Her Share of the Blessings: Women's Religions among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman WorldIn this pathbreaking volume, Ross Shepard Kraemer provides the first comprehensive look at women's religions in Greco-Roman antiquity. She vividly recreates the religious lives of early Christian, Jewish, and pagan women, with many fascinating examples: Greek women's devotion to goddesses, rites of Roman matrons, Jewish women in rabbinic and diaspora communities, Christian women's struggles to exercise authority and autonomy, and women's roles as leaders in the full spectrum of Greco-Roman religions. In every case, Kraemer reveals the connections between the social constraints under which women lived, and their religious beliefs and practices. The relationship among female autonomy, sexuality, and religion emerges as a persistent theme. Analyzing the monastic Jewish Therapeutae and various Christian communities, Kraemer demonstrates the paradoxical liberation which women achieved by rejection of sexuality, the body, and the female. In the epilogue, Kraemer pursues the disturbing implications such findings have for contemporary women. Based on an astonishing variety of primary sources, Her Share of the Blessings is an insightful work that goes beyond the limitations of previous scholarship to provide a more accurate portrait of women in the Greco-Roman world. |
Contents
| 3 | |
| 22 | |
| 30 | |
4 Womens Devotion to Dionysos | 36 |
5 Rites of Roman Matrons | 50 |
6 Womens Devotion to the Egyptian Goddess Isis in the GrecoRoman World | 71 |
7 Womens Religious Offices in GrecoRoman Paganism | 80 |
8 Jewish Womens Religious Lives in Rabbinic Sources | 93 |
Womens Religion as Heresy | 157 |
12 Womens Leadership and Offices in Christian Communities | 174 |
13 Womens Religious Leadership and Offices in Retrospect | 191 |
Toward a Theory of Womens Religions | 199 |
Abbreviations | 209 |
Notes | 211 |
Ancient Sources and Translations | 248 |
Bibliography | 253 |
9 Jewish Womens Religious Lives and Offices in the GrecoRoman Diaspora | 106 |
10 Autonomy Prophecy and Gender in Early Christianity | 128 |
Index | 269 |
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Common terms and phrases
Acts of Thecla ancient antiquity argued asceticism Aseneth Asia Minor authority autonomy Bacchae Bacchic Bona Dea Brooten Cataphrygians century C.E. chastity Christian communities Christian women church Corinthians cosmologies cult cultic Cybele daughters Demeter Dionysos divine Douglas Douglas's early Christian ecstatic elite Roman women Epiphanius evidence experience father female feminist festival Fiorenza gender goddess Gospel Greco-Roman Greco-Roman world group and grid Hellenistic high grid husbands Ibid inscriptions interpretation Isis Jesus Jesus movement Jewish Jewish women Jews Judaism Kraemer leadership Livy low grid Maenads male marriage married Mary Matralia matrons Matuta Maximilla Mishnah Montanism Montanist mother movement named numerous observes Ovid pagan participation Paul Perpetua Plutarch presbyter priestess priests Priscilla Prophecy rabbinic rites ritual roles Rome scholars second century sexual slaves society sources status story strong grid strong group suggests synagogue temple Tertullian Timothy tion tradition Vestals virgins weak grid weak group Wegner wives woman women prophets women's religions worship
Popular passages
Page 235 - Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us?
Page 141 - As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
Page 150 - I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.
Page 149 - God not of disorder but of peace. (As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.
Page 175 - Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, then healers, helpers, administrators, speakers in various kinds of tongues.
Page 234 - Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Page 59 - Review all the laws with which your forefathers restrained their licence and made them subject to their husbands; even with all these bonds you can scarcely control them. What of this ? If you suffer them to seize these bonds one by one and wrench themselves free and finally to be placed on a parity with their husbands, do you think that you will be able to endure them ? The moment they begin to be your equals, they will be your superiors.