lpetrich

There were some sects, like the Gnostics, that were relatively female-friendly, but they were declared heretical by the church that eventually won. And even they had some sexism in them, like the Gospel of Thomas, which states that everybody will eventually become male.

The New Testament itself has some rather obnoxious sexism, like 1 Corinthians 11:3-10, 14:34-35, Ephesians 5:22-24, 5:33, Colossians 3:18, 1 Timothy 2:9-15, Titus 2:4-5, 1 Peter 3:1-7.

Richard Carrier has touched on the question of Jesus Christ as a feminist here and here. He notes that several pagan philosophers were more explicit about good treatment of women than anyone in the Bible; starting with Epicurus, some philosophers let women join their schools. Some of the literate class, as it may be called, praised education for women; Plutarch claimed that it is a good way of keeping women from becoming superstitious. Such men often practiced what they preached; many women became educated, and many rich men's parties were considered as dull as dishwater unless they had some female professional entertainers who could debate the fine points of poetry and philosophy as well as any man.

As to religion, women could serve as priests, and Hellenic/Roman religion featured important female as well as male deities. By comparison, the Three Persons of the Xian Trinity are all male, and the Virgin Mary has all the personality of a doormat.

By contract, the Xian churches had never allowed women to become priests for most of its history, and only in recent decades have Xian clergywomen become common, and that only in some denominations. The Catholic Church is still adamant about not allowing women to become priests.

Like how? And can one show that infanticide did not happen covertly? There were also some pagan Romans who opposed abortion and infanticide, like the Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus, who felt that infanticide means acting like a bad parent.

Like how? Giving birth can also kill.

I don't see how that does anything for women, because that can easily be part of an attitude that women's sexuality is dangerous and that women must therefore be confined to keep them from being a menace to society. Which makes it seem like pseudo-feminist propaganda to me. What's really good for women is enabling them to have careers and social status comparable to what men can have.

And instead they become hidden-away nuns.

This seems like a common caricature of a feminist as someone who deserts her family for the sake of her career. Why should a woman's dignity be dependent on her rejecting her family and her sexuality?

And Bede might enjoy my thread on nuns becoming "none"; Catholic nuns are dwindling and aging, with very few American and European women becoming nuns. American nuns' average age is now around 70, and only 3% or so are younger than 50; their numbers have declined from 181,421 in 1966 to 106,912 in 1988 and 71,486 in 2004.

And how did that work out in practice? Did women get to get any positions with serious status?

countjulian

Good job, Ipetrich. Why should a woman need virignity to be valued? Don't forget Leo's letter to the church in Africa, those raped nuns just weren't as useful anymore (maybe he could make a trade in on some newer virgin models?).

Toto

Hi Bede - taking a moderator's name in vain, with an implied insult.

I personally think it is a mistake to read sexual politics from the 20th century back into the first. The idea of social equality was a long ways away from ancient hierarchical societies. Paul and the gospel Jesus endorsed slavery, explicity or implicitly.

Rodney Stark makes a fairly good case that early (pre-empire) Christianity grew because it was relatively good to women - whatever superior legal rights upper class women might have had in pagan society, the actual experience of women was better in Christian communities because of their pro-natalist positions.

What Stark doesn't discuss IIRC is the relative position of women in Jewish society at the time. I suspect that Christian societies merely copied what was common among Jews.

And once Christianity became part of the ruling apparatus of the Roman Empire, it adopted Roman practices, and devolved into a bastion of anti-women patriarchal attitudes. Uta Ranke-Heinemann in Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven: Women, Sexuality, and the Catholic Church claims that the earliest Christianity would have been pro-marriage and pro-women, but was corrupted by pagan and gnostic ideas, which denigrated sex, motherhood, and women in general. She traces the worst of these attitudes to the gnostics.

countjulian

The whole "Christianity grew because it was nicer to women" thing is a myth. Women were no better off Christian than pagan; if anything, the opposite is true, as MacMullen pointed out. Women could have no prominent role in worship or the church, unlike pagan priestesses, and women were only to be emulated for their virginity, nothing else. As the letter from Leo indicates, even if a woman was raped, her status was always lowered in the eyes of the church if she lost her virginity.

CJD

Exactly, the notion that "rights" existed in the abstract sense that we banter on about them today was non-existent in the ancient world (hell, it was non-existent in the West before the Enlightenment). Anyone who couches their discussion of ancient things in terms of "the right to…", etc., also probably thinks Braveheart encapsulates truthfully a thirteenth-century fight for "freedom," "independence," and "autonomy."

countjulian

Oh really? Other than the De viriis il. mistake, which I have accepted responsibility for, when did you find out that "None backed up what you said MacMullen said." Whenever it was, you sure failed to tell me. How's the blog entry on the matter coming? I also love the way you tried to insinuate that I made up words and shoved them into MacMullen's mouth (a funny thing for a person such as myself to do, for I am no Christian). I quoted MacMullen's whole paragraph, and I took nothing out of context. Whatever qualms you have with the quote, you have with macMullen. On the Michael of syria issue, you did not even look up what he said? We accept many narratives about things that happened hundreds of years before the narrative was writen; Arian is still considered a primary source on Alexander the Great.


Oh really? Then why, on page 7, Paganism and Christianity in the 4th to 8th Centuries, does he say that "Among the most general [reasons given for the growth of Christianity], it is commonly supposed, was Christinity's attractive openness to tow large categories of persons whom paganism, in all it's varieties, nowhere had much room: women and slaves laong with the vulgar masses. Yet there are difficulties here." and then goes on to give all the reasons why women were probably better off pagan than Christian. And he also says again on page 8 that "it [the previous examples, all of which I gave] casts further doubt on the question of concern here, whether the women of the Empire were likely to see Christinity as a more receptive community than that to which they had been used." And as for your declaration " MacMullen nowhere says that pagan women had higher status than Christian women (IIRC). " which book of his exactly are you getting this from?

Bede

No insult meant or implied. Thanks for the back up.

MacMullen is plainly wrong and I begin to see why he is so popular with CJ. I agree with Toto and CJD on the inadvisability of reflecting our own ideas back in ancient history. What is interesting about Stark is that he shows how the improved status of women helped Christianity grow. If it was anything like as bad as CJ implies, it would never have got off the ground - reasons to be extremely sceptical about what he says.

Best wishes

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

countjulian

Stark is plainly wrong and I am beginning to see why he is so popular with Bede. See, I can summarily dismiss scholars I don't like, too. Since this has turned into Stark vs. MacMullen (hmmm, I wonder how that deathmatch would turn out) I just want to say to things. (1) I'll admit to never having read Stark, but I have read reviews of his book and it seems to me he did have somewhat of an agenda with it (of course, who doesn’t?) and (2) stark is a sociologist, while MacMullen is a classical scholar; this is his area of expertise. In my mind, whenever the two clash, the specialist wins, every time. Just my two cents.

And as for it getting off the ground, MacMullen has a perfectly good explanation, backed up by Fox: miracles. The Christians, with their pickled heads, preserved bones, martyrs, angels, appearances of Jesus etc. were able to out-miracle the competition, and with the loss of literacy and education in late antiquity, it gave them an edge no one could beat. Combined with a warlike conception of one true god, backed by hordes of armed monks and other Christian partisans, Christianity was without equal until the rise of another equally ferocious religion: Islam.

Toto

Don't be so quick there. I think that Stark has some problems on some issues, but his work is not "plainly wrong," especially on this issue. Check out these past threads: Toto's review of Stark Vorkosigan's review of Stark

I think that Stark and MacMullen are concentrating on different periods of time. Stark is concerned with the first 3 centuries, before Christianity became the established religion, MacMullen with the period after that.

One of Stark's advantages is that he brings a social science perspective to the historical problem. Classical scholars are more likely to be experts in language and military history, I would think.

I'm not clear on why miracles would be the defining edge for converting women, which is the topic of this thread.

countjulian

I was being sarcastic. I have not read Stark, but instead of just dimissing him based on what Bede has said, I am going to hold off judgment until I can get my hands on a copy of that book.


No. MacMullen's second book, the one I have quoted from thus far, deals with the 4th to 8th centuries, while his first book deals with 100 A.D.-400 A.D. They cover the same period.

The only problem is, Stark is probably not as familiar with the source material as MacMullen, and I wonder, can he read Greek or Latin?

Bede's point was that my model of early Christian growth could never have worked because Christianity needed women; a non-egalitarian church would never have gotten off the ground, since Christianity could never attract enough male members on its own merits. I was saying that the Christians did not need to appeal to women en mass, they were able to out perform their opponenets in the miracle front, and to your average pagan, that was what mattered, not silly 20th century feminist issues (not that I'm saying feminism is bad or silly, just that it is absurd to project backwards our ideal of the "early church" onto people who had no concept of the values of said ideal church).