Korinna Zamfir and Uta Poplutz, eds. Reading Women in the New Testament Letters. SBL Press, 2025.
Editors Korinna Zamfir and Uta Poplutz have compiled an impressive collection of essays on women in the New Testament who are often overlooked: women in the letters of Paul and authors who came after him. New Testament scholars would be well-advised to have this volume in their libraries; if the writings of Paul and others are among the earliest literary examples from the movement that became Christianity, the women discussed in these epistles are among the earliest members and leaders of that movement, and scholars should be acquainted with them.
Reading Women in the New Testament Letters is divided into five sections: (1) Rhetoric and Context; (2) Women in the Household; (3) Women in the Ekklēsia; (4) The Rhetoric of Gender; and (5) The Theology of Gender/Gendering Theology. The authors are refreshingly diverse, including both women and men and representing at least seven nations. The editors’ introduction provides a helpful overview of the essays’ contents.
Peter Lampe, writing on the rhetoric of gender in the New Testament letters, discusses such topics as generic masculine terms and satire. He closes with a bold statement on the irony of the many modern Christians who “follow values of the Pastorals that reproduced imperial Roman ideology” rather than conduct a critical reading of the biblical traditions (26–27).
In her piece on domestic women, Korinna Zamfir reminds us that women did have roles in the ancient workplace. She uses evidence from contemporary Greco-Roman groups to explore the roles of benefactors and patrons, cult officials, and gender-inclusive household-based associations.
Several decades ago, Bernadette J. Brooten made significant breakthroughs concerning the roles of Jewish women in antiquity. In “Female Officeholders in Ancient Jewish Synagogues,” Brooten examines the issue again, describing a number of inscriptions that specifically refer to female heads of synagogues. She also addresses the issue of women’s education levels and leadership roles in relation to decision-making.
William R. G. Loader, in “Women and Sexuality,” looks at passages in 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy in relation to male fallacies and assumptions about women’s sexuality. In general, the attitude in antiquity was that women “were a danger to themselves and others because of their sexuality and consequently deemed unsuitable for leadership” (106), although there were significant exceptions.
Christine Gerber and Tanja Forderer make a number of interesting points in their chapter on wives, separation, and divorce. In 1 Cor 7, for instance, they argue that “Paul is conceptualizing marriage in an unusual manner.… The relationship is not only reciprocal, but also symmetrical” (119). This sentiment was “overwritten in the so-called household codes” in Colossians and Ephesians (124).
In “Mothers in Contexts: Intersections of Letters and Lives,” Annette Bourland Huizenga discusses motherhood in Paul, the deutero-Pauline letters and the Pastorals in helpful and instructive ways. What might have added to her treatment would have been a look at Mother Goddesses in the GrecoRoman cults that still thrived around the Mediterranean. This wider context, in fact, is taken in Angela Standhartinger’s chapter on old women in the New Testament letters. Standhartinger notes that old women in antiquity “are not just victims of mockery” but are rather respected; she cites, for example, priestesses of Demeter and the Pythia (161–62). In the New Testament specifically, we see the examples of Eunice and Lois in 1 Timothy (166) and female elders/presbyters in Titus 2:3 (169).
Michael Sommer argues that there are complex realities about widows behind the clichés and stereotypes often reflected in texts such as 1 Tim 5. This is a helpful perspective, which he reaches through examination of Roman-Hellenistic literature; examples reflect such values “as humility, modesty, and restraint” (189).
Maria José Schultz Montalbetti, in “The Submission of Women in the First Letter of Peter,” provides an interesting perspective on 1 Peter’s goals. She highlights the courage of wives, slaves, and other women, especially their agency in “the ability to modify the patriarchal structure of the home and thereby subvert dominant values” (212).
Dominika Kurek-Chomycz examines female apostles and others in the Pauline Letters who “toil together” in the domestic context. Citing many of the important named women in the New This review was published by RBL ã2025 by the Society of Biblical Literature. See https://www.sblcentral.org/home. Testament corpus, she examines leadership as a shared practice, “an alternative world, one where ‘power with’” is recognized as a model for both women and men (238). In a second essay in the volume, Korinna Zamfir looks at women as teachers and learners in the Pauline corpus. In the wider Greco-Roman context, women could not generally teach except in certain situations (as exemplified in 1 Tim 2:11–12, for instance). However, some idioms in Paul’s genuine letters “suggest that women were involved in communicating the gospel alongside male collaborators” (259).
In “Virginity and Apostolate: The Example of Paul,” Marinella Perroni and SilIn “Virginity and Apostolate: The Example of Paul,” Marinella Perroni and Silvia Zanconato look specifically at 1 Cor 7, a text with a complex transmission history that befuddled earlier scribes and continues to vex modern scholars. Perroni and Zanconato bring the example of Thecla into the discussion, whose “chastity [makes] her suitable for teaching and preaching” (286); Thecla’s story expands our understanding of Paul’s argument. Silke Petersen also tackles transmission issues in “Obedience and Subordination or Equality and Liberation?” Her observations are quite enlightening, among them the fact that writings in antiquity were handed down differently than how we classify them now (298). Also, the Pastoral Letters had a very weak transmission before the fourth century (299), and the people of Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, did not seem to be very attracted by inauthentic Pauline writings (301).
Silence, speech, and ambiguity are the topics of Marianne Bjelland Kartzow’s offering. She, too, singles out named women in the New Testament letters and investigates the phenomenon of women’s silence, a more nuanced situation than we might think. While women were generally required to be silent in more public and mixed-gendered settings, in reality many women with a variety of roles and responsibilities “had a voice and probably used it” (327).
Heildrun E. Mader provides an intriguing look at the examples of Hagar, Sarah, and circumcision in the Galatian context. Mader argues that Paul is trying to steer the congregations away from the Hagar model of circumcised gentiles and toward the Sarah model of the uncircumcised, who “will inherit God’s promise” (339).
Beate Kowalski’s “Feminine Characterizations of God” begins with an overview of feminine images of God in the Old Testament and gospels (e.g., birth and womb), then drills down into three female characteristics of God from Paul: midwife or mother, likeness of God, and traits such as comfort and consolation. Paul’s “doctrine of justification and mystical experience of a deep relationship with God lead him to this inclusive image of God” (364).
The reception of Gen 1–3 and the figure of Eve in the New Testament are the topics of Elisa Estévez López’s piece. While Eve is only a minor character in the epistles, López makes the interesting observation that in 2 Corinthians Paul equates Eve with the community, a community that has been deceived by false apostles. This review was published by RBL ã2025 by the Society of Biblical Literature. See https://www.sblcentral.org/home. Finally, Miklós Szabó focuses on women as models of faith in Heb 11. The author of Hebrews depicts Sarah, Rahab, and the mother of the tortured martyrs in 2 Maccabees as exemplifying faith that helps them through times of severe testing. Szabó argues that the author “guides the πίστις step by step to Jesus” (398).
This volume has a number of features to commend it. First, even those of us who have long been engaged in this material can learn a great deal. Second, the essays offer very nuanced arguments, demonstrating once again how complex the world of the New Testament continues to be, even after two centuries of sophisticated scholarship.
Another positive is the stance taken throughout the volume that Colossians, Ephesians, and the Pastoral Epistles, which are still attributed to Paul in many quarters, are deutero-Pauline (e.g., Gerber and Forderer [112], Huizenga [146, 155], Sommer [182ff]). This is especially important in the American context: a conservative (some might say fundamentalist) strand of Christianity in the US continues to maintain that all letters traditionally designated “of Paul” were written by Paul and are thus authoritative. As several of the essays note, the seven genuine Pauline letters tend to be much more positive toward women than the later writings. The limiting of women’s roles in the early movement did not originate with Paul but with his successors.
Some minor shortcomings to Reading Women can be noted. First, while the bibliographies for each essay are strong and the authors cite excellent sources, the volume would have been improved by a combined bibliography. Relatedly, there is no subject index, although an ancient sources index and a modern authors index are included and useful.
Second, only a few of the essays, primarily both of Zamfir’s and StanSecond, only a few of the essays, primarily both of Zamfir’s and Standhartinger’s, cite archaeological evidence. Many of the essays use epigraphic evidence, but archaeological data broader than inscriptions have been illuminating women, slaves, and nonelite men in the Roman Empire for several decades. New Testament scholars are not traditionally trained to use archaeology so are unacquainted and/or uncomfortable with it. However, readers of Reading Women in the New Testament Letters might benefit from looking at some of the following (none of which are included in the bibliographies): Valerie A. Abrahamsen, Women and Worship at Philippi: Diana/Artemis and Other Cults in the Early Christian Era (1995); Mary Ann Beavis and Ally Kateusz, eds., Rediscovering the Marys: Maria, Mariamne, Miriam (2020); Jenn Cianca, Sacred Ritual, Profane Space: The Roman House as Early Christian Meeting Place (2018); and Ally Kateusz, Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership (2019).
Several other resources might also be helpful to readers: Joseph A. Marchal, ed., The People beside Paul: The Philippian Assembly and History from Below (2015); 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 (2000); and LauraNasrallah, Charalambos Bakirtzis, and Steven J. Friesen, eds., From Roman to Early Christian Thessalonikē: Studies in Religion and Archaeology (2010).
Valerie Abrahamsen
Review of Biblical Literature, December 2025