Book review: Roman burial art reveals forgotten women of Christianity

From National Catholic Reporter:

Is there such a thing as reverent glee? If so, then that's how I would have described St. Joseph Sr. Christine Schenk as she bounded among the ruins of ancient Cenchreae, the location of the house church of the deacon Phoebe during a travel program I led. There is something about standing in the place mentioned in our Scriptures that stirs us, and reminds us that our ancestors in the faith were real, historical folks. In this case, a first-century woman whom the Apostle Paul called "our sister, who is [also] a diakonos of the church at Cenchreae" (Romans 16:1).

It is this sense of immediacy that permeates Crispina and Her Sisters: Women and Authority in Early Christianity. This connection across the expanse of time makes what could have been a recitation of dusty facts into an engaging read.

While her work makes a valuable contribution to the conversation about women's authority roles within the early church, Crispina and Her Sisters does a mitzvah for academics who investigate early Christian burial practices. Schenk analyzed 2,119 images and descriptors of sarcophagi (stone coffins) and fragments from the third to fifth centuries — "all currently available images of Christian sarcophagi and loculus plates" — focusing on the portraits and their accompanying iconography.

The Darkening Age by Catherine Nixey

From Financial Times:

Palmyra, Syria. “The destroyers came from out of the desert . . . and utter destruction followed.” Wearing beards and dressed in black, the religious zealots entered the temple and attacked the statue of the goddess Athena. When they were done, “they melted out once again into the desert. Behind them the temple fell silent.” 

With this nifty, cinematic opening Catherine Nixey draws an equivalence between today’s Islamic extremists and vicious bands of Christian thugs in 385AD. Her aim is to tell the “unknown” story, as she puts it, of the collapse of late Hellenic and Roman antiquity, thereby exposing the truth about the inherent violence and ignorance of early Christianity. As she puts it: “The story of Christianity’s good works in this period has been told again and again . . . The history and sufferings of those whom Christianity defeated have not been.”

read more here @ Financial Times and @ The Guardian

Band of Angels

From Christian Today:

"A Manchester University professor has published a book to shine light on the women she claims have been neglected by mainstream churches.

Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women by Professor Kate Cooper draws on five years of research and looks at some of the women who were hugely influential as Christianity spread in the first and second centuries.

She argues that women played a central role in spreading the new Christian faith through informal friendship and family networks.

Their authority within Christian communities was earned through their role as parents, community organisers, and small business owners."

From The Guardian:

"Drawing on the earliest Christian texts, Cooper examines what it would have been to live as a woman between the first and fifth centuries. Her book is as much an exercise in historical detective work as anything else, an act of reading between and behind the lines, rescuing these lost women from ancient sources, assessing their influence, and placing their lives in a broader social and historical context.

She explores in particular detail the exaltation of virginity and the role of the domestic space in the growth and spread of the church. Early Christians usually gathered in private homes, with families and communities praying together, and women were a vital part of this process."