<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Women, Wealth and Conversion
Review: The most recent addition to the Contraversions: Jews and Other Differences series and a revision of the author's Harvard Divinity School dissertation, this volume focuses on two apologetic first-century texts-Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews and the New Testament book of Acts-to explore the rhetoric and reality of "women's involvement in missionary religions of antiquity" (5). Anyone wishing to find the evidence for women's missionary activities in antiquity, however, will be disappointed, for the primary concern here is not with women's active roles in conversions but rather their representation in highly rhetorical apologetic and propagandistic texts, and how this representation affects reading these texts for historical reconstruction. Indeed, the value of this slim volume lies in Matthews's efforts to engage with both rhetorical representations and historical reconstruction.The first two chapters set Josephus's Antiquities (with special attention on a passage in 18.65-84) against and alongside Roman apologetics more generally. Matthews argues in these chapters that Josephus "exploits a common Roman topos linking chastity of married women with proper practice of religion, on the one hand, and sexual violation with foreign religions practice, on the other" (21) in his treatment of the role of Fulvia; yet she also claims that such representations of women may have some basis in reality. Her second chapter catalogues more broadly the appearance of elite women in Josephus's Antiquities (for example, Livia, Antonia, Agrippina) to illustrate that these "noblewomen" are presented in a positive light and in "stark contrast" to Josephus's denigration or dismissal of Hasmonean, Herodian, and biblical women (41). Throughout this chapter, Matthews brings together the rhetoric and reality by attending to women's roles as patrons and benefactors. The two chapters on Acts-focusing on "God-fearing noblewomen" and Acts 16-parallel the chapters on Josephus and reassert the rhetorical function of praising elite women to legitimate a religious movement and address the roles of women vis-a-vis the transition of the early Christian movement from its Jewish roots to a predominantly Gentile religion. Much of the volume raises more questions than it can possibly answer in a mere one hundred pages of text. Nowhere, for example, is the notion of class-itself highly problematic and much debated-treated in any depth, nor is some of the basic literature on the topic (for example, G. E. M. de Ste. Croix) cited. Yet for Matthews's move from rhetoric to reality, such status indicators are critical. One wishes too for more attention to the range of literature on patronage in antiquity or early Christianity (for example, by Elizabeth Clark) as well as some engagement with the rhetoric-reality problem in representations of, for example, heretical women (for example, Virginia Burrus). Such wishes on the part of this reader, however, do not detract from the provocative nature of the volume as a whole. While specialists in the fields of women and religion in antiquity, in Josephus, or in Luke-Acts will no doubt take issue with some of Matthews's arguments, the contribution that this volume makes to ongoing theoretical, methodological, and practical debates about how we read ancient texts is important. Kim Haines-Eitzen
Cornell University
<< 1 >>
| 
