ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the early Jesus movement. It explores the portrayal of Jesus’s own attitudes toward gender, why so many women followed him during his life and after his death, how women patrons drove the first-century movement, and why Jesus’s view of women still matters today. The gospels are selective narratives about certain parts of Jesus’s life, with a strong focus on what his life and death mean for the readers. The fact that early Christianity eventually kept four different gospels reminds people that even from the beginning there was not one single Jesus movement that had the same practices in every place. All four gospels agree that there were many women involved in the life of Jesus, from his mother Mary, to the onlookers that came to him for healing and teaching, to the inner core of disciples who travelled with him, including his disciple and financial patron, Mary Magdalene.
