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| Class Prep |
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The Legacy of Paul: The Ideal Wife
Paul was extremely popular in the early Church. Six letters were penned
in his name (the so-called Deutero-Pauline letters like today's 1 Timothy and
the Letter to the Ephesians), the Acts of the Apostles was written largely about
his mission, and several apocryphal works were written about him that circulated
widely, but did not make it into the Bible (like the Acts of Paul and Thecla,
which we will read for the next class). -
- Today's selections
illustrate one of two very different directions that people would take Paul's
thought. 1 Timothy 2 speaks of church offices as restricted mostly
to men, and disavows women's celibacy in favor of marriage, both in explicit contrast
to Paul's letters to the Corinthians. This author understands women's silence
and childbearing to be a kind of cosmic retribution for Eve's role in the fall
of man (pictured above). The author of Ephesians is also interested
in the ideal marriage and family, and ideal he largely borrows from the "family values" campaign first sponsored by Emperor Augustus to promote his restoration of Roman virtue.
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- Today's Dig Site presentation (if we have one) will focus on the site tied to the recipients of this letter, Ephesus. As one of the four largest cities in the Roman Empire and an important trade hub in the near east, it preserves a lot of archaeological and epigraphic material from the first and early second century, some of which tells us more about the imperial cult and about gender in this period.
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- To prepare for class, read the
primary material first, and taking notes on how women's roles are constructed,
what arguments are used to support this, and how this is similar to/different
from our earlier readings in Paul. Then read Margaret MacDonald's essay in WCO. Develop a wider sense of the sorts of changes later authors introduce in the various deutero-Pauline texts. Then focus on Ephesians. Read Carolyn Osiek and MacDonald's
essay on the letter to the Ephesians in A Woman's Place. Be able to explain
how the ideals in Ephesians reflect the ideals being promoted in the propaganda
of the Roman empire. Consider why the author of Ephesians might want to conform
Christian practice to Roman practice.
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- Assigned Readings
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- Primary: Ephesians;
1 Timothy 2 (you may use this version or your Bible)
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- Secondary: WCO 236-49; Osiek and MacDonald, "Ephesians 5 and the Politics of Marriage," pp. 118-43 in A Woman's Place (Camino); online class prep
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- Slides for Lecture
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- Today's Authors
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Carolyn
Osiek , Charles Fisher Catholic Professor of New Testament, Brite Divinity
School, Texas Christian University |
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Margaret
Y. MacDonald, Professor of Religious Studies, St Francis Xavier University |
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- Dig Site 2: Roman Culture in a Near Eastern City (Ephesus, Turkey)
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- Further Reading
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- Balch, David L. "Household Codes." In Greco-Roman
Literature and the New Testament: Selected Forms and Genres (ed. David E.
Aune; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988) 25-50.
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- Hylen, Susan E. "Women διάκονοι and Gendered Norms of Leadership." Journal of Biblical Literature 138:3 (2019) 687-702.
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- MacDonald, Margaret Y. The Pauline Churches: A Socio-historical
Study of Institutionalization in the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline Writings. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988.
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- Madigan, Kevin and Carolyn
Osiek, eds. Ordained Women in the Early Church: A Documentary History. Baltimore,
Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.
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- Niccum, Curt. "The Voice of the Manuscripts on the Silence of Women: The External Evidence for 1 Cor 14:34-35." New Testament Studies 43:2 (1997) 242-55.
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- Payne, Philip B. "1 Timothy 2.12 and the Use of Oude to Combine Two Elements to Express a Single Idea." New Testament Studies 54:2 (2008) 235-53.
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- --------. "Fuldensis, Sigla For Variants in Vaticanus, and 1 Cor 14.34-5." New Testament Studies 41:2 (1995) 240-62.
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- --------. "Ms 88 as Evidence for a Text without 1 Cor 14:34-35." New Testament Studies 44:1 (1998) 152-8.
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- Thurston, B. Bowman. The Widows: A Women's Ministry in the Early Church. Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1989.
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- Links
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- Sources
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- Photograph: The Fall and Expulsion from Eden, Sistine Chapel, online,
Rev. Roger J. Smith, "Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel," The East Lewis
County Catholic Community, http://landru.i-link-2.net/shnyves/
Fall_expulsion_from_Ed.html (source: Christus
Rex).
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