image: While once essential agents in early Christian communities, in centuries to come women hosts were forgotten. Kaisa-Maria Pihlava, Th.D., sets out to trace literary representations of women hosts in early Christian sources. She also discusses what we know of early Christian communities, women property owners, and heads of households in antiquity. She argues that women hosts had authority in their early Christian communities because of the domestic setting of these communities and the authority that hosts had irrespective of their gender. The authority that women hosts gained was not countercultural. Instead, socioeconomic hierarchy resulted in the authority positions of women hosts of early Christian gatherings. In Pihlava's study, women hosts are written into the narratives of early Christian beginnings. view more
Credit: Kaisa-Maria Pihlava. Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society 113
Women who provided spaces in which early Christian communities could congregate were already being ignored in contemporary writings. In addition, centuries of Christian tradition have overlooked their contribution.
However, according to the book Forgotten Women Leaders by DTh Kaisa-Maria Pihlava, a scholar of early Christianity, offering spaces where the communities could congregate and accepting certain teachers for the gatherings in their homes meant that these women had a practical impact on the evolution of early Christianity.
Women were also authority figures for the members of these congregations.
"Nevertheless, these women received little mention in early Christian writing, as the authors focused on the prominent male leaders and their teachings. This phenomenon has repeated in later research into early Christianity," states Pihlava.
There are many reasons for this.
"Typically, men have written texts like these from a male perspective for a male audience. The social environment or forms of congregation that shaped and developed early Christianity have been thought of as secular and secondary to the 'pure doctrine'," says Pihlava.
Published by the Finnish Exegetical Society, the new book focuses on the ways women were portrayed in early Christian texts. A particular focus of the book is the status of women as authorities which was based on their position as the heads of their households and the economic benefactors of their communities.
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