This work, a revision of the author's Claremont dissertation, examines how women's differing roles in the ancient Greco-Roman world are reflected in the Gospel portraits of women. Focusing on women's varying portrayals in meal or banquet settings, Corley uncovers evidence that women's roles were undergoing radical social change throughout the Greco-Roman world--both in moving toward equality and in returning to a more traditional role. Such spadework helps us in analyzing the conflicting portrayals of women in the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Bibliography, notes and an index of ancient sources render this an invaluable tool for studying women in the Synoptics and ancient social attitudes toward women. This volume should be of particular interest to pastors and teachers, as well as college, university, and seminary students.

Through the lives and works of three women in colonial California, Bárbara O. Reyes examines frontier mission social spaces and their relationship to the creation of gendered colonial relations in the Californias. She explores the function of missions and missionaries in establishing hierarchies of power and in defining gendered spaces and roles, and looks at the ways that women challenged, and attempted to modify, the construction of those hierarchies, roles, and spaces. Reyes studies the criminal inquiry and depositions of Barbara Gandiaga, an Indian woman charged with conspiracy to murder two priests at her mission; the divorce petition of Eulalia Callis, the first lady of colonial California who petitioned for divorce from her adulterous governor-husband; and the testimonio of Eulalia Pérez, the head housekeeper at Mission San Gabriel who acquired a position of significant authority and responsibility but whose work has not been properly recognized. These three women's voices seem to reach across time and place, calling for additional, more complex analysis and questions: Could women have agency in the colonial Californias? Did the social structures or colonial processes in place in the frontier setting of New Spain confine or limit them in particular gendered ways? And, were gender dynamics in colonial California explicitly rigid as a result of the imperatives of the goals of colonization?

Though "community" has become a common byword in the contemporary Western church, the practice of communal sharing has effectively fallen by the wayside. Unfortunately, it is often the poor who are left wanting because we no longer come together. Reta Halteman Finger finds a solution to this modern problem by learning from the ancient Mediterranean Christian culture of community. In the earliest Jerusalem church, in holding the responsibility for preparing and serving communal meals, women were given a place of honor. With the table fellowship and goods sharing of the early church, Luke says, "there were no needy persons among them" (Acts 4:34). Finger thoroughly examines this agape-meal tradition, challenging traditional interpretations of the "community of goods" in the Jerusalem church and proving that the communal sharing lasted for hundreds of years longer than previously assumed. Of Widows and Meals begins a discussion of need in community that can revolutionize the contemporary church's interaction with the world at large.

What are the links between people's beliefs and the foods they choose to eat? In the modern Western world, dietary choices are a topic of ethical and political debate, but how can centuries of Christian thought and practice also inform them? And how do reasons for abstaining from particular foods in the modern world compare with earlier ones? This book will shed new light on modern vegetarianism and related forms of dietary choice by situating them in the context of historic Christian practice. It will show how the theological significance of embodied practice may be retrieved and reconceived in the present day. Food and diet is a neglected area of Christian theology, and Christianity is conspicuous among the modern world's religions in having few dietary rules or customs. Yet historically, food and the practices surrounding it have significantly shaped Christian lives and identities. This collection, prepared collaboratively, includes contributions on the relationship between Christian beliefs and food practices in specific historical contexts. It considers the relationship between eating and believing from non-Christian perspectives that have in turn shaped Christian attitudes and practices. It also examines ethical arguments about vegetarianism and their significance for emerging Christian theologies of food.

In Delicious Prose: Reading the Tale of Tobit with Food and Drink, Naomi S.S. Jacobs explores how the numerous references to food, drink, and their consumption within The Book of Tobit help tell its story, promote righteous deeds and encourage resistance against a hostile dominant culture. Jacobs’ commentary includes up-to-date analyses of issues of translation, text-criticism, source criticism, redaction criticism, and issues of class and gender. Jacobs situates Tobit within a wide range of ancient writings sacred to Jews and Christians as well as writings and customs from the Ancient Near East, Ugarit, Greece, Rome, including a treasure trove of information about ancient foodways and medicine.

This book explores the accounts of communal meals and the metaphorical use of food and drink language in the narrative world of the Gospel of John. It argues that the Johannine community regularly gathered for communal meals in which the food and drink on the menu would have taken on a spiritual significance far exceeding the physical sustenance. The study employs a socio-rhetorical methodology and consequently moves from text to context. It tentatively describes the texts’ influence on the formation of early Christian identity and suggests that the Johannine meal accounts provide a way to imagine the demographic composition of the community and its historical context.

Markus McDowell examines how the literature of the Second Temple period portrays women at prayer through an examination of the literary context and character of those prayers. The goal of this work is a greater understanding of how women were portrayed in literary sources and an offering of some fresh insights for the study of women's religious and social roles in the ancient world. The texts are analyzed and categorized within five areas: social location, content, form, occasion, and gender perspective. The prayers are also compared and contrasted with men's prayers in the same sources. The analysis includes locating (as much as possible) the historical, literary, and cultic context of each document in which these prayers appear. By examining all prayers in these texts uttered by women (not just prayers of named or prominent women), and then comparing them with all the prayers of men in those same texts, certain patterns appear. This study adds to our knowledge of women and religion in Second Temple Judaism by primarily exploring patterns that appear among the prayers in the literature of the Second Temple period. While there are fewer prayers by women than men in this literature, the prayers of women are not portrayed as significantly different from those of men in terms of social location, content, form, or occasion. At the same time, the prayers of women exhibit other patterns of language - and in a minor way, form and occasion - that differ from the prayers of men.