In Moral Education for Women in the Pastoral and Pythagorean Letters: Philosophers of the Household, Annette Bourland Huizenga examines the Greco-Roman moral-philosophical “curriculum” for women by comparing these two pseudepigraphic epistolary collections.

This volume argues that Titus’s invocation of Crete affected the ways early readers developed their identities. Using archaeological data, classical writings, and early Christian documents, he describes multiple traditions that circulated on Crete and throughout the Roman Empire concerning Cretan Zeus, Cretan social structure, and Cretan Judaism. He then uses these traditions to interpret Titus and explain how the letter would intersect with and affect readers’ identities. Because readers had differing conceptions of Crete based on their location and access to and evaluation of Cretan traditions, readers would have developed their identities in multiple, conflictual, even contradictory ways.

In the church tradition three letters, now known as the Pastoral Epistles, are attributed to the apostle Paul. They are unlike any other letters by Paul. They are written to two of his closest companions, Timothy and Titus, and they instruct those two leaders how to lead gathered Christians in Ephesus and in Crete. The letters contain plenty of instruction for how church leaders at that time, and in those places, were to function. In this commentary, Scot McKnight seeks to explain the major themes of the Pastoral Epistles - church order, false teaching, and failing Christians - and their foundational vision for how Christians could make a good impression in public life. These three brief letters express a view of how Christians were to live in the Roman empire in a way that does not offend public sensibilities. They prescribe a way of public behavior best translated as 'civilized religion.'

Conversations about gender, both inside and outside the church, can frequently degenerate into stale and rancorous disputes in which predictable arguments are traded back and forth, or fade awkwardly away into the tense silences of mutual misunderstanding. But the issue is an important one, and calls for a better conversation than either of those alternatives. In September 2015, Morling College hosted a one-day symposium entitled The Gender Conversation. A rich and diverse mix of contributors met to discuss issues of gender, theology, and Christian living, within a shared framework of evangelical conviction. Our aim in hosting the symposium was to deepen mutual understanding and respect, highlight common ground, clarify points of difference, and unite us all in a quest to learn from the Scriptures and live in the light of the gospel. This book brings together the papers presented at the symposium and the contributors' responses to one another, as a resource for further reflection and discussion.

Women played an important part in Pythagorean communities, so Greek sources from the Classical era to Byzantium consistently maintain. Pseudonymous philosophical texts by Theano, Pythagoras' disciple or wife, his daughter Myia, and other female Pythagoreans, circulated in Greek and Syriac. Far from being individual creations, these texts rework and revise a standard Pythagorean script. What can we learn from this network of sayings, philosophical treatises, and letters about gender and knowledge in the Greek intellectual tradition? Can these writings represent the work of historical Pythagorean women? If so, can we find in them a critique of the dominant order or strategies of resistance? In search of answers to these questions, Pythagorean Women Philosophers examines Plato's dialogues, fragmentary historians, and little-known testimonies to women's contributions to Pythagorean thought. Adopting Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics, Dutsch approaches such testimonies with a mixture of suspicion and belief. This approach allows the reader to alternate critique of the epistemic regimes that produced ancient texts with a hopeful reading, one which recognizes female knowledge and agency. Dutsch contends that the value of the Pythagorean text-network lies not in what it may represent but in what it is ? a fictionalized version of Greek intellectual history that makes place for women philosophers. The book traces this alternative history, challenging us to rethink our own account of the past.

The Pythagorean women are a group of female philosophers who were followers of Pythagoras and are credited with authoring a series of letters and treatises. In both stages of the history of Pythagoreanism – namely, the fifth-century Pythagorean societies and the Hellenistic Pythagorean writings – the Pythagorean woman is viewed as an intellectual, a thinker, a teacher, and a philosopher. The purpose of this Element is to answer the question: what kind of philosopher is the Pythagorean woman? The traditional picture of the Pythagorean female sage is that of an expert of the household. The author argues that the available evidence is more complex and conveys the idea of the Pythagorean woman as both an expert on the female sphere and a well-rounded thinker philosophising about the principles of the cosmos, human society, the immortality of the soul, numbers, and harmonics.

In his New Testament letters to Timothy and Titus, the apostle Paul is concerned with church order, defending correct doctrine, and passing on the faith. This Tyndale commentary from Osvaldo Padilla explores the pastoral epistles' historical background, providing a detailed commentary on their content and unpacking their theology.