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Policy: The Bible and Welfare Reform
91
sources should be relied upon and how they should be evaluated in order
io cull credible evidence about women’s lives. Another obstacle to over
come is the task of locating sufficient sources of information about
women. With the help of feminist biblical scholars, we are introduced to
this gnarled pathway of considerations. They contain clues about the need
i<>exercise control over women that is so much at issue in contemporary
policy discussions of the poor.
Gender and social class were significant factors during the first few cen-
mries of the Common Era in the Greco-Roman world. For instance, in
ihe household, the central unit of organization for their society, women’s
lives were restricted on the basis of gender. In general, women were sub
l e t to the control of men. In the family, daughters were subject to the
mthority of their fathers, wives to their husbands, fatherless daughters to
iheir father’s male relatives, widows to their own sons. Female slaves were
subject to their masters, including the daughters of their masters. Slave
women were thus subject to the authority of women as well as men. It
should also be kept in mind that most men were also under the control of
other men.32 Under the Roman Empire, Greco-Roman society (the set
ting for the Lukan gospel writer) idealized and tried to enforce a rigidly
hierarchical social and political system.
What cultural categories do we use to envision the lives of women who
surrounded the gospel writer? As in our society, the first century eastern
Mediterranean included multiple dominant and subcultural influences.
Isolating the key cultural traits that defined the gospel writer’s late, first
century context is complicated. There were Hellenistic, Roman, Egyp
tian, and Jewish cultural influences.
Christianity initially emerged in first century Palestine as a movement
w
i thin
Judaism and then spread quickly throughout the Mediterranean
legion, where many Gentiles were converted. A distorted historical
understanding results from setting Christianity against Judaism in order
io prove that Christian women had more freedoms than Jewish women,
lexts about women such as those found in Luke are sometimes heralded
is evidence on behalf of a kind of ancient Christian feminism and are pit-
ted
against ancient Jewish sexism. This reasoning is not only anachronis
tic but also erroneous. In the first century Christian movement, some of
tlu* Christian w'omen were Jewish. Thus, for some of the women in the
movement, a dichotomous view ofjewish and Christian women is simply
.1
mi s taken
one.
In
addition, the notion of ancient Christian feminism
versus anci ent Jewi sh sex i sm
preserves
an
equally erroneous stereotyped
portrai t of (tin* non ( Christian major i ty of ) w om e n wi t hin Juda i sm.