Paul: A Biography

by N.T. Wright

Pagans routinely practiced infanticide for unwanted children in general and girls in particular, but the Christians followed the Jews in renouncing such behavior. The consequent shortage of marriageable girls in the pagan world and the surplus of them among the Christians resulted in many marriages between Christian women and pagan men, who might then either convert or at least give consent for the children to be brought up as Christians. And, once again against the common perceptions of our age, the fresh evaluation of the role of women, though it came ultimately from Jesus himself, was mediated not least through Paul—the Paul who listed several women among his colleagues and fellow workers (including one “apostle”), who saw early on that in the Messiah’s family there was ultimately no “male and female,” and who entrusted Phoebe with the responsibility of delivering and almost certainly expounding the letter to the Romans.