the story behind that? He talks about another woman called Junia, who has sometimes had her gender erased and been called Junius, and her partner or husband called Andronicus. He even says that they were apostles before him. They've been in prison for their faith.

and they are kinsmen of him, he says. And he names a lot of women in that list. And one of the most interesting women is the very first one, the one he commends. He says, I commend to you our sister Phoebe. And so he's commending this person because she's not known to the Roman church. And the implication seems to be that she is the one carrying the letter. So she is bringing the letter. he says that she's a deacon of the church in Kentria, which is in Corinth.

She's a benefactor of many, he says, and, you know, she's a deacon. She's clearly a high-ranking woman in the church just outside Corinth, and she is bringing this letter to the Romans, and presumably she's not just handing it over because she knows Paul well. She's maybe reading it out or maybe a slave is reading it out, and then she's going to explain it. What does Paul mean here? Well, this is what I think he's saying. So that, I think, is an incredible thing. Given Paul's reputation, you know, George Bernard Shaw said he was the eternal enemy of women, that doesn't sound like the eternal enemy of women to have sent this important letter via a woman and then for his whole sort of legitimacy to rest on saying hello to

a third of women in this list. So I think that gives us a very different picture of Paul. And the most interesting thing to me about this is that you're reading between the lines, as it were. It's not like Paul has written, by the way, women are really important. We're just looking at the text and naturally seeing that, oh, like a third of these names are women. And Romans chapter 16 opens, as you say, it says, this is the NIV. I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon, and that word deacon, I think, like, diaconon or something like this. Yeah, diaconos, which is, I mean, it just means, I mean, it can mean a kind of a leader, but it can also mean a servant, actually. And it's often translated as kind of a deacon or a leader when it's a male and a servant when it's a female.

But it's the same word. So clearly she's in some kind of leadership role in this term. Yeah, well, the KJV will have servant rather than deacon. Yes, yes. The thing that the thing that, again, when you wrote in your book about this, I always think to myself, well, okay, well, then we don't, we don't know. I mean, maybe Paul meant servant, maybe he meant something more like deacon. But the one thing you said, which I think is undoubtable, is that if he was talking about a man, it would have been translated as deacon. You know, regardless of whether we're correct in that translation or not, we know that that's how modern translators would translate it.

So more and more people are beginning to use the word deacon here. And of course, this early in the church, in the Christian church, the sort of organizational structure is still being fleshed out. So it might not be clear exactly what it means to be a deacon or what that role entailed at that time. But we know that this Phoebe is incredibly important. So I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Kentrea. I don't know how to say it. Contria. Cantria.

thank you. You can tell how much reading and how little talking I do by my absolute inability to pronounce names and places. I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me. Now, that does read like somebody saying, by the way, the woman who's bringing you this letter and take care of her and give her anything she needs because she is incredibly important and she's helped out a lot of people. including me. She's risked her life for me, you know, like you say, this naturally reads as her coming and bringing the letter and potentially being its first exeat. If that's the case, what I want to know is why we sort of see this development from an indication of an early church community where women were being sent out, possibly with Jesus' disciples, but certainly, you know, by people like Paul and were spreading the word of Jesus to a modern church today which sees the role of women as very specifically excluded or subordinate to that of men when it comes to the clergy at the very least, you know, not allowed to be priests in the Catholic Church, for example, this kind

of stuff. Historically, how like this occurs. And I suppose sort of way into that is maybe to first talk about this character of Junior, who you mentioned a moment. ago. She's mentioned in Romans chapter 16, along with presumably her husband, I think. And yet, if you read Martin Luther's translation of the Bible, it doesn't say Junia. It says Junius. Like, what is that about? What's going on there? Yeah, again, I mean, it's this really fascinating thing about gendered translation. So exactly in the same way that we'd said, you know, if Diaconos is a man, it's going to be translated leader, if it's a woman, it's going to be translated servant. In the case of Junius, it's because a roundabout

what Paul says about her is that, you know, greet Junius and Andronicus, they're their kins people of him. And he says, they were apostles before me. So I think in the minds of the translators, apostles have to be men. You know, there's no universe in which apostles are women. So even though there is no male name called, I mean, there is a, Junia is a very, very common female name. Lots and lots of women in the Roman world are called Junia. It's as common as Mary as in the Jewish world. So lots of women are called Junia, but they don't translate it by the obvious Junia.

They assume that it must be male. And then they go looking for what male name could Junia possibly be. And they sort of invent this male name Junias, which has no kind of basis in reality. It's just but when you add an S to the end, it becomes a male name. And the Greek would kind of support it. It's just a question of where an accent goes. And of course, the earliest text didn't have accents. So we can't know for sure.

And so for a long time then, it was assumed that the correct reading here was Juniass. And so this was a male. It was only really much, much later, when people started looking at the various texts and saying, wait a minute here, you know, there's no basis for this. And realizing that actually, you know, that the better translation here is Juni A. and the only reason why people weren't translating it as Junia was because of this reference to being an apostle. And perhaps the note, too, that they'd both been in prison. You know, perhaps people thought, oh, you know, maybe a woman wouldn't have been put in prison,

though, I mean, we know that women could be put in prison just as easily as men. So it does seem to be really to do with nothing to do with the text itself, but entirely to do with the interpreters and their sense that, a woman couldn't be an apostle. And once you make her into a female again, restore her femininity, then again, she becomes one of these gendered pairs, her and Andronicus, whether he's her husband or whether he's just this sort of, you know, missionary co-worker. Again, the two of them are prominent missionaries who, Paul says, go back to a very early time. They were apostles before he was. So maybe even from the days in Jerusalem, they've been part of this movement for a long, long time.

But, you know, we wouldn't know nothing at all about them if it hadn't been for this tiny little reference here in Paul's letter to the Romans. But even that motivation, you say that, like, exegettes are reading this and going, hold on, they're referred to as apostles. So this can't be a woman. It has to be a man. Even that is not quite clear, right? because like the verse says, and this is Romans chapter 16, verse 7, greet Andronicus and junior, my fellow Jews or fellow Israelites who or kinsmen or whatever, who have been in prison with me, they are outstanding among the apostles and they were in Christ before I was. Now that word outstanding, that's the NIV. Outstanding among the apostles is a little bit ambiguous, right? Because the term is, is what, episimon or epistemoy or something like that, which presumably is the same root as, like epistle because it means something like of note. And also that that same word shows up when describing Barabbas, the prisoner. The notorious. Yes. The notorious Barabas and it's the

same word. So although you could read it as like Junia was outstanding among the apostles, that is she was one of the apostles who was outstanding, it could also just mean that she was like notable among the apostles in that she was well regarded by the apostles. And so that reading of being an apostle isn't actually that straightforward in the first place, right? Yeah, I mean, that's a really good point that you're raising and I hadn't realized that the NIV was translating it in that way. So yes, and I think that, yeah, you can't really tell which way around it is. I think my sense is that it's translated as outstanding, you know, sort of she's counted as outstanding by the apostle.

is the way that is translated by the people who are happy enough to have her as a woman, but don't want to have her labeled as an apostle. And that's a kind of a middle position, I suppose. I don't think there's many people nowadays would want to argue that this is a male called Junius. That's not really a viable option nowadays. And the two main camps, I suppose, are the ones who just say, Well, it's Junia and Andronicus, and they are outstanding among the apostles, and this includes them as apostles, which would be my position. But there are, as you say, some people who would say that the apostles, the 12 males, regard them as outstanding.

I think that's a less likely translation. And particularly coming from Paul, it would be different if it was Luke, because Luke reserves the term Apostle. just for the 12 and then the 11. I mean, he doesn't even want to call Paul an apostle. But Paul is very happy to call anybody an apostle, really, anybody who's been sent out with the mandate of any kind. So I can't really see why Paul would sort of not include them as apostles. That seems unlikely to me.

But you're absolutely right. There is that sort of slight get-out clause there if you're uncomfortable with Junior being an apostle. At the very least, what we do know it definitely says is that they were in Christ before Paul was. And given the pool is a pretty early convert to Christianity as far as converts go, like if these two figures, at least one of whom being junior, were in Christ before Paul was, it means that we're dealing with very, very early followers of Jesus, possibly even people who followed him while he was still alive. Because we're talking about so early in the development of Christianity here that

whatever you think of their position, you know, as apostles or not, and you rightly point out that Paul uses the word apostle a lot more loosely. So it actually wouldn't be that like crazy for him to call a woman an apostle. But regardless whether he did that or not, these are early important believers who Paul thought were worth mentioning in Romans chapter 16 at the very least, right? Presumably, you know, because they've been followers for such a long time, they have a certain preeminence in the Roman community. You know, people are probably looking up to them. And I mean, Paul says they're, they're kings people, which probably means that they're Jewish. So, you know, they're Jewish like him. So they may well be from, you know, Judea originally, somewhere like

that or Galilee. So they are probably, you know, quite prominent within the church in Rome. Summer is Tim's ice latte season. It's also hike season. picnic season, and yeah, I'm down season. So drink it up with Tim's ice lattes, now whipped for a smooth taste. Order yours on the Tim's app today at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. I did want to ask you briefly, and I should also mention like the way that we're, the way that we're trying to sort of go back in time here and look at like who are the real figures behind these stories and these names and what's really going on is what you. you do on your podcast, biblical time machine, literally sort of trying to go back in time. We go back in time. Yes, we do. You and David Ruse, is that how you say his name, David Ruse? You've got your own show and people. I think that I like to consider my show as a bit of a, a bit of a sort of door for people to get into biblical scholarship if they're interested in it, but of course,

I'm not a biblical scholar. So I talk about lots of things. I do philosophy. I do a bit of Bible. I do a bit of this and a bit of that. But if this is your jam, people listening, if you're into this kind of stuff, then stop, stop listening to me and go and listen to Dr. Bond and Dr. Roos as well. Perhaps not Dr. Rose. Yeah, we look at everything to do with the Bible. Hebrew Bible and, I mean, the earliest stuff that we can get right through to the New Testament and anything to do with the Bible and its offshoots, you know, films and other things like that and have guests That's one of the exciting things for me, actually, too. You know, you can get a little bit in your own narrow world, but it's really exciting to hear, you know, what are the latest things that people are saying about the Hebrew Bible or different parts of the New Testament that I don't look at much.

So, yeah, always something different. Well, one of the ways that we can go back in time is, of course, to look at the earliest manuscripts. But another way is literally, like, physically, to look at something like archaeology. Like, archaeology is a sort of way of going back in time. If you step into an ancient ruin or something, you really feel like you're stepping into the time period. And there might even be like etchings on the wall from the time period that are there today as they were when they were originally written. And in the documentary that I've already mentioned once that you made with Joan Taylor, I forget the name of the documentary. Was it also called Women Remembered?

No, it was called Jesus' female disciples, the new evidence. Yes, yeah, and you can watch the whole thing on YouTube, actually, and it's about an hour long, and I would recommend it to people. One of the things you do is you visit the catacombs of Milan. You go to this... Naples. Naples. Oh, is it Naples? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you're in Naples, and under the ground, there are these huge, like, cave systems.

And at some point, I think in the last few decades or something, there was some renovation work done in the... catacombs underneath Naples and something really interesting was discovered. Yeah, female bishops. Yeah, I mean, it's incredible. I mean, they are catacombs, and we went there with art historian Ali Kachus, who has done a lot of work on these. So she was really showing us around here. And, I mean, there's a couple of them, but the one that really sort of stands out is the one of

Chirola her name is. And so there's a sort of a place where she's presumably buried. And then on top of that, there's this sort of arch-shaped painting. It's quite large. And like you say, it's been renovated lately. But, you know, very skillfully and only based on what's there already. And you can tell from the iconography that this woman is a bishop. She's wearing sort of a bishop's robes. There's also copies of books, which are the Gospels, and there's sort of flames coming up from them. All of these apparently are signs of being a bishop. And certainly in other art historical contexts like this, if you get this iconography, people would say straight away, you know, oh, this is a bishop. The difficulty here is it, it's a female.

And so, again, is she really a bishop? But there seems to be no reason to doubt it. And I think what's really fascinating about this, it's from the 6th century Naples. You know, this is a time when the church has already very much kind of change. It's moved from that sense that, you know, the end of the world is about to be here as you have in Paul. And that sort of egalitarian mission to get out, get everybody into the church before the end of the world comes. And that realization that it's not going to come quite so soon. And we need to kind of get used to being in the world and look sensible and, you know, look respectable to outsiders.

And you've got the creeds now formulated. You've got the church fathers. And you're now in this world where the men are very much in charge. And yet here in Naples, you've got a female bishop. So I think what's really interesting about discoveries like this is that it really does kind of put a little bit. pinholes in the normal narrative, you know, the narrative that men gradually took over. That might be generally the right story. But it's important to realize that that wasn't happening everywhere. There were little pockets where women were still able to exercise a certain amount of authority in these churches. And if Chirola, then probably other women too, you know,

we shouldn't necessarily think that the women's voices have been completely stamped at. And this image of Choralla, which is discovered, I mean, you know, to the untrained eye, it's a, it's a picture of a woman with some gospels floating above her. And for those watching on YouTube, I'll have put it on screen, or my wonderful editor will have done so. And you might think she's of, okay, but like, how do we, how do we know this? And one of the things that Ali, I forget her, Ali, um. Catius, I think I'm saying it right. I'm not sure. The art historian who you go to the catacumous with points out is that, well, she points to,

the writings of Severian of Gabala or Gabala, who is an important fourth century or fifth century, fourth, fifth century preacher and bishop. And he writes about the ordination process of bishops and how these gospels, the open books are held above the bishops when they're being, when when the sort of ordination is happening, the gospels are held above them. And I thought, okay, that's kind of interesting. You've got these gospels held above the woman like it's an ordination of a bishop. But then he specifically writes that this is so that the flames of the Holy Spirit will come out of the Gospels and inspire the bishops.

He tells us that that's why the books are held open. And what do we see in this image? We see flames coming out of the gospel. I mean, just a fascinating indication of female bishops. And she also points out in this documentary that the timing, of this painting, I don't know what you call it, a painting, a fresco, I don't know what it is. A fresco, I think, yeah. A fresco, the timing of it is around the time when Pope Galasius in the late 5th century writes a letter to bishops in southern Italy complaining about women ministering at the

holy altar, complaining that women are having too much authority in churches. So we've got this letter from the Pope saying women have got too much authority in the churches. We've got this sort of artistic indication of women being ordained as bishops. We've also, and this is fifth century, right? So we've also got much earlier in Poole and the Romans indications of women being sent out and possible women deacons and maybe described as apostles. And then, like, at some point, around about here, it just changes. Suddenly, the art. changes. Suddenly, the position of women in church changes. Why do we go from this evidence of women in high positions of authority in the church to suddenly not to be present at all? Well, I mean,

this is one of the big questions, and there are lots of different answers to that. I mean, one is that the accession of Constantine, when Constantine became emperor and then converted to Christianity in the fourth century, early fourth century, would be that he favoured this more sort of militant branch of Christianity that favoured men rather than women in these roles. Another explanation that I quite like is that around about this time, you know, the purpose of bishops and leaders was more to, or equally important part of it was oratory and being able to argue your case. against, you know, non-believers. And it just happened to be the case that fewer women were trained in, you know, trained in, were educated anyway, and certainly few of them were trained as orators.

And so it just sort of naturally happened that the ones who were sort of rising to the top in ecclesial circles were the ones with this higher level of training. And probably a variety of reasons in different places. But, I mean, I think you can always. at all points in history, you can point to some women who were, you know, moving outside of the norm for their gender. And clearly, you know, once the sort of monastic movements get going, you have women in cloisters, you have women mystics, there's always, you can always point to some indication of women exercising some kind of leadership or some kind of theological. role. But yeah, I mean, broadly speaking, sometime around about the sort of the fourth to the sixth century, women's participation very much kind of begins to decline.

One of the really interesting things that Ali Kattoots, is how do you say it? I don't know how to pronounce her name. One of the things that she then talks to you about from her work as a historian of art and sort of ancient Christian artwork. is specifically tracking the depiction of the raising of Lazarus, right? Because it's one of the most commonly, yeah, it's one of the most commonly depicted scenes. I think particularly it was like on people's graves or something. Circophagus, yeah, because it's to do with resurrection. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so Jesus, I mean, John's Gospel tells us that Jesus hears that Lazarus has died. This is where Jesus famously weeps for his friend Lazarus, and then he comes and he raises him from the dead. And there are women present, right? It's Martha and Jesus' mother are the two which are named as present at the raising of Lazarus. No, it's Martha and Mary that they're said to be the sisters of Lazarus. Martha and Mary, that's right, sorry, not Mary the mother of God. Martha and Mary of Lazarus's relation. And they're in the text.

We know that they're there. And she shows us, I think, I don't know the exact dates, but we're looking at like some kind of third century engraving. and you have all of the characters Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead and Martha and Mary are stood there with the disciples and then you get a little bit later and Mary is still there but Martha isn't or vice versa. There's just one woman, yeah. Yeah, and then you get a little bit further and then it looks like the women aren't there at all except one is there. It's just that she's this gremlin looking creature in the bottom left corner who's been shrunk down to this tiny size just just about making it into the frame. And then eventually around, I guess, like the fourth or fifth century, you start seeing depictions of the raising of Lazarus, which just don't include the women at all. And you can literally see this progression from the women, both of them being present, just like the disciples, getting smaller, smaller, and finally disappearing altogether. This is like an artistic, an art historian's explicit depiction of the literal erasure of women from the story of the New Testament. And I found that really, really interesting. Yeah, it is. I mean, it's absolutely fascinating to see them shrinking. And, you know, the very small little Mary or Martha, whichever one it is, I mean, it looks like a little hedgehog. And you say, why even bother to put it in when she's so small? And then, of course, like you say, she just sort of disappears. But, I mean, that one that we looked at in the documentary was a really clear one. But, I mean, there are other ones, too. I mean, we looked at a lot of, we filmed so much stuff that didn't get into the documentary.

documentary actually and we were in the Vatican Museum looking at various other sarcophagy there and again it's a very similar picture you look at sort of ones from about the third century which is about as early as you get Christian sarcophagy and and they have representations of women by the fourth fifth century suddenly they've disappeared altogether and and they're just not part of the narrative and that's a really important thing given that most of the people who are looking at these, can't, can't read. So they are understanding their biblical texts by looking at representations like this, like the things on sarcophagy, like, you know, other examples of Christian art, perhaps in sort of, you know, meeting places as they're generally

sort of becoming more a thing. And so if people are sort of remembering or being told the story through these images there's just no women there so again I think it just kind of reinforces that idea that this is a story about men doing things yeah and the documentary opens

with you in the square in St Peter's Square right outside of St Peter's Basilica the heart of the Catholic Church and there are these glorious statues almost too many statues and given that there are just so many of them on the square it is incredible to think

that not one of them is a statue of a woman there is no depiction of a woman, except for one tiny little mosaic of Mary. And the reason that's there, I spotted it when I was at the Vatican recently. And my friend told me this, I didn't realize, but you might see if you're there, sort of if you're facing the church, it's off on the right, up high. Little mosaic of Mary on the wall. And that was put there at the request of John Paul II, Pope John Paul the 2nd,

after his assassination attempt. So somebody shot John Paul the 2nd at very close range. in St. Peter Square, I think in like the 80s or something. Yeah, 1981. And the Pope survived. And it was surprising that he survived. And I think it was like on the feast day of Our Lady of Fatima. And so the Pope thanked Our Lady of Fatima for guiding the bullet to miss his vital organs. I think it was Christopher Hitchens who wondered why Our Lady of Fatima couldn't have guided the bullet to miss him altogether. But that's besides the point. And the way my friend told this to me was that like when he thought might be dying. He wants to pray to Mary and he looks up and realizes that he was amazed. There's

no depiction, even of Mary. And for Catholics, that's saying something that there isn't a statue of Mary or a painting somewhere. There was nothing. And so whether it was in that moment he realized it or sometime afterwards, the Pope realizes that there is not a single depiction of Mary. And so he insists that this tiny little mosaic goes up in the corner. And that's all you've got. And I mean, I think that kind of embodies what we're talking about, doesn't it? It's like, you know, it's all men in huge grand statues. And firstly, nobody even notices at first that there aren't any women. And then finally, when they become like unavoidably relevant, they go, oh, gosh, we better,

we better stick them up there in the corner and at least include them a little bit, right? And I think in so many ways, that's kind of what's happening in the Gospels. Yeah, yeah, I think the Gospels are different. I mean, you know, they do include a lot more women than that. I mean, I don't think they've sort of got to the stage where they're, just telling the story about what men are doing. And, I mean, there is enough, there's enough just left in the Gospels for us to be able to reconstruct a different history, or at least a more sort of variegated history by including women and women's experiences.

But I think it's really interesting that, you know, when you want a woman, you go to the Virgin Mary, you know, in the Catholic Church. I mean, there's plenty of other women as well that could. And at the end of the documentary, you know, we get CGI to kind of take off the male representations and put women up there in St. Peter's Basilica instead. And there's plenty of them. You know, it's just that it's just where you look and the stories you hear and the representations you see. And these things are all so important. and I think just gradually over the years the women have just dropped out of this

which is why I think the name of your book is such a brilliant one because you could so easily name the book something like a reassessment of women in Christianity or so but no it's women remembered because the point is not so much that they've been like exactly just like erased

or maybe it's not even some of it might not even be conscious it might just be due to unconscious bias or whatever, but for some reason, despite these indications of they're important in the early church, it's like they've just been forgotten, which is why I think your book is so interesting. And it is amazing to think that there is a book's worth and a documentary's worth of material around these people who are so scantily mentioned. There's just like so much to say about them. And so, of course, if people are interested, I've already mentioned

the podcast, but specifically this topic, that book will also be linked in the description as well, phenomenal. And a great cover too. It's wonderful. Yeah, I really like the cover. And again, you know, the cover just really sort of captures that sense of, you know, piecing together fragments and the mosaic of it all. But I mean, one of the reasons we wrote the book was because we felt with a documentary we'd only just scratched the surface. The documentary only looks at four different women, I think it is, and really not in a great deal of depth. So we thought There's so much more that we could say. And the book only really sort of takes you to the end of the New Testament period.

You know, very interesting stuff to explore beyond that second century to the fifth or sixth century. As we've been discussing, I think, a really crucial time in all of this. So we have thought about doing another book, but just not got around to it yet. Yeah, I think it would be great. I mean, even from what we've been talking about here and, of course, the documentary, you can only scratch the search. surface. We haven't talked about the woman with the flow of blood who touches Jesus's garment and gets healed. We haven't talked about the anointing woman. We haven't talked about Martha, really. We talked about her a little bit in the context of art, like Martha and Mary, Tabitha. There's so many wonderful female characters in the New Testament who don't get enough attention. I mean, I think Prisca actually was probably far more important than Luke suggests. I mean, every time you see her, you see her going first to a new area, preparing the way and then, you know, Paul comes and says, I founded this church. You said, you didn't at all.

Prisker was already there, busying herself. But it's like so many things, you know, people don't remember what the women did. It's just when the big guy comes in, but he sort of throws his weight around. Yeah. Well, hopefully this podcast and books like yours can begin to rectify that historic injustice. If people are interested, it's all in the description. Helen Bond, thanks so much for coming on. It's been great.

Thank you. I've really enjoyed our chat. Join us aboard CN's podcast, The Inside Track, your front row seat to the railroads and supply chains powering North America. In episode two, we unpack CN's approach to temperature-controlled shipping with Kegan Donaghy. From frozen goods to protect from freeze shipments, learn how CN's specialized intermodal fleet helps deliver on time and on temperature. Tune in now to the inside track.