Women and Christian Origins

by Ross Shepard Kraemer (Editor)

This new collection of fourteen integrated, original essays by prominent scholars and experienced teachers provides a comprehensive and accessible entree to current research on women and the origins of Christianity. Engaging for both the interested reader and the specialist in religion, Women and Christian Origins is sensitive to feminist theory and attentive to distinctions between the (re)construction of women's history in early Christian churches and ancient constructions of gender difference

Genres: History, Biblical Studies

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 1999

About the author

Ross Shepard Kraemer is a professor of Religious Studies at Brown University, specializing in early Christianity and other religions of the Greco-Roman Mediterranean.

Reviews

[Alyssa]

This was a really interesting read. It almost persuaded me to get my PhD in Biblical Studies. (Uhhh... almost.) I learned so much about women in early Christianity and Judaism as a result of this book. It's a scholarly book published by the Oxford press. As such, it was very well-researched and balanced. It's a great introduction to anyone who wants to get a feel for the key issues involved in feminist Biblical scholarship.

My only criticism is that the book claims to be a good introduction to feminist Biblical scholarship for lay readers. That is most certainly not true. I was lucky that I had read books like Misquoting Jesus and other stuff about Biblical scholarship so that I had a better feel for the basic assumptions that textual Biblical scholars all hold. (Stuff like the fact that scholars believe that Paul did not write half of the books in the New Testament that are attributed to him, that many of the Gospels were created from a theoretical "Q" manuscript, the date that gospels were written, etc.) Had I not, I would have been fairly lost while reading this book.

All in all, a good read for people who are interested in this topic.

[Kate Davis]

joanne uses it a lot

[Mills College Library]

270.1082 W8723 1999