FSR's Thinking of Thecla

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Thinking of Thecla: Issues in Feminist Historiography

Author(s): Shelly Matthews
Source: Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Fall, 2001), pp. 39-55
Published by: FSR, Inc.
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THINKING OF THECLA
Issues inFeminist Historiography
ShellyMatthews
The elite heroine in theActs of Thecla listensday and night to the ascetic
teachings spoken by the apostle Paul.1 She is transfixed,"like a spider at the
window bound by his words" (9).Converted by this teaching,Thecla spurns
her betrothed, pursues Paul on his journeys,endures the tormentsput upon
her by the city'snobilitywhose welfare is threatenedby her ascetic choice, per
forms a rite of self-baptism,and ultimately receives the commission fromPaul
to "goand teach theword of God" (41).
The focus on the highbornwoman who courageously defies the social
order by opting for ascetic Christianity is a commonmotif in theApocryphal
Acts of the second and thirdcenturies C.E.The crystallizationof resistance in
female form isparticularlystark in theActs of Thecla, where even the female
lion in the arena sideswith the ascetic and against the city, reverencingThecla
rather than devouring her. As stories of women's resistance in the early cen
turies of Christianity, the Apocryphal Acts in general and the Thecla text in
particularprovide vehicles for illustratingsome of the contentions among fem
inistand other historiansofwomen and gender in the discipline of earlyChris
tian studies. In this article I discuss three "women-centered"monographs on
theActs of Thecla written in the 1980s. I thenmove to examine two types of
responses to thiswomen-centered work thatdiverge quite a lot in termsof the
oretical sophisticationbut nevertheless converge in arguing against the legiti
I thank the two anonymous readers for theJournal of Feminist Studies in Religion for their valuable
criticism. I also thankElizabethCastelli for invitingme todeliver the earliestversionof thisarticle in
the IdeologicalCriticism sectionof the Society of BiblicalLiterature annualmeeting inBoston, No
vember 1999, and for encouragingme to revise it forpublication.
1The Acts of Thecla is embedded in the
largerActs of Paul. For theGreek text, seeRicardus
Adelbertus Lipsius, ed., Acta ApostolorumApocrypha (Darmstadt,Germany:Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1959), 235-72. The English translationis available inEdgarHennecke andWil
helm Schneemelcher, eds., The New TestamentApocrypha (Philadelphia:Westminster, 1964),
2:352-90.
40 Journalof Feminist Studies inReligion
macy of positing any linkbetween theThecla text and second-centuryChrist

ianwomen. I closewith an argument for the importanceof attempting to re
construct the history of women in earlyChristianitywhile acknowledging the
growing consensus among feministhistorians that such reconstructionscannot
presumemimetic relationshipsbetween text and reality.
Women's History
In the 1980s, three authorsworking independentlyon monograph-length
treatmentsof theApocryphalActs-Steven Davies, Dennis RonaldMacDon
ald, and Virginia Burrus-each proposed that the Acts in some way repre
sentedwomen-centered communities that resisted the rulingpatriarchalorder.
MacDonald and Burrus posited that these stories are best understood as folk
tales andwere originallyoral stories told by women; Davies posited that the
written texts themselveswere penned bywomen.2 Each author identified the
point of resistance in the stories in the person of the elite female heroinewho
defied household and city by refusing to marry and opting for an ascetic
lifestyle.
Burrus, in arguing for linksbetween theApocryphalActs and folktales,de
parted from traditionaldiscussion of theActs as a subgenre of theHellenistic
romance, and hence shifted the focus of study away frommale authorsand to
ward female storytellers.On the basis of cross-culturalevidence aboutwomen
and the transmissionof folklore, she argued for the likelihoodofwomen as pri
mary transmittersof these chastity tales.While conceding that Thecla and
other protagonists, such asMaximilla (Actsof Andrew) andAgrippina,Nicaria,
Euphemia, and Doris (Actsof Peter) were fictional figures, she argued that
from these figures a socialworld of storytellersand their audience could be re
constructed.
The thesis that theApocryphalActs bearwitness to communities resisting
patriarchalizing ecclesiastical tendencies is elaborated most completely in
D. R.MacDonald'swork juxtaposingthe extracanonicalActs of Thecla and the
2 Steven L.
Davies, TheRevolt of theWidows: The SocialWorld of theApocryphalActs (Car
bondale:Southern IllinoisUniversity Press, 1980);Dennis RonaldMacDonald, TheLegend and the
Apostle: TheBattlefor Paul in Story and Canon (Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1983);VirginiaBurrus,
Chastity as Autonomy:Women in the Stories of Apocryphal Acts (Lewiston,NY: Edwin Mellen,
1987).Other discussionsof the socialworld of theApocryphalActs from the 1980s includeElisabeth
SchtisslerFiorenza, InMemory of Her:A Feminist TheologicalReconstructionof ChristianOrigins
(New York:Crossroad, 1983), 173-75; Ross S. Kraemer, "TheConversion ofWomen toAscetic
Forms of Christianity,"Signs:JournalofWomen inCulture and Society 6, no. 2 (1980):298-307; and
Ruth Albrecht,Das Leben der heiligenMakrina aufdem Hintergrund der Thekla-Traditionen:Stu
dien zu dem Ursprungen desweiblichen Monchtums im 4. Jahrhundert inKleinasien (Gottingen,
Germany:Vandenhoeck& Ruprecht, 1986).
Matthews: Thinking of Thecla 41
canonical letters 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, commonly referred to as the Pas
toralEpistles. Although the pseudonymous PastoralEpistleswere written ear
lier than the Thecla text,MacDonald argued that oral versions of the Thecla
tales influenced the Pastorals. Each document appropriates the authorityof
Paul to shore up itsvision of social and ecclesiasticalorganization,but in radi
cally different ways. For instance, "Paul,"the author of 1 Timothy, exhorts
women tobe silent,urgeswidows to remarry,requiresmarriage ofmale church
officials, and sets forth amodel of ecclesiastical leadership in conformitywith
traditionalGreco-Roman civic ideals.On the other hand, "Paul,"the hero of
theActs of Thecla, preaches celibacy,models an itinerantcharismaticministry,
threatens civic order, and exhortsThecla to traveland to teach.3
These arguments forwomen storytellers,women authors, and women's
communities of resistanceplaced thework of Davies, D. R. MacDonald, and
Burrus squarelywithin the discipline of "women'shistory"as ithas been tradi
tionallyconceived. Their projectswere acts of retrieval,of writingwomen into
mainstream narrativesof earlyChristian history that had previously ignored
them. These writers posited historicalwomen as subjectswith "experiences"
and "agency."4 All relied on a relativelystraightforwardreadingof the relation
ship between textual representation and social reality.The sympatheticpor
traitsof women characterswere held up almost as prima facie evidence that
the authors and receivers of the taleswere women.5 Disciplinary boundaries
were stretched,most notably byMacDonald's andBurrus'suse of folklore the
ory, and eachwork contains indicationsthat the authorswere cognizantof the
relevance of theirwork to contemporary feminist struggles.Yet these mono
graphs remainedby and largewithin the rubricsof traditionalhistorical-criti
cal scholarship.6
3D. R.MacDonald,
Legend and theApostle, 54-77.
4For traditionalframeworks and categories of analysisused inwomen's history, as distinct
fromgender history, see, for example, the discussion of Catherine Hall,White, Male, andMiddle
Class: Explorations in Feminism and History (New York:Routledge, 1992), 1-40; and Louise M.
Newman, "CriticalTheory and theHistory ofWomen:What's at Stake inDeconstructingWomen's
History,"JournalofWomen'sHistory 2, no. 3 (1991):58-68. For a discussion specific to earlyChris
tianity,see Elizabeth A. Castelli, "Heteroglossia,Hermeneutics, andHistory: A Review Essay of
Recent Feminist Studies of Early Christianity,"Journal of Feminist Studies inReligion 10, no. 2
(1994):73-98.
5 For
example,D. R.MacDonald saysof theActs of Thecla, "The story reveals the perspec
tiveof someone deeply resentfulof themale sexand highly sensitive to the difficultiesofwomen....
If the contentsof any earlyChristian storysuggest that its tellerswere women, it is thisone" (Legend
and theApostle, 36). See alsoDavies, Revolt of theWidows, 61, 63, 69, 106-9; andBurrus,Chastity
as Autonomy, 77.
6 For
recognitionof relevanceof work to contemporarysocial and theological struggles, see
Burrus, Chastity asAutonomy, 118-19; D. R.MacDonald, Legend and theApostle, 100-103; and
Davies, Revolt of theWidows, 129.Of these three scholars,only Burrus has continued to engage
Backlash
In her work Early ChristianWomen and Pagan Opinion, Margaret Mac
Donald has identified a common rhetorical insult used against Christian
women in the second and third century: theirwords andwork were dismissed
as owing to their "hysteria."7 This same rhetorical trope finds itsway into the
work of three twentieth-century scholars responding to the studies of Davies,
D. R. MacDonald, andBurrus. But, unlike the earlypagan critics,who under
stood their attacks against Christian women as rhetorical arguments, these
modem critics hurl their insults from their locationwithin the scientistic
fortressof value-neutralityand objectivity.8These three scholars,who are dis
cussed in this section, set up a dichotomy between their own supposedly ob
jective, scientific, detached research and that of Thecla scholarswhom they
dismiss as ideologicallydriven and/or irrational.Such a positioning is exempli
fied byWilhelm Schneemelcher in his 1991 edition of New TestamentApoc
rypha, a standardreferencework of the discipline.While noting that theApoc
ryphalActs seem to reflect popular traditions,he calls into the question the
usefulness of folklore studies to their elucidation. Speakingdirectly to thework
of D. R. MacDonald and Burrus, he continues: "Aboveallwe must be very
cautious about any combination of these folk-lore hypotheses with the as
sumptionof a liberatedwomen's movement in theChurch of the 2nd century
as the Sitz imLeben for theActs of Paul.On a sober treatmentof the evidence,
hypotheses of such a kind appear to be largelyno more than the products of
modern fancy, without any basis in the sources."9Because it is self-evident to
with feministmethodologies inher scholarship. In addition toher most recentwriting on Thecla,

which I discuss in this article, see "Begotten,Not Made": ConceivingManhood inLate Antiquity
(Stanford,Calif.: StanfordUniversity Press, 2000); and TheMaking of a Heretic:Gender,Authority,
and thePriscillianistControversy (BerkeleyandLos Angeles:University of CaliforniaPress, 1995).
7
Margaret Y.MacDonald, Early ChristianWomen and Pagan Opinion: The Power of the
HystericalWoman (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1996). See especiallyMacDonald's in
troduction (1-4), which includes thisquotation fromOrigen'sAgainst Celsus 2.55 and 3.55: "Butwe
must examine thisquestionwhether anyonewho reallydied ever rose againwith the samebody....
Butwho saw this?A hysterical female, asyou say,andperhaps some other one of thosewho were de
ludedby the same sorcery,who either dreamt ina certain stateofmind and throughwishful thinking
had a hallucinationdue to somemistaken notion (anexperiencewhich has happened to thousands),
or,which ismore likely,wanted to impressothers by telling this fantastic tale, and so by this cock
and-bull story toprovide a chance forother beggars."
8I
adopt the term scientistic fromElisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza, who uses it "to signal the
positivistic ideologicalframeworkofmuch thatpasses for 'science.'Inasmuchas scholarlyand scien
tific inquiryanddiscourse function to legitimateoverarchingkyriarchaloppressions, invokinga false
value-neutralityand objectivity,they are effectivelypositivistor scientistic,not genuinely scientific."
See herRhetoric and Ethic: The Politics of Biblical Studies (Minneapolis:Fortress, 1999), ix.
9Wilhelm
Schneemelcher, ed., New TestamentApocrypha, English translationedited by
1.McL. Wilson (Louisville,Ky.:Westminster/John Knox, 1991), 2:220-22 (emphasisadded).
Schneemelcher that a "sober"treatment of the evidence suggest no hint of

women's liberation,he refutes the "modern fancy"of Davies, D. R. MacDon
ald, andBurrus in themost dismissiveway possible. Rather thanengagingwith
anyof their arguments,he closes discussionwith one sentence appended to the
citation of theirwork thatmerely restates his previous assertion: "[U]nfortu
nately no evidence from the sources of the period ... could be adduced for a
women's liberationmovement' in the Church of the 2nd century" (2:236
n. 19).
Schneemelcher's insistence that such theories are not "sober"but "mod
em fancy" is echoed in an article by Lynne Boughton written to dispute the
claims of D. R. MacDonald and Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza about the Acts
of Thecla. The title of Boughton's article, "FromPious Legend to Feminist
Fantasy," is indicativeof her position.10She dismisses as "feministfantasy"the
argument that the Thecla story indicates resistance to patriarchal order.
Boughton'spose as an objective historiandisguises only thinlyher confessional
and apologetic approach to historical reconstruction.One of her main objec
tions to the "fantasies"ofMacDonald and SchiisslerFiorenza is this: these two
scholars,by privileging the Thecla document as an indicationof early church
communities inwhich women's sacerdotalauthority is accepted, are using "ec
clesiastical terminology such as 'church'or 'canon'in amanner different from
the way those termswere used during the first three Christian centuries"
(370).When Boughton says "in amanner different from theway those terms
were used during the first threeChristian centuries,"however, shemeans the
way those termswere used exclusivelyby proto-orthodoxchurch leaders.This
is evident, for example,when she argues thatwomen leadersamong theMon
tanistmovement should not be cited as evidence forwomen in the "early
church,"because second-centurybishops of Rome explicitly stated thatMon
tanismwas outside the church (370).
Moreover, Boughton engages in the dubious methodological practice of
faulting "unorthodox"second-century readers for having interpreted texts
wrongly. This interpretivemove occurs inher discussion of Tertullian'sfamed
reference to theActs of Paul/Acts of Thecla in chapter 17 of his Baptism. Ter
tullianwrites:
But if thewritings which wrongly go under Paul's name, claim Thecla's
example as a license for women's teaching and baptizing, let them know
that, in Asia, the presbyter who composed that writing, as if he were
augmenting Paul's fame from his own store, after being convicted, and
10
Lynne C. Boughton, "From Pious Legend to Feminist Fantasy:Distinguishing Hagio
graphicalLicense fromApostolic Practice in theActs of Paul/Actsof Thecla,"JournalofReligion 71,
no. 3 (1991):362-83. Boughton refershere to SchiisslerFiorenza'sargument in InMemory ofHer,
173-75.
confessing that he had done it from love of Paul, was removed from his
office."
Here Tertullian polemicizes against those in the late second centurywho

pointed to theThecla story inorder to claim apostolic authorizationforwomen
administeringbaptism and engaging in formal teaching.l2That is (asDavies,
D. R. MacDonald, Burrus, and others have pointed out), Tertullian provides
indicationthatChristians in the second century used the example of Thecla as
ameans of resistingan all-male sacerdotal institution.Yet, after acknowledging
that some earlyChristians read the Thecla story in thisway, Boughton asserts
that their readings are not valid. "Carefulreadingof the Thecla episode indi
cates thatThecla's involvement in teaching and in baptismwas very limited,"
she notes. Thecla baptizes no one but herself, and she is not a formal teacher
or spiritualdirector of a church community.Therefore, according toBoughton,
second-century readers using the Thecla text to legitimizewomen's religious
leadership roles engaged in a "distortionof the wording and content of the
text."13
In this interpretivemove, Boughton's confessional agenda is again un
masked, for she delivers the accusation of careless and distorted readings
against only "unorthodox"second-century readers. It is tempting to note that
ifBoughtonwere to treat all earlyChristian readersequally, shewould have to
apply such judgments across the board to all early interpreterswho addressed
the issue of women's authority.This would then lead to the question,Was the
Pauline disciple and authorof the PastoralEpistles, 1 and 2 Timothy, andTitus
a "carefulreader"of the authentic letters of Paul? As modern exegetes have
long pointed out, the Pastoral Epistles depart at several points from Pauline
thinking, including their directives concerningmarriage, church organization,
andwomen's leadership.14
But the prior question here iswhether it ismeaningful to subject any early
Christian reader to the charge of careless and distorted interpretation.These
readers, unlike traditionalhistorical-criticalexegetes, had no concern for his
torical situation or authorial intent of texts. Elizabeth A. Clark has carefully
documented how patristic authorsproduced new meanings from biblical texts
' Tertullian,Baptism, inTheAnte-Nicene Fathers, ed.AlexanderRoberts and JamesDonald

son (GrandRapids,MI: Eerdmans, 1985), 3:677 (emphasisadded).
12For the view thatTertullian's reference here is to some version of theActs of Thecla, see
A. Hilhorst, "Tertullianon theActs of Paul," in TheApocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla, ed. Jan
Bremmer (Kampen,Netherlands: Kok Pharos, 1996), 150-63.
13 "FromPious Legend," 376-77.
14Boughton,
See, for example, any standardNew Testament introduction,such as BartD. Ehrman, The
New Testament:A Historical Introductionto theEarly ChristianWritings, 2d ed. (NewYork:Oxford
University Press, 2000), 354-62.
to speak to their own practical and theological concerns.'5Likewise, both the

Thecla community and the author of the Pastorals produced what were for
them suitable readingsof Paul, that is, readings thatedified theirown religious
and social situations.Although amodem interpretermight fruitfullyevaluate
the effectsof various earlyChristian readings,one cannotweigh them on some
objective scale of interpretiveaccuracy.Such a procedurewrongly presumes
the existence of a singularoriginarymeaning that a subsequent interpreter
could faithfullypreserve.
Schneemelcher and Boughton are joinedby another scholar,Peter Dunn,
who derides Davies, D. R. MacDonald, Burrus, and other like-minded inter
preters, forhaving an agenda.16After arguingagainstany indicationofwomen's
liberation in the ApocryphalActs, Dunn concludes: '"Thedesire to relate the
API [Actsof Paul] and other AAA [ApocryphalActs of the Apostles] to con
cerns relevant to twentieth century feminism leads the authors to their con
sensus.This is also the bane of the consensus, since the authors impose on the
text contemporaryfeminist thinking.The documents need to be researchedon
their own terms,without the unwarranted impositionof contemporary ideol
ogy" (258).Dunn's critiqueof thiswork is coupledwith his own readingof The
cla and the Pastorals, in which he argues that early Christians embraced
chastity not primarily as ameans of resistingpatriarchybut as away to seek
freedom from the present age ingeneral.He immediatelyqualifies earlyChris
tian freedom as having included freedom from the "snareof female sexuality,"
therebypegging feminine allure as at least as troublesome for earlyChristians
asmale domination.17 One could argue, of course, that such a conclusion,with
itspeculiar and derogatory focus on female sexuality,revealsmuch about the
ideologicalcommitments of this supposedlyobjective critic.
To be sure, both Boughton andDunn (unlikeSchneemelcher) do at least
engagewith thewomen-centered work of Davies, D. R. MacDonald, Burrus,
and others, occasionally raisingvalid arguments and pushing legitimately for
more careful considerationof the ancient texts at the base of this earlierwork.
15Elizabeth A. Clark,
Reading Renunciation:Asceticism and Scripture inEarly Christianity
(Princeton,N.J.: PrincetonUniversityPress, 1999). Inher introduction(1-13) Clark elaborateshow
Derrida's notion of supplementarityandFoucault's analysisof commentary informher own under
standingof patristic readingpractices. Inview of the divergentuses towhich the authentic lettersof
Paul are put in theActs of Thecla and the PastoralEpistles, Clark'schapter on how ascetically in
clined fathers appropriated the Pastorals to support their ascetic agenda (330-70) is particularly
fascinating.
16PeterW. Dunn, "Women'sLiberation, theActs of Paul, andOther ApocryphalActs of the
Apostles,"Apocrypha 4 (1993):245-61.
17
Ibid.,258: "ThechasteChristian sought freedomnot only frommale-dominated structures,
but from the present age in general,which includes the snareof female sexuality,as the chaste lion
demonstratesby fleeing the lioness in theAPl'sEphesian episode."
I do notmean to suggest that thewomen-centered work of the 1980s isbeyond

critique or should not be refined. But Schneemelcher, Boughton, andDunn,
even in the context of the 1990s and even in themainstream journalsand ref
erenceworks of the profession, all employ the interpretivestrategyof positing
their own scholarlyresearch into theworld of earlyChristianity as objective,
scientific, and agenda-free.All three remain convinced-not coincidentally, I
would argue-that it ismerely the nature of the data that leads them to con
clude that (1) therewas no legitimate resistanceby earlyChristianwomen to
the patriarchal structures beginning to solidify in the second century and
(2)women could not be legitimate agents and authorsof earlyChristian liter
ature. It is also, ostensibly,only the resultsof theirobjective, scientific research
that drive them to dismissive name-callingwhen they approach thework of
scholarswho have attempted to reconstructwomen as agents and authors in
history.Schneemelcher,Boughton, andDunn call us to return to our senses, to
embrace "soberness"and "science,""objectivity"and "orthodoxy," while flee
ing from "fantasy,""fancy," and "feminist ideology."
Erasure?
The responsesof Schneemelcher,Boughton, andDunn toThecla scholar
shipof the 1980s are unambiguouslyantifeminist. Imove now to a second type
of response that ismuch more texturedand interestingbut that stillhas, inmy
view, potentially troublingeffects for the project of feminist historiography.I
consider here historical scholarship influencedby structuralistand poststruc
turalistthought. In thework discussed in this section, the focus shifts from re
trieving"realwomen," theirhistorical "experiences,"and their "agency,"to is
sues of textual representation.The Thecla texthere is studied not for signs of
awomen's communitynor for signsofwomen's resistance,but forwhat this fic
tional female heroine suggests about the struggles and ideology of the text's
male author.l8
This reading is elaboratedmost fully in thework of Kate Cooper, towhich
I shall soon attend, but itwas intimated earlier in thework of Peter Brown,
which Cooper acknowledges as influencingher own. In his magisterialwriting
on earlyChristian asceticism,The Body and Society,Brownmakes passing ref
erence to theApocryphalActs, cautioning againstattempts to adduce anything
about the livesof actualhistoricalwomen on the basis of theActs' female pro
18For discussionof both thebenefits of and the dilemmas

posed by poststructuralismfor fem
inisthistoriography,see Elizabeth A. Clark, "TheLadyVanishes:Dilemmas of a Feminist Historian
after the 'LinguisticTurn,'"ChurchHistory 67, no. 1 (1998):1-31. See alsoher earlieressay "Ideol
ogy, History, and the Construction of 'Woman'in Late Ancient Christianity,"Journal of Early
Christian Studies 2 (1994):155-84.
tagonists.For Brown, these fictionalwomen aremore appropriatelyspoken of

as signs in a complexly coded imaginativeeconomy:
Continentwomen playa centralrole in theApocryphal
Acts.Yet these
narratives should not be read as evidence for the actual role of women
in Christianity. Rather, they reflect the manner in which Christian
males of that period partook in the deeply ingrained tendency of all
men in the ancient world, to use women "to think with." There is no
doubt that women played an important role in the imaginative econ
omy of theChurch.Their presencecondensedthe deep preoccupa
tions of male Christians with their own relations with the "world,"with
the ever present reality of a tainted and seductive pagan society that
pressed up against the doors of their houses and abutted the closed
spacesof theirnewmeeting places.Throughoutthisperiod,Christian
men used women "to think with" in order to verbalize their own nag
ging concern with the stance that the Church should take to the
world.1'
This invitationof Brown to read thewomen characters in theApocryphal

Acts asmetaphors or signs in conversations thatmen are having is takenup by
Kate Cooper in a series of writings culminating in her 1996monograph The
Virgin and the Bride.20 In these writings Cooper argues compellingly that
women characters inGreek and Latin prose frequently function as rhetorical
markers of the characterof themen underwhose control they stand.As signs
of men's character,she argues,women protagonists in fictionwere particularly
well-suited rhetoricalvehicles for supportingor undermining the sacrosanct
Greco-Roman institutionsof marriage, the family, and the city. Speaking in
general aboutGreco-Roman literature,Cooper notes thatutilizing the rheto
ric of womanly influencemade it possible for an author to dismiss his oppo
nent:
To characterize the nature of womanly influence in a man's private life,

and his response to it,was to admit or disallow him as a speaker in ra
tional discourse. Merely by invoking either figure of the topos, the lu
19Peter
Brown,The Body and Society:Men,Women, and SexualRenunciation inEarly Chris
tianity (NewYork:Columbia University Press, 1988), 153.Note the similarassessment ofwomen
protagonists in earlyChristian literatureby Averil Cameron in her essay "VirginityasMetaphor:
Women and theRhetoric of EarlyChristianity,"inHistory as Text:TheWriting ofAncient History,
ed.AverilCameron (ChapelHill: University of North CarolinaPress, 1989), 181-205, esp. 191.
20See the
followingsources,allwritten byKate Cooper: "Apostles,AsceticWomen, andQues
tionsof Audience: New Reflections on theRhetoric of Gender in theApocryphalActs," Society of
Biblical Literature SeminarPapers, no. 31 (Atlanta:ScholarsPress, 1992), 147-53; "Insinuationsof
Womanly Influence:An Aspect of theChristianizationof theRomanAristocracy,"JournalofRoman
Studies 82 (1992): 150-64; and TheVirgin and theBride: IdealizedWomanhood inLateAntiquity
(Cambridge:HarvardUniversity Press, 1996).
minous wife acting on behalf of the common good or the lurid

temptressbent on itsbetrayal,a speakercoulddisingenuouslyimply
that itwent without sayingwhether or not aman's conduct was reason
able, and indeed how reasonable men would define the common good
in a given instance.2
Because of the rhetorical function thesewomen serve,Cooper questions

the possibility of using stories about them for purposes of historical recon
struction. In her article addressing theApocryphalActs specifically,she notes,
"The choice of a female protagonist for a given narrativewas often governed
by rhetorical rather thanmimetic necessity," and she raises a question: "Can
these stories serve as evidence for the historical role ofwomen, or are theynot
more properly evidence for the history of apologetics?"22 The answer to her
question, both in this article and in her later
monograph, that it ismisguided
is
to search for "realwomen" behind these earlyChristian fictions.By contrast
ing two related genres-the Hellenistic romance, inwhich the social order is
celebrated through the marriage of nubile hero and heroine, and the Apoc
ryphalActs, inwhich the social order is subverted through focus on the asce
tic heroine and the denigration of sexuality-Cooper sheds light on an early
Christian contest of authority.But in her view, this contest takesplace solely
between male protagonists:"The challenge by the apostle to the household is
the urgentmessage of these narratives,and it is essentially a conflict between
men. The challenge posed here by Christianity is not really aboutwomen, or
even about sexualcontinence, but about authorityand the social order."23
Cooper's conclusion that the Apocryphal Acts are "not really about
women" places her work within a growing body of feminist historiography in
fluenced by poststructuralismthatmakes similarclaims.This work problema
tizes in general the relationshipof text to reality,24and specifically the relation
21
22
Cooper, "InsinuationsofWomanly Influence,"163.
Ascetic Women," 148.
23Cooper, "Apostles,
24Cooper, Virgin and theBride, 55 (Cooper'semphasis).
See here, for example, the discussion of Clark, "TheLady Vanishes," 19-23, drawing on
Roland Barthes, "TheReality Effect," inTheRustle of Language, trans.RichardHoward (NewYork:
Hill &Wang, 1986;French original, 1984), 141-42; HaydenWhite, "TheQuestion of Narrative in
ContemporaryHistorical Theory,"History and Theory 23, no. 1 (1984), reprinted inWhite, The
Content of theForm:NarrativeDiscourse andHistoricalRepresentation (Baltimore:JohnsHopkins
University Press, 1987), 26-57; and SandeCohen, Historical Culture:On theRecoding of anAcad
emicDiscipline (BerkeleyandLos Angeles: University of CaliforniaPress, 1986).Clark notes with
these authors thatnarrativehistory serves as a carrierof ideology,reproducing"acultureof common
language,common society,or common realityin the faceof uncommon language (codes), class soci
ety, and uncommon realities" (21). Speaking of those seemingly reliable details in earlyChristian
vitae, once viewed by socialhistorians as legitimategrist for reconstructinghistory, she argues that
these arebetter understood as "acreative artist'sattempt to create an illusoryrealityin theminds of
readers"(20).
ship ofwomen in texts to actualwomen inhistory. In thiswork, textsonce cel

ebrated as indicationsof women as agents in their own right,moving outside
the rule of husband or father and defying patriarchalstructures, receive new
and sobering assessments as representationsof androcentric, and sometimes
even pornographic, fantasiesaboutwomen. To cite but a few instancesof this
type of reassessment, I note the followingwork: The feminist medievalist
Roberta Krueger has charted thismovement in the study of medieval courtly
love literature;where once thewomen's strong role in these love poems was
cited as evidence of the power and erotic independence of courtlywomen,
feminist literarycritics now see not courtlywomen's independence but "mas
culine desire" of themale poetic authors.25 New Testament scholarLawrence
Wills makes a similar assessment of the book of Judith;whereas Judith has
been hailed as an exemplarof a strong, independentwoman in antiquity,Wills
argues that, through slayingHolofernes, Judithblends sex and violence in a
way that isnot "antimale"but typicalof male visions of the exhilarationof sex
ual violence.26The classicist Sandra Joshel notes how the sexualizedRoman
empressMessalina functionsmetonymically to represent empire in Tacitus's
Histories, and argues for the impossibilityof disentangling anything of Mes
salina's"lived reality"from Tacitus's rhetoric.27
Howard Eilberg-Schwartz fo
cuses not on historicalwomen per se but on a feminine image for the deity, yet
his argument follows a similarvein; against feminist scholarswho have viewed
the feminine image ofWisdom/Sophia as reflectingpositively onwomen, Eil
berg-Schwartz suggests that the feminine Sophia functions as a cover forwhat
would otherwise be a homoerotic associationbetween Israelitemen and their
masculine deity.28
The importanceof thework of these historians,Cooper included, lies in
the questions they raise regarding the straightforwardand unproblematic re
trievalof women from historical texts about them.Whatever reluctance femi
25Roberta L.
Krueger, "Double Jeopardy:The AppropriationofWoman inFour Old French
Romances of the 'Cyclede laGageure,' "in Seeking theWoman inLateMedieval and Renaissance
Writings, ed. Sheila Fisher and JanetE. Halley (Knoxville:University of Tennessee Press, 1989),
21-50.
26LawrenceM.Wills, The JewishNovel in theAncientWorld (Ithaca,NY:Cornell University
Press, 1995), 132-57.
27 Sandra R. "Female Desire and the Discourse of Empire: Tacitus's Messalina,"
Joshel, Signs
21, no. 1 (1995):50-82. See also Joshel's"TheBody Female and theBody Politic:Livy'sLucretia and
Verginia," inPornography and Representation inGreece and Rome, ed. Amy Richlin (NewYork:
OxfordUniversity Press, 1992), 112-30.
28Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, "TheNakedness of aWoman's Voice, the Pleasure in aMan's
Mouth: An Oral History ofAncient Judaism,"inOff with Her Head! TheDenial ofWomen's Identity
inMyth, Religion, and Culture, ed. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz andWendy Doniger (Berkeleyand
Los Angeles: University of CaliforniaPress, 1995), 165-84.
nist historianshave regarding the use of critical theory in historiography,29it is

no longer feasible to pluckwomen from ancient texts and restore them to his
toricalnarrativeswithout paying attention to issues of textual representation.
Yet my concern about this approach,at least as ithas been applied to the
ApocryphalActs, lies in its reductionism-each woman in the text becomes a
sign, a means of communication between men, but serves no other possible
function.This insistence that theApocryphalActs are not aboutwomen seems
especiallyoverdrawn inCooper's summation:"[T]hechallenge posed by Chris
tianity in theApocryphalActs isnot reallyaboutwomen ... but about author
ityand the socialorder."Such an assertionprompts the question,How is it con
ceivable that in the early church,which was never an exclusivelymale sect,
questions about authority and the social order could have nothing to do with
women? Even if the authorityquestionwas being raisedbymen and answered
bymen, in earlyChristianity these questions and answerswere intimatelycon
nected to the status and role ofwomen.
In this insistence that theApocryphalActs have nothing really to do with
women, Cooper'swork shares a bit of common spacewith the dismissivework
of Schneemelcher, Boughton, and Dunn. Both types of responses have the
dual effect of shifting the focus away fromwomen as historical subjects and of
calling into question the possibility of inquiry into the history of women in the
ancientworld. Moreover, because of the importantplace of the scholarshipof
Cooper (andBrown) on earlyChristianity, the effects of this responsewithin
the academymay be much more wide-ranging.
Levi-Strauss andWomen Speaking

Much has been made of Peter Brown's assessment inThe Body and Soci
ety that in theApocryphalActs, men are usingwomen "to thinkwith." In ad
dition to being the kernel aroundwhich Cooper builds her arguments regard
ing the Apocryphal Acts, this phrase is cited more generally as signaling the
impasse for historians trying towrite of realwomen in antiquity.Brown ac
knowledges in a footnote thathe has adopted the phrase fromLevi-Strauss's
StructuralAnthropology and notes that it "impliesconsiderablymore than the
29Clark summarizes some of the concerns of feminist historians

concerning some forms of
poststructuralism:"[T]hepost-structuralistversion of the critique of objectivity seemed to nullify
historians'weighing of evidence according to agreed-on disciplinarystandards;representationwas
deemed soproblematic thatany connection between people of thepast and the description of them
by historianswas abrogated;categorieswere so fractured thathistorians could not even speak of
'women'anymore; the decentering of themale subject eventuallyannihilated the female subject as
well. Asmany feministshave queried,why were we told to abandon 'subjectivity'justat thehistorical
moment when women had begun to claim it?Why, Nancy Miller asks,was the 'endofwoman' au
thorizedwithout consultingher?" ("TheLadyVanishes,"3).
creation andmanipulation of stereotypes."30It is important to note, however,

that, asLevi-Straussuses the phrase, it impliesconsiderablymore thanwoman
as a sign in the text. InLevi-Strauss'sargument thatwomen are used "to think
with," he speaks of a patriarchal system of communication inwhich women,
throughmarriage regulations operative in human societies, are circulated
among clans, lineages,or families in the sameway thatwords are circulatedbe
tween individuals.But his argument also includes the following infamous
parenthesis:
Of course, itmay be disturbing to some to have women conceived as
mere partsof ameaningfulsystem.However,one shouldkeep inmind
that the processes by which phonemes and words have been reduced
to pure sign, will never lead to the same results inmatters concerning
women. For words do not speak, while women do; as producers of
signs,women can never be reduced to the status of symbols or tokens.31
Brown adopts the phrase "us[ing]women 'to thinkwith'" fromLevi-Strauss to

make his argument thatwomen in the textsof theApocryphalActs are signs
used bymen to communicate.But he hasmade no allowance forLevi-Strauss's
all-importantcaveat, "Forwords do not speak,while women do; as producers
of signs,women can never be reduced to the status of symbols of tokens."
However problematic Levi-Strauss's formulationmay be,32he signals here a
complexity that needs to be reckonedwith.Women may function in texts like
phonemes andwords, but theydidmore than that inhistory,because they also
spoke.
Women, Text, and Reality

Levi-Strauss'sacknowledgmentof the "two-foldedness"of women, that is,
that they are both signs and producers of signs,dovetailswith thework of fem
inisthistorianswho argue first for the importanceof interrogatingtexts for the
ways women function as signswithin them, and second for furtherwork re
constructinghistoricalwomen speakerswho existed beyond these texts.Rather
than formulatingthe question of textualrepresentationand historical realityas
an either/or question, these historiansargueboth for the studyof gender in tex
tual representationand for reconstructivehistorical projects.33
30
Brown,Body and Society, 153.
31Claude Levi-Strauss,Structural
Anthropology (NewYork:Basic Books, 1963), 61.
32See Alice
Jardine,Gynesis: Configurations ofWoman andModernity (Ithaca,NY:Cornell
University Press, 1985), 88-102.
33
See, for example,Newman, "CriticalTheory";Castelli, "Heteroglossia,Hermeneutics, and
History,"92-98; and Elisabeth SchiisslerFiorenza, But She Said:Feminist Practicesof Biblical In
terpretation (Boston: Beacon, 1992), 79-101. This argument for both working at the level of the text
The textualbase for reconstructionsof women's history in antiquity isnot

as thick aswe would like, andwork such asCooper's brings us to the sobering
awarenessof itsmany limitations.Yet indications thatwomen helped to pro
duce and shape earlyChristianityoccur commonly enough that somethingof a
history ofwomen in earlyChristianity can be told. In this reconstructivework,
feminist historians join forces with other ideological critics, reading texts
against the grain and reading forwhat a textboth does and does not say.34 This
acknowledgment of a realitybeyond the texthasmade it possible forNew Tes
tament scholarElisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza to in
argue that, spite of what a
textmay or may not say about them,women were essential shapers of early
Christian practice. Or, in her negative formulationof the argument, it is not
thatwomen were marginal in earlyChristianity;"rather,biblical texts and his
toricalsourcesproduce themarginalityof women."35The possibilityof such re
constructions against the grain is also noted by the classicistBarbaraK. Gold
in her reflection on writing the history of marginalized persons from the an
cient Greek and Latinmaster narratives.Gold acknowledges that thesemaster
narrativeshave, by and large,naturalizedand normalized idealsaccording to a
particular masculine and aristocratic ideology, thereby reinforcing stereotyped
of women. Yet she continues thus:
representations
In certain authors, however, we can see a "space" in the fabric, where

there is an uneasiness in the representation of gender for both the au
thor and the reader, where the language seems to have more potential
where themar
itytobe interpretedfrommanydifferentperspectives,
and presuming somethingbeyond it specifically inorder to reconstructwomen's history isaffirmed

as a more general principle of historiography "after the linguistic turn" by the medievalist
GabrielleM. Spiegel, in "History,Historicism, and the SocialLogic of theText in theMiddle Ages,"
Speculum65 (1990):59-86, esp. 77: "Whatisneeded is the elaborationof a theoreticalposition ca
pable of satisfyingthe demands of both literarycriticismand history as separateyet interdependent
disciplinarydomainswith a common concern for the socialdimensions of textualproduction inpast
times. Justaswe rightlyreject the reductionof literatureto a reflectionof theworld, so alsowe must
reject the absorptionof historyby textuality.
We need to rethinkthe issueof textand context in terms
of a criticalposture thatdoes justice equally to textual,historicist,andhistorical principles of analy
sis and explanation"(Spiegel'semphasis).
34For a discussionof the intersectionbetween
ideologicalandbiblical criticism, seeGale Yee,
"IdeologicalCriticism," inDictionary of Biblical Interpretation, ed. JohnH. Hayes (Nashville:
Abingdon, 1999), 1:534-37.
35
Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of
Christian Origins, 10th anniversaryed. (NewYork:Crossroad, 1994), xx.For furtherdiscussion of
the distinction between the kyriocentric textsof antiquity and the possible textsone could recon
struct bearing a different sociohistorical reality,see also Schiissler Fiorenza, "TheRhetoricity of
HistoricalKnowledge: PaulineDiscourse and ItsContextualizations,"inReligious Propagandaand
Missionary Competition in theNew TestamentWorld: Essays Honoring Dieter Georgi, ed. Lukas
Bormann,Kelly Del Tredici, andAngela Standhartinger(Leiden,Netherlands:Brill, 1994),443-69.
ginalized characters seem to be trying to "speak," and where there are

borderchallengings(voicesspeakingagainstthe text).Not only Sap
of Homer,or Sulpicia's
pho'sexplicitrereadings of elegy,but suchfig
ures as the women of Aristophanes's Lysistrata, Thesmophoriazousai,
and Ekklesiazousai... the freed slaves of Petronius's Satyricon; Vergil's
Dido and Statius's Hysopyle; the native leader of Calgacus who speaks
against Rome in Tacitus's Agricola-all these have been seen, or could
be seen, as places where themute are pushing through the fabric of the
text.36
The Thecla legend and its reception history, I argue, is another place
where we can see themute "pushing through the fabricof the text."To sup
port this argument,my point of departure isTertullian'sBaptism, chapter 17:
"But if thewritingswhich wrongly go under Paul'sname, claimThecla's exam
ple as a license forwomen's teaching and baptizing . ." If they did, then one
can posit that in the late second and early third centuries,women resisted the
exhortationsof 1 Timothy and pointed to the example of Thecla to authorize
their public speech and leadershipof initiation rituals in the church.That is,
not only is the Thecla text about "authorityand the social order,"as Cooper
recognizes,but also, at least in its receptionhistory, ithad quite a lot to dowith
women.
The enduringpopularityof theThecla legend amongwomen suggests that

women looked to Thecla's example not just in the late second century but in
subsequent centuries aswell.37Although extant historical sources suggest that
theThecla legendwas embraced by laterChristianwomen chiefly forThecla's
asceticism rather thanher public teaching and baptizing, thismay stillbe un
derstood as an indicationof some earlyChristianwomen's resistance to patri
archalcontrol.38Because of Thecla's popularityamongwomen, it ispossible to
36See BarbaraK.
Gold, "'But AriadneWas Never There in the First Place': Finding the
Female inRoman Poetry," inFeminist Theory and theClassics, ed. Nancy SorkinRabinowitz and
Amy Richlin (NewYork:Routledge, 1993), 75-101, esp. 84.
37For
sources, see D. R. MacDonald, Legend and theApostle, 90-96; and Albrecht, Das
Leben der heiligen Makrina.
38On the embrace of the ascetic
lifestyleas an act of resistanceby earlyChristianwomen, see
VirginiaBurrus, "Wordand Flesh: The Bodies and Sexualityof AsceticWomen inChristianAntiq
uity,"Journalof Feminist Studies inReligion 10, no. 1 (1994):26-51, esp. 32: "[I]t is the problem of
resistance tomale controlwhich most concerns asceticwomen. And once they have escaped the
socialand sexualdominationofmen and constructed an alternativeascetic culture, ancientwomen
are free to seek new expressionsof their sexuality....Within the textsof the ancientChristian asce
ticmovement we can, then, detect signs ofwomen gaining control over theirbodies and sexuality.
We discern the faint tracesof the ongoing history ofwomen struggling to free their flesh from im
prisonment in themale word and gaze." See also Elizabeth A. Clark,Ascetic Piety andWVomen's
Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity (Lewiston,NY:Mellen, 1986), 175-208; and Schiissler
Fiorenza, InMemory ofHer, 90,220-26, 315.
imagine stories about her being generated, elaborated, and retold among
them.39
Having an Agenda
I have argued that the best feministhistoriographypays close attention to
representation in textswhile still attempting to reconstructa history ofwomen.
In thewords of Gabrielle Spiegel, one needs both to "reject the reduction of
literature to a reflection of theworld" and to "reject the absorptionof history
by textuality."I close by arguing for the importanceof acknowledging repeat
edly and unapologetically the political nature of historiography.40 History is
written not in a vacuum but in a sociopoliticalcontext.What is said,or not said,
aboutwomen in early Christian history necessarily affects this contemporary
context. To illustrate this point, again the Thecla text and the historical texts
that surround it serve as a vehicle. I finish this articleone year after the largest
Protestant denomination in theUnited States, the Southern Baptist Conven
tion, passed a resolution thatwomen should no longer serve as pastors in
39The theoriesof women as oral

generators and/or textualauthorsof theActs of Thecla, first
posited byD. R.MacDonald, Burris, andDavies in the 1980s, have been called intoquestion. See,
for example,JeanKaestli, "LesActes apocrypheset la reconstitutionde l'historiedes femmesdans le
christianismeancien,'Cahiers bibliquesde Foi etVie 28 (1989):71-79; and JeanKaestli, "Fiction lit
t6raireet r6alit6 sociale:Que peut-on savoirde lasplace des femmes dans lemilieu de production
des actes apocryphesdes apotres?"Apocrypha 1 (1990):279-302. Like Burrus inher 1994 assess
ment of theThecla document ("Wordand Flesh," 45 n. 29), Iwill not argue here for a particular
gender of the author of any of the extantThecla manuscripts. The freedom and autonomywith
which copyists of theApocryphalActs approached these texts suggest the futilityof positing "au
thorship"in a singular,originarysense. See ChristineMarie Thomas, "TheActs of Peter, theAncient
Novel, andEarlyChristianHistory" (Ph.D. diss.,HarvardUniversity, 1995).
40The need for feminists to eschew the scientistic
pose of Enlightenment discourse and the
'ludic"interpretiveformsof postmoderndiscourse inorder to takeup "acriticalfeminist rhetoricof
inquiry"iscompellinglyargued inSchiisslerFiorenza'sRhetoric andEthic, esp. 17-102. For the im
portance of women's history to feminist movements, compare also this statement of Elizabeth
Castelli: "Theproject ofwomen's history involvesa dual goal: to restorewomen tohistory and to re
store our history ofwomen. This process of double restoration is,of course, crucial to the political
project of feminism andwomen'smovements because itprovides substance, texture,and depth to
our knowledge of the past, and therefore, of ourselves in relation to the past.Moreover, insofaras
themasculinist dominant culture isgrounded inpart in a refusal to recognize, record,and valorize
the richdiversities ofwomen's contributions to the (re)productionof society and their strategiesof
survivaland resistance, thewriting ofwomen's history calls the adequacyof the dominantorder'sex
planationsof the past intoquestion.Women's history contradicts the ideaof 'woman'as ithas been
promulgated by male thinkers.Politically,women's history offers women foremothers and fore
sisters;feministhistorical reconstructionoffers all of us a new,more adequate version of the story"
("Heteroglossia,Hermeneutics, andHistory,"92).
churches.41This resolution fell on the heels of an earlier declaration thatwives

should "submitgraciously"to their husbands. The key biblical proof text of
fered in thismost recent decisionwas 1Timothy 2:11-12: "Let awoman learn
in silencewith full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have author
ity over aman; she is to keep silent" (NRSV).Such a view draws on the Pas
toralEpistles as if theywere the only speech aboutwomen in the early church.
A feminist reconstructionof earlyChristian history that foregrounds theThe
cia text as a countervoice calls intoquestion the univocityof the Pastorals.The
cia serves as a resource for thosewho resist the hegemony of the "Pastor's" di
rectives. Because of the value of this resistance, both then and now, I
acknowledge and concurwith the observationof Peter Dunn regarding those
who seek evidence of such resistance in theActs of Thecla-yes, indeed, I have
an agenda.
41
See Jennifer Kehler, "Southern Baptists Vote to Ban Female Pastors," Ms., June 20, 2000,
NewsPro archive<http://www.msmagazine.com/newspro/arc5-2000.html>.

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Thinking of Thecla: Issues in Feminist Historiography

macy of positing any linkbetween theThecla text and second-centuryChrist

with feministmethodologies inher scholarship. In addition toher most recentwriting on Thecla,

Schneemelcher that a "sober"treatment of the evidence suggest no hint of

Here Tertullian polemicizes against those in the late second centurywho

' Tertullian,Baptism, inTheAnte-Nicene Fathers, ed.AlexanderRoberts and JamesDonald

to speak to their own practical and theological concerns.'5Likewise, both the

I do notmean to suggest that thewomen-centered work of the 1980s isbeyond

18For discussionof both thebenefits of and the dilemmas

tagonists.For Brown, these fictionalwomen aremore appropriatelyspoken of

This invitationof Brown to read thewomen characters in theApocryphal

To characterize the nature of womanly influence in a man's private life,

minous wife acting on behalf of the common good or the lurid

Because of the rhetorical function thesewomen serve,Cooper questions

ship ofwomen in texts to actualwomen inhistory. In thiswork, textsonce cel

nist historianshave regarding the use of critical theory in historiography,29it is

Levi-Strauss andWomen Speaking

29Clark summarizes some of the concerns of feminist historians

creation andmanipulation of stereotypes."30It is important to note, however,

Brown adopts the phrase "us[ing]women 'to thinkwith'" fromLevi-Strauss to

Women, Text, and Reality

The textualbase for reconstructionsof women's history in antiquity isnot

In certain authors, however, we can see a "space" in the fabric, where

and presuming somethingbeyond it specifically inorder to reconstructwomen's history isaffirmed

ginalized characters seem to be trying to "speak," and where there are

The enduringpopularityof theThecla legend amongwomen suggests that

39The theoriesof women as oral

churches.41This resolution fell on the heels of an earlier declaration thatwives

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