"The original essays in this collection offer a comprehensive scan of the role of women and attitudes to women in the various New Testament books and their cultural context....The value of this work is its scope in viewing the whole span of New Testament traditions from a feminist perspective."—The Bible Today
"This anthology is a model of comparative, critical scholarship. With shrewd sensitivity to questions of gender analysis, textual exegesis and historical method, the authors canvass a broad range of material—pagan, Jewish, and Christian; literary and archaeological—to assess the roles of women, imagined and actual, in various ancient Christian communities. No orthodoxy, ecclesiastical, academic, or feminist, emerges unchallenged. Kraemer, D'Angelo and their colleagues deserve our warm thanks. Bravissima!"—Paula Fredricksen, Boston University
"This superb collection will be an ideal text book for undergraduate and seminary courses on the history of early Christian women. Both students and scholars will appreciate the lucid overviews of the results of over two decades of intensive feminist research on early Christian women. The authors present their material honestly and fairly without the apologetic tendencies that characterize some Christian treatments of women in the New Testament. The attention to the Jewish and other neighbors of early Christian women continues the valuable inter religious model pioneered by Kraemer in her earlier works."—Bernadette J. Brooten, Brandeis University
"Congratulations to Ross Kraemer and Mary Rose DAngelo for giving us this excellent collection of critical, incisive, and diverse essays. We are all in their debt."—Elaine Pagels, Princeton University
"An outstanding collection of articles by informed women scholars."—Edgar Krentz, Lutheran School of Theology
Intended as introductory or supplementary, these 14 essays explore recent scholarship concerning women in early Christianity. While providing some new analysis, the essays compiled by Kraemer (Judaic studies, Univ. of Pennsylvania) and D'Angelo (theology, Univ. of Notre Dame) are primarily critical review essays of the issues and approaches to religious studies. Areas covered include women's roles in ancient Mediterranean Jewish and Greco-Roman cultures, analysis of the Gospels and Pauline texts, and the use of early Christian texts from the gnostic gospels to fourth-century apostolic constitutions and disciplinary canons. As introductory texts, the essays vary widely, some providing detailed explanations of scholarly terms and traditions (such as the Q document), others assuming a greater base knowledge. The tone of the writing tends toward the dry and scholarly, but issues are clearly presented and arguments well reasoned. They are complemented by a bibliography current enough to include 1997 publications. Recommended for larger public and academic libraries.--Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll., NC
