Biblical Womanhood Magazine:

Magazine Structure Overview

Title Suggestion: RECLAMATION: The Truth About Biblical Womanhood

Total: 12 spreads (24 pages) & cover

Spread 1: Introduction / Editor’s Letter

“Reclaiming the Narrative”

Word count: ~400 words

For centuries, “biblical womanhood” has evoked a particular image: a soft-spoken woman in modest attire, deferring to her husband and finding fulfilment solely in domestic roles. This ideal has been promoted from pulpits, reinforced in Christian literature, and presented as the divine standard for women.

However, this image may reflect Victorian values more than biblical ones. The women depicted in Scripture often differ significantly from the submissive ideal commonly portrayed.

This magazine seeks to question dominant assumptions. A close reading of biblical texts in their original languages and historical backgrounds reveals women who defied empires, led armies, supported religious movements, and spoke truth to power. Figures such as Deborah, Mary of Nazareth, Junia, and Priscilla exemplify leadership, courage, and religious understanding.

The transition from these powerful biblical women to the contemporary emphasis on a “gentle and quiet spirit”—often equated with personality traits and domestic roles—warrants examination.

This shift is rooted not in Scripture itself, but in its interpretation and the interpreters. Historically, biblical interpretation was dominated by men, whose ideas and interests frequently influenced which passages were emphasised and how conclusions were drawn, frequently upholding existing power structures.

This does not imply that all established interpretations are incorrect or that all male scholars are biased. Rather, it acknowledges that interpretation is never neutral; everyone brings assumptions to the text. The key is a willingness to examine those assumptions. This publication will explore the historical development of “biblical womanhood” as a concept, examine biblical women whose stories have been overlooked or altered, and analyse translation choices and interpretive traditions that have influenced current understanding. We will also study the implications of reading these early texts from new perspectives.

This magazine is intended for those who feel constrained by narrow definitions of womanhood, for individuals raised in religious traditions who are re-examining their beliefs, and for all who are curious, questioning, or hopeful.

The women of the Bible deserve recognition as they truly were: complex, courageous, and fully human.

Welcome to this reclamation.

Spread 2–3: Historical Feature Article

“The Invention of Biblical Womanhood: A Historical Investigation”

Word count: ~1,200 words

[INFOGRAPHIC OPPORTUNITY 1: Timeline of “Biblical Womanhood” Concept Development]

The term “biblical womanhood” feels ancient, as if it has always existed as a category of Christian thought. In reality, the phrase and the specific ideology it represents are remarkably recent—products of nineteenth and twentieth-century cultural anxieties more than first-century faith.

The Ancient World: More Complicated Than We Think

Women in the ancient Mediterranean world occupied varied social positions depending on their culture, class, and historical moment. Jewish women in first-century Palestine could own property, initiate divorce in some circumstances, and participate in religious life through ways that varied by region and community (Ilan, 1995). Roman women of the upper classes exercised considerable informal power, managing households that functioned as economic enterprises and patronising religious and civic institutions (Kraemer, 1992).

The earliest Christian communities emerged within this complicated landscape. The letters of Paul, our earliest Christian documents, mention women as deacons (Phoebe), apostles (Junia), church leaders (Priscilla), and coworkers in ministry (Euodia, Syntyche, and others). Archaeological and textual evidence suggests that women held leadership positions in early Christianity that would later be closed to them (Eisen, 2000).

The Patristic Period: Suspicion and Ambivalence

As Christianity became institutionalised in the fourth and fifth centuries, attitudes toward women grew more restrictive. Church fathers like Tertullian, who called women “the devil’s gateway,” and Augustine, who questioned whether women fully bore the image of God, shaped theological traditions that would persist for centuries (Clark, 1983).

Yet even in this period, the picture was complicated. Women served as deacons in the Eastern church for centuries. Wealthy women founded monasteries and exercised considerable authority within them. The cult of the Virgin Mary elevated one woman to the highest status below Christ himself—though this elevation often came at the expense of ordinary women, who could never match Mary’s unique combination of virginity and motherhood (Warner, 1976).

The Victorian Invention

The “biblical womanhood” most familiar to contemporary conservative Christians owes more to the nineteenth century than to the first. The Industrial Revolution created a sharp division between the public world of work (coded male) and the private sphere of home (coded female) that had not existed in earlier agricultural societies, where home and work overlapped (Welter, 1966).

Victorian ideologues—both secular and religious—developed what historian Barbara Welter termed the “Cult of True Womanhood,” celebrating four cardinal virtues: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. These qualities were presented as timeless feminine ideals, though they were actually responses to specific nineteenth-century anxieties about industrialisation, urbanisation, and changing gender roles.

Christian writers baptised these Victorian ideals with biblical language. Passages like Proverbs 31, Titus 2, and 1 Peter 3 were interpreted through this Victorian lens, read as endorsing separate spheres and female subordination as God’s eternal design rather than as texts addressed to specific ancient communities.

The Twentieth-Century Backlash

The ideology of biblical womanhood intensified in reaction to feminism. As women gained legal rights, educational availability, and economic independence, conservative Christians increasingly emphasised gender hierarchy as a defining marker of Christian faithfulness (Griffith, 1997).

Organisations like the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, founded in 1987, developed the theological framework of “complementarianism”—the belief that men and women have different but complementary roles, with male headship in the home and church. This system was explicitly developed as a response to evangelical feminism and the wider cultural acceptance of gender equality (DuMez, 2020).

The Southern Baptist Convention’s 1998 Amendment

A watershed moment came in 1998 when the Southern Baptist Convention amended its statement of faith to include the declaration that a wife should “submit herself graciously” to her husband’s leadership. This was the first time in Baptist history that such a statement had been included in a confessional document—revealing that “biblical womanhood” as currently defined is a contemporary formulation, not an ancient tradition (Flowers, 2012).

Recovering the Complexity

Understanding that “biblical womanhood” is historically constructed does not mean dismissing Scripture or tradition entirely. Rather, it means reading more carefully—distinguishing between the biblical texts themselves and the interpretive frameworks we bring to them.

The Bible contains a diverse collection of texts written over more than a thousand years by many different authors in different cultural settings. It includes stories of women who led armies (Deborah), saved nations (Esther), founded churches (Lydia), and proclaimed the resurrection (Mary Magdalene). It includes passages that restrict women’s speech (1 Corinthians 14) and passages that celebrate women’s prophecy (Acts 2). Any honest reading must wrestle with this variety rather than flattening it into a single “biblical” position.

What might it mean to read these texts not as a rulebook for gender roles but as witnesses to communities wrestling with questions of power, faithfulness, and human flourishing? That is the invitation of this magazine.

​

Spread 4–5: Biblical Women Profile #1

“Mary of Nazareth: Revolutionary Mother”

Word count: ~1,000 words

[INFOGRAPHIC OPPORTUNITY 2: The Magnificat as Political Document—Visual Breakdown]

The image of Mary in popular Christianity often reduces her to a passive vessel: serene, silent, submissively accepting God’s will. Countless Renaissance paintings depict her with downcast eyes and folded hands, embodying gentle acquiescence.

But this image cannot survive an actual encounter with the Mary of Luke’s Gospel.

The Scandal of the Annunciation

When the angel Gabriel appears to Mary, she does not simply accept the announcement. She questions it: “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:34). This is no passive consent but active engagement. Mary seeks to understand what is being asked of her.

Her eventual “yes”—”Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38)—is thus not submission in the sense of defeated compliance. It is consent: the free choice of a woman who has asked questions and received answers. Catholic theologians have long emphasised that Mary’s consent was essential; God did not override her agency but invited her participation (Johnson, 2003).

The Magnificat: A Revolutionary Hymn

The song Mary sings after visiting her relative Elizabeth is among the most revolutionary texts in Scripture. Far from the mild lullaby its traditional musical settings would suggest, the Magnificat is a declaration of divine revolution:

“He has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:51-53).

This is the language of social upheaval. Mary proclaims a God who overturns existing power structures, who sides with the poor against the wealthy, with the powerless against rulers. Liberation theologians have long recognised the Magnificat as a basic text for understanding God’s preferential concern for the marginalised (Gebara & Bingemer, 1989).

The revolutionary nature of Mary’s song is often domesticated through spiritualization—as if “the humble” refers only to spiritual humility rather than social location, or as if “rulers” means only cosmic forces rather than actual political powers. But Luke’s Gospel consistently emphasises concrete, material realities. The reversal Mary proclaims is not simply spiritual but social and political.

Under Empire

Mary’s son was born during the reign of Augustus Caesar, who claimed titles like “Son of God” and “Saviour of the World.” The Roman Empire proclaimed itself the bringer of peace and prosperity, the divine order of civilisation (Crossan & Reed, 2004).

The claims made for Jesus in the Gospels directly challenged these imperial claims. When Mary sings of God scattering the proud and bringing down rulers, she is not speaking in abstractions. She is a colonised woman under military occupation, pregnant with a child whom the empire will eventually execute as a political criminal.

To be the mother of the Messiah in first-century Palestine was not an easy vocation. It was dangerous. Herod’s massacre of the infants, whether historical or theological, captures something true about the threat that Jesus—and his mother—posed to existing powers.

At the Cross

The Gospels record that Mary was present at Jesus’s crucifixion (John 19:25). Roman crucifixion was designed not only to kill but to humiliate and terrorise. Victims were often left naked; their deaths could take days; their bodies might be left for scavenging animals. For family members to be present was itself a risk, an act of resistance that could mark them as sympathisers with an enemy of the state (Hengel, 1977).

Mary at the cross is not the passive figure of piety but a woman of extraordinary courage, bearing witness to imperial violence against her son.

Beyond Submission

None of this is to deny Mary’s faithfulness or her willingness to participate in God’s purposes. But faithfulness is not the same as passivity, and participation is not the same as subordination.

The Mary of Scripture speaks, questions, sings revolutionary songs, and stands in defiance before imperial execution. She is no domestic ideal, yet a woman of fierce courage and prophetic voice.

That later Christian traditions frequently reduced her to a model of quiet submission says more about those traditions than about Mary herself.

Spread 6–7: Biblical Women Profile #2

“Deborah: Judge, Prophet, Military Commander”

Word count: ~1,000 words

In a context where women are often told that leadership isn’t their biblical role, Deborah presents an inconvenient reality. She held the highest position of authority in Israel—combining roles we might today call those of a Supreme Court justice, a prophet, and a commander-in-chief.

The Office of the Judge

The book of Judges describes a period in Israel’s history before the monarchy, when charismatic leaders called “judges” arose to deliver the people from foreign oppression. These judges exercised comprehensive authority: military, judicial, and spiritual.

Deborah is introduced with no apology or qualification: “Now Deborah, a prophet, the wife of Lappidoth, was leading Israel at that time. She held court under the Palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the Israelites went up to her to have their disputes decided” (Judges 4:4-5).

The text shows a woman exercising public judicial authority with no indication that this was considered problematic or exceptional. The people of Israel came to her for judgment as a matter of course (Niditch, 2008).

Military Command

When Israel faced the threat of Jabin, a Canaanite king, and his general Sisera with their nine hundred iron chariots, it was Deborah who summoned the military commander Barak and issued the battle orders:

“The Lord, the God of Israel, commands you: ‘Go, take with you ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zebulun and lead them up to Mount Tabor. I will lead Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his troops to the Kishon River and give him into your hands” (Judges 4:6-7).

Barak’s response is striking: “If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go” (Judges 4:8). The male military commander refuses to go to battle without Deborah at his side.

Some interpreters have read Barak’s response as cowardice or lack of faith. However, the text does not criticise him; his name appears in Hebrews 11, the “hall of faith” (Hebrews 11:32). Another reading is that Barak recognised Deborah’s authority and sought her prophetic presence to secure divine guidance. Either way, Deborah agrees to accompany the army into battle (Matthews, 2004).

The Song of Deborah

Judges 5 preserves the Song of Deborah, considered one of the oldest texts in the Hebrew Bible based on its archaic Hebrew. This victory hymn celebrates Sisera’s defeat and is presented as sung by Deborah herself.

The song praises Jael, another woman who takes firm action—killing Sisera with a tent peg when he seeks refuge in her tent. Between Deborah’s command and Jael’s action, the victory over Sisera is accomplished entirely through women’s agency.

The Interpretive Problem

Deborah’s story presents an obvious challenge to those who argue that Scripture prohibits women from holding authority over men. The usual strategies for managing this challenge are revealing.

Some argue that Deborah was an exception, raised up only because no qualified man was available. However, the text gives no indication of this; there is no criticism of Israel for following a woman, nor any suggestion that her leadership remained a divine concession to male failure (Scholz, 2017).

Others argue that Deborah exercised only “private” rather than “public” authority, or that she merely relayed God’s words without exercising her own judgment. However, the text describes her “holding court” and deciding disputes—language of public judicial authority. And the distinction between “relaying God’s words” and exercising authority is precisely what prophetic leadership means (Belleville, 2000).

The simpler reading is that the book of Judges presents Deborah’s leadership as legitimate, God-ordained, and effective. The Israelites who sought her judgment, the commander who followed her orders, and the text that preserves her story without criticism all testify to this acceptance.

A Model for Today?

What are we to do with Deborah? If Scripture truly prohibits women’s leadership, her story becomes an embarrassing anomaly requiring explanation. If, however, we approach Scripture not as a rulebook but as a collection of testimonies to God’s work through diverse people amid diverse circumstances, Deborah becomes something else: evidence that God’s Spirit empowers whomever God chooses, regardless of gender.

The early church father John Chrysostom, hardly a feminist, acknowledged this truth: “God does not make distinctions on the basis of sex, but on the basis of virtue of soul” (Homilies on Romans 31). Deborah is proof that when such distinctions are made, they originate not in God but in human traditions that Scripture itself contradicts.

Spread 8–9: Biblical Women Profile #3

“Mary Magdalene: Apostle to the Apostles”

Word count: ~1,000 words

No biblical woman has been more misrepresented than Mary Magdalene. For centuries, she was portrayed as a repentant prostitute—a characterisation found nowhere in Scripture and originating in a sixth-century sermon by Pope Gregory I that conflated her with other Gospel women (Haskins, 1993).

The actual Mary Magdalene of the Gospels is far more significant: a prominent disciple who witnessed the crucifixion, discovered the empty tomb, and became the first witness of the resurrection.

Who Was Mary Magdalene?

The Gospels introduce Mary as “Mary Magdalene,” indicating she came from Magdala, a prosperous fishing town on the Sea of Galilee. Luke 8:2 notes that Jesus had cast seven demons from her and that she was among the women who supported Jesus’s ministry “out of their own means.”

The reference to exorcism tells us nothing about Mary’s moral character; demon possession in the Gospels afflicts people regardless of their virtue. The reference to financial support suggests Mary was a woman of independent means—she had resources she could direct as she chose.

Mary Magdalene appears in all four Gospels’ accounts of the crucifixion and resurrection, a consistency that stresses her historical importance. While other disciples fled or denied knowing Jesus, the women—with Mary Magdalene prominently named—remained (Schaberg & Johnson-DeBaufre, 2006).

First Witness to the Resurrection

In all four Gospels, Mary Magdalene is among the first—in John’s Gospel, the very first—to encounter the risen Jesus. John’s account is particularly striking:

Mary stays at the empty tomb, weeping after Peter and the beloved disciple have left. Jesus appears to her, and she initially mistakes him for the gardener. When he speaks her name—”Mary”—she recognises him and responds, “Rabboni” (Teacher). Jesus then commissions her: “Go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God'” (John 20:11-17).

This commission makes Mary Magdalene the first evangelist of the resurrection. The early church recognised this significance by calling her apostola apostolorum—the apostle to the apostles (Bovon, 2002).

A Woman’s Testimony

In the ancient world, women’s testimony was generally considered less reliable than men’s. The Talmud expresses scepticism about women as witnesses, and Roman legal tradition similarly privileged male testimony.

This makes the Gospels’ witness all the more remarkable. If the early Christians were inventing the resurrection story, they would not have chosen women—especially one woman—as the primary witnesses. The fact that they did testifies to the historical reality they were reporting: the women really were the first witnesses, and the Gospel writers reported this truth despite its potential to undermine their credibility (Bauckham, 2002).

The Gnostic Mary

Outside the canonical Gospels, Mary Magdalene appears prominently in several second-century texts discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945. The Gospel of Philip describes her as Jesus’s “companion” (a term that can mean partner or spouse). The Gospel of Mary, though fragmentary, depicts her as a leader among the disciples, possessing special revelation from Jesus and encountering opposition from Peter (King, 2003).

These texts are not historically reliable sources for the first-century Mary Magdalene; they reflect second-century theological developments. But they do testify to ongoing traditions of Mary’s prominence and to early Christian debates about women’s authority.

The Erasure

How did Mary Magdalene become a prostitute in popular imagination? In 591 CE, Pope Gregory I delivered a homily identifying Mary Magdalene with the sinful woman who anointed Jesus’s feet in Luke 7 and with Mary of Bethany. This conflation had no basis in the texts but proved remarkably influential, shaping Western Christian art and imagination for over a millennium.

In 1969, the Catholic Church quietly corrected this error, acknowledging that the three women were distinct. But the popular image of Mary Magdalene as a redeemed prostitute persists.

This transformation—from apostle to apostles to repentant prostitute—is representative of wider patterns. A woman of spiritual authority and evangelical witness was reduced to a sexualized penitent. Her speech, her commission, and her status as first witness were hidden by a story about her (fictional) body and (invented) sins (Thompson, 2006).

Reclaiming Mary

The recovery of the historical Mary Magdalene is part of the larger effort to reclaim women’s stories from patriarchal distortion. The Mary of the Gospels was a woman of means who chose to follow Jesus, remained faithful when others fled, and was entrusted with the most important message in Christian history.

That later tradition found ways to diminish her significance says nothing about Mary and everything about the tradition.

Spread 10–11: Biblical Women Profile #4

“Junia: The Female Apostle Hidden in Translation”

Word count: ~900 words

[INFOGRAPHIC OPPORTUNITY 3: Translation Changes Over Time—How “Junia” Became “Junias”]

In Romans 16:7, Paul writes: “Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.”

For most of church history, Junia was understood as a woman—and as an apostle. Then, in the twentieth century, something strange happened: Junia became a man.

Junia in the Early Church

The name Junia (Greek: Iounian) was a common Roman woman’s name. The masculine form Junias is unattested in ancient literature; it would be a contracted form of Junianus, but such a contraction appears nowhere in surviving Greek or Latin texts (Epp, 2005).

Church fathers had no doubt about Junia’s sex. John Chrysostom, writing in the fourth century, exclaimed: “How great is the devotion of this woman that she should be even counted worthy of the appellation of apostle!” Origin, Jerome, and others similarly assumed Junia was female (Belleville, 2005).

The Modern Change

Beginning with Martin Luther and accelerating in the twentieth century, translators and commentators began treating Junia as a man named “Junias.” The 1927 Nestle Greek New Testament changed the accent on the Greek word to indicate a masculine name. English translations followed: the RSV (1946), the NASB (1960), and the NIV (1973) all rendered the name as masculine.

Why the change? The reason, though rarely stated explicitly, was theological rather than textual. Once interpreters began arguing that women could not hold church office, a female apostle became theologically problematic. Rather than adjust the theology, they adjusted the translation (Bauckham, 2002).

The Restoration

Recent decades have seen the recovery of Junia. The 1998 edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament returned to the feminine accentuation. Major English translations have followed: the NRSV, the 2011 NIV update, and the ESV all now render the name as “Junia” (feminine).

The scholarly consensus is now clear: Junia was a woman, and the attempt to change her sex was an ideologically motivated error without textual support (Epp, 2005).

An Apostle?

Even granting Junia’s femaleness, some interpreters argue that “outstanding among the apostles” could mean “well-known to the apostles” rather than “outstanding as apostles themselves.” This interpretation has been thoroughly critiqued on grammatical and contextual grounds. The Greek phrase (episēmoi en tois apostolois) most naturally means “prominent among the apostles,” indicating that Andronicus and Junia were themselves apostles and distinguished ones (Burer & Wallace, 2001, cf. rebuttals by Bauckham, 2002; Epp, 2005).

What did it mean to be an “apostle”? Paul uses the term broadly to include those who had witnessed the risen Christ and been commissioned to preach. Junia apparently met these criteria. She was “in Christ before” Paul himself—among the earliest converts. She had suffered Paul’s imprisonment for the faith. And she bore the title apostle, the highest designation in the early church.

Implications

The case of Junia illustrates how translation is never neutral. The decision to make Junia male had no basis in manuscript evidence or linguistic probability. It was a theological choice, made to avoid a conclusion that challenged dominant assumptions about women’s roles.

If Junia could be an apostle in the first-century church—prominent among apostles, no less—what does that say about claims that women’s leadership is “unbiblical”? The woman hidden in translation testifies against such claims.

Spread 12–13: Analysis Article

“How Did We Get Here? The Mechanisms of Erasure”

Word count: ~1,100 words

The women we have explored—Mary, Deborah, Mary Magdalene, Junia, and many others—appear clearly in Scripture. Yet their significance has been consistently minimised, their stories sanitised, their authority denied. How does this happen?

Translation Choices

We have seen how Junia became Junias through a simple accent mark. But translation choices influence perception in countless subtler ways.

The Greek word diakonos is translated “servant” when applied to Phoebe (Romans 16:1) but “minister” or “deacon” when applied to male leaders. The same word, different translations, different implications.

When Paul mentions Priscilla and Aquila, he usually names Priscilla first—a significant reversal of normal ancient practice that suggests her prominence. Some translations reverse this order, restoring the expected male-first pattern (Kroeger & Kroeger, 1992).

These choices are rarely conscious attempts to deceive. They reflect translators’ assumptions about what the texts must mean, shaped by traditions that developed long after the texts were written.

Interpretive Traditions

Beyond translation, interpretation shapes how texts are read. The household codes (Ephesians 5, Colossians 3, 1 Peter 2-3) have been read as timeless prescriptions for gender hierarchy. But scholars increasingly understand these texts as addressing specific first-century situations, drawing on conventions borrowed from Greco-Roman household management literature to help Christian communities navigate their social context (MacDonald, 2006).

Similarly, 1 Timothy 2:12—”I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man”—is treated by some as an eternal prohibition. But attention to context suggests Paul (or a Pauline follower) is addressing a specific situation in Ephesus, likely involving particular women influenced by false teaching. The universal application of this situational instruction is an interpretive choice, not a necessary reading (Payne, 2009).

Selective Emphasis

Which texts get preached, taught, and memorised? Which appear on greeting cards and church bulletin boards?

The Magnificat’s revolutionary social vision rarely appears in contexts emphasising Mary’s meekness. Deborah’s judgeship is unmentioned in sermons opposing women’s leadership. Mary Magdalene’s apostolic commission appears less frequently than her (fictional) tears of repentance.

Selectivity creates canons within the canon. The same Bible that contains Deborah, Huldah, Priscilla, Phoebe, and Junia also contains passages that appear to restrict women. Which passages are treated as normative, and which as exceptions, is a matter of theological choice (Trible, 1984).

Institutional Interest

Uncomfortable as it is to acknowledge, institutional interests shape interpretation. Men who hold power in religious institutions have not always been keen to find scriptural support for sharing that power.

This is not to say that all male interpreters are consciously protecting their privilege. But systems tend toward self-perpetuation. When power is held by those who benefit from certain readings of texts, those readings tend to dominate (Schüssler Fiorenza, 1984).

The antidote is not to dismiss all traditional interpretation but to expand who interprets—to bring women’s voices, perspectives, and questions to the interpretive task. When that happens, texts often yield meanings that centuries of male-dominated interpretation missed.

The Way Ahead

Understanding how erasure happens is the first step toward reversing it. We can read translations critically, comparing versions and consulting original languages when possible. We can seek out interpretations by women scholars and scholars from different cultural settings. We can notice which texts we gravitate toward and which we avoid.

Most importantly, we can approach Scripture not as a tool for policing gender boundaries but as a collection of testimonies to the varied ways God has worked through human beings—all human beings—throughout history.

Spread 14–15: Contemporary Reflection

“Why This Matters Now”

Word count: ~900 words

Some might ask why these old manuscripts matter. What difference does it make whether Mary Magdalene was an apostle or a prostitute? Why revisit Deborah or Junia?

The answer is that stories shape us. The accounts we tell about women in our sacred texts influence how we see women today—in our churches, our families, our societies.

The Individual Cost

Women raised in traditions that emphasise female submission report varied experiences. For some, these teachings give structure and clarity. For others, they have caused profound harm.

Research has documented connections between rigid gender ideology and tolerance for domestic abuse, with some religious contexts producing higher rates of violence against women than secular equivalents (Nason-Clark, 2004). When women are taught that submission is their highest calling and that questioning male authority is sin, they may lack the theological resources to name abuse as wrong.

Beyond abuse, many women describe a subtler cost: the sense that their gifts are unwelcome, their voices unimportant, their callings illegitimate. Women who feel called to ministry, scholarship, or leadership must either suppress those callings or leave their communities.

The Church’s Loss

When women’s gifts are restricted, the church is impoverished. How much wisdom has been lost because women’s voices were silenced? How many potential theologians, preachers, and leaders have been turned away or never developed their gifts?

The church has never actually succeeded in silencing women entirely. Women have always found ways to exercise influence—through writing, through teaching other women, through the informal power that comes from constituting the majority of most congregations. But these contributions’ve often gone unrecognised, their authors unnamed, their observations attributed to male authorities (Ruether, 1998).

Imagine what the church might look like if women’s contributions had been fully valued from the beginning. Imagine if Junia’s name had never been changed, if Mary Magdalene had remained the apostle to the apostles, if Deborah’s judgeship had been cited as precedent rather than exception.

Beyond the Church

The implications reach beyond religious communities. The construction of “biblical womanhood” has influenced secular law, social policy, and cultural norms in societies formed by Christianity. Arguments against women’s education, voting rights, and legal equality have all claimed biblical warrant (Griffith, 1997).

Today, religious rationales remain shaping debates over reproductive rights, workplace equality, and political leadership. Understanding the constructed nature of “biblical womanhood” provides resources for critiquing these rationales—not by dismissing Scripture but by reading it more carefully and sincerely.

An Invitation

This magazine does not argue that everyone should reach the same conclusions about gender, the Bible, or faith. It does not claim that the questions are simple or the answers obvious.

Rather, it urges readers to connect more intensely with texts that have too often been handled superficially. It invites curiosity where there has been certainty, humility where there has been dogmatism.

And it invites reclamation: the recovery of women’s stories, voices, and authority from under the layers of interpretation that have obscured them.

The women of the Bible are waiting to be met. Not the sanitised, domesticated versions, but the actual women: fierce and faithful, complicated and courageous. They have been there all along.

It is time to let them speak.

Spread 16 (Back Matter): Reference List

References

Bauckham, R. (2002). Gospel women: Studies of the named women in the Gospels. Eerdmans.

Belleville, L. L. (2000). Women leaders and the church: Three crucial questions. Baker Academic.

Belleville, L. L. (2005). Ἰουνιαν… ἐπίσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις: A re-examination of Romans 16.7 in light of primary source materials. New Testament Studies, 51(2), 231–249.

Bovon, F. (2002). Mary Magdalene in the Acts of Philip. In F. S. Jones (Ed.), Which Mary? The Marys of early Christian tradition (pp. 75–89). Society of Biblical Literature.

Burer, M. H., & Wallace, D. B. (2001). Was Junia really an apostle? A re-examination of Romans 16.7. New Testament Studies, 47(1), 76–91.

Clark, E. A. (1983). Women in the early church. Liturgical Press.

Crossan, J. D., & Reed, J. L. (2004). In search of Paul: How Jesus’s apostle opposed Rome’s empire with God’s kingdom. HarperSanFrancisco.

DuMez, K. K. (2020). Jesus and John Wayne: How White evangelicals corrupted a faith and fractured a nation. Liveright.

Eisen, U. E. (2000). Women officeholders in early Christianity: Epigraphical and literary studies. Liturgical Press.

Epp, E. J. (2005). Junia: The first woman apostle. Fortress Press.

Flowers, E. H. (2012). Into the pulpit: Southern Baptist women and power since World War II. University of North Carolina Press.

Gebara, I., & Bingemer, M. C. (1989). Mary, mother of God, mother of the poor. Orbis Books.

Griffith, R. M. (1997). God’s daughters: Evangelical women and the power of submission. University of California Press.

Haskins, S. (1993). Mary Magdalen: Myth and metaphor. Harcourt Brace.

Hengel, M. (1977). Crucifixion in the ancient world and the folly of the message of the cross. Fortress Press.

Ilan, T. (1995). Jewish women in Greco-Roman Palestine. Mohr Siebeck.

Johnson, E. A. (2003). Truly our sister: A theology of Mary in the communion of saints. Continuum.

King, K. L. (2003). The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the first woman apostle. Polebridge Press.

Kraemer, R. S. (1992). Her share of the blessings: Women’s religions among pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman world. Oxford University Press.

Kroeger, C. C., & Kroeger, R. C. (1992). I suffer not a woman: Rethinking 1 Timothy 2:11-15 in light of ancient evidence. Baker Book House.

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