#111 Helen Bond - The Forgotten Female Disciples of Jesus

28:16We don't know anything more about her, unfortunately, other than that she's there. She travels on the road with Jesus. She's there at the cross, the empty tomb, and she's one of these very first witnesses to the resurrection. One interesting thing that I wanted to ask you about and see what you think about this, and you mention it in the book as well, is that when Salome is mentioned, for example, so she first shows up in Mark chapter 15, we've already talked about this verse, where suddenly we're told some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, the younger, and of Joseph, and Salome.

28:59it seems to me that although this naturally reads as one mary magdalene two mary the mother of james the younger and of joseph three and salome isn't there like some ambiguity here like it could for example the text could mean to say because there are no commas here like there are in the english it could mean to say among them were one mary magdalene and two mary the mother of james the younger and of Joseph, and Salome, as if to say that this second Mary was the mother of Salome as well. That's possible, yeah. And there's big discussions of how many women there are at the cross in all the Gospels.

29:40I mean, John's Gospel is particularly problematic, whether there are three or four. I suppose the difficulty is that you wouldn't normally say somebody is the mother of a woman, though obviously you could if the woman was very well known, as in this case, perhaps. I mean, she does appear later on. There's the sort of three mentions of these women. I think in one of them Salome isn't mentioned. But I think when you look at all of them together, it does suggest that there's three women. But you're absolutely right. It is very, without commas and without anything else, it is difficult to know exactly how many women we're dealing with here.

30:21There's also the added complication that some people suggest that Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, could be Jesus's mother because those are the names of two of Jesus's brothers. And if you lumped Salome in with that, then that could also be Jesus's sister, if that tradition is correct. But that just seems odd to me. I think if Jesus's mother was there, they would have said, you know, his mother. They wouldn't have gone in this roundabout way and picked out two sort of random brothers and said, you know, the mother of these two. I think the reason people like that interpretation is that it then sort of harmonizes with John's gospel, which does have the mother of Jesus at the cross.

31:08I think Mark's gospel and the synoptic gospels generally don't. Yes, we've got at the cross here in Mark's gospel Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph, and Salome. One interesting feature is that in Matthew's gospel, and of course Matthew is using Mark as a source, Matthew also lists three women and says many women were there watching from a distance. They'd follow Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee's sons, which is another sort of clunky way of saying it, I suppose.

31:46But interestingly, Mark's gospel has three names. Matthew's has the same, except that last name, Salome, is now rendered as an anonymous mother of Zebedee's sons. So again, a lot of exegetes look at this and say, well, that's because Matthew knew that Salome was the mother of Zebedee's sons. That is, like the apostles of Jesus who were Zebedee's sons. So we've also got this indication that Salome might have been Zebedee's wife, I suppose. Yeah, that is another possibility and one that the commentaries take seriously. I mean, another sort of slight problem with that is that Matthew has already created a character around Zebedee's wife.

32:31So in Mark's gospel, the sons of Zebedee, James and John, come to Jesus with this really embarrassing question. They say, when you come in glory, can we sit on the left and right? And Jesus says, oh, guys, you really don't understand. And so in Matthew's gospel, when you get to that, Matthew's clearly a little bit uncomfortable with the disciples really not

32:54Helen Bond:getting it. So he says that it was their mum who went and asked Jesus, can my boys have the best seats? And so that gets over that sort of problematic thing about the boys not really getting it. So he has already made her into a character. So it's possible on one level that he has better historical information or he just sort of knows something here, But equally possible that he just doesn't know who Salome is. And because he's already created this character around the wife of Zebedee, maybe he just kind of adds her for that reason. It's so difficult to know with these random names. You know, it's like the Simon of Cyrene in Mark 15, where in Mark's gospel, he says Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus.

33:49Helen Bond:You know, who are these guys? Why put them in? Unless perhaps, you know, people in the audience know them. I mean, that's the obvious thing, isn't it? Oh, remember Alexander and Rufus? This is their dad. um so so again you know it's not unreasonable to think that the evangelists change the women according to just women that they know um particularly when when mark says there were many women so there's maybe a lot to choose from you put in the ones that you are aware of or that you know some traditions about your group kind of has some affinity with this particular woman it's hard to know. And it is important to point out that a lot of people will say, for example, the Gospels contradict each other because is it one woman or two women or three women and which women are they?

34:37And we know for a fact, because Mary Magdalene, for example, only shows up in Mark 15 and we're told retrospectively, oh, by the way, she was like with Jesus the whole time. We just didn't mention her. We know that the Gospel authors didn't exhaustively list everyone one who was present and oftentimes only mentioned the people who were specifically relevant to what they were talking about. And so it's impossible to know the number of women that we're talking about here. One tiny other indication of this Salome as not a third name in the list, but also one of the daughters, is that when Jesus rises, when they discover the empty tomb, Mark's gospel says in Mark chapter 16 that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome brought spices to anoint Jesus' body.

35:33So it seems like three women there. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome. But it could read as Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome. Be a little bit clunky, but it is interesting how when you get to Matthew's gospel, the same story is reported and matthew just has two women mary magdalene and the other mary so if this second mary really was the mother of james and salome as if to say the mother of james and the mother of salome there's some indication here from the fact that matthew interprets this or rewords this part of the story as just saying mary magdalene and the other mary however it is important to point out that maybe he just didn't mention uh salome maybe he didn't think she was

36:15Helen Bond:Maybe he's just getting a bit confused with all these women. He's not too bothered. Maybe by the time he's writing, these women are largely forgotten already in these communities, these sort of reading groups that he's writing for. And he just sort of says, you know, and a Mary. There's always a Mary. Yeah, it's always hard to know whether you're reading too much into things. You know, how deliberate are some of these changes? I mean, because they're fascinating. And often you can sort of run with changes and you see the same type of changes being made. And I think that's often a good indication that you're onto something.

36:56But when you've only really got one or two things, it's difficult to know, you know, did he just write it because he just thought, oh, that doesn't really matter much. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website, to marketing, to selling, and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz, and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into... Sign up for your$1 per month trial at shopify.com slash special offer.

37:33Yeah, it does seem like women show up in the New Testament narratives only when they are strictly necessary to the story. It's like we can't help but bring them up. And the sort of corollary of that is to think that there are instances where the women were present and perhaps doing something that was important, but were just not told about it because of a sort of narrative erasure. One indication of this, for example, is the fact that as we've already discussed at length, the women were crucial to the discovery of the empty tomb. Mary Magdalene is said in John's gospel to be the first person who sees the risen Jesus.

38:07Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene in some detail. And these traditions of Jesus appearing to the women and the women running and telling the men, and of course the male disciples don't believe them and have to go and check for themselves. But one interesting feature is that if you look at Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, which is one of the most, it's definitely an authentic Pauline letter. It's one of our earliest New Testament sources. It's written before the Gospels. in chapter 15 of first corinthians paul famously lifts off lists off this this uh sort of schema these people that jesus appeared to he says uh for what i have received i pass on to you of first importance as a first importance that christ died for our sins according to the scriptures that he was buried that he was raised and that he appeared to cephas that's peter and then to the 12 after that he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers and sisters at one time most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.

39:03Then he appeared to James and the apostles. And last of all, he appeared to me. Well, hold on a second. He's just listed a bunch of names in trying to sort of celebrate how wonderful it is that Jesus has appeared to all of these people and neglected to mention who our gospel narratives tell us are some of the most important early first witnesses to Jesus's resurrection. Why wouldn't Paul mention that? It's bad.

39:28Helen Bond:I mean, there are various reasons. And this is one of those huge intractable problems. Why does Paul not mention the women? I mean, one common suggestion actually is that he doesn't mention the women simply because this story has not yet been made up. You know, Paul is writing in the 50s. The earliest gospel is Mark's gospel, probably early 70s or so. Mark just doesn't know about this tradition. Sorry, Paul just doesn't know about this tradition. I mean, that's possible. And I think there's probably something to that. But I think stories about if there was an empty tomb at all, then stories about it must have been known to people.

40:17I mean, for Paul, it's all about visions. Who has seen the resurrected Jesus? And he doesn't mention an empty tomb at all. He doesn't seem interested in that. And so what some people say is that the whole empty tomb tradition is a later invention designed to kind of give the resurrected Jesus more of a bodily raising, you know, to really graphically underline the fact that he has been raised from the dead because the tomb is empty. his body is no longer there. And so the argument goes, Paul doesn't really buy into that whole thing. He's just thinking who has actually had a vision of that raised Jesus.

41:00So I mean, I think, I mean, I suppose the question is, where does the whole story about resurrection come from in the first place? Is it simply a question of people seeing visions and being convinced in some way that Jesus is alive again. Is there an element of people going to the tomb and finding it empty or not being able to find the tomb or being a bit confused about where the tomb is? I mean, you know, Mark is making a lot of effort here to say that women who knew Jesus saw him die and they saw where the tomb was and they came back to the same place later on. He's really trying to

41:42Helen Bond:emphasize that. And that does make me think that there must have been people around who say, ah, yes, but nobody knows, you know, nobody knew where Jesus was buried. Nobody, you know, he was buried by people who weren't followers. You know, the whole thing was just, you know, nobody had any facts and any information. So he's very clear to make this link. I think for Paul, he's just not interested in any of this. He's just talking about people who've seen resurrection appearances. But I think it's also significant that the women make their first appearance in Mark's gospel. And one of the things about Mark is that he doesn't have any appearances and he ends on this very uncertain note.

42:28So he has the women run away. They've seen this angel who says, you know, he's not here, he's been raised, and the women are seized with fear and run off. And so that's a very strange place to leave your gospel.

42:45Helen Bond:There's no tidy endings, there's no visions, there's no hurrah, he's raised from the dead. Instead, it's this strange story of women going down to the grave, finding it empty and not being sure about what to do about it. And so I think if anybody is going to pass on traditions about women finding sort of graves and not knowing what to do about it, it's going to be Mark because he's just, that's the kind of ending he wants. He wants this ambiguous ending and you have to then kind of supply your own faith. And then, of course, that gets retold in all the other Gospels because they're retellings of Mark.

43:28Whereas I think Paul's project is just very different. Even if he did know that women went down to the tomb and they couldn't find the tomb or they found it empty or there was just some uncertainty about where Jesus' remains were, he's not going to tell you that.

43:45Helen Bond:because in that passage in 1 Corinthians 15, it's almost like a sort of a creedal sort of going back to, you know, this is our founding story. These people, these important people, you know, Peter and the 12 and Jesus's brother, 500 brethren, and last of all, Paul. So it's people whose word can be trusted. And he's wanting to nail it down. He's not wanting to leave you with a certain ambiguity like Mark is. So I think you can sort of work out reasons why Paul may not have mentioned the women, even if he had heard that there were stories about women going to the tomb and not being sure about what they were finding.

44:29Well, one option is also that Paul was a sexist, although maybe we can talk about that a bit too. But even if Paul himself is not a sexist, given the culture that he was writing in. If for Paul the importance was telling the message of Jesus, he might have thought to himself, well, if I tell everyone that it was women who discovered the tomb, man, they might not. So let's just not mention that because they might not trust the women. Whereas the gospel authors, unavoidably, they have to mention the women because everybody knew it was women who discovered the empty tomb. So it's possible that Paul left it out, not because of his own sexism, but because he realized it wouldn't work in the project that he was trying to do.

45:06Yeah, no, I think that's undoubtedly right. It would have added nothing to his great story of the resurrection and people seeing visions to say, well, some women went down and they couldn't find the body. Nothing about that account is going to be useful for him. And, you know, this is a society where the voices of women were not necessarily trusted in a court of law. So, you know, there's nothing kind of adding to his argument to say that, you know, we can trust these women. I think, you know, he's sexist in the same way that, you know, everybody in that culture was sexist to a degree. You know, it's the men, the men's voices that you want to trust here.

45:54Yes. Don't we have, I can't remember when it's from, but somebody writing about trying to dismiss Christianity as sort of, oh, the tomb was discovered by these delirious women or something. Yeah. What am I thinking? Yeah, it's Celsus, second century pagan philosopher who's actually very, very up on the Gospels and sort of goes through the Gospels and critiques them. And one of his many critiques is that the empty tomb was discovered by, as you say, a delirious woman. And he constantly says that Christianity is full of the worst type of beggar women, uneducated people and women. And that's very much a sign for him that this is a degenerate movement that really has no place and shouldn't be trusted.

46:46Yeah, which gives you an indication as to the psychology of the people Paul was writing to and why he might have been hesitant to mention the women. Yeah, I think that's right. And also, I mean, I think, you know, again with the Gospels, why they perhaps wouldn't overemphasize the role of women in this story. I mean, partly I think they're telling a story of the Jesus movement. And then as you get into Acts, it's the spread of the movement across the Roman world.

47:15Helen Bond:And they're very much shining the light on what the men are doing, because that's what feels natural to them, as it would have done to most authors up to about the last few decades. But at the same time, I think they probably realized subconsciously, if not consciously, that including too many women in this was not a good idea because most people in the Roman world would have thought that a new religious movement that had too many women in it was not a good thing. Yes. Although, regardless of what somebody wants to say, we do have some indications of the presence of women in the early church, even though they're not really mentioned in the Gospels, in some sense.

47:58When we turn to Paul, who is famously the problem for women in Christianity, because he's the one that says women should be silent in churches, that Adam was formed first, then Eve. He's the one that basically brings all of the sexism to Christianity. it's also in Paul's letter to the Romans that we find a strong indication of the reverence which he had for at least some women so I want to sort of put a put a pin in the sexism stuff because we've been talking about a video that I'm hoping to produce soon about these sexist verses in Paul and my ultimate analysis of most of these really hard-hitting cases is that Paul didn't actually write those words.

48:40There's a famous line in 1 Corinthians where Paul is saying that women should be silent in churches, and if they've got a question, they should go home and ask their husbands. But it's the only part of Paul's letter which moves around in early manuscripts. It also says they should be in submission as the law also says, which is very un-Pauline. It's a very un-Pauline thing to say. He's also just said in 1 Corinthians that women should cover their hair when they prophesy and then telling them that they can't speak at all. So there are lots of reasons to think that Paul didn't actually write those words.

49:10So I just want to sort of acknowledge the fact that there's a lot of sexism in Paul's letters, but say that there's good reason to suggest that Paul, the historical Paul, didn't write those words. 1 Timothy 2.12 is another example, but most scholars think that Paul didn't write the book of 1 Timothy altogether. However, we do know that Paul did write the letter to the Romans. And at the very end of the epistle to the Romans, we find a pretty interesting indication of the position of women in early Christianity.

49:40Helen Bond:Yeah, I mean, it's an incredible chapter. And for me, it's the most interesting chapter in the whole thing. I mean, which is terrible. Poor old Paul would be absolutely flabbergasted that people find his list of people he knows in Rome far more interesting, maybe, than his great theological ideas in the rest of Romans. But this is a really important letter for Paul. He's writing to a church that he didn't found, and he's sort of laying out his theological understanding of the importance of Jesus and the place of Gentiles in this movement. So it's an incredibly important letter. and then he ends it by sort of adding on a list of names.

50:30I mean, he basically, he says, first of all, I commend this person. Then he says, you know, greet this person, greet this person, greet this person. And so in a way, I mean, obviously it's a very carefully manufactured list of people, but it's as close as we're ever going to get to a snapshot of people in the early Roman church. And what's fascinating about it is a third of those people are women.

50:57Helen Bond:And they're women who are described as leaders of house churches. He kicks off with Prisca and Aquila. Prisca's name is always first before her husband, Aquila. They are leaders of a house church. He says that they've risked their necks for him. I would love to know what that was. You know, what was that story? What's the story behind that? He talks about another woman called Junia, who has sometimes had her gender erased and been called Junias, and her partner or husband called Andronicus. He even says that they were apostles before him. They've been in prison for their faith, and they're kinsmen of him, he says.

51:46and he names a lot of women in that list.

51:51Helen Bond:And one of the most interesting women is the very first one, the one he commends. He says, I commend to you our sister Phoebe. And so he's commending this person because she's not known to the Roman church. And the implication seems to be that she is the one carrying the letter. So she is bringing the letter. He says that she's a deacon of the church in Kentria, which is in Corinth. She's a benefactor of many, he says, and she's a deacon. She's clearly a high-ranking woman in the church just outside Corinth. And she is bringing this letter to the Romans. And presumably, she's not just handing it over because she knows Paul well.

52:37Helen Bond:She's maybe reading it out or maybe a slave is reading it out, and then she's going to explain it. What does Paul mean here? Well, this is what I think he's saying. So that, I think, is an incredible thing. Given Paul's reputation, George Bernard Shaw said he was the eternal enemy of women. That doesn't sound like the eternal enemy of women, to have sent this important letter via a woman, and then for his whole sort of legitimacy to rest on saying hello to a third of women in this list. So I think that gives us a very different picture of Paul. And the most interesting thing to me about this is that you're reading between the lines, as it were.

53:22It's not like Paul has written, by the way, women are really important. We're just looking at the text and naturally seeing that, oh, like a third of these names are women. And And Romans chapter 16 opens, as you say, it says, this is the NIV, I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon. And that word deacon, I think like diakonon or something like this.

53:43Helen Bond:Yeah, diakonos, which is, I mean, it just means, I mean, it can mean a kind of a leader, but it can also mean a servant, actually. and it's often translated as kind of a deacon or a leader when it's a male and a servant when it's a female but it's the same word so clearly she's in some kind of leadership role in this yeah well the kjv will have servant rather than deacon yes yes the thing that the thing that again when you wrote in your book about this i always think to myself well okay well then we don't we don't know i mean maybe paul meant servant maybe he meant something more like deacon But the one thing you said, which I think is undoubtable, is that if he was talking about a man, it would have been translated as deacon.

54:27Regardless of whether we're correct in that translation or not, we know that that's how modern translators would translate it. So more and more people are beginning to use the word deacon here. And of course, this early in the Christian church, the sort of organizational structure is still being fleshed out. So it might not be clear exactly what it means to be a deacon or what that role entailed at that time, but we know that this Phoebe is incredibly important. So I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Kentria. Thank you. um i you can tell how much reading and how little talking i do by by my absolute inability to pronounce names and places um i ask you to receive her in the lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help she may need from you for she has been the benefactor of many people including me now that does read like somebody saying by the way you know the woman who's bringing you this letter take care of her and give her anything she needs because she is incredibly important and she's helped out a lot of people including me she's risked her life for me you know like you say this naturally reads as her coming in and bringing the letter and potentially being its first its first exegete um if that's the case what i want to know is why we sort of see this development from an indication of an early church community where women were being sent out possibly with Jesus' disciples, but certainly by people like Paul, and were spreading the word of Jesus to a modern church today, which sees the role of women as very specifically excluded or subordinate to that of men when it comes to the clergy at the very least.

56:12Not allowed to be priests in the Catholic Church, for example, this kind of stuff. Historically, how this occurs, and I suppose sort of way into that is maybe to first talk about this character of Junior who you mentioned a moment ago. She's mentioned in Romans chapter 16 along with presumably her husband I think and yet if you read Martin Luther's translation of the Bible it doesn't say Junior it says Junias like what is that about what's going on there? Yeah again I mean And it's this really fascinating thing about gendered translation. So exactly in the same way that we'd said, you know, if diakonos is a man, it's going to be translated leader.

57:00If it's a woman, it's going to be translated servant. In the case of Junias, it's because around about what Paul says about her is that, you know, greets Junias and Andronicus, they're kins people of him. And he says, they were apostles before me. So I think in the minds of the translators, apostles have to be men. There's no universe in which apostles are women. So even though there is no male name called, I mean, Junia is a very, very common female name. Lots and lots of women in the Roman world are called Junia. It's as common as Mary is in the Jewish world. So lots of women are called junia, but they don't translate it by the obvious junia.

57:51They assume that it must be male. And then they go looking for what male name could junia possibly be. And they sort of invent this male name junias, which has no kind of basis in reality. It's just but when you add an S to the end, it becomes a male name. And the Greek would kind of support it. It's just a question of where an accent goes. And of course, the earliest texts didn't have accents, so we can't know for sure. And so for a long time then, it was assumed that the correct reading here was Junias, and so this was a male. It was only really much, much later when people started looking at the various texts and saying, wait a minute here, there's no basis for this.

58:43And realizing that actually, the better translation here is Junia. And the only reason why people weren't translating it as Junia was because of this reference to being an apostle. And perhaps the note too, that they'd both been in prison. Perhaps people thought, ooh, maybe a woman wouldn't have been put in prison, though we know that women could be put in prison just as easily as men.

59:09Helen Bond:So it does seem to be really to do with nothing to do with the text itself, but entirely to do with the interpreters and their sense that a woman couldn't be an apostle. And once you make her into a female again, restore her femininity, then again, she becomes one of these gendered pairs, her and Andronicus, whether he's her husband or whether he's just this sort of missionary co-worker. Again, the two of them are prominent missionaries who, Paul says, go back to a very early time. They were apostles before he was. So maybe even from the days in Jerusalem, they've been part of this movement for a long, long time.

59:55But we wouldn't know nothing at all about them if it hadn't been for this tiny little reference here in Paul's letter to the Romans. But even that motivation, you say that exegetes are reading this and going, hold on, they're referred to as apostles, so this can't be a woman, it has to be a man. Even that is not quite clear, right? Because the verse says, and this is Romans 16, verse 7, greet andronicus and junior my fellow jews or fellow israelites who or kinsmen or whatever who have been in prison with me they are outstanding among the apostles and they were in christ before i was now that word outstanding that's the niv outstanding among the apostles is a little bit ambiguous right because the the term is is what epi epissimum or epissimoi or something like that which presumably is the same root as like epistle because it means something like of note.

1:00:50And also that same word shows up when describing Barabbas, the prisoner. The notorious Barabbas, and it's the same word. So although you could read it as like, Junia was outstanding among the apostles, that is, she was one of the apostles who was outstanding. It could also just mean that she was notable among the apostles in that she was well regarded by the apostles. And so that reading of her being an apostle isn't actually that straightforward in the first place, right? Yeah, I mean, that's a really good point that you're raising. And I hadn't realized that the NIV was translating it in that way.

1:01:28So yes, and I think that, yeah, you can't really tell which way around it is. I think, my sense is that it's translated as

1:01:40Helen Bond:outstanding, you know, sort of, she's counted as outstanding by the apostles, is the way that it's translated by the people who don't want, who are happy enough to have her as a woman, but don't want to have her labeled as an apostle. And that's a kind of a middle position, I suppose. You know, I don't think there's many people nowadays would want to argue that this is a male called Junias. That's not really a viable option nowadays. And the two main camps, I suppose, are the ones who just say, well, it's Junia and Andronicus, and they are outstanding among the apostles, and this includes them as apostles, which would be my position.

1:02:28But there are, as you say, some people who would say that the apostles, the 12 males, regard them as outstanding. I think that's a less likely translation.

1:02:41Helen Bond:And particularly coming from Paul, it would be different if it was Luke, because Luke reserves the term apostle just for the 12 and then the 11. I mean, he doesn't even want to call Paul an apostle. But Paul is very happy to call anybody an apostle, really, anybody who's been sent out with a mandate of any kind. So, I can't really see why Paul would not include them as apostles. That seems unlikely to me. But you're absolutely right. There is that sort of slight get-out clause there if you're uncomfortable with Junia being an apostle. At the very least, what we do know it definitely says is that they were in Christ before Paul was.

1:03:23And given that Paul is a pretty early convert to christianity as far as converts go uh like if if these two figures at least one of whom being junior were in christ before paul was it means that we're dealing with very very early followers of jesus possibly even people who followed him while he was still alive because we're talking about like so early in the in the development of christianity here that whatever you think of their position uh you know as as apostles or not and you rightly point out the pool uses the word apostle a lot more loosely. So it actually wouldn't be that crazy for him to call a woman an apostle.

1:03:58But regardless of whether he did that or not, these are early important believers who Paul thought were worth mentioning in Romans chapter 16 at the very least.

1:04:08Helen Bond:Presumably, because they've been followers for such a long time, they have a certain preeminence in the Roman community. People are probably looking up to them. Paul says they're kins people, which probably means that they're Jewish. So, you know, they're Jewish like him. So they may well be from, you know, Judea originally, somewhere like that, or Galilee. So they are probably, you know, quite prominent within the church in Rome. Have you ever spotted McDonald's hot, crispy fries right as they're being scooped into the carton and time just stands still i did want to ask you briefly and um i should also mention like the way that we're the way that we're trying to sort of go back in time here and and look at like who are the real figures behind these these stories and these names and what's really going on is what you do on your podcast, Biblical Time Machine, literally sort of trying to go back in time.

1:05:16We go back in time. Yes, we do. You and David Ruse. Is that how you say his name, David Ruse? You've got your own show. I like to consider my show as a bit of a sort of door for people to get into biblical scholarship if they're interested in it. But of course, I'm not a biblical scholar. So I talk about lots of things. I do philosophy. I do a bit of Bible. I do a bit of this and a bit to that. But if this is your jam, people listening, if you're into this kind of stuff, then stop listening to me and go and listen to Dr. Bond and Dr. Ruse as well. Perhaps not Dr. Ruse. We look at everything to do with the Bible.

1:05:54Helen Bond:Hebrew Bible and the earliest stuff that we can get right through to the New Testament and anything to do with the Bible and its offshoots, films and and other things like that and have guests. That's one of the exciting things for me, actually, too. You can get a little bit in your own narrow world, but it's really exciting to hear what are the latest things that people are saying about the Hebrew Bible or different parts of the New Testament that I don't look at much. So, yeah, always something different. Well, one of the ways that we can go back in time is, of course, to look at the earliest manuscripts.

1:06:30But another way is literally physically to look at something like archaeology. Like archaeology is a sort of way of going back in time. If you step into an ancient ruin or something, you really feel like you're stepping into the time period. And there might even be like etchings on the wall from the time period that are there today as they were when they were originally written. And in the documentary that I've already mentioned once that you made with Joan Taylor, I forget the name of the documentary. Was it also called Women Remembered?

1:07:02Helen Bond:No, it was called Jesus' Female Disciples, The New Evidence. Yes. And you can watch the whole thing on YouTube, actually, and it's about an hour long, and I would recommend it to people. One of the things you do is you visit the catacombs of Milan. You go to this… Naples. Naples. Oh, was it Naples? Yeah. Okay. So you're in Naples and under the ground, there are these huge like cave systems. And at some point, I think in the last few decades or something, there was some renovation work done in these catacombs underneath Naples and something really interesting was discovered. Yeah. Female bishops.

1:07:43Helen Bond:Yeah. I mean, it's incredible. I mean, they are catacombs. And we went there with art historian Ali Kachous, who has done a lot of work on these. So she was really showing us around here. And I mean, there's a couple of them, but the one that really sort of stands out is the one of Chirola, her name is. And so there's a sort of a place where she's presumably buried. And then on top of that, there's this sort of arch-shaped painting. It's quite large. And like you say, it's been renovated lately, but very skillfully and only based on what's there already. and you can tell from the iconography that this woman is a bishop.

1:08:26Helen Bond:She's wearing sort of a bishop's robes. There's also copies of books which are the gospels and there's sort of flames coming up from them. All of these apparently are signs of being a bishop and certainly in other art historical contexts like this if you get this iconography people would say straight away you know oh this is a bishop. The difficulty here is it's a female. And so again, is she really a bishop? But there seems to be no reason to doubt it. And I think what's really fascinating about this, it's from the sixth century Naples. This is a time when the church has already very much kind of changed.

1:09:08Helen Bond:It's moved from that sense that the end of the world is about to be here as you have in Paul and that sort of egalitarian mission to get out, get everybody into the church before the end of the world comes. And that realization that it's not going to come quite so soon and we need to kind of get used to being in the world and look sensible and, you know, look respectable to outsiders. And you've got the creeds now formulated, You've got the church fathers and you're now in this world where the men are very much in charge. And yet here in Naples, you've got a female bishop. So I think what's really interesting about discoveries like this is that it really does kind of put little pinholes in the normal narrative.

1:10:00Helen Bond:You know, the narrative that men gradually took over. That might be generally the right story, but it's important to realize that that wasn't happening everywhere. There were little pockets where women were still able to exercise a certain amount of authority in these churches. And if Chirulla, then probably other women too. We shouldn't necessarily think that the women's voices have been completely stamped out. And this image of Chirala, which is discovered, I mean, you know, to the untrained eye, it's a picture of a woman with some gospels floating above her. And for those watching on YouTube, I'll have put it on screen or my wonderful editor will have done so.

1:10:42And you might think to yourself, okay, but like, how do we know this? And one of the things that Ali, I forget her, Ali...

1:10:49Helen Bond:Catuse, I think I'm saying it right. I'm not sure. The art historian who you go to the catechomes with points out is that, well, she points to the writings of Severian of Gabala, who is an important 4th-5th century preacher and bishop. and he writes about the ordination process of bishops and how these gospels, the open books, are held above the bishops when the sort of ordination is happening, the gospels are held above them. And I thought, okay, that's kind of interesting. You've got these gospels held above the woman like it's an ordination of a bishop. But then he specifically writes that this is so that the flames of the Holy Spirit will come out of the Gospels and inspire the bishops.

1:11:41He tells us that that's why the books are held open. And what do we see in this image? We see flames coming out of the Gospels. I mean, just a fascinating indication of female bishops. And she also points out in this documentary that the timing of this painting, I don't know what you call it, a painting, a fresco, I don't know what it is. A fresco, the timing of it is around the time when Pope Galatius in the late 5th century writes a letter to bishops in southern Italy complaining about women ministering at the holy altar, complaining that women are having too much authority in churches. So we've got this letter from the Pope saying women have got too much authority in the churches.

1:12:26We've got this sort of artistic indication of women being ordained as bishops. And this is 5th century, right? So we've also got much earlier in Paul and the Romans indications of women being sent out and possible women deacons and maybe described as apostles. and then like at some point around about here it just changes suddenly the art changes suddenly the position of women in church changes why do we go from this evidence of women in high positions of authority in the church to suddenly not to be present at all well i mean this is one of the big questions and there are lots of different answers to that.

1:13:10I mean, one is that the accession of Constantine when Constantine became emperor and then converted to Christianity in the fourth century, early fourth century, this would be that he favoured this more sort of militant branch of Christianity that favoured men rather than women in these roles.

1:13:33Helen Bond:Another explanation that I quite like is that around about this time, the purpose of bishops and leaders was more to, or equally important part of it was oratory and being able to argue your case against non-believers. And it just happened to be the case that fewer women were educated anyway, and certainly few of them were trained as orators. And so it just sort of naturally happened that the ones who were sort of rising to the top in ecclesial circles were the ones with this higher level of training. and probably a variety of reasons in different places. But I mean, I think you can always, at all points in history, you can point to some women who were moving outside of the norm for their gender.

1:14:35And clearly, once the sort of monastic movements get going, you have women in cloisters, you have women mystics. there's always you can always point to some indication of women exercising some kind of leadership or some kind of theological role but yeah I mean broadly speaking sometime around about the sort of the fourth to the sixth century women's participation very much kind of begins to decline One of the really interesting things that Ali Katutz, one of the things that she then talks to you about from her work as a historian of art and sort of ancient Christian artwork is specifically tracking the depiction of the raising of Lazarus.

1:15:28because it's one of the most commonly depicted scenes. I think particularly it was on people's graves or something. Sarcophagy, yeah, because it's to do with resurrection. John's gospel tells us that Jesus hears that Lazarus has died. This is where Jesus famously weeps for his friend Lazarus. Then he comes and he raises him from the dead. There are women present, right? It's Martha and Jesus' mother are the two which are named as present at the raising of Lazarus.

1:16:00Helen Bond:No, it's Martha and Mary. They're said to be the sisters of Lazarus. Martha and Mary. That's right. Sorry, not Mary, the mother of God. Martha and Mary of Lazarus' relation. And they're in the text. We know that they're there. And she shows us, I think, I don't know the exact dates, but we're looking at some kind of third century engraving. And you have all of the characters, Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead and Martha and Mary are stood there with the disciples. And then you get a little bit later and Mary is still there, but Martha isn't or vice versa. There's just one woman. Yeah. Yeah. And then you get a little bit further and then it looks like the women aren't there at all, except one is there.

1:16:43It's just that she's this gremlin looking creature in the bottom left corner who's been shrunk down to this tiny size, It's just about making it into the frame. And then eventually around, I guess, like the 4th or 5th century, you start seeing depictions of the raising of Lazarus, which just don't include the women at all. And you can literally see this progression from the women, both of them being present, just like the disciples, getting smaller, smaller, smaller, and finally disappearing altogether. This is like an art historian's explicit depiction of the literal erasure of women from the story of the New Testament.

1:17:18And I found that really, really interesting.

1:17:21Helen Bond:Yeah, it is. I mean, it's absolutely fascinating to see them shrinking. And, you know, the very small little Mary or Martha, whichever one it is, I mean, it looks like a little hedgehog. And you say, why even bother to put it in when she's so small? And then, of course, like you say, she just sort of disappears. But, I mean, that one that we looked at in the documentary was a really clear one. But, I mean, there are other ones, too. I mean, we looked at a lot of, we filmed so much stuff that didn't get into the documentary, actually. And we were in the Vatican Museum looking at various other sarcophagi there.

1:17:57Helen Bond:And again, it's a very similar picture. You look at sort of ones from about the third century, which is about as early as you get Christian sarcophagi. And they have representations of women. By the fourth, fifth century, suddenly they've disappeared altogether. and they're just not part of the narrative. And that's a really important thing, given that most of the people who are looking at these can't read. So they are understanding their biblical texts by looking at representations like this, like the things on sarcophagi, like other examples of Christian art, perhaps in meeting places as they're generally becoming more a thing.

1:18:42And so if people are sort of remembering or being told the story

1:18:47Helen Bond:through these images, there's just no women there. So again, I think that just kind of reinforces that idea that this is a story about men doing things. Yeah. And the documentary opens with you in the square, in St. Peter's Square, right outside St. Peter's Basilica, the heart of the Catholic Church. And there are these glorious statues, almost too many statues. And given that there are just so many of them on the square, it is incredible to think that not one of them is a statue of a woman. There is no depiction of a woman except for one tiny little mosaic of Mary. And the reason that's there, I spotted it when I was at the Vatican recently.

1:19:25And my friend told me this, I didn't realize, but you might see if you're there, it's sort of, if you're facing the church, it's off on the right, up high, little mosaic of mary on the wall and that was put there at the request of john paul ii pope john paul ii after his assassination attempt so somebody shot john paul ii uh at very close range uh in saint peter square i think in like the 80s or something yeah 1981 and the pope survived and it was surprising that he survived and i think it was like on the feast day of our lady of fatima And so the Pope thanked Our Lady of Fatima for guiding the bullet to miss his vital organs.

1:20:03I think it was Christopher Hitchens who wondered why Our Lady of Fatima couldn't have guided the bullet to miss him altogether. But that's besides the point. And the way my friend told this to me was that when he thought he might be dying, he wants to pray to Mary. And he looks up and realizes that he was amazed. There's no depiction even of Mary. And for Catholics, that's saying something. There isn't a statue of Mary or a painting somewhere. There was nothing. And so whether it was in that moment he realized it or sometime afterwards, the Pope realizes that there is not a single depiction of Mary.

1:20:33And so he insists that this tiny little mosaic goes up in the corner and that's all you've got. And I mean, I think that kind of embodies what we're talking about, doesn't it? It's like, you know, it's all men in huge, grand statues. And firstly, nobody even notices at first that there aren't any women. And then finally, when they become like unavoidably relevant, they go, oh, gosh, we better we better stick them up there in the corner and at least include them a little bit. Right. And I think in so many ways, that's kind of what's happening in the Gospels.

1:21:04Helen Bond:Yeah. Yeah. I think the Gospels are different. I mean, I mean, you know, they they do include a lot more women than that. I mean, I don't think they've sort of got to the stage where they're just telling the story about what men are doing. And I mean, there is enough just left in the Gospels for us to be able to reconstruct a different history or at least a more sort of variegated history by including women and women's experiences. But I think it's really interesting that, you know, when you want a woman, you go to the Virgin Mary, you know, in the Catholic Church. I mean, there's plenty of other women as well that could.

1:21:42And at the end of the documentary, we get CGI to kind of take off the male representations and put women up there in St. Peter's Basilica instead. And there's plenty of them.

1:21:59Helen Bond:You know, it's just that it's just where you look and the stories you hear and the representations you see. And these things are all so important. And I think just gradually over the years, the women have just dropped out of this. Which is why I think the name of your of your book is such a brilliant one, you know, because you could so easily name the book something like, you know, a reassessment of women in Christianity. But no, it's women remembered, because the point is not so much that they've been exactly erased. Maybe some of it might not even be conscious. It might just be due to unconscious bias or whatever.

1:22:41But for some reason, despite these indications that they're important in the early church, it's like they've just been forgotten, which is why I think your book is so interesting. And it is amazing to think that there is a book's worth and a documentary's worth of material around these people who are so scantily mentioned. There's just like so much to say about them. And so, of course, if people are interested, I've already mentioned the podcast, but specifically this topic, that book will also be linked in the description as well. Phenomenal. And a great cover too. It's wonderful.

1:23:12Helen Bond:Yeah, I really like the cover. And again, the cover just really sort of captures that sense of piecing together fragments and the mosaic of it all. But I mean, one of the reasons we wrote the book was because we felt with the documentary we'd only just scratched the surface. The documentary only looks at four different women, I think it is, and really not in a great deal of depth. So we thought there's so much more that we could say. and the book only really sort of takes you to the end of the New Testament period. You know, very interesting stuff to explore beyond that second century to the fifth or sixth century, as we've been discussing, is I think a really crucial time in all of this.

1:23:58So we have thought about doing another book, but just not got around to it yet. Yeah, I think it'd be great. I mean, even from what we've been talking about here, and of course the documentary, you can only scratch the surface. We haven't talked about the woman with the flow of blood who touches Jesus' garment and gets healed. We haven't talked about the anointing woman. We haven't talked about Martha, really. We talked about her a little bit in the context of art, like Martha and Mary, Tabitha. There's so many wonderful female characters in the New Testament who don't get enough attention. Prisca.

1:24:27I mean, I think Prisca actually was probably far more important than Luke suggests. I mean, every time you see her,

1:24:34Helen Bond:you see her going first to a new area, preparing the way, and then Paul comes and says, I founded this church. You say, you didn't at all. Prisca was already there, busying herself. But it's like so many things, you know, people don't remember what the women did. It's just when the big guy comes in, but he sort of throws his weight around. Yeah. Well, hopefully this podcast and books like yours can begin to rectify that historic injustice. If people are interested, it's all in the description. Helen Bond, thanks so much for coming on. It's been great. Thank you. I really enjoyed our chat.