ABSTRACT
Imagining transmission of sacred texts and traditions from father to son, or elder to prophet, or bishop to bishop, or rabbinic teacher to rabbinic disciple, as these texts do, already presumes masculine authority as exclusive. But is this the whole story? This chapter considers women who may have served as links in the chains of transmission of ancient texts but who, for reasons linked with authority, were largely left out (in antiquity and in modern scholarship) of the texts that were transmitted. My contention is as follows: there were Jewish and Christian women who heard or read or copied or recited or commissioned texts in antiquity, and these women thus played a part in the transmission of these texts even when they were not the intended audiences of these texts, and even when their role in the process was actively written out of our texts. Transmission, in this case, can be understood as decoupled from authority, or perhaps presenting an alternative form of authority that is usually not acknowledged within the ancient sources as such or is actively diminished. Rather, their overwhelming absence from our texts and scholarly discussions might be explained not only because of how few such women there were, but also because of the challenge a female transmitter posed to the male authority, authorship, and transmission of the texts.
