From Storytelling to Written Text: The Loss of Early Christian Women's Voices

Abstract

Scholars today generally agree that women were more prominent in early Christianity than the evidence of the Second Testament suggests. In this article I argue that a major reason for the loss of early Christian women's voices was the shift from an oral to a manuscript medium. The few men who were literate tended to minimize and trivialize the stories about women in composing the written manuscripts. First I retell an ancient story, then briefly describe literacy and orality in antiquity. Then I discuss the question of oral vs. written media and access to authority. Next, I describe what happened to women's folk tales as they were transformed into the print medium by men. Finally, I describe the traces of similar minimalizing and distortion of stories about women to be found in the Gospels.

Um palco de tensões e disputas: tempo presente e lembranças do passado no evangelho de Marcos

“…Essa questão que aqui levantamos é tão saliente que Dewey (1996) aventa, em uma perspectiva assaz interessante, que a transição da transmissão das memórias de e sobre Jesus de Nazaré do meio oral para o meio escrito resultou, sobretudo, no silenciamento de várias vozes femininas que tinham também histórias para contar. Em defesa de sua hipótese, Dewey (1996) estabelece as seguintes premissas: (a) os seguidores de Jesus e de seu movimento circulavam em um ambiente de comunicação predominantemente oral; (b) há vários indícios, na literatura antiga e em relatos de folcloristas modernos, de que mulheres podiam desempenhar o papel de contadoras de histórias e (c) tradições presentes na literatura cristã primitiva, canônica e extra canônica, suportam a noção de que mulheres foram ativas contadoras de histórias e ouvintes receptivas. Muito embora estes pressupostos, Dewey (1996, p. 72) observa: "a composição dos textos cristãos e a seleção de quais entrariam para o cânon foi o trabalho de uma minoria de letrados que, por sua vez, eram todos homens".…”

“What is a woman that you are mindful of her?” Aspects of irony and honour in Luke 7:36-50

“…Although the anointing woman is mute throughout the story (cf. Dewey 1996;1997), she is "open to God's mercy" and reveals "a more basic orientation to God" than does the Pharisee (Fitzmyer 1981:687). Through her actions she acknowledges Jesus' liberating, healing authority.…”

Performance Criticism: An Emerging Methodology in Second Testament Studies—Part I

“…Communities regularly appropriated and re-appropriated the oral compositions as their means to build, maintain, and change the identity of the community. In such a context, the spectrum of people who engaged in oral performance of traditions ex-124 tended from "trained storytellers" on one end of the spectrum to folks engaged in "informal gossip" on the other end of the spectrum (Botha 1998;Rohrbaugh), both women and men (Hearon 2004;Dewey 1996). The traditions ranged from lengthy, formal, public performances to individual stories or clusters of stories told among family and friends.…”