Women in Early Christianity: Translations from Greek Texts

by Patricia Cox Miller

From the fictional Thecla in the second century to the very real Olympias in the early fifth century, the history of women in early Christianity was as complex and rich as the religion itself. This comprehensive sourcebook brings together translations of a variety of ancient Christian texts that elucidate how women were perceived and portrayed in the Greek literature written in the second to the sixth centuries. The texts included in the volume have been generously excerpted, providing the modern reader with an in-depth view of the historical reality of early Christian women's lives as well as a nuanced perspective on the many ways in which women were understood in theological and ecclesiastical frameworks. Few documents written by early Christian women have been preserved; contemporary readers therefore do not have much direct access to these women's own perspectives on their lives and roles as Christians. Nevertheless, there are many kinds of texts that can be used both to reconstruct the history of actual women in early Christianity and to analyze the ancient ideologies and rhetoric that affected how they were perceived. This volume offers many different kinds of texts in order to present as complete a view as possible of early Christian documentary sources such as church orders and proceedings, popular narrative sources such as the novelistic apocryphal acts, biographies and lives of saints, and theological treatises on virginity and marriage. What emerges from these texts is a colorful portrayal of the many faces of ancient Christian women in their roles as teachers, prophets, martyrs, widows, deaconesses, ascetics, virgins, wives, and mothers. Whether celebrated as saints or denigrated as harlots, early Christian women were magnets of theological and social thought. ABOUT THE Patricia Cox Miller is W. Earl Ledden Professor of Religion at Syracuse University. She is the author or editor of numerous works including The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Gender, Asceticism, and History (coedited with Dale Martin). PRAISE FOR THE "Patricia Cox Miller has produced a treasure house of primary sources for those exploring the history and theology of women in Christianity. . . . The author organizes and introduces the sources but lets them speak for themselves. This is a rich source book with a wonderful range of sources and bibliographic listings, and it should be welcomed by those who appreciate the value of a ready reference book."― Magistra "Patricia Cox Miller has skillfully sifted, sorted, and glossed a richly diverse collection of ancient texts that testify to the history of Christian women in their roles as teachers and prophets, martyrs and ascetics, widows and deaconesses, wives, mothers, sisters, and, finally, theological symbols. The texts not only speak for themselves but also, at Miller's prompting, convey a fascinating and complex story. This is much more than a sourcebook in the usual, supplementary it is a work of history that stands on its own."―Virginia Burrus, Drew University "As a generation of scholarship has shown, early Christian texts can be mined for tantalizing, if fragmentary, evidence of the historical lives of early Christian women. They can also provide access to the complex and sometimes contradictory portraiture of 'woman' as an idealized category in the early church. Women in Early Christianity collects a rich array of documentary, literary, and ideological material from the first five centuries of Christian movements and organizes these sources thematically so that both historical women and figures of the feminine come into sharp relief. This book provides a new generation of students with a collection that is both accessible and challenging."―Elizabeth A. Castelli, Barnard College

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction

340 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Patricia Cox Miller is the (Bishop) W. Earl Ledden Professor Emerita of Religion at Syracuse University. She researches religious imagination in late antiquity, religion and aesthetics in late antiquity, early Christian asceticism, women and religion in late antiquity, early Christian and pagan hagiography and ancient art.

Patricia Cox Miller completed her BA in history at Mary Washington College of University of Virginia in 1969. She then did a year of Special Study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel from 1969 to 1970. Following this she completed an MA in the History of Christianity at the University of Chicago in 1972 and her Ph.D., also at the University of Chicago, on Religion in Late Antiquity in 1979.

Patricia Cox Miller spent a year as an Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Washington from 1975 to 1976, before moving to New York and rising through the ranks of the Department of Religion at Syracuse University from 1977–present. She has been a member of several professional societies such as the Society of Biblical Literature, the North American Patristic Society and the Society for the Arts, Religion and Contemporary Culture.

She has also been on the editorial board for journals such as The Second Century (now the Journal of Early Christian Studies, for which she was also on the Board of Senior Editors), The Syracuse Scholar which ran from 1979 to 1991, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, and Church History: A Journal of Christianity and Culture as well as the Patristic Monograph Series and being a member of the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Grant Evaluation Committee.

Reviews

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

A study about early Christians, by a scholar who is not Christian

[Lizmilner]

Reading for class... interesting but dense