Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion

• Introduction: 1. Defining the task; 2. Women's studies in early Christianity and cultural anthropology; 3. Honour and shame; 4. Public, male/ private, female; 5. A social-scientific concept of power; Part I. Pagan Reaction to Early Christian Women in the Second Century CE: 1. Pliny; 2. Marcus Cornelius Fronto; 3. Lucius Apuleius; 4. Lucian of Samosata; 5. Galen of Pergamum; 6. Celsus; 7. Conclusion; Part II. Celibacy, Women, and Early Church Responses to Public Opinion: 1. Paul's teaching on marriage as a 'conversionist' response to the world; 2. Paul's focus on women holy in body and spirit in 1 Corinthians 7; 3. A focus on women in light of the values of honor and shame; 4. 1 Timothy 5.3-16 - second-century celibate women under public scrutiny; 5. When the private becomes public - contacts between 1 Timothy 5.3-16 and the Acts of Paul and Thecla; Part III. Marriage, Women, and Early Church Responses to Public Opinion: 1.1 Corinthians 7.12-16 - the evangelising potential of household relations; 2. 1 Peter 3.1-16 - recovering the lives of the quiet evangelists; 3. Justin's woman married to an unchaste husband - religious sensiblities and life with a pagan husband; 4. Married life and the social reality of women in the communities of Ignatius of Antioch; 5. From Ephesians 5.21-33 to Ignatius, Letter to Polycarp 5.1-2 - the evolution of authority structures governing the lives of married women; 6. The church-bride and married women as mediators between the church and the world; 7. Conclusion; General conclusion.

"This sensitively written and subtly argues book sheds new light on the position of women in early Christianity by investigating the stereotypes of Christian women purveyed in pagan and early Christian texts through the lens of social-scientific models of gender relations." University of Toronto Quarterly