Placeholders, Lessons, and Emasculators: The Literary Function of Women in Early Christian Texts

Abstract

Scholarship on women in ancient Christian texts has primarily aimed to argue either that these texts were patriarchal and hostile to women or to show that on the contrary, women’s capabilities and roles were held in higher esteem than we might assume. This dissertation highlights the literary function of female characters—the roles they play for the aims of the texts where they appear—to offer a way to study them beyond the framework of critique or apologetics. While the study of women in early Christianity has generally categorized women by their biographical details, such as their marital status, I propose three new categories—placeholders, lessons, and emasculators—as a means of accounting for and organizing the data we have about these women. These categories are based on the literary function of the women within their respective texts. The discussion of each category features a main exemplum and text. The category of placeholders focuses on Mary in the Gospel of Thomas, lessons through women discusses Bilhah in the Testament of Reuben, and emasculators discusses Judith in the book of Judith. The character of Thecla from the Acts of Paul and Thecla is used throughout the dissertation as a recurring point of comparison for each category and woman. Overall, this study argues that understanding the literary function of these women is effective for identifying similarities among female characters from various corpora and traditions.