Previously we have examined the women around St. Paul, noting that, contrary to comments about women incorrectly attributed to him that have been used to oppress women in both church and society, Paul actually worked closely with many women in leadership positions and had great respect for them. Most of the women in these positions are found in the letter/epistle to the Romans, Chapter 16, which was written between 50 and 60 of the Common Era (CE).
Verse 12 of Romans 16 reads: “Greet those workers in the Lord, Tryphaena and Tryphosa. Greet the beloved Persis, who has worked hard in the Lord.” While a fair amount has been learned over the years about Tryphaena and Tryphosa, Persis has been almost completely ignored. There is no entry on her in the Oxford Companion to the Bible nor in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Perhaps predictably when it comes to traditional reference works in New Testament studies, The Oxford Dictionary also has no entries for Chloe or Phoebe, two other women mentioned in Rom 16, but does have entries for Priscilla (who is mentioned several times in the New Testament but always with her husband Aquila) and minor male characters, such as Epaphroditus (in Philippians 2:25 and 4:18) and the slave Onesimus (from Paul’s one-chapter letter to Philemon).
To its credit, The Wycliffe Bible Commentary, published by the conservative Moody Bible Institute, does discuss Persis and the other women of Rom 16. Wycliffe offers positive comments about all the women mentioned and states further, “This chapter refutes the idea that the apostle resented women working in the churches or among believers.” 
On the other hand, following the debunked tradition about the person whose name is erroneously translated “Junias” in verse 7, Wycliffe refers to this person as male (1225); as we have seen, Bernadette Brooten long ago showed that this person – called an apostle – is Junia, female.
What can we learn about Persis from just these few words in Paul’s letter? Scholar Jouette Bassler believes that the phrase “the beloved Persis” indicates Paul’s high esteem for her, since Paul uses “the” with “beloved” rather than “my,” as he does elsewhere. Bassler further notes that Paul’s reference to Persis as having “worked hard in the Lord” is parallel to how Paul refers to his own apostolic labor and that of leaders within local congregations; that is, Persis should be counted among the other (mainly male) apostles and leaders of the movement. Thus, according to Bassler, Persis “was clearly a pillar, if not one of the founders, of the Roman church” (134).
Margaret Y. MacDonald points out, in addition, that Persis, like Phoebe (mentioned in Rom 16:1-2), may have worked alone as a missionary in the movement (although neither woman probably would have traveled alone). Persis and the other women of Rom 16 reveal “the importance of geographical mobility (for purposes of both trade and religious conviction) to the expansion of the Pauline mission” (MacDonald, 207).
Ross Kraemer suggests that, like many of the other women mentioned in Rom 16, Persis was unlikely to have been born Jewish (43). This tracks with Paul’s primary mission to non-Jews. Another observation of Bassler’s is that Persis may have been a slave or freedwoman (134), a large topic for another day.
Based on these scholars’ research, we can make a few other points about women in antiquity:
- Women (slaves, freedwomen and free born) in the Graeco-Roman era were not confined to the home, or even to their own towns;
- Women did seem to have a certain amount of agency and the ability to make their own life decisions; and
- Women and men were apparently not segregated in the mission – they worked closely together, apparently in a fair amount of harmony.
In the words of Elizabeth Castelli, to summarize, while the evidence for women that we can glean from Rom 16 may be slim, “it all points in a similar direction – toward the significant and sustained presence of women in the ranks of early Christian missionary work (225). These women often held leadership positions in their communities – just like their male colleagues.
Resources
Bassler, Jouette M. “Persis,” in Carol Meyers, Toni Craven and Ross S. Kraemer, eds., Women in Scripture: A Dictionary of Named and Unnamed Women in the Hebrew Bible, the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, and the New Testament, 134. Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, England: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000.
Brooten, Bernadette J. “Junia,” in Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan, eds., Oxford Companion to the Bible, 405. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Brooten, Bernadette J. “Junia,” in Carol Meyers, Toni Craven and Ross S. Kraemer, eds., Women in Scripture: A Dictionary of Named and Unnamed Women in the Hebrew Bible, the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, and the New Testament, 107. Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, England: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000.
Brooten, Bernadette J. “‘Junia … Outstanding among the Apostles’ (Romans 16:7),” in Leonard J. Swidler and Arlene Swidler, eds., Women Priests: A Catholic Commentary on the Vatican Declaration, 142. New York: Paulist, 1977.
Castelli, Elizabeth A., “Paul on Women and Gender,” in Ross Shepard Kraemer and Mary Rose D’Angelo, eds., Women and Christian Origins, 221-35. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Cross, F.L. and E.A. Livingstone, eds. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Second Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
D’Angelo, Mary Rose. “Tryphaena,” in Carol Meyers, Toni Craven and Ross S. Kraemer, eds., Women in Scripture: A Dictionary of Named and Unnamed Women in the Hebrew Bible, the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, and the New Testament, 165-66. Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, England: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000.
D’Angelo, Mary Rose. “Tryphosa,” in Carol Meyers, Toni Craven and Ross S. Kraemer, eds., Women in Scripture: A Dictionary of Named and Unnamed Women in the Hebrew Bible, the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, and the New Testament, 166. Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, England: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000.
D’Angelo, Mary Rose. “Women Partners in the New Testament,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 6 (1990) 65-86.
Kraemer, Ross S. “Jewish Women and Christian Origins,” in Ross Shepard Kraemer and Mary Rose D’Angelo, eds., Women and Christian Origins, 35-49. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
MacDonald, Margaret Y. “Reading Real Women Through the Undisputed Letters of Paul,” in Ross Shepard Kraemer and Mary Rose D’Angelo, eds., Women and Christian Origins (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) 199-220.
Metzger, Bruce M. and Michael D. Coogan, eds. The Oxford Companion to the Bible. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Pfeiffer, Charles F. and Everett F. Harrison. The Wycliffe Bible Commentary. Chicago: The Moody Bible Institute, 1962.