vid

In Pliny's famous letter we see:
What would contemporary reader understand under term "deaconesses"?

andrewcriddle

The typical pagan reader of Pliny (if he did not realize it was a technical term within the cult) would understand something like attendant

Andrew Criddle

rlogan

Obviously early Christians made the mistake of letting women participate beyond the sex-slave level. At least they reformed things to the level of requiring them to be silent at church meetings later.

Seriously, does it not demonstrate that it was successfully circulating amongst the downtrodden? Slaves as deaconesses?

Toto

The masculine value of the word seems to be more often translated as minister.

Deaconess Deacon

Clivedurdle

But slaves who were deaconesses sounds tautological!

Slaves who were servants or attendants?

Was he investigating is it a religious or political association?

Clivedurdle

Followers of the true gods were definitely not then country bumpkins!

Clivedurdle

And I thought temple prostiution was a high class profession!

andrewcriddle

With hesitation I suggested attendant rather than minister, because in modern English (at least modern British English) minister suggests either a senior official or a clergyman.

The deaconesses in Pliny were not senior officials and although they may have been clergywomen, this is not how Pliny's pagan readers would have understood the term.

Andrew Criddle

aa5874

So, how do you know they were not senior officials?

What evidence is there in the Pliny letters to eliminate the deaconesses from being senior officials?

What was the highest rank among the sect with the deaconesses?

DCHindley

According to John S. Kloppenborg's article "Collegia and Thiasoi: Issues in Function, Taxonomy and Membership," in Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World (Routledge, 1996):

Organization

... the organization of Roman voluntary associations was normally patterned on that of the city and the army. It is quite common to find collegia divided into centuriae or decuriae although the terms had apparently lost their numeric significations. In many collegia, the group of decurions functioned as the administrative body. Other associations appear to have had a more differentiated leadership, with magistri or quinquennales as the highest positions, then other officials variously named mater collegii, pater collegii, curator, honoratus, immunis, quaestor, sacerdos and scriba. [...]

The leadership of Greek associations was even more varied. In cultic associations the titles hiereus, archiereus, archimystēs and archithiastēs (or thiasarchēs) are common. In a more general sense, the president of an association could be called the aschisynagōgos or epimelētēs. The term prostatēs (or epistatēs) is found in several senses. Occasionally. prostatēs is found in the sense of the Latin patronus; but more often it connotes an official of the collegium itself, especially in Egypt. There are in addition a large number of titles - patēr, matēr, presbys, tamias, grammateus, hypēretēs, diakonos - and a host of more specialized terms. [...]

While Pliny the Younger would correspond with emperor Trajan in Latin, the locals Pliny governed were Greek speaking, and diakonos was apparently the name of one of the official positions of this particular voluntary association which went by the name "christians."

DCH