High-Standing Women and Mission and Conversion: A Rhetorical-Historical Analysis of the Antiquities and Acts

Shelly Matthews
(Assistant Professor of Religion, Furman University)
Harvard University Completed: 1997.
Advisors: Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Helmut Koester, and Lawrence Wills

Abstract:

This work explores both the negative and postive rhetorical function of women characters in religious propaganda in antiquity. Two chapters focus specifically on Josephan material.

The first focuses on the story of the expulsion of Jews and Isis worshippers from Rome in Antiquites 18. I argue that story is best understood in light of social-political context of Josephus' day, a time when Domitian proclaims himself lover of Isis, and inscribes the defeat of Judea as an Isean triumph. I also note that in this story, Josephus, like Tacitus, appropriates a common topos linking women, "foreign" cults, sexual misconduct, and state subversion.

The second Josephan chapter of the dissertation focuses on the many positive references Josephus makes to high-standing Roman women's intercessions on behalf of the Jews.

* A revised version of the dissertation is forthcoming with Stanford University Press, Spring 2001.