Chapter IV - “But these words seemed to them an idle tale”

Summary

Chapter IV unravels the status and role of women in the Greco-Roman world, examining their property and inheritance rights, their level of education, and their public role. In the Gospels of John and Matthew, Jesus appears to his female followers (above all Mary Magdalene) before his male disciples. Instructed to inform the disciples of Jesus’ resurrection, Luke records that the women’s testimony was not believed by the male disciples. The apocryphal gospels, wrested from one and a half millennia of oblivion by the papyrus finds of the twentieth century, report on conflicts between the men and women of the earliest Christian communities. In contrast to the canonical New Testament texts, the apocrypha grant a much greater role to Mary Magdalene, who has been incorrectly identified in Catholic tradition since Gregory I as the anonymous sinner who anointed the feet of Jesus. The Gospel according to Mary enjoyed a certain popularity in Roman Egypt, which contrasts with the exclusion of women from positions of leadership within the Egyptian Church.