In the course of his talk on Eros, the first in the Symposium, Phaedrus embarks on a demonstration of the ability of love to prompt people to noble and courageous deeds. Although the context of the discussion of love in the Symposium is primarily homosexual, “the most remarkable feature” of Phaedrus's speech, as William K. C. Guthrie puts it, is that the exemplary figure illustrating his thesis is a woman. Alcestis, the wife of Admetus king of Therae, was the only one among her husband's relatives who volunteered to die in his stead:

In his discussion of Romans 1:26–27, Robin Scroggs raised two important questions which have been the subject of much debate since the publication of his 1983 book. One is the question of why this passage mentions women at all in its remarks concerning same-sex acts. Scroggs commented:

Since there are no Old Testament laws prohibiting female homosexuality, why does Paul include it here? If Paul is dependent on a preformed tradition for these two verses, he of course found it in that tradition. Why the tradition included it is a question to which I see no answer.

In her discussion of the life of Macrina (ca. 327–79), the sister of Gregory of Nyssa, Susanna Elm comments upon Macrina's decision to treat the death of her fiancé as if it were the death of a husband. Inasmuch as this decision became a reason for her not to (re)marry, Macrina took on “a new social role: the virgin widow.” Elm's casual remark points to a remarkable failure among a number of commentators to take account of the ambiguities inherent in the title “widow” (Greek χήρα, Latin vidua). While acknowledging the existence of an order of widows, scholars have also widely assumed that the terms χήρα and vidua can be equated to the modern term “widow,” that is, a woman who has survived her husband. The discussion of Christian widows, and especially enrolled widows, has accordingly focused primarily upon the function and often the age of these women. If scholars mention the marital status of such women at all, their discussion is generally directed toward the question of second marriages. I shall argue, however, that it is in fact misleading to assume that a widow must have been married previously and that in the earliest centuries of the Christian church, there is evidence not only for the existence of “virgin widows” but also for the problems that these women posed for some church leaders.

Paul Veyne wrote a book entitled, Did the Greeks Believe their Myths? Regarding rabbinic Judaism, one might similarly ask: Did the rabbis believe their imagery? Rabbinic literature is so replete with fanciful images of God and humans and anecdotes of epiphanies involving both, that one naturally wonders whether the midrashic authors believed that their imagery reflected some actual moment in the world's history. Some scholars have chosen to view the literature as containing parables and images that were composed as mere metaphors, sometimes used for political purposes, and other times to spawn further associations and religious teachings. The question is, can one differentiate true statements about happenings in the material world from symbolic statements whose relationship to that material world is more vague? The tension is especially acute when one considers cosmogony, the story of human origins, and other moments in primoridal history. Yet it is no less present in those simple midrashic “biblical scenes” that are not actually part of the Tanakh, but which the sages readily ascribe to the text. Does a given rabbinic image convey literal beliefs about material happenings or metaphorical metaphysics?

When William James launched into the Gifford Lectures of 1901, he admitted to his Edinburgh audience a certain feeling of trepidation. Those lectures, which he would later publish as The Varieties of Religious Experience, evoked in James a sense of consternation because, as he remarked on the occasion, he was neither a theologian, nor a historian of religion, nor an anthropologist. “Psychology is the only branch of learning in which I am particularly versed,” James pleaded.