ABSTRACT

Women have always been important to the development and expansion of Christianity. The New Testament gospels clearly show women active in the Jesus movement; Paul wrote about women who acted as deaconesses and companions to the apostles, and some extracanonical works, such as “The Acts of Paul and Thecla” or “The Gospel of Mary,” describe dynamic women during the time when Christianity was extending around the Mediterranean. When separation emerged between the mass of believers and the developing professional clergy who were occupied full-time with service to the church, women were relegated to a subordinate role and an attempt was made to restrict them to only one vocation within the established church: asceticism.