New Testament Exegesis
Notable Women of the New Testament
Figures, roles and theological implications
The Gospels name more women than any comparable writing of Graeco-Roman antiquity, and grant them roles that later transmission has often effaced. Rereading them requires distinguishing three planes: what the text says, what reception has made of it, and what historical criticism can establish.
Mary of Nazareth
Luke gives her the first great theological text of his Gospel. The Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) is not a private devotional prayer but a canticle of social reversal, woven from reminiscences of the song of Hannah (1 Sam 2:1-10): the mighty cast down, the hungry filled, the rich sent away empty. The text is so politically charged that it was banned from public proclamation in several twentieth-century dictatorships.
Mark, by contrast, places her among those who come to seize Jesus, believing him out of his mind (Mark 3:21, 31-35), and Jesus there redefines kinship by the doing of God’s will. John sets her at the beginning of the signs (John 2:1-11) and at the foot of the cross (John 19:25-27). Acts mentions her a last time among the disciples devoted to prayer (Acts 1:14).
Mary Magdalene
A reputation constructed, then corrected
Nowhere does the New Testament say that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. Luke 8:2 says only that seven demons had gone out of her. The confusion proceeds from a homily of Gregory the Great delivered in 591, which conflates three distinct figures: Mary Magdalene, the anonymous sinful woman of Luke 7:36-50 and Mary of Bethany. The Latin West followed for fourteen centuries; the East never confused them. The Roman calendar separated the three figures in 1969, and her liturgical memorial was raised to the rank of a feast in 2016.
Her narrative function is nonetheless considerable. She heads the lists of women in all four Gospels, she finances the itinerant ministry (Luke 8:3), she is present at the crucifixion and the burial, and she is the first witness of the resurrection. In John 20:17-18 she receives the commission to announce to the disciples, whence the title apostola apostolorum, apostle of the apostles, already given her by Hippolytus in the third century and taken up by Thomas Aquinas.
The women who financed the ministry
Luke 8:1-3 is a text of often underestimated sociological weight: Mary Magdalene, Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, Susanna and “many others” provided for Jesus and the Twelve “out of their means” (ἐκ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων αὐταῖς). The Jesus movement therefore depended economically on women with resources of their own, one of whom belonged to the circle of the Herodian court. Such female patronage is well attested elsewhere in the Graeco-Roman world.
The interlocutors
| Figure | Text | What is at stake |
|---|---|---|
| The Samaritan woman | John 4:4-42 | The longest dialogue in all the Gospels, with a woman, a Samaritan, of irregular marital status. She conducts a theological debate on the place of worship, receives the revelation of the ἐγώ εἰμι (4:26) and becomes the first proclaimer: “many Samaritans believed because of the woman’s word” (4:39). |
| The Syrophoenician woman | Mark 7:24-30; Matt 15:21-28 | The only character in all the Gospels who prevails in an exchange with Jesus. Her reply about the dogs and the crumbs turns the argument, and Jesus alters his position: “for this saying, go.” The text has fed debate on the humanity and the learning of Christ. |
| Martha of Bethany | John 11:20-27; Luke 10:38-42 | In John 11:27 she pronounces a confession of faith strictly parallel to Peter’s in the Synoptics: “you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.” Tradition has reduced her to the domestic activity of Luke 10, eclipsing the Johannine confession. |
| The woman with the haemorrhage | Mark 5:25-34 | A woman in a state of permanent ritual impurity takes the initiative of touching Jesus, inverting the logic of contamination: it is not she who defiles, it is he who heals. Jesus calls her “daughter,” the sole occurrence of that address. |
| The bent woman | Luke 13:10-17 | Healed on a sabbath and named “daughter of Abraham,” an expression without parallel that explicitly confers on her membership of the covenant. |
| The anointing at Bethany | Mark 14:3-9 | A prophetic act performed by an anonymous woman, of whom Jesus says that it will be told “wherever the gospel is proclaimed,” a promise belied by a tradition that has lost even her name. |
The women at the tomb
The four Gospels agree in making women the first witnesses of the empty tomb, despite divergences on their number and identity. The fact is remarkable in a context where female testimony had reduced legal value: Josephus expressly excludes it (Antiquities 4.219). This is precisely what has led many historians to see here a solid traditional datum, hardly invented by a community seeking to persuade. The reaction reported in Luke 24:11, that the women’s words seemed to the apostles “an idle tale,” confirms the difficulty this tradition posed.
Geneva and Swiss Romande scholarship
- Parmentier, Elisabeth, Lauriane Savoy and Pierrette Daviau, eds. Une Bible des femmes. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2018.
- Marguerat, Daniel, ed. Introduction au Nouveau Testament. 5th ed. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2021.
- Zumstein, Jean. L’Évangile selon saint Jean. CNT 4a-4b. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2007-2014.
- Norelli, Enrico. Marie des apocryphes. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2009.
Other works
- Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. In Memory of Her. New York: Crossroad, 1983.
- Schottroff, Luise. Lydia’s Impatient Sisters. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995.
- Ricci, Carla. Mary Magdalene and Many Others. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994.
Acts and the letters supply still more precise documentation: names, titles, functions. Chapter 16 of Romans, with its twenty-eight persons greeted, ten of them women, is the densest document in the New Testament on the concrete organisation of the communities.
The titles and their weight
| Figure | Text | Greek title | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phoebe | Rom 16:1-2 | διάκονος and προστάτις | She is called deacon of the church at Cenchreae, with the masculine διάκονος and not the later feminine διακόνισσα. The second term, προστάτις, denotes in the Graeco-Roman world a patroness, a protector in the legal and financial sense. She in all likelihood carries the Letter to the Romans, which implies that she provided its reading and first explanation. |
| Junia | Rom 16:7 | ἐπίσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις | “Outstanding among the apostles.” John Chrysostom marvels at it in the fourth century: “how great the wisdom of this woman, that she should be counted worthy of the title of apostle.” The debate bears on two points: the sex of the person and the sense of the preposition. |
| Prisca or Priscilla | Acts 18; Rom 16:3; 1 Cor 16:19; 2 Tim 4:19 | συνεργός | She is named before her husband Aquila in four of the six mentions, contrary to custom, which suggests pre-eminence. With him she “explains the Way more accurately” to Apollos (Acts 18:26), that is, she teaches a preacher. |
| Tabitha or Dorcas | Acts 9:36-42 | μαθήτρια | The only occurrence of the feminine of “disciple” in the whole New Testament. She runs a network of assistance to widows at Joppa. |
| Lydia | Acts 16:14-15, 40 | — | A dealer in purple, hence in a luxury trade, head of a household and the first convert in Europe. Her house becomes the base of the mission at Philippi. |
| Euodia and Syntyche | Phil 4:2-3 | συνήθλησαν | They “contended alongside” Paul for the gospel, a verb of the agonistic register he applies elsewhere to his own ministry. Their disagreement is grave enough for Paul to treat it in a public letter, which signals their weight in the community. |
| Chloe, Nympha, Apphia | 1 Cor 1:11; Col 4:15; Phlm 2 | — | Three women at the head of households in which the church meets. Primitive Christianity being domestic, the mistress of the house in fact exercised a structuring function. |
| The daughters of Philip | Acts 21:9 | προφητεύουσαι | Four unmarried women who prophesy, mentioned without comment or restriction, which supposes the ordinariness of female prophecy in the communities. |
The Junia dossier
A philological disappearance
The text of Rom 16:7 has the accusative Ἰουνίαν, an ambiguous form in unaccented writing. Two readings are possible: the feminine Junia, an extremely common Latin name, with more than two hundred and fifty epigraphic attestations at Rome; or a masculine Junias, a supposed hypocoristic of Junianus, of which no attestation is known in all antiquity.
The whole patristic tradition reads a feminine. The shift occurs in the modern era: Luther translates a masculine, and the twentieth-century critical editions, from Nestle-Aland up to the 26th edition, print Ἰουνιᾶν. Bernadette Brooten’s study of 1977 reopened the dossier; recent editions have returned to the feminine.
The second question remains: does ἐπίσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις mean “outstanding among the apostles,” hence belonging to the group, or “well known to the apostles,” hence outside it? The first reading is that of the whole patristic tradition; the second was defended in 2001 by Burer and Wallace on the basis of a survey of the construction, whose method has itself been contested.
What this dossier establishes and what it does not
It establishes that women exercised in the Pauline communities functions of patronage, teaching, prophecy, diaconal service and itinerant mission, and that Paul designates them with the same vocabulary as his male collaborators. It does not establish that they exercised eucharistic presidency or a function equivalent to the later presbyterate, categories that do not yet exist in the texts. It is this distinction that contemporary debates on ministry sometimes cross too quickly, in both directions.
Geneva and Swiss Romande scholarship
- Parmentier, Elisabeth, Lauriane Savoy and Pierrette Daviau, eds. Une Bible des femmes. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2018.
- Dettwiler, Andreas, Jean-Daniel Kaestli and Daniel Marguerat, eds. Paul, une théologie en construction. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2004.
- Marguerat, Daniel. Les Actes des Apôtres. CNT 5a-5b. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2007-2015.
Other works
- Brooten, Bernadette. “Junia… Outstanding among the Apostles.” In Women Priests, ed. Leonard and Arlene Swidler, 141-144. New York: Paulist, 1977.
- Epp, Eldon Jay. Junia: The First Woman Apostle. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005.
- Osiek, Carolyn and Margaret Y. MacDonald. A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006.
- Kraemer, Ross S. Her Share of the Blessings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Three Pauline passages restrict the speech or authority of women in the assembly. They lie at the heart of all contemporary confessional debates on ministry, and each poses distinct exegetical problems that must be treated separately.
1 Corinthians 11:2-16
Paul here regulates the question of the veil in prayer and prophecy. The decisive point is often neglected: the text presupposes that women pray and prophesy in the assembly (11:5), and discusses only the dress. It would be incoherent to regulate the attire of a practice that was forbidden elsewhere.
The debate over κεφαλή
The whole argument rests on the sense of κεφαλή, “head,” in 11:3. Two readings oppose each other. The sense of authority, dominant in traditional exegesis and defended by Wayne Grudem on the basis of a survey of Greek literature. The sense of source or origin, defended notably by Gordon Fee, who relies on Hellenistic usage and on the continuation of the Pauline reasoning, since 11:8-9 argues from the origin of the woman taken from the man in Gen 2.
The conclusion of the passage complicates matters further: “woman is not independent of man nor man of woman in the Lord; for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman, and all things are from God” (11:11-12). Paul himself corrects the hierarchical scope of his own argument.
1 Corinthians 14:34-35
“Let the women keep silent in the churches.” The passage stands in direct contradiction with 11:5, which has prompted four kinds of explanation.
| Hypothesis | Argument | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| Interpolation | The passage is displaced after v. 40 in the Western text (D, F, G and several Latin witnesses). Such a floating position is a classical sign of a marginal gloss incorporated into the text. Gordon Fee makes this the central argument. | No manuscript simply omits it; the displacement can be explained otherwise. |
| Contextual restriction | The verb employed (λαλεῖν) and the mention of asking at home suggest that disorderly interruptions or questions during the weighing of prophecies are meant, not prophecy itself. | The formulation remains general and the appeal to “the Law” in v. 34 hardens its scope. |
| Refuted quotation | Paul would be quoting a Corinthian slogan in order to refute it in v. 36, a procedure he uses elsewhere in the letter (cf. 6:12; 7:1). | Nothing marks the quotation typographically, and the reconstruction remains conjectural. |
| Normative reading | The text lays down a permanent rule, distinct from the case of 11:5, which would concern a non-liturgical setting. | The distinction between the two settings is not in the text. |
1 Timothy 2:11-15
The most restrictive text of the corpus, and the one whose attribution is most discussed: the Pastorals are widely held to be deutero-Pauline.
The ἅπαξ of verse 12
The verb αὐθεντεῖν is a ἅπαξ λεγόμενον of the New Testament, and its exact sense is the object of a lively philological controversy. Classical Greek knows uses ranging from “commit a murder” to “exercise absolute authority,” by way of “arrogate to oneself.” Paul elsewhere uses ἐξουσιάζειν for ordinary authority, which suggests that the choice of a rare term carries a particular nuance, probably that of usurped or abusive authority rather than of teaching as such.
Verse 15, “she will be saved through childbearing,” is one of the cruces of the New Testament. Readings diverge between an allusion to the birth of Christ, a promise of preservation in childbirth, and a polemic against an Ephesian asceticism hostile to marriage, of which 1 Tim 4:3 bears a trace.
The counterweight: Galatians 3:28
The third pair is distinguished from the other two by its formulation: where Paul writes “neither… nor,” he here shifts to ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ, “male and female,” which quotes Gen 1:27 literally in the Septuagint. The formula therefore does not deny sexual difference but declares that it no longer grounds a hierarchy of status in the ecclesial body.
The debate concerns its scope: is this a strictly soteriological statement, equal access to salvation, or also an ecclesiological and social one? The complementarian and egalitarian positions part company precisely here.
The two contemporary readings
The restrictive texts are normative and transcultural. They ground a distinction of roles, not of worth: man and woman are equal in dignity and differentiated in function. The argument relies on the fact that 1 Tim 2:13-14 motivates the rule by creation and not by culture. Representatives: Grudem, Piper, Schreiner.
The restrictive texts answer local situations, and the practice attested in Acts and Rom 16 shows that the restriction was neither general nor permanent. Gal 3:28 supplies the hermeneutical principle, and the restrictive texts must be read in its light. Representatives: Fee, Wright, Bilezikian, Payne.
Geneva and Swiss Romande scholarship
- Parmentier, Elisabeth, Lauriane Savoy and Pierrette Daviau, eds. Une Bible des femmes. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2018.
- Parmentier, Elisabeth. Les filles prodigues. Défis des théologies féministes. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1998.
- Bonnard, Pierre. L’Épître de saint Paul aux Galates. CNT 9. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1972.
Other works
- Fee, Gordon D. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. NICNT. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014.
- Payne, Philip B. Man and Woman, One in Christ. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009.
- Grudem, Wayne and John Piper, eds. Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Wheaton: Crossway, 1991.
- Hylen, Susan E. Women in the New Testament World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
What is at stake is not reducible to the question of ordination. It touches hermeneutics itself: how to read a corpus transmitted by a tradition that filtered what it contained, and by what criteria to rank texts that do not say the same thing.
The filter of transmission
Three cases document the phenomenon precisely. Junia becomes Junias without manuscript basis. Mary Magdalene, the Easter witness, becomes a prostitute by homiletic conflation. The woman of the anointing, of whose act Jesus announces that it will be told everywhere, loses her name as early as Mark. In all three cases the alteration comes not from the text but from its reception, which supplies a methodological argument: historical criticism can here correct tradition by relying on the documents that tradition itself transmitted.
Two hermeneutics
| Approach | Principle | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| Hermeneutics of suspicion Schüssler Fiorenza | The texts are androcentric in their very composition; one must read against the grain to restore the effaced memory of women, treating residual mentions as the visible tip of a larger reality. | The procedure risks reconstructing a history from silences, without documentary control. |
| Canonical hermeneutics | The received canon is authoritative as it stands; the restrictive texts and the texts attesting participation must be held together, without subordinating one to the other. | Supplies no criterion for adjudicating when the texts contradict each other, which is precisely the case. |
A middle way, often adopted in French-language academic exegesis, distinguishes the level of attested practice, historically established by Rom 16 and Acts, from the level of theological normativity, which belongs to a confessional decision assumed as such and not deducible from the text alone.
A Bible of women, from Stanton to Geneva
Two undertakings a hundred and twenty years apart
In 1895 and 1898 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a committee of collaborators published The Woman’s Bible, the first explicitly female biblical commentary, which caused considerable scandal and was disowned by the suffragist movement itself.
In 2018 Elisabeth Parmentier and Lauriane Savoy, of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Geneva, with Pierrette Daviau, published Une Bible des femmes: twenty women theologians of several confessions reread biblical texts. The project explicitly claims Stanton’s legacy while distinguishing itself by its method, academic rather than militant, and by its ecumenical character.
Consequences for ministry
Present confessional positions do not follow mechanically from exegesis, and it matters to acknowledge this. The Catholic Church holds the question closed since Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994), relying less on the restrictive texts than on the argument from the choice of the Twelve and the constancy of Tradition. Orthodoxy likewise invokes Tradition, while reopening the dossier of the female diaconate. The Reformed and Lutheran churches have ordained women since 1958 in Sweden, 1966 in the canton of Vaud and 1968 in Geneva, relying on Gal 3:28 and on the contextual character of the restrictions. The evangelical world remains divided.
The exegetical debate and the ecclesiological debate therefore do not exactly coincide: one may acknowledge the participation of women attested in Rom 16 while holding that the structure of ministry belongs to another decision, and vice versa.
Geneva and Swiss Romande scholarship
- Parmentier, Elisabeth, Lauriane Savoy and Pierrette Daviau, eds. Une Bible des femmes. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2018.
- Parmentier, Elisabeth. Les filles prodigues. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1998.
- Marguerat, Daniel, ed. Introduction au Nouveau Testament. 5th ed. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2021.
Other works
- Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. In Memory of Her. New York: Crossroad, 1983.
- Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. The Woman’s Bible. New York: European Publishing Company, 1895-1898.
- Osiek, Carolyn and Margaret Y. MacDonald. A Woman’s Place. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006.
- Hylen, Susan E. Women in the New Testament World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
- John Paul II. Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. Vatican City, 1994.
Quiz — Women of the New Testament
What Greek title does Paul give Phoebe in Rom 16:1-2?
- διακόνισσα, the feminine form of deacon
- διάκονος, in the masculine, and προστάτις, patroness
- πρεσβυτέρα, elder
- χήρα, enrolled widow
The feminine διακόνισσα appears only later