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Women Remembered: Jesus' Female Disciples
A history of the women, both named and implied, in the New Testament - and their integral roles in the early church.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published March 17, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
June 8, 2023
I have logged that I have read this book not because I have finished it, but because I am DONE with it. If I could give this book zero stars, I would. I have tried to get though until the end but I cannot do it any longer. While the authors may have respectable credentials under their belt, it seems unlikely they are Christian, and if they are they are seriously lacking in biblical clarity and understanding. This book is heretical. They read the Bible as a ‘story� rather than the word of God. Much of their argument rests on unreliable sources like the ‘gospels� of Thomas, Mary, etc and mere assumptions. 2 Timothy 3:16 easily breaks down pretty much all of the silly arguments they make. The idea that Jesus was influenced by a ‘patriarchal� society is one of the most foolish things I’ve ever heard; He was, is, and always will be the son of God. Genesis 1:26, ‘Then God said, “Let us make man in our image�. Christ was in the beginning, along with the Father. He created the world, He created men and women. Indeed, a sinful world means His design has been distorted and abused. However, the roles for men and women were ordained before The Fall and as such, Christian’s should submit to this not seek to subvert it. Women were not made lesser than men, we were simply made differently. The garden was perfect when Eve was created. The role we have as a man’s help mate is only derogatory and misogynistic when viewed with feminist presuppositions. Women of God need discernment; are we coming to the scriptures with humility and submission or seeking to only obey what we think deserves our obedience. Spend your time in scripture. Read books about women throughout church history that we do know existed and from credible sources. Read books about men and women of the reformation. Read books on what it means to be a biblical man and a biblical woman. But don’t waste your time reading books such as this, that only perpetuate an unbiblical, feminist perception of Christianity. That is not Christianity!
September 5, 2023
Before I begin, I want to say that this is an area I already knew a great deal about, so little was new and this didn't help my review since I could see some glaring absences plus the fact that, like all of us, they haven't had time to read everything. In the unlikely event either author stumbles across this review, one book I highly recommend is by the Kroegers. While Women Remembered is for the layperson, the Kroegers' book is more of a university text and overall far the best book of any of the ones I have mentioned here when it comes to hermeneutics.
There is far too much for me to put into one review--were I to try and write every thought I'd be here for hours and run out of allowable text, and I am usually one for short reviews (not always.) Although I am leaning to the negative and only putting in a few good things, this does not mean that the entire book was bad; if it were I'd have given it only 1 star.
What this book is not: a faith based academic search of scripture and history--there are very faith based feminist scholars (by the looser definition that anyone who questions the suppression of women and hides the leadership roles of women is feminist)
What this book is: a very secular approach to the Bible and history, or at the very least a very interfaith approach. I am not going to delve into the differences in this
What I did like was that they did include enough information to show that women in the church were very involved with leadership at many levels until the Romans took over the church (this book was short, and the history of how Constantine, et al, tried to use a modified Christianity in order to keep his kingdom united was well beyond the scope of this book). The Romans had a long tradition of keeping women out of all leadership and had no plans to change this. Yes, the history is messy, longer and more complicated than that. However, if they know that many Christian splits have involved women at all levels of leadership over the centuries until men later squelched them, they didn't mention it in this book.
What I'd like to do is to address certain assumptions that I disagree with as I go through the very few notes I made (it was hard not to make far more.)
1. Yes, I realize that faith is not scientifically provable just like the lack of any spiritual entity isn't, but nevertheless it irks me when people will make a biblical assumption and act like it's a fact when it is unproven. I got so sick and tired of them going on and on about how two of the gospels are merely edits of Mark; this is one of the reasons I know this leans more secular because they are completely clueless to the fact that each one emphasizes a different aspect of who Jesus was, and this theology is not limited to just a few people. This also explains why his birth is only recorded in the two where that was important. Mark emphasizes him as a servant, and John as the son of God, so neither of those would dwell on his being a man or a king in the same way as Matthew and Luke do.
2. At times they almost contradict themselves, particularly with Mary and Martha--they spent a great deal of time on this. At one point they claim that Jesus thought women's work unimportant, but later they pointed out that the word for serving was the same one for serving in ministry, which would mean he said that that was unimportant! But, and this is far more critical, they completely ignored the fact that Jesus asked all of his disciples to leave their jobs and follow him during the duration of his time on earth at the very least. The fishers stopped fishing, Matthew stopped collecting taxes, etc.
3. They rely on gnostic gospels to the point that I suspect that they are ignorant of how many times Paul confronts false gnostic teachings in I Timothy, for example, which is one of the reasons I recommended that book, but the main reason is because it has a very strong and compelling case for that entire passage of I Timothy being a refutation of Gnostic teachings which were common in the city Timothy was in.
4. I appreciated that they pointed out that the section in I Cor 14 that tells women to be silent in the church was most likely added and that the Romans had many similar writings about this. does some excellent work on this in in her chapter "What if Biblical Womanhood Doesn't Come from Paul?" It would be great Barr would also read the book by the Kroegers.
5. Yes, this is part of history and this needed to be mentioned to show that early on women as leaders were more important, etc, but you can see their more interfaith type thinking when they talk respectfully about cults based on people other than Jesus.
6. Although they have a poor understanding of the two anointings of Jesus, although they did hint at the anointing of a king like David and also for his death, they did have an excellent understanding of many of the customs of the day, such as a woman taking down her hair when she was in grief.
7. I wanted to bang my head on the wall when they repeated the baloney that Jewish girls were usually marrying older men. It must have happened at times, of course, but it was more common boys to marry while still in their teens, although they were older than the girls. Men also died young, not just women. There is a myth that still pervades many denominations that Joseph was old because he was dead before Jesus started his ministry, but the fact that Jesus at so many siblings doesn't point to that; in fact, Joseph was probably 16-18, and since life expectancy averaged 40 years and men often died young, not just women, he could have easily died some years before most of the action in the gospels starts.
8. Complete and utter lack of scope with the Old Testament. Throughout the Bible many people are unnamed, men and women, and some in leadership positions. This doesn't mean that they person isn't important. I realized that this is a short book and that the focus is on the women disciples of Jesus, but I still think it would have been highly pertinent to mentioning OT women such as Huldah the prophetss who gave prophesy to a king, Deborah who led men into battle and was also judge over an entire tribe and other women, because customs change over time and have not been static.
That said, I was pleased at the end where they showed different carvings of some of these women that changed over time, suddenly veiling women who hadn't been veiled and then making them significantly smaller than the men in an overt attempt to minimize the contribution of women in a very Roman way.
This is long, but I have written it in haste, so if there are blatant typos, feel free to let me know in the comments. It is also quite incomplete and I may have missed things I think are very important. I do want to point out that, despite a comment from someone who gave this 1 star, nowhere did it say Jesus was influenced by patriarchal society. In fact, the opposite since he welcomed women as disciples, etc.
There is far too much for me to put into one review--were I to try and write every thought I'd be here for hours and run out of allowable text, and I am usually one for short reviews (not always.) Although I am leaning to the negative and only putting in a few good things, this does not mean that the entire book was bad; if it were I'd have given it only 1 star.
What this book is not: a faith based academic search of scripture and history--there are very faith based feminist scholars (by the looser definition that anyone who questions the suppression of women and hides the leadership roles of women is feminist)
What this book is: a very secular approach to the Bible and history, or at the very least a very interfaith approach. I am not going to delve into the differences in this
What I did like was that they did include enough information to show that women in the church were very involved with leadership at many levels until the Romans took over the church (this book was short, and the history of how Constantine, et al, tried to use a modified Christianity in order to keep his kingdom united was well beyond the scope of this book). The Romans had a long tradition of keeping women out of all leadership and had no plans to change this. Yes, the history is messy, longer and more complicated than that. However, if they know that many Christian splits have involved women at all levels of leadership over the centuries until men later squelched them, they didn't mention it in this book.
What I'd like to do is to address certain assumptions that I disagree with as I go through the very few notes I made (it was hard not to make far more.)
1. Yes, I realize that faith is not scientifically provable just like the lack of any spiritual entity isn't, but nevertheless it irks me when people will make a biblical assumption and act like it's a fact when it is unproven. I got so sick and tired of them going on and on about how two of the gospels are merely edits of Mark; this is one of the reasons I know this leans more secular because they are completely clueless to the fact that each one emphasizes a different aspect of who Jesus was, and this theology is not limited to just a few people. This also explains why his birth is only recorded in the two where that was important. Mark emphasizes him as a servant, and John as the son of God, so neither of those would dwell on his being a man or a king in the same way as Matthew and Luke do.
2. At times they almost contradict themselves, particularly with Mary and Martha--they spent a great deal of time on this. At one point they claim that Jesus thought women's work unimportant, but later they pointed out that the word for serving was the same one for serving in ministry, which would mean he said that that was unimportant! But, and this is far more critical, they completely ignored the fact that Jesus asked all of his disciples to leave their jobs and follow him during the duration of his time on earth at the very least. The fishers stopped fishing, Matthew stopped collecting taxes, etc.
3. They rely on gnostic gospels to the point that I suspect that they are ignorant of how many times Paul confronts false gnostic teachings in I Timothy, for example, which is one of the reasons I recommended that book, but the main reason is because it has a very strong and compelling case for that entire passage of I Timothy being a refutation of Gnostic teachings which were common in the city Timothy was in.
4. I appreciated that they pointed out that the section in I Cor 14 that tells women to be silent in the church was most likely added and that the Romans had many similar writings about this. does some excellent work on this in in her chapter "What if Biblical Womanhood Doesn't Come from Paul?" It would be great Barr would also read the book by the Kroegers.
5. Yes, this is part of history and this needed to be mentioned to show that early on women as leaders were more important, etc, but you can see their more interfaith type thinking when they talk respectfully about cults based on people other than Jesus.
6. Although they have a poor understanding of the two anointings of Jesus, although they did hint at the anointing of a king like David and also for his death, they did have an excellent understanding of many of the customs of the day, such as a woman taking down her hair when she was in grief.
7. I wanted to bang my head on the wall when they repeated the baloney that Jewish girls were usually marrying older men. It must have happened at times, of course, but it was more common boys to marry while still in their teens, although they were older than the girls. Men also died young, not just women. There is a myth that still pervades many denominations that Joseph was old because he was dead before Jesus started his ministry, but the fact that Jesus at so many siblings doesn't point to that; in fact, Joseph was probably 16-18, and since life expectancy averaged 40 years and men often died young, not just women, he could have easily died some years before most of the action in the gospels starts.
8. Complete and utter lack of scope with the Old Testament. Throughout the Bible many people are unnamed, men and women, and some in leadership positions. This doesn't mean that they person isn't important. I realized that this is a short book and that the focus is on the women disciples of Jesus, but I still think it would have been highly pertinent to mentioning OT women such as Huldah the prophetss who gave prophesy to a king, Deborah who led men into battle and was also judge over an entire tribe and other women, because customs change over time and have not been static.
That said, I was pleased at the end where they showed different carvings of some of these women that changed over time, suddenly veiling women who hadn't been veiled and then making them significantly smaller than the men in an overt attempt to minimize the contribution of women in a very Roman way.
This is long, but I have written it in haste, so if there are blatant typos, feel free to let me know in the comments. It is also quite incomplete and I may have missed things I think are very important. I do want to point out that, despite a comment from someone who gave this 1 star, nowhere did it say Jesus was influenced by patriarchal society. In fact, the opposite since he welcomed women as disciples, etc.
June 11, 2023
This is a great book on the female disciples of Jesus and other women important to the early Jesus movement. It is written for a general audience and is easy to follow, with some fascinating and thought-provoking suggestions. Overall, I'd recommend to anyone interested in learning more about the women who were crucial to the origins of Christianity!
April 25, 2022
This book is a well-researched & detailed account of the women who were part of Jesus' circle in the 1st C AD. The authors clearly explain some of the translation issues (from Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew & Latin) etc. & how this has contributed to the 'disappearance' of women even being mentioned in the then current & subsequent accounts within the Jesus narrative, which includes The Bible as well as other Gospels not now included in the standard Christian bible. Confusion about women's names as well as geographical sites along with the more important problems about the roles that these women played in spreading the word of Christianity are brought to the fore & teased out of written texts, not always with complete success. The authors also highlight the ever-present male perspective bias & offer some reasons for this too. I felt that a few more illustrations would have helped but the map & photos provided helped to show in a down-to-earth way what life could have been like for these women at the time, not to mention the really big one about how history tends to conflate the distant past. A good read & also a bit of an eye-opener about the world of Jesus in the Roman-occupied middle east.
July 14, 2022
This is such an important, well-researched, and worthwhile read that I’m writing my first (I think) ever review about it! Here’s for the power of evidence, contextual understanding, and informed imagination in the search for truth where history has been edited into obscurity. Women are missing, they were removed by force. This book is bringing them back into the picture again - As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.
August 21, 2022
An excellent book remembering women of the New Testament. There were a few things that caught me by surprise (no spoilers) even though I have studied feminist theology before. I used it as a reference for a talk, in our vicar’s absence, on Women In The Bible: Who Cooked the Last Supper? This was an excellent resource.
Recommended to anyone interested in feminism, theology or both.
Recommended to anyone interested in feminism, theology or both.
September 14, 2022
A really interesting read, I have learnt a lot
January 23, 2024
4.75 /
Fantastic book if you are interested in the early Christian leaders, especially the women (clearly). It also made me frustrated knowing that so much has been changed and removed by men who hated women so much that they’d rather their faith be destroyed than admit that women have the right to be treated equally. Imagine our world if misogyny didn’t exist�
Fantastic book if you are interested in the early Christian leaders, especially the women (clearly). It also made me frustrated knowing that so much has been changed and removed by men who hated women so much that they’d rather their faith be destroyed than admit that women have the right to be treated equally. Imagine our world if misogyny didn’t exist�
January 10, 2024
A brilliant book that tells the stories of the women that Christianity forgot -the ones who paved the way for Christ's mission and the ones who were spiritual leaders in their own right.
March 8, 2024
This book is a historical exploration and reconstruction of the role of women in the New Testament. It is written by academic historians, not confessional Christian scholars, and this is important for those seeking to read this book. One might notice that, here on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ, there are some highly negative reviews written by Christians that are unable to find the value in a book about Jesus written from a historical-critical perspective. This is unfortunate, because the book is full of interesting insights, and it seems we are all better served as readers by avoiding offense and learning what we can while having the discernment to process the book within our own confessional perspectives. I am a confessing Christian, and I see the veracity of the text differently than these authors, and I still really enjoyed the book, and gleaned a lot from their particular way of describing and speculating about the first-century world.
I did think their speculations often ran too far, not for confessional/theological reasons, but for historical ones. It seemed, often, that they were stretching the actual evidence in directions it likely did not go, or they surmised possibilities that were so far outside of our evidence, that it was hard to follow where they wanted to lead. Bond and Taylor are very good communicators, so it's fun to see where their minds ran with the possibilities, but I was seldom convinced by their more remote speculations.
Having said that, they did a great job of highlighting socio-cultural realities that illuminate our understandings of the women described by NT texts. They were often inconsistent (e.g., simultaneously describing how women are honored by NT portrayals while trying, wrongly in my mind, to insist that these women were also being "hidden" from view). But, Bond and Taylor actually give credence to the idea that there was something quite special about Jesus, and they do not, as historians often do, try to "demythologize" Jesus. Even where I disagreed, I found them mostly to be fair, and I think this is a very helpful book, full of interesting insights.
I did think their speculations often ran too far, not for confessional/theological reasons, but for historical ones. It seemed, often, that they were stretching the actual evidence in directions it likely did not go, or they surmised possibilities that were so far outside of our evidence, that it was hard to follow where they wanted to lead. Bond and Taylor are very good communicators, so it's fun to see where their minds ran with the possibilities, but I was seldom convinced by their more remote speculations.
Having said that, they did a great job of highlighting socio-cultural realities that illuminate our understandings of the women described by NT texts. They were often inconsistent (e.g., simultaneously describing how women are honored by NT portrayals while trying, wrongly in my mind, to insist that these women were also being "hidden" from view). But, Bond and Taylor actually give credence to the idea that there was something quite special about Jesus, and they do not, as historians often do, try to "demythologize" Jesus. Even where I disagreed, I found them mostly to be fair, and I think this is a very helpful book, full of interesting insights.
January 18, 2024
A fascinating and revealing exploration of the stories of women disciples of Jesus, hidden just below the text of the New Testament. The book is changing my ideas about the importance of women leaders in the Christian church's first century. Good stuff. Useful for my sermon this Sunday.
July 6, 2024
Just exceptional NT scholarship, by two very fine scholars. The women in leadership genre can sometimes feel tired, but this is a simply brilliant synthesis of contemporary NT scholarship, drawing on the best of social memory theory and engaging the breadth of relevant sources. Compelling.
July 29, 2024
informative but boring
November 27, 2024
Interesting stuff
January 19, 2025
Will definitely be going back to this for a deep dive.
May 2, 2025
Another very good book about women in the Bible. I enjoyed this book very much.
May 4, 2024
[17 Apr 2023] I wasn't sure what I was expecting from this book, possibly thought it would be a bit militant - feministic and, I must confess, man-hating. How wrong was I? A detailed, exceptionally balanced, evidence based account of men and women around at the time of Jesus and afterwards in the creation and spread of the Christian faith. It was illuminating and very interesting with much new information. The authors are clear that the times were such that women would have been very actively involved, but would have had less voice in the written records.
I changed my attitudes and learned so much new information that I was sad it ended. Well done to both authors.
I changed my attitudes and learned so much new information that I was sad it ended. Well done to both authors.
March 24, 2025
3.5 stars. An informative and engaging read. The authors argue for the familiar narrative that women’s participation in early Christianity devolved from one of equality to one of subordination. Even if one has misgivings about aspects of this narrative (e.g., what does “equality� mean here? Are 1 Cor 14 and 1 Tim 2 incompatible with Jesus’s and Paul’s teaching/practice?), this remains a valuable book, and I think we can agree that the degree of women's participation has been masked by cultural factors in the production of these texts. Evidence is considered from all available ancient sources but, appropriately, not all available evidence is weighed equally. One senses a tension between weighing Matthew and Luke as sources which preserve ancient memories (a welcome approach) and sources which merely redact Mark for theological and apologetic reasons, but I would need to undertake another read of the book to determine if there really is inconsistency here. Besides, it's a tension which seems to be unresolved in scholarship. Finally, although geared to a wide audience, I still would have liked footnotes, certainly to acknowledge additional ambiguities.
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