Bruce W. Winter
Preface xi
Abbreviations xvi
i. The Search for a Setting i
1. The Connection between Roman Law and Roman Society 2
II. The Neglected First-Century Women 3
III. Defining Appearance, `New' and `Roman' 4
IV. Perceptions of First-Century Women 6
V. Proletarian or Socially Diverse Christian Women 7
VI. Enslaved v. Emancipated Women? 8
VII. The Structure of This Book 9
PART I 2. The
2. The Appearance of New Wives 17
1. Roman Women 17
Wives and the Legal Power of Husbands 17
Wives and the Portrayal of Affectionate Husbands i8
Wives and Unfaithful Husbands 19
II. `New' Roman Women 21
Change 21
Contemporary Writers 23
The Promotion of Promiscuity by Poets 24
Catullus (c. 84-54 B.c.) 25
Propertius (c. 48-16 B.c.) 25
Ovid (43 B.c.-A.D. 17) 27
Playwrights and New Roman Comedy 30
III. Roman Social Values in the East 32
Roman Culture 32
Roman Women 34
IV. Conclusions 37
3. New Wives and New Legislation 39
1. Augustus' Marriage Legislation of 17 B.C. 40
II. Reactions to Augustus' Legislation 47
Women's Defiance 47
Equestrians' Revolt 48
Horace on the lex Julia 49
Legal Inequality 50
Julia and lex Julia 51
III. The Subsequent Response of Augustus 52
IV. Amendments to the Legislation in A.D. 9 54
V. Conclusions 56
4. New Wives and Philosophical Responses 59
1. Cardinal Virtues and New Roman Wives 60
II. Women Studying Philosophy 63
Self-Control 63
Justice 64
Courage 64
III. `Headstrong and Arrogant' Women 65
IV. Educating Daughters 66
V. Single and Married Men and Sexual Indulgence 68
VI. Pythagorean Woman to Woman 72
VII. Conclusion 74
PART II 5. The
5. The Appearance of Unveiled Wives in i Corinthians 11:2-16 77
1. The Significance of the Veil in Marriage 78
II. The Significance of the Removal of the Veil in Public 81
III. Modest and Immodest Appearances in Roman Law 83
IV. Official Policing of Dress Codes on Religious Occasions 85
V. What Was `Proper' in Roman Corinth? 91
VI. Appearing to Be Contentious 94
6. Deciphering the Married Woman's Appearance, i Timothy 2:9-15 97
1. Dress Codes in 1 Timothy 2:9-11 98
Respectable Apparel 99
Modesty and Self-Control (2:9a, 15) 101
Adornment 103
Hairstyles 104
Gold 104
Pearls 105
Godliness and Good Works ,o8
II. Abortion or Child-Bearing? (2:15a) log
Avoiding Childbearing 110
III. Submissiveness and Learning, Teaching and Dominating (2:11-12) 112
Submissiveness or Teaching 113
Speaking and Teaching 115
To Have Authority or Dominate? 116
IV. Conclusions 119
7. The Appearance of Young Widows, i Timothy 5:11-15 123
1. The Widows and the Christian Community 124
II. Inappropriate Behaviour by Young Widows 128
III. To Marry and Have Children 137
8. The Appearance of Young Wives, Titus 2:3-5 141
1. The Legal Privileges of Cretan Women 141
Ancient Rights 141
The Coming of Roman Culture 144
II. Cultural Conditioning and Cretan Christianity 145
Instructors v. Elders 146
Cretans and Cretanizing 149
III. Drunkenness among Older Married Women 152
IV. Recalling Young Married Women to Their Responsibilities 154
`Wakeup Calls' 155
Lovers of Husbands and Children 159
Household Management 160
Debauchery among Older Children 163
The Behaviour of Husbands 164
Traditional and Christian Values 165
V. Conclusions 167
PART III ix 9.
9. The Appearance of Women in the Public Sphere 173
1. Women in Commerce 174
II. Women in the Courts 176
III. Women in Politics 18o
Election Propaganda in Pompeii 18o
The Roman Forum and Italy 180
Woman Civic Patrons, Magistrates, and Gymnasiarch in the East 181
Junia Theodora, the Federal Patron in Corinth 183
Junia Theodora's Benefactions 185
Junia Theodora's Official Honours 186
The Stated Purposes for Honouring Junia Theodora 186
Junia Theodora and the Request of the Lycian Federation 187
The Limits of Participation 191
IV. Women in politeia and Women in the Church 193
Junia Theodora and Phoebe, Patron and Deacon 194
Junia Theodora and Junia 200
V. Conclusions 204
Appendix: Women in Civic Affairs 205
lunia Theodora 205
i. A Decree of the Federal Assembly of the Lycian Cities 205
2. A Letter from the Lycian City of Myra to Corinth 206
3. A Letter from the Lycian City of Patara 206
4. A Letter of the Federal Assembly to Corinth Introducing a Second Decree in Favour of lunia Theodora 208
5. A Decree of the Lycian City of Telmessos 209
Claudia Metrodora from Chios 210
i. Claudia Metrodora as Magistrate (stephanephoros) 210
2. Claudia Metrodora and Her Many Other Public Offices 210
3. Claudia Metrodora from Ephesos 211
Bibliography 212
Index of Subjects 224
Index of Modern Authors 228
Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Sources 231
Roman Wives, Roman Widows: The Appearance of New Women and the Pauline Communities aims to show that where the poets and other literary observers in the late Republic and early Empire, Augustus in his marriage legislation, the Stoic and the Neo-Pythagorean philosophical schools in their deliberations and the letters to the Pauline communities discuss the behaviour of a certain type of women, they were all dealing with one and the same phenomenon. It is what some ancient historians have recently designated the `new woman' who was contrasted with the modest wife and widow. From ancient literary, legal, and non-literary sources it will be argued that the appearance of the `new woman' can be identified.
This book does not focus on the authorial views on women in the relevant New Testament texts. It does not discuss the early Christian household codes nor i Corinthians 7 which contains the longest discussion on marriage, singleness, divorce, remarriage and courtship directed to the Christian communities in the early church.
It was in the midst of teaching a course on hermeneutics called "Text and Context" at Beeson Divinity School in 2000 that this book had its genesis. A graduate student requested that a lecture be given on `being saved through childbirth' in i Timothy 2:15 in its social context. I was at that time completing the first draft of the chapter "Veiled Men and Wives and Christian Contentiousness (i Corinthians 11:2-16)" for my book, After Paul Left Corinth: The Influence of Secular Ethics and Social Change. What struck me as I began to prepare the material was how apposite the particular cultural setting of
the Corinthian passage was in illuminating aspects of i Timothy 2:8-15.
I had assumed that the ancient material would have already been brought to light in the not inconsiderable secondary literature on i Timothy 2:9-15. However, I discovered from Andreas Kostenberger who has published in this area that was not the cases and was encouraged to publish the evidence for the appearance of the `new woman' in i Timothy 2:9-15 whose existence was unknown to Pauline scholars.2
Later that year at the Trans-Pennine Ancient History Seminar at the University of Liverpool, I read a paper on the subject of "The New Roman Wife and the Pauline Churches" as part of the term's seminar theme. I did not pursue its publication in their forthcoming volume on the ancient family although the New Testament material was of interest in that it provided another view in the ancient world that interacted with the `new women', the other two being the Stoics and the Neo-Pythagorean philosophical schools.
In the discussions that followed the paper I gave on the search for a Sitz im Leben of i Timothy 2 at the British New Testament conference in September, 2000, my colleagues confirmed the need for a publication. While preparing this paper, it became clear that one could not do justice to all the material in the passage and the issues involved, let alone other New Testament texts.3 A short monograph which gathered the primary evidence was needed on the appearance of `new' Roman women in the first century. The extensive secondary discussion by ancient historians on extant sources in the late Republic and early Empire, especially the vast body of Roman law that is not normally brought within the ambit of Pauline studies, also needed to be noted.
These are the circumstances that gave rise to yet another book on a somewhat well trodden, if not overworked, topic. I hope that this monograph will be seen to be a constructive contribution to the important issue of women in the Pauline communities as it seeks to secure as the starting point the Sitz im Leben of texts relating to them.
There may be those who remain sceptical about the need to explore these texts yet again. One can also understand that some will have no stomach for any further discussions if this book was being written to re-ignite what has, at times, been something of an acrimonious debate. Those apprehensions are understood, given it would have been expected that discussions on this New Testament subject would have manifested a more courteous treatment of those who have taken different views on this issue. After all, its wider teaching affects the treatment of others - `show perfect courtesy towards all', Titus 3:2.
However unfortunate the way in which the arguments of others were sometimes handled in the past, that provides no logical reason for not putting forward new material that could help illuminate the New Testament texts by securing their social setting with a greater certainty. To date, almost all of the discussion on women in the Pauline communities has focused on the cultural preconceptions or theological preconditioning of the writer of particular passages; little attention has been given to the setting of the women under discussion. Furthermore, the appropriate semantic fields have not always been carefully scrutinised when making decisions on the apposite rendering of key terms used in New Testament passages about women, wives or widows.
A good deal of the Angst that marked the early years of controversy over these passages has now subsided. I judge this to be an apposite time for all to revisit these texts in the light of the ancient social contexts from which they arose.
It is clear that in the past hermeneutical methods have been found wanting. For example, the support invoked from i Corinthians 11:2-16 for wearing head coverings in church up until the second half of the last century went unchallenged until women in the wider society ceased wearing hats and gloves in public (except for weddings, gala occasions and royal garden parties). This widespread Western custom was then largely abandoned in church gatherings because society in general ceased to observe it. However, no justification was given from pulpits for this; they can remain conspicuously silent when congregations abandon ecclesiastical directives in favour of changes in social customs in the wider society. Some decades later the same text was invoked in support of male headship in the congregation. I have previously raised my own uncertainties about invoking this text on head coverings for men and women in support of male headship in the congregation. This interpretation arose because insufficient attention seems to have been given to the relationship between the words `woman' and `veil' and the social context.4
Those who believe that you simply apply the text to the contemporary situation are faced with the need to instruct women praying or prophesying in the congregation to cover their heads or else crop or shave their hair. Young men must also resist the cultural trend of shoulder-length hair that has passed in and out of fashion at least twice in recent decades.5 This seems to be the logical consequence of simply applying the text from i Corinthians 11:2-16.
If the text is to be applied literally then the injunctions in i Timothy 2:9 for women not to wear gold or pearls should question our present-day tolerance of the adornment with traditional jewellery, body piercing, and expensive clothing. On what basis can you ignore those injunctions and yet insist on the enforcement of those immediately following in 2:12? The apostolic tradition in i Timothy 5:14 that young widows remarry is not enforced, or even taught, in Christian communities today in the West. It was, however, a legal stipulation in legislation introduced by Augustus.
This raises the issue of the criteria for selectivity. What are the grounds on which it is decided to apply or not to apply a text or part thereof? Rigorous hermeneutical considerations have been rightly to the fore in recent decades. In the multicultural settings of worldwide Christianity it is highly appropriate to inquire into the basis on which judgements are made for the application of some texts and not others. Arguments such as common sense will hardly gain acceptance from those who rightly seek to establish careful criteria in the field of hermeneutics. Those interested in biblical interpretation have not always seen the need to pursue the first-century setting of particular texts, before proceeding to locate an identical issue in the contemporary scene and then engaging with it.6
Others will want to argue that New Testament authors were the children of their time. Those who do so have to account for the fact that some aspects of New Testament teaching were distinct and consciously ran counter to the cultural norms of the day.7
I was recently made acutely aware of the predicament that some Christian women who work in the business and academic world have when it comes to explaining some enigmatic sections in biblical texts on women to their colleagues. The educated Bible reader has difficulties understanding those that deal with women in the Pauline churches because they are texts without social contexts which have been used selectively.
This research is produced under the auspices of the Institute for Early Christianity in the Graeco-Roman World, Cambridge. It is part of on-going work which aims to examine the intersection of documents of early Christianity with the world of its day. This book was written as part of a long-term commitment to harvest the enormous number of extant literary and nonliterary sources to illuminate New Testament texts in their first-century settings. Such work seeks to take note of the discussion of those ancient historians, epigraphists, papyrologists and archaeologists, as well as the history of recent scholarly approaches. Given that their discussion is not normally accessible to New Testament scholars, I have not hesitated to quote them verbatim where their discussion of the ancient sources has been important for the argument.
I owe an enormous debt to my wife who edited this book in the midst of her own very busy schedule and to Judith Taylor for reading through yet another of my manuscripts. A longstanding friend, Alanna Nobbs, Associate Professor of Ancient History at Macquarie University, very kindly read the manuscript and made helpful suggestions and corrections. It will be clear that I am also indebted to ancient historians who have devoted themselves in recent times to the previously neglected study of women in the ancient world. Without their publications this book could
not have been produced.
Roman Wives, Roman Widows had its genesis in lectures given at Beeson Divinity School, Samford University while a visiting research professor in 2000. I wish to dedicate it to the dean, faculty, and staff, as well as the students whose stimulating and persistent questions helped conceive this book.
Philo of Alexandria
`The potential for more fruitful contact between classical studies and studies of early Christianity [on women] is great, and it provides another opportunity to look at the intersection of Roman, Greek and Near Eastern cultural traditions." Beryl Rawson, who has herself written extensively on the Roman family, made this observation recently at the end of a helpful critique of the history of recent research on women in the Greek and Roman world by ancient historians. This book takes up her recommendation and explores that contact for the first century. A great deal of light has thereby been shed on texts addressed to women in the Pauline communities.
The research for this book has also shown that the flow of first-century information need not only be from the ancient world to the New Testament corpus. The evidence from the latter can provide significant additional material for a fruitful interaction with ancient historians with the movement from Christentum to Antike, as Rawson herself has suggested.2
Some see the vast body of extant Roman law as a significant sub-discipline of ancient history, while others see it as independent of its setting and simply an aspect of study of law as a whole. Crook noted that `legal historians were pursuing the legal history of Roman antiquity, but the general historians were making insufficient use of Roman law in their treatments of social and economic history'.' He considers this a deficiency because the central thesis of his early work on Law and Life of Rome was that it is impossible to deal with Roman society and Roman law as if they were basically autonomous spheres not only in Rome but also, we might add, in Roman colonies and her provinces of the Empire.' Roman public and private law regulated most aspects of life in antiquity.
The legal sources, statutes, juristic opinions, textbooks, documents and reports preserve a wealth of information that helps illuminate or supplement important aspects of Roman society and economy. This is the central concern of the recent book, Speculum Iuris: Roman Law as a Reflection of Social and Economic Life in Antiquity.5 The essential aspects of Roman society were consciously built on Roman law and operated on that basis. Unlike cultures before or after, citizens of Rome and those in Roman colonies scattered throughout the Empire were aware of this important nexus and, therefore, were well informed of their rights, how privileges were grounded in Roman law and how much of life might be determined by it.6
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