Thinking of Thecla

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Thinking of Thecla: Issues in Feminist Historiography
Author(s): Shelly Matthews
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Fall, 2001), pp. 39-55
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THINKING OF THECLA
Issues inF eminist
Historiography
Matthews
Shelly
The elite heroine in theA cts of Thecla listens and to the ascetic
day night
teachings spoken by the apostle Paul.1 She is transfixed," like a spider at the
window bound by his words" (9). Converted by this teaching,T hecla spurns
her betrothed, pursues Paul on his journeys, endures the tormentsp ut upon
her by the city'sn obilityw hose welfare is threatenedb y her ascetic choice, per
forms a rite of and receives the commission fromP aul
self-baptism, ultimately
to "go and teach thew ord of God" (41).
The focus on the woman who defies the social
highborn courageously
order for ascetic is a commonm otif in the
by opting Christianity Apocryphal
Acts of the second and third centuries C.E.T he of resistance in
crystallization
female form is particularlys tark in theA cts of Thecla, where even the female
lion in the arena sidesw ith the ascetic and the Thecla
against city, reverencing
rather than her. As stories of women's resistance in the cen
devouring early
turies of the Acts in and the Thecla text in
Christianity, Apocryphal general
vehicles for some of the contentions fem
particularp rovide illustrating among
inista nd other historianso f women and in the of Chris
gender discipline early
tian studies. In this article I discuss three "women-centered" on
monographs
theA cts of Thecla written in the 1980s. I thenm ove to examine two of
types
responses to thisw omen-centered work thatd iverge quite a lot in termso f the
oretical sophisticationb ut nevertheless converge in arguing against the legiti
I thank the two anonymous readers for theJournal of Feminist Studies in Religion for their valuable
criticism. I also thankE lizabethC astelli for invitingm e to deliver the earliestv ersion of thisa rticle in
the IdeologicalC riticism sectiono f the Society of Biblical Literature annualm eeting inB oston, No
vember 1999, and for encouragingm e to revise it forp ublication.
1
The Acts of Thecla is embedded in the largerA cts of Paul. For theG reek text, see Ricardus
Adelbertus Lipsius, ed., Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha (Darmstadt,G ermany:W issenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1959), 235-72. The English translationi s available inE dgar Hennecke andW il
helm Schneemelcher, eds., The New TestamentA pocrypha (PhiladelphiaW: estminster, 1964),
2:352-90.
40 Journalo f Feminist Studies inR eligion
of linkb etween the Thecla text and Christ
macy positing any second-century
ianw omen. I close with an for the of to re
argument importance attempting
construct the of women in while the
history earlyC hristianity acknowledging
consensus feminist historians that such reconstructionsc annot
growing among
mimetic between text and
presume relationships reality.
Women's
History
In the 1980s, three authorsw orking independently on monograph-length
treatmentso f theA pocryphalA cts-Steven Davies, Dennis RonaldM acDon
ald, and Virginia Burrus-each proposed that the Acts in some way repre
sentedw omen-centered communities that resisted the order.
rulingp atriarchal
MacDonald and Burrus that these stories are best understood as folk
posited
tales andw ere originally oral stories told by women; Davies posited that the
written texts themselvesw ere women.2 Each author identified the
penned by
of resistance in the stories in the of the elite female heroinew ho
point person
defied household and city by refusing to marry and opting for an ascetic
lifestyle.
Burrus, in arguing for linksb etween theA pocryphalA cts and folktales,d e
from traditionald iscussion of theA cts as a of theH ellenistic
parted subgenre
romance, and hence shifted the focus of study away fromm ale authors and to
ward female On the basis of cross-culturale vidence aboutw omen
storytellers.
and the transmissiono f folklore, she argued for the likelihoodo f women as pri
transmitterso f these tales.W hile that Thecla and
mary chastity conceding
other protagonists, such asM aximilla (Actso f Andrew) andA grippina,N icaria,
Euphemia, and Doris (Actso f Peter) were fictional figures, she argued that
from these a socialw orld of and their audience could be re
figures storytellers
constructed.
The thesis that the Acts bearw itness to communities
Apocryphal resisting
ecclesiastical tendencies is elaborated most in
patriarchalizing completely
D. R.M acDonald's work the extracanonicaAl cts of Thecla and the
juxtaposing
2
Steven L. Davies, TheR evolt of theW idows: The SociaWl orld of theA pocryphalA cts (Car
bondale:S outhern IllinoisU niversity Press, 1980);D ennis RonaldM acDonald, TheL egend and the
Apostle: The Battlefor Paul in Story and Canon (PhiladelphiaW: estminster, 1983);V irginiaB urrus,
Chastity as Autonomy:W omen in the Stories of Apocryphal Acts (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen,
1987).O ther discussionso f the sociawl orld of theA pocryphalA cts from the 1980s includeE lisabeth
SchtisslerF iorenza, InM emory of Her: A Feminist TheologicalR econstructiono f ChristianO rigins
(New York:C rossroad, 1983), 173-75; Ross S. Kraemer, "TheC onversion ofW omen to Ascetic
Forms of Christianity,"S igns:J ournalo fW omen inC ulture and Society 6, no. 2 (1980):2 98-307; and
Ruth Albrecht,D as Leben der heiligenM akrina aufdem Hintergrund der Thekla-Traditionen:S tu
dien zu dem Ursprungen des weiblichen Monchtums im 4. Jahrhundert inK leinasien (Gottingen,
Germany:V andenhoeck& Ruprecht, 1986).
Matthews: of Thecla 41
Thinking
canonical letters 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, commonly referred to as the Pas
toral the Pastoral were written ear
Epistles. Although pseudonymous Epistles
lier than the Thecla text,M acDonald argued that oral versions of the Thecla
tales influenced the Pastorals. Each document the of
appropriates authority
Paul to shore its vision of social and ecclesiastical but in radi
up organization,
cally different ways. For instance, "Paul,"t he author of 1 Timothy, exhorts
women to be silent,u rgesw idows to remarry,r equiresm arriage of male church
officials, and sets forth am odel of ecclesiastical leadership in conformityw ith
traditionaGl reco-Roman civic ideals.O n the other hand, "Paul,"t he hero of
theA cts of Thecla, preaches celibacy,m odels an itinerantc harismaticm inistry,
threatens civic order, and exhortsT hecla to travela nd to teach.3
These arguments forw omen storytellers,w omen authors, and women's
communities of resistance placed thew ork of Davies, D. R. MacDonald, and
Burrus within the of "women's as it has been tradi
squarely discipline history"
tionallyc onceived. Their projectsw ere acts of retrieval,o f writing women into
mainstream narratives of Christian that had
early history previously ignored
them. These writers historicalw omen as with
posited subjects "experiences"
and All relied on a of the relation
"agency."4 relativelys traightforwardr eading
between textual and social The
ship representation reality. sympathetic por
traitso f women charactersw ere held almost as facie evidence that
up prima
the authors and receivers of the talesw ere women.5 boundaries
Disciplinary
were stretched,m ost notably byM acDonald's and Burrus'su se of folklore the
ory, and eachw ork contains indications that the authorsw ere cognizant of the
relevance of theirw ork to feminist Yet these mono
contemporary struggles.
remained and within the rubricso f traditionalh istorical-criti
graphs by large
cal
scholarship.6
3D . R. MacDonald, Legend and theA postle, 54-77.
4
For traditionalf rameworksa nd categories of analysisu sed inw omen's history, as distinct
fromg ender history, see, for example, the discussion of Catherine Hall, White, Male, andM iddle
Class: Explorations in Feminism and History (New York:R outledge, 1992), 1-40; and Louise M.
Newman, "CriticaTl heory and theH istory ofW omen: What's at Stake inD econstructingW omen's
History,"J ournalo fW omen'sH istory 2, no. 3 (1991):5 8-68. For a discussion specific to earlyC hris
tianity, see Elizabeth A. Castelli, "Heteroglossia,H ermeneutics, and History: A Review Essay of
Recent Feminist Studies of Early Christianity,"J ournal of Feminist Studies in Religion 10, no. 2
(1994): 73-98.
5
For example,D . R. MacDonald sayso f theA cts of Thecla, "The story reveals the perspec
tiveo f someone deeply resentfulo f them ale sex and highly sensitive to the difficulties of women....
If the contents of any earlyC hristian storys uggest that its tellersw ere women, it is thiso ne" (Legend
and theA postle, 36). See alsoD avies, Revolt of theW idows, 61, 63, 69, 106-9; andB urrus,C hastity
as Autonomy, 77.
6 For recognitiono f relevanceo f work to contemporary social and theological struggles, see
Burrus, Chastity asA utonomy, 118-19; D. R.M acDonald, Legend and theA postle, 100-103; and
Davies, Revolt of theW idows, 129.O f these three scholars,o nly Burrus has continued to engage
42 Journalo f Feminist Studies inR eligion
Backlash
In her work ChristianW omen and Mac
Early Pagan Opinion, Margaret
Donald has identified a common rhetorical insult used Christian
against
women in the second and third theirw ords andw ork were dismissed
century:
as to their This same rhetorical finds its into the
owing "hysteria."7 trope way
work of three twentieth-century scholars responding to the studies of Davies,
D. R. MacDonald, and Burrus. But, unlike the earlyp agan critics,w ho under
stood their attacks Christian women as rhetorical these
against arguments,
modem critics hurl their insults from their locationw ithin the scientistic
fortresso f value-neutralitya nd objectivity.8T hese three scholarsw, ho are dis
cussed in this section, set up a dichotomy between their own supposedly ob
jective, scientific, detached research and that of Thecla scholarsw hom they
dismiss as driven and/or irrationalS. uch a is
ideologically positioning exempli
fied Wilhelm Schneemelcher in his 1991 edition of New Testament
by Apoc
a standardr eferencew ork of the While that the
rypha, discipline. noting Apoc
ryphalA cts seem to reflect popular traditions,h e calls into the question the
usefulness of folklore studies to their elucidation. to thew ork
Speakingd irectly
of D. R. MacDonald and Burrus, he continues: "Abovea ll we must be very
cautious about combination of these folk-lore with the as
any hypotheses
of a liberatedw omen's movement in the Church of the 2nd
sumption century
as the Sitz imL eben for theA cts of Paul.O n a sober treatmento f the evidence,
of such a kind to be no more than the of
hypotheses appear largely products
modern without basis in the sources."9B ecause it is self-evident to
fancy, any
with feministm ethodologies inh er scholarship. In addition to her most recentw riting on Thecla,
which I discuss in this article, see "BegottenN, ot Made": ConceivingM anhood in Late Antiquity
(StanfordC, alif.: StanfordU niversity Press, 2000); and TheM aking of a Heretic:G ender,A uthority,
and theP riscillianistC ontroversy (Berkeleya ndL os Angeles: University of CaliforniaP ress, 1995).
7M argaret Y.M acDonald, Early ChristianW omen and Pagan Opinion: The Power of the
HystericalW oman (CambridgeC: ambridgeU niversity Press, 1996). See especiallyM acDonald's in
troduction (1-4), which includes thisq uotation fromO rigen'sA gainst Celsus 2.55 and 3.55: "Butw e
must examine thisq uestionw hether anyonew ho reallyd ied ever rose againw ith the sameb ody....
Butw ho saw this?A hysterical female, as you say,a nd perhaps some other one of thosew ho were de
ludedb y the same sorceryw, ho either dreamt in a certain stateo fm ind and throughw ishful thinking
had a hallucinationd ue to somem istaken notion (ane xperiencew hich has happened to thousands),
or,w hich ism ore likelyw, anted to impresso thers by telling this fantastic tale, and so by this cock
and-bull story top rovide a chance foro ther beggars."
8
I adopt the term scientistic fromE lisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza, who uses it "to signal the
positivistic ideologicalf rameworko fm uch thatp asses for 'science.'I nasmucha s scholarlya nd scien
tific inquirya nd discourse function to legitimateo verarchingk yriarchalo ppressions, invokinga false
value-neutralitya nd objectivity,t hey are effectivelyp ositivist or scientistic,n ot genuinely scientific."
See her Rhetoric and Ethic: The Politics of Biblical Studies (MinneapolisF: ortress, 1999), ix.
9
Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., New TestamentA pocrypha, English translatione dited by
1.M cL. Wilson (LouisvilleK, y.W: estminster/John Knox, 1991), 2:220-22 (emphasisa dded).
Matthews: of Thecla 43
Thinking
Schneemelcher that a "sober" treatment of the evidence no hint of
suggest
women's liberation,h e refutes the "modern fancy"o f Davies, D. R. MacDon
ald, and Burrus in them ost dismissivew ay possible. Rather than engagingw ith
any of their arguments,h e closes discussionw ith one sentence appended to the
citation of theirw ork thatm erely restates his previous assertion: "[U]nfortu
no evidence from the sources of the ... could be adduced for a
nately period
women's liberationm ovement' in the Church of the 2nd century" (2:236
n. 19).
Schneemelcher's insistence that such theories are not "sober"b ut "mod
em is echoed in an article written to the
fancy" by Lynne Boughton dispute
claims of D. R. MacDonald and Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza about the Acts
of Thecla. The title of Boughton's article, "From Pious Legend to Feminist
is indicativeo f her She dismisses as "feminist the
Fantasy," position.10 fantasy"
argument that the Thecla story indicates resistance to patriarchal order.
as an historian her confessional
Boughton's pose objective disguises only thinly
and to historical reconstruction.O ne of her main
apologetic approach objec
tions to the "fantasies"o fM acDonald and Schiissler Fiorenza is this: these two
scholars,b y privileging the Thecla document as an indicationo f early church
communities inw hich women's sacerdotal is are "ec
authority accepted, using
clesiastical such as 'church'o r 'canon'i n am anner different from
terminology
the those terms were used the first three Christian centuries"
way during
(370)W. hen Boughton says "in a manner different from thew ay those terms
were used during the first threeC hristian centuries,"h owever, shem eans the
those termsw ere used church leaders.T his
way exclusivelyb y proto-orthodox
is evident, for example,w hen she argues thatw omen leaders among theM on
tanistm ovement should not be cited as evidence for women in the
"early
church,"b ecause second-centuryb ishops of Rome explicitly stated thatM on
tanismw as outside the church (370).
Moreover, Boughton engages in the dubious methodological practice of
"unorthodox" readers for texts
faulting second-century having interpreted
This move occurs in her discussion of Tertullian'sf amed
wrongly. interpretive
reference to theA cts of Paul/Acts of Thecla in 17 of his Ter
chapter Baptism.
tullianw rites:
But if the writings which wrongly go under Paul's name, claim Thecla's
example as a license for women's teaching and baptizing, let them know
that, in Asia, the presbyter who composed that writing, as if he were
augmenting Paul's fame from his own store, after being convicted, and
10
Lynne C. Boughton, "From Pious Legend to Feminist Fantasy:D istinguishing Hagio
graphicalL icense fromA postolic Practice in theA cts of Paul/Actso f Thecla,"Journalo fR eligion 71,
no. 3 (1991):3 62-83. Boughton refersh ere to SchiisslerF iorenza's argument in InM emory ofH er,
173-75.
44 Journalo f Feminist Studies inR eligion
confessing that he had done it from love of Paul, was removed from his
office."
Here Tertullian those in the late second who
polemicizes against century
to theT hecla in order to claim authorizationf orw omen
pointed story apostolic
administeringb aptism and engaging in formal teaching.l2T hat is (asD avies,
D. R. MacDonald, Burrus, and others have pointed out), Tertullian provides
indication thatC hristians in the second century used the example of Thecla as
am eans of resisting an all-male sacerdotal institutionY. et, after acknowledging
that some Christians read the Thecla in this asserts
early story way, Boughton
that their are not valid. "Careful of the Thecla indi
readings reading episode
cates thatT hecla's involvement in teaching and in baptismw as very limited,"
she notes. Thecla baptizes no one but herself, and she is not a formal teacher
or spirituald irector of a church community.T herefore, according toB oughton,
readers the Thecla text to women's
second-century using legitimize religious
roles in a "distortiono f the and content of the
leadership engaged wording
text."13
In this interpretivem ove, Boughton's confessional agenda is again un
masked, for she delivers the accusation of careless and distorted readings
"unorthodox" readers. It is to note that
against only second-century tempting
if were to treat all Christian readers shew ould have to
Boughton early equally,
such across the board to all who addressed
apply judgments early interpreters
the issue of women's This would then lead to the Was the
authority. question,
Pauline and authoro f the Pastoral 1 and 2 and Titus
disciple Epistles, Timothy,
a "carefulr eader"o f the authentic letters of Paul? As modern have
exegetes
long pointed out, the Pastoral Epistles depart at several points from Pauline
their directives church
thinking, including concerningm arriage, organization,
andw omen's
leadership.14
But the prior question here isw hether it ism eaningful to subject any early
Christian reader to the of careless and distorted These
charge interpretation.
readers, unlike traditionalh istorical-criticale xegetes, had no concern for his
torical situation or authorial intent of texts. Elizabeth A. Clark has
carefully
documented how authors new from biblical texts
patristic produced meanings
' Tertullian,B aptism, inT heA nte-Nicene Fathers, ed.A lexanderR oberts and JamesD onald
son (GrandR apids,M I: Eerdmans, 1985), 3:677 (emphasisa dded).
12F or the view thatT ertullian's reference here is to some version of the Acts of Thecla, see
A. Hilhorst, "Tertulliano n theA cts of Paul," in TheA pocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla, ed. Jan
Bremmer (KampenN, etherlands: Kok Pharos, 1996), 150-63.
13
Boughton, "FromP ious Legend," 376-77.
14
See, for example, any standardN ew Testament introduction,s uch as BartD . Ehrman, The
New TestamentA: Historical Introductiont o theE arly ChristianW ritings, 2d ed. (NewY orkO: xford
University Press, 2000), 354-62.
Matthews: of Thecla 45
Thinking
to speak to their own practical and theological concerns.'5L ikewise, both the
Thecla and the author of the Pastorals what were for
community produced
them suitable readingso f Paul, that is, readings that edified their own religious
and social situations. a modem evaluate
Although interpreterm ight fruitfully
the of various Christian one cannot them on some
effects early readings, weigh
scale of Such a
objective interpretivea ccuracy. procedure wrongly presumes
the existence of a that a
singular originarym eaning subsequent interpreter
could
faithfullyp reserve.
Schneemelcher and Boughton are joined by another scholar,P eter Dunn,
who derides Davies, D. R. MacDonald, Burrus, and other like-minded inter
for an After indicationo fw omen's
preters, having agenda.16 arguinga gainst any
liberation in the ApocryphalA cts, Dunn concludes: '"Thed esire to relate the
API [Acts of Paul] and other AAA [ApocryphaAl cts of the Apostles] to con
cerns relevant to twentieth feminism leads the authors to their con
century
sensus.T his is also the bane of the consensus, since the authors impose on the
text feminist The documents need to be researchedo n
contemporary thinking.
their own terms,w ithout the unwarranted impositiono f contemporary ideol
ogy" (258).D unn's critique of thisw ork is coupledw ith his own readingo f The
cla and the Pastorals, in which he argues that early Christians embraced
not as a means of but as a to seek
chastity primarily resisting patriarchy way
freedom from the in He Chris
present age general. immediatelyq ualifies early
tian freedom as having included freedom from the "snareo f female sexuality,"
feminine allure as at least as troublesome for Christians
therebyp egging early
asm ale domination.1O7 ne could argue, of course, that such a conclusion,w ith
its and focus on female revealsm uch about the
peculiar derogatory sexuality,
commitments of this critic.
ideological supposedly objective
To be sure, both Boughton andD unn (unlikeS chneemelcher) do at least
engagew ith thew omen-centered work of Davies, D. R. MacDonald, Burrus,
and others, occasionally raisingv alid arguments and pushing legitimately for
more careful considerationo f the ancient texts at the base of this earlierw ork.
15E lizabeth A. Clark,R eading Renunciation:A sceticism and Scripture inE arly Christianity
(PrincetonN, .J.: PrincetonU niversityP ress, 1999). Inh er introduction( 1-13) Clark elaboratesh ow
Derrida's notion of supplementaritya nd Foucault's analysiso f commentary informh er own under
standingo f patristic readingp ractices. Inv iew of the divergent uses tow hich the authentic letterso f
Paul are put in theA cts of Thecla and the Pastoral Epistles, Clark'sc hapter on how ascetically in
clined fathers appropriated the Pastorals to support their ascetic agenda (330-70) is particularly
fascinating.
16P eterW . Dunn, "Women'sL iberation, theA cts of Paul, andO ther ApocryphalA cts of the
Apostles,"A pocrypha 4 (1993):2 45-61.
17
Ibid., 258: "Thec hasteC hristian sought freedomn ot only fromm ale-dominated structures,
but from the present age in general,w hich includes the snareo f female sexuality,a s the chaste lion
demonstrates by fleeing the lioness in theA Pl's Ephesian episode."
46 Journalo f Feminist Studies inR eligion
I do not mean to that thew omen-centered work of the 1980s is
suggest beyond
critique or should not be refined. But Schneemelcher, Boughton, and Dunn,
even in the context of the 1990s and even in them ainstream and ref
journals
erencew orks of the all the of
profession, employ interpretives trategy positing
their own research into thew orld of as
scholarly earlyC hristianity objective,
scientific, and agenda-free.A ll three remain convinced-not coincidentally, I
would it is the nature of the data that leads them to con
argue-that merely
clude that (1) therew as no legitimate resistanceb y earlyC hristianw omen to
the structures to in the second and
patriarchal beginning solidify century
(2)w omen could not be legitimate agents and authorso f earlyC hristian liter
ature. It is also, ostensibly,o nly the resultso f their objective, scientific research
that drive them to dismissive name-callingw hen they approach the work of
scholarsw ho have to reconstructw omen as and authors in
attempted agents
history.S chneemelcher, Boughton, andD unn call us to return to our senses, to
embrace "soberness"a nd "science," "objectivity"a nd "orthodoxy,w"h ile flee
from and "feminist
ing "fantasy,"" fancy," ideology."
Erasure?
The responses of Schneemelcher,B oughton, andD unn toT hecla scholar
of the 1980s are antifeminist. Im ove now to a second
ship unambiguously type
of response that ism uch more textureda nd interestingb ut that stillh as, inm y
view, potentially troublinge ffects for the project of feminist historiography.I
consider here historical influenced structuralista nd
scholarship by poststruc
turalist thought. In thew ork discussed in this section, the focus shifts from re
trieving "reawl omen," their historical "experiences,"a nd their "agency,"t o is
sues of textual The Thecla text here is studied not for of
representation. signs
aw omen's communityn or for signso fw omen's resistance,b ut forw hat this fic
tional female heroine about the and of the text's
suggests struggles ideology
male author.l8
This is elaboratedm ost in thew ork of Kate tow hich
reading fully Cooper,
I shall soon attend, but itw as intimated earlier in thew ork of Peter Brown,
which as her own. In his
Cooper acknowledges influencing magisterialw riting
on earlyC hristian asceticism, The Body and Society, Brownm akes passing ref
erence to theA pocryphalA cts, cautioning againsta ttempts to adduce anything
about the lives of actualh istoricalw omen on the basis of theA cts' female
pro
18
For discussion of both the benefits of and the dilemmasp osed by poststructuralismf or fem
inisth istoriography,s ee Elizabeth A. Clark, "TheL adyV anishes:D ilemmas of a Feminist Historian
after the 'LinguistiTc urn,'"C hurchH istory 67, no. 1 (1998):1 -31. See alsoh er earlier essay "Ideol
ogy, History, and the Construction of 'Woman' in Late Ancient Christianity,"J ournal of Early
Christian Studies 2 (1994):1 55-84.
Matthews: of Thecla 47
Thinking
tagonists.F or Brown, these fictionalw omen arem ore appropriatelys poken of
as in a coded
signs complexly imaginativee conomy:
Continenwt omen play a centralr ole in theA pocryphaAl cts.Y et these
narratives should not be read as evidence for the actual role of women
in Christianity. Rather, they reflect the manner in which Christian
males of that in the of all
period partook deeply ingrained tendency
men in the ancient world, to use women "to think with." There is no
doubt that women an role in the econ
played important imaginative
omy of theC hurch.T heir presence condensedt he deep preoccupa
tions of male Christians with their own relations with the "world,"w ith
the ever present reality of a tainted and seductive pagan society that
pressed up against the doors of their houses and abutted the closed
of theirn ew this Christian
spaces meeting places.T hroughout period,
men used women "to think with" in order to verbalize their own
nag
concern with the stance that the Church should take to the
ging
world.1'
This invitationo f Brown to read thew omen characters in the
Apocryphal
Acts as or in conversations thatm en are is taken
metaphors signs having up by
Kate in a series of in her 1996 The
Cooper writings culminating monograph
and the Bride.20 In these that
Virgin writings Cooper argues compellingly
women characters inG reek and Latin function as rhetorical
prose frequently
markers of the charactero f them en underw hose control stand.A s
they signs
of men's character,s he argues,w omen protagonists in fictionw ere particularly
well-suited rhetoricalv ehicles for or the sacrosanct
supporting undermining
Greco-Roman institutionso f the and the in
marriage, family, city. Speaking
general aboutG reco-Roman literature,C ooper notes that utilizing the rheto
ric of influencem ade it for an author to dismiss his
womanly possible oppo
nent:
To characterize the nature of womanly influence in a man's private life,
and his response to it,w as to admit or disallow him as a speaker in ra
tional discourse. Merely by invoking either figure of the topos, the lu
19
Peter Brown, The Body and Society:M en, Women, and SexualR enunciation inE arly Chris
tianity (NewY ork:C olumbia University Press, 1988), 153. Note the similara ssessment of women
protagonists in earlyC hristian literatureb y Averil Cameron in her essay "Virginitya sM etaphor:
Women and theR hetoric of EarlyC hristianity,"i nH istory as Text:T heW riting of Ancient History,
ed. AverilC ameron (ChapelH ill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 181-205, esp. 191.
20S ee the following sources,a llw ritten byK ate Cooper: "ApostlesA, sceticW omen, andQ ues
tions of Audience: New Reflections on theR hetoric of Gender in theA pocryphalA cts," Society of
Biblical Literature SeminarP apers, no. 31 (AtlantaS: cholarsP ress, 1992), 147-53; "Insinuationso f
Womanly Influence:A n Aspect of theC hristianizationo f theR oman Aristocracy,"Journaol fR oman
Studies 82 (1992): 150-64; and TheV irgin and the Bride: IdealizedW omanhood inL ate Antiquity
(CambridgeH: arvardU niversity Press, 1996).