the new testament *also* says “women should remain silent in church” and “i do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet”, and rather conspicuous in their absence are revelations abrogating the parts of the patriarchal Law pertaining to women – indeed Jesus only straitens it by condemning divorce.
Yes, you can see people acting in radical ways in the Gospels, and how well do attempts at living the Gospel life in the sense of “acting like the good characters in the drama of the Gospels” usually go? Much more common is people living according to Christianity, which see above.
I would also say that the women of the Gospels portray a kind of heroic womanhood that is within the norms of classical Mediterranean (i.e. deeply patriarchal) society, and not our own. Virtuous women in the classical Mediterranean (and considerably later) were women who did not engage in any public life, that sphere being restricted to men, and who lived a domestic life “barefoot and chained to the kitchen sink”.
The male apostles were rather free spirits: of the professions recorded, four were fishermen, one was a “tax collector” (read: bailiff, read: half-educated thug), one was a “zealot” (read: religious thug) and one was Judas. Each of them had ample opportunity to run away and pursue a sort of life.
The women stuck with Jesus out of faith, sure, but also because in a patriarchal society, women are obliged to be attached to a male of some kind — a father, a husband, a master… and Jesus was the best male to be attached to. A number of the women who followed Jesus were either ex-prostitutes or working as prostitutes. The women were present at the resurrection because they were picking up the spiritually polluting job of handling a dead body.
The Gospel lesson is not “Men flee when things get scary, girl power!!!!” but “So, you are a woman, called to a station of abject dependence and servitude in life, but Jesus has a special love for the abject, and gives them a special grace, and a promise of an especially exalted life in the Kingdom to Come”.
This is the Gospel, but it is not feminist in even the basic sense that modern society now takes for granted. The Gospel, as I say, is not often fully enacted.
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I don’t think the role of “missionary” properly belongs to the public male sphere. part of life in the female sphere is going around to one anothers houses, engaging in communal women’s work etc, and this is also a fruitful mission field
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Part of the Gospel is “despite what you have been told, the social role of “sinner” is not one you have to live as, and nor should you live as it, despite society telling you that you should – you are entitled to new life through Jesus!“
The Samaritan woman at the well, along with the various prostitutes whom Jesus befriended very much *were* conforming to a female gender standard, but it was the female gender standard of “WHORE” and not “lady”. This, I think, is also an enduring trait of Mediterranean society, despite all the Christianity – a woman is one of these two kinds: a good virtuous daughter and mother or “no better than she should be”
“first missionary” is a rather vague title and could be ascribed to any number of people, but I don’t think the role of “missionary” properly belongs to the public male sphere. part of life in the female sphere is going around to one anothers houses, engaging in communal women’s work etc, and this is also a fruitful mission field. Think of all the men who converted because their wives were Christian first.
i think it is simply mistaken to say that the anointing of Christ with the precious spikenard was done in public – the gospel accounts agree that it was done in somebody’s house:
😇🦁: “the home of Simon the Leper” (“Leper” being of course one of the main “sinner” social roles that Christ ministered to)
🐮: “one of the pharisees”
🦅: “Bethany, where Lazarus lived”
Matthew and Mark agree it was done in a leprosy house, there’s some harmonisation possible with the Lucan account and John is weird as usual – this is Lazarus of Bethany, not leprous Lazarus the beggar but w/e. They all agree it was done in a private house at a private party.
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i don’t think Mediterranean social norms were such that a woman talking in the town square where she lived was a social deviant – it hardly constitutes much of a really public life, especially since she was a) already living the social role of a Wife-of-Bath harlot and b) coded as a semi-wild “Samaritan”, so the kind of social role where that would be considered causing a scene, the ultra-purdah of a rich man’s wife who would never go out unveiled is not the kind of life she lived. I agree she is maybe unusually outspoken, but I can’t see this as “very public” – if that is “very public” then what in comparison is the standard life of a male apostle, sent out to go from strange village to strange village, healing the sick, proclaiming the Kingdom, and depending on charity?
The woman’s initial confusion is not about gender, but ethnos – “How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria?” though it’s possible the woman also has a notion that Jesus, being a Jew, should have ideas about talking to women too. The confusion of the disciples I also take to be primarily a mixture of their general character of being goodhearted but stupid boys, and the ethnic angle. The gender angle isn’t played up.
“The guy” who objects to the anointing of Christ in Matthew and Mark are indeed just “some guys” but their objection isn’t “you broke a gender norm” but “what a waste of money!”. John makes this rather plain do-gooder sentiment something spicier by putting it in the mouth of Judas. Still no gender stuff. Now, Luke doesn’t like this story, so he is the one who makes it about gender, as you rightly say. I don’t know why he changes it, but he does, so we do have to think about it and speculate a little.
There’s an absence of any explicit “and lo the Pharisee spoke unto the harlot saying what the fuck art thou doing in mine house” stuff but don’t you think it is implicit that “a Pharisee” – whose famous line is condemning Christ for eating with sinners – would object to a presence of a sinner at dinner? Do you suppose she was a frequent dinner guest of his? Hardly! What brings her to the house isn’t that it is semi-public space, but, Watsonishly, the presence of Jesus and, Doylishly, that it creates an occasion to for Luke to insert a parable of the “Jesus preaching to a Pharisee” type on the theme of sexual morality. So this is definitely an occasion about sexual morality, but then isn’t the sinner doing what a prostitute should to a man she is loving? It’s a strange story and I think you’re on stronger ground by calling her a deviant.
But try this reading on for size: Jesus rebukes the pharisees repeatedly for their hypocrisy and unwillingness to repent. I think Jesus knows that although the sinful woman is never, could never possibly be, a dinner guest of the Pharisee, she is a bed-partner of his, and this is a scene that Jesus is creating to freak the Pharisee out.
Notice that in the parable Jesus is also calling the Pharisee a sinner like her but one tenth as bad – different in degree but not kind – a reasonable ratio for the different ways a man and woman in fornication might be judged.
The treatment the sinful woman gives Jesus is some high class escort foreplay stuff – costly perfume, weird hair stuff, kisses everywhere. When she does this to Jesus she is herself enacting a parable of the Kingdom, in which the repentant harlot’s highest arts, though developed for sin, are converted into an instrument for a great blessing and, here perhaps, the further conversion of Simon the Pharisee.
Jesus rebukes Simon the Pharisee by saying “you did not wash my feet, you did not kiss me…’ which were simple acts of hospitality but which in this context became an occasion to freak him out by, again, saying “you are more like this woman than you would care to admit” and sharpening the point by saying that even though his sins are only a tenth of this woman’s, that his attempts to bless Jesus do not even rise to common courtesy, never mind a high-class erotic-but-chaste show. I also like to imagine that Jesus is mogging him: “When you, you dirty teacher of the Law sinned with her, she never gave you this, but behold, such is my glory…”
That is to say, I don’t think this was a public show. I read it as being a little domestic psychodrama enacted by Jesus for a specific effect – the metanoia of Simon the Pharisee, by playing on his own insecurities in his own squalid house, in collaboration with a penitent harlot, and Luke is recounting this drama like a telenovelista for we readers of his gospel to consider.