Conclusion
by Ivoni Richter Reimer
In this book I have investigated all the passages in Acts in which women are explicitly mentioned. I have also examined those passages in which I could suppose that women were also present behind Luke’s androcentric language. My observations about the androcentric nature of Luke’s account are a fundamental component of my work. It has become obvious that Luke mentions by name, or explicitly, only a few women who came into contact or conflict with the principal figures in the Petrine and Pauline mission, as described by Luke. Most of these women are found in the accounts of the Jerusalem community and in the report of Paul’s second missionary journey. Luke only mentions women by name when their personalities are outstanding and their stories paradigmatic for the continuing life of the community of the saints.
The Lukan account is androcentric and concentrates on the principal figures in the apostolic mission, yet it contains and hands on many facets of women’s lives in the first century C.E. There are details that express both their experiences of faith and their ordinary work. Examining these details more closely in light of other sources gives us access to some realities of their lives and histories that are hidden in the text. In this way we can uncover the stories of other women and men who may have been companions in faith, work, or in life of those whom Luke mentions. Even if the historicity of some stories, persons, or events cannot always be established, the information found in the text may be regarded as historical insofar as it throws light on the reality of people’s lives or the social context of the Lukan communities.
Luke’s androcentric account is not intended to present a homoge neous and unified picture of the experiences or world of women, be cause Luke’s interest is focused on the male personalities o Peter and Paul, and women are mentioned only in passing. He is unable to write a unified history of women in the community of the saints, or to connect the stories of individual women. Feminist theologians of liberation have demonstrated the necessity of distinguishing between individual women and their experiences if we are to draw more precise conclusions about their life contexts. To this extent, the absence of a unified account in Luke’s work can be regarded as an opportunity for observing women in very different contexts and worlds of work, and not simply to see them as women confined to the household.
In the following pages, I will summarize the results of the preceding investigation and connect the stories of the different women in the Acts of the Apostles.
On the one hand, Acts has left unmentioned many women who were important and actively engaged in spreading the good news; on the other hand, it has left us a literary tradition of other women. The information in the text must therefore be read together with, and augmented by, other canonical and extra-canonical texts. The women men- tioned by Luke frequently worked independently and some of them lived independently of men. They did their work, in house churches and on the road, to earn their living and to advance the reign of God. Women belonged to the community of the saints from the beginning, and took part in the events that touched that community, both in Jerusalem and in house churches elsewhere. Often women appear in the text when conflicts arise: Sapphira, the Hellenist widows, the women persecuted by Saul together with the men, the prophetic slave girl in Philippi. There were women among the believers who headed house churches: Mary, the mother of John Mark, in Jerusalem; Tabitha, in Joppa; Lydia, in Philippi; Priscilla, in Corinth and Ephesus. The growing community of the saints included women who were active in trades and crafts, but also in the mission, in philosophy, in prophecy. Acts also mentions, m two places, women who were socially and politically influential in their cities, but nothing is said of a conversion of Drusilla, the wife of Felix the governor, or of Bernice, the wife of King Agrippa II. Within that circle, the liberating word of justice and resurrection was not believed. The women who converted to the Jewish-Christian faith were those who found themselves addressed by the liberating message of the Jewish Messiah, Jesus Christ, and who served him in the upbuilding of solidarity and just ways of life.
The story of Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11) began very positively for the Jerusalem community. It was said of that church that it was a community of solidarity in which no one had to suffer want. They had everything in common; those with property placed it at the disposal of the community, and as needed they sold what they had: for example, a piece of land. The proceeds they gave to the community. Sapphira and Ananias had also joined this community and were prepared to sell their field. Sapphira agreed to her husband Ananias’s sale of the field; in doing so, she relinquished her kethuba, which was a legal claim she had against her husband’s property: normally this consisted of a sum of money for which the husband’s entire estate was encumbered. By her agreement to the sale of the field, Sapphira integrated herself totally into the community whose self-understanding Luke describes with the phrase “one heart and one soul” (4:32). In her dealing with property she demonstrated, on the one hand, her freedom and solidarity, but in agreeing with her hus- band’s corrupt decision, she demonstrated a different aspect of her character: her complicity. She cooperated with the terms of a patriarchal marriage by functioning as accomplice in the concealment of part of the proceeds, a deed planned and executed by her husband, Ananias. Her role was not passive: she did nothing to counter her husband’s decision. On the contrary, she united with him in tempting the Holy Spirit, who dwells in the community of the saints, and in putting God to the test. This tempting, or lying to the Holy Spirit, is expressed in the concealment. Deceiving the community is equivalent to deceiving the Holy Spirit and God. This expresses a unified pneumatological-theological-ecclesiological concept. Sapphira’s initially passive participation becomes quite active when she lies in order to cover her husband’s action. Both of them, by their sin—the concealment, which in turn called for repeated lying—become liable to death, which means total exclusion from the community of the saints. It is difficult to determine whether the two of them actually died, as Acts 5:5, 10 reports. The purpose of the narrative to reveal to every individual, and to the church as a whole (w. 5 b, 11) the death-dealing power of sin, and to encourage everyone to act differently from Sapphira and Ananias. The power of sin finds expression here when Ananias and Sapphira attack the fundamental bases of the existence of this community of solidarity.
We may observe in this story a substantial difference between the sinfulness of the two: Ananias’s action is characterized by self-assertion that of Sapphira by a lack of self-determination. This is very important to a feminist liberation theological reading of the story. The story can produce liberating impulses for women who often feel themselves “powerless” within patriarchal and hierarchical structures, calling them to resist corrupt and corrupting power. In light of the negation of sin and of death—this narrative derives a power to evoke change: Women must oppose death-creating structures if they and others are not to be destroyed. They should be able to trust that their disobedience will bring them a place in the community of the saints, where they will be received. Their disobedience can open for them a way to a liberated life. On the other hand, their resigned complicity can be fatal.
The account of the disciple Tabitha (Dorcas) in Joppa (Acts 9:36-43), who was independently active at the local level, attests to her social, organizational, and missionary work. This comprehensive field of activ- ity is indicated not only by her being called “disciple,” but also by the further description of her in terms of her good works. Here, for the first time in Acts, we read of a Jewish-Christian house church outside Jeru- salem. Tabitha is its head. As a fully committed disciple of Jesus Christ, she also proclaims his good news. Her good works, acts of love, are connected with the widows, but need not be restricted to that group or to the making of garments. Her works should not be understood as alms, but as a more comprehensive field of charitable activity in the service of justice. The text expresses an internal coherence between faith and works. Both together constitute Tabitha’s identity. This identity is still more strongly revealed in the narrative of her death. Tabitha is remembered; the weeping, mourning widows and the garments she has made bear witness to her. The mourning scene reflects the commitment she made with her entire person to the whole sphere of her activity.
The commitment of those who belong to this house church and the witness of the widows are central components in the raising of Tabitha. The latter is the most obvious demonstration of a power in relationship that is evident here on a number of levels. It takes its course in seeking, going, weeping, in the witness of those belonging to the community, and comes to full expression in Peter’s action. The power of God was re- vealed, in this case, through the power in relationship between human beings. This raising of the dead was preceded by a great deal of action, beginning with the life of Tabitha. The power here revealed is not only to be understood as a new opportunity for Tabitha’s own engagement on behalf of life for others. The miraculous power in relationship extends beyond the event affecting Tabitha. The memory of the life, death, and raising of Tabitha can continue to effect something miraculous: a continually renewed conversion or turning toward God, who empowers all disciples to translate divine love into the concrete works of love.
The story of Lydia in the Roman colony at Philippi (Acts 16:13-15, 40) attests both to the business activity of a woman and to her active participation in Jewish and Christian communities of faith. Lydia was not alone in Philippi. She does not appear alongside a man, but in the company of other women. Lydia is one of the women who gathered on the Sabbath in the place of prayer, the synagogue. These were a group who practiced the Jewish religion independently of men, and drew identity and strength from it. Lydia came from Thyatira in Asia Minor. That city and the region were known and valued for their traditional production of textiles, including dyeing. Among the dyes produced was purple, most probably derived from plants and used in the dyeing of wool. The dyed products were sold, for the most part, by those who made them. This kind of work was despised by the upper class because the production of such goods and all retail trade was considered “dirty.” Lydia, who was probably a freedwoman, did her work alongside other workers who probably made up her household. From her work, they together earned the basic subsistence of the house headed by Lydia.
Paul and Silas came into contact with Lydia and her household on a Sabbath and preached to them the message of the Jewish Messiah, Jesus Christ, and Lydia and her household were baptized. Because of Lydia’s fidelity to Jesus Christ, this house became the base of the Jewish-Christian mission in Philippi. On a local level, Lydia had the function of a presider entrusted with the tasks of organization and preaching. Lydia also placed her house at the disposal of the missionaries, in which and from which they could live and work. But she was unable to shield the missionaries from anti-Jewish attacks, expressed in terms of political conflicts in Philippi. Her power was also limited at the higher ideological and political level because it was a counter-power. It was realized in the internal sphere. There, in the cellula mater of society, in the house, she constructed a new power not based on a paterfamilias and not required to create or legitimate any patriarchal hierarchical order of subordination. The house of a foreign worker in European Macedonia, in the Roman colony of Philippi, became the first center of a Jewish-Christian community of equals, loyal to the crucified and resurrected Lord Jesus Christ, and attempting to shape its life according to his commandments. This story contains important religious – and social – historical information on a relevant part of the history of women within early Christianity, including especially Jewish Christianity, and at the same time it opens the door to an investigation of an aspect of the working world of women in the first Christian centuries.
The counter-image to Lydia and the community of equals in her house is presented by the story of the prophetic slave girl in the same Roman colony of Philippi (Acts 16:16-18). To obtain a more complete picture of women with whom the Jewish-Christian missionaries came into contact and the conditions of their lives, it is necessary to read these two stories in complementary fashion. Like Lydia, the slave is also religiously active. Like Lydia, she also has a speaking part in Luke’s text. The former, Lydia, is probably a freedwoman; the other is a slave woman. A number of owners have claims on the slave girl and her abilities: according to the thinking of the time, she is “animate property.” As such, she brings her owners considerable profit through her prophetic power.
The spirit that gives her that power is called “Python,” which makes her a “Pythia,” that is, a religious agent in the service of Apollo. The mantic spirit in her neither makes her ill nor tortures her in any way. Instead, it enables her to prophesy and thus provides her with a more respected position and better treatment from her owners, especially since it is in their interest to keep her “production-ready.” Her prophetic words about Paul and Silas prove to be true: They are servants of the Jewish God, who was also called the “Most High.” Thus on the one hand the slave girl functions as a precursor of the missionaries; on the other hand we may suppose that her public proclamation over the course of many days could endanger the missionaries, because they could be suspected of seeking proselytes among the Roman population, which was forbidden. Paul, becoming annoyed, drove the mantic spirit out of the slave girl. At this point, the narrative turns directly to the owners and the political charge they brought against Paul and Silas. As owners, they had received economic injury, and they charge the two men with dirturbing the city by propagating foreign customs. The Roman authorities undertook police measures against the missionaries.
We may conclude from the account that the slave girl was not liberated by the exorcism of the spirit in her. On the one hand, the mantic spirit was unable to free her from slavery, although it did guarantee her better treatment at the hands of her owners. On the other hand, Paul’s exorcism did not bring her freedom from slavery either. Her concrete situation had, indeed, grown worse, inasmuch as she was now damaged goods, and had become worthless to her owners. With the expulsion of her prophetic power, they had lost the source of their profits. Now they had no further reason to take special care of her. Her future fate would probably consist in hard, physical labor as a slave. There could have been a concrete possibility of liberation for her if Paul or the community in Lydia’s house bought her freedom by the payment of a compensatory sum and took her into their protection. The slave could have been received into the community of equals in Lydia’s house; only then would she have had the opportunity for a qualitatively new and free life. But the text says nothing about it, and we can no longer know whether the slave was really welcomed there. This hypothesis remains a historical possibility, supported by other examples. Without at least considering it, I could not speak of any liberation for the slave girl in this exorcism story.
The story of the missionary artisan Priscilla (Acts 18:1-28) and her husband, Aquila, is a high point in Paul’s missionary activity. This is attested not only through Pauline and deutero-Pauline witnesses, but by the Lukan account. Acts 18:1-28 offers us social-historical information not only about the life and work of Priscilla and Aquila, but also about Paul himself. Only here do we find mention of the craft of tentmaking, which all three of them practiced. This story can be used to augment and interpret Paul’s own statements, when he says that he had to work hard to earn his living (1 Cor. 4:11-12; 1 Thess. 2:9; 2 Cor. 11:9). As craftspeople, they earned their living by tedious and tiring work. Because of their work and their mission, they traveled a great deal: from Pontus to Rome, from Rome (ejected for religio-political reasons) to Corinth, from Corinth to Ephesus. Part of their journeying was done as companions and fellow workers of Paul, but they worked on their own, and even independently of Paul. They were at work both before and after him. Their work in teaching the Jewish-Christian faith was highly important: according to Luke’s account, they even taught Apollos, who was already famous as a brilliant and learned preacher and speaker. The kind of teaching they did, as reported by Luke, is attested in the New Testament only of Peter, Paul, Priscilla and Aquila: it is a form of challenge and dialogue that builds up and clarifies. It is done by those in possession of acknowledged authority. The high position held by Priscilla in the early Jewish Christian movement is also attested by the fact that except for the four prophetic daughters of Philip, she is the only woman mentioned by Luke in connection with teaching.
Some changes were made in the texts concerning Priscilla at a very early date in order to weaken the power of the traditions handed on about Priscilla’s importance. Such attempts represent interventions not merely in the text, but in the history of women. These interventions in the tradition have certainly not been, and are not, without harmful effect. On the contrary, they reflect a conflict between different spheres of authority. The attempt to reduce Priscilla’s high status is at the same time an attempt to strike at other women and men who, in their daily missionary work and in the building up of their communities, referred to the authority of the outstanding missionary Priscilla. The strength and importance of a recovery and preservation of the history of Priscilla can be seen in the way in which this story can encourage women and men to engage in a liberating missionary praxis, for it also shows that good missionary work, even without a hierarchical institution, can be liberating in daily life and can achieve recognition. Sticking one’s neck out for others, in opposition to the terrifying power of sin, is an on-going challenge and at the same time an encouragement, both of which can be derived from the story of Priscilla and her husband, Aquila.
Some observations uniting a number of “women” passages in Acts can be summarized as follows.
Luke hands on some very different pictures of women and their experiences. The facets of women’s history retained here thus reveal that women did not have a unified history. Many of them, however, had important characteristics in common, some of which I want to emphasize.
Women’s membership in a Jewish Christian community of the saints and their active participation in the events within this community are characterized by the fact that they contributed to the creation of this community of solidarity through their artisan work and their missionary activity, and not only at the local level. They did not withdraw from the world, but within a world that was hostile toward them they attempted to shape a new life in a community of solidarity based on the liberating message of the crucified and risen Christ.
The passages in Acts in which women’s experiences in Jewish Christian communities are depicted offer neither arguments nor legitimation for patriarchal and hierarchical attitudes and structures. The experiences reported do not serve the preservation of the patriarchal system of the time, because within these house churches there was no need of a paterfamilias to organize life. This life was not based on any of the patriarchal ruling structures of the society of that time: master/slave, man/ woman, etc. Instead, these communities should be understood as communities of resistance, also in the sense that, on the one hand, women presided over their households independently of men, and on the other hand when, like Priscilla, they are mentioned together with the men of their families they nevertheless led lives of their own. Acts gives us an example of one attempt to live in the community of the saints and still to retreat into the patriarchal system. The result of that attempt was total exclusion from the community: this is the story of Sapphira and Ananias.
One story in Acts reveals a set of patriarchal relationships: that of the prophetic slave girl in Philippi. The society in which she lived was patriarchal; in her case it was characterized by subordination within the master/slave system. Luke’s account is also patriarchal in the sense that it takes no interest in the fate of the slave before and after the “exorcism.” The dominant tradition of interpretation is equally patriarchal, defining the slave’s “difference” from the perspective of those in power insofar as it compares the slave girl’s religion with Christianity and declares it to be of lesser value.
The Acts of the Apostles reflects no particular tendency to keep women at home and subject them to men, i.e., to their own husbands. Even though it is silent about important women like Mary Magdalene, it is still far from what was written, at about the same time as its composition, in the Pastoral letters and similar works (e.g., Titus 2:5; 1 Pet. 3:1; Col. 3:18) regarding the subordination of women and slaves. The example of Sapphira makes it clear that women should not simply function as cooperators and co-conspirators. The flip side of this story, in fact, shows that here women were given an example of how they might break with patriarchal and hierarchical structures and, together with others, attempt to build a life dedicated to the preservation of all life.
I hope that my attempt to reconstruct the stories of the women in the Acts of the Apostles has succeeded in reviving memories of the life, the work, and the struggles of women of the past. It is my desire that their stories may inspire and strengthen women and men in the present in their struggle against oppression and for liberation.