Bibliography
| Title: High-standing women and mission and conversion. A rhetorical-historical analysis of the Antiquities and Acts Type: Thesis Year: 1997 Abstract: "This dissertation focuses on narratives in Josephus' s Antiquities and the Acts of the Apostles which suggest that high-standing Gentile women were prominent among those attracted to early Judaism and Christianity. The analysis of these texts serves as a contribution to the current debate about the nature of mission and conversion in Judaism in antiquity. I first analyze these high-standing women as rhetorical figures employed by Josephus and the author of Acts for persuasive purposes. Secondly, I explore what these texts suggest about the actual history of women's involvement in mission and conversion. This work explores the negative rhetorical function of women in discourse about missionary religions in antiquity. I show how Tacitus and Josephus appropriate the topos linking women, "foreign" cults, sexual misconduct, and state subversion in their stories of the expulsion of Jews and Isis worshippers from Rome. By identifying this link age I elucidate Josephus's claims in Antiquities 18 that the expulsion of both Jews and Isis devotees was due to the duping of high-standing Roman matrons attracted to these two cults. I then pose the question, given this negative view of high-standing women's involvement with missionary religions, why do both Josephus and the Author of Acts still advertise elite Gentile women's association with their respective communities? In answer to this question, I argue that these stories can also serve positive rhetorical functions. To develop this argument, I first show how widespread the pattern of highlighting prominent Gentile women's involvement with Judaism is. I identify and analyze the several narratives in the Antiquities in which elite women serve as Jewish benefactors and saviors, both in imperial and biblical times. I also argue that in the missionary journeys of Paul in Acts, it is specifically Gentile noble women's affiliation with early Christianity that is highlighted. Secondly, I show how the positive rhetorical function of high-standing Gentile noble women in the Antiquities and Acts can be understood within the framework of elite women's benefaction, and the positive valuation of women's public religious function on behalf of the state in the Greco-Roman world". Keywords: New Testament / Early Christianity |