- 864-569-3974
Shelly Matthews
Texas Christian University, Brite Divinity School at TCU, Faculty Member
- Shelly Matthews is Professor of New Testament at Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian Universityedit
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Wire's Corinthian Women Prophets has made possible a significant turn in the way we imagine the in-Christ assemblies of ancient Corinth, and by analogy, of all such assemblies scattered across the cities of the ancient Mediterranean... more
Wire's Corinthian Women Prophets has made possible a significant turn in the way we imagine the in-Christ assemblies of ancient Corinth, and by analogy, of all such assemblies scattered across the cities of the ancient Mediterranean world. This essay aims to honor Wire's contribution first by highlighting argumentative strands of her scholarship that are particularly salient-even if not fully understood and sometimes misread in its reception over the past thirty years. Second, it then offers an analysis of two major strands of her argument that bear reclaiming and repeating, in view of the resistance to them in mainstream scholarship: first, the proposal that ancient women in the Corinthian assembly had agency and voice, and second, the argument that these women were inspired by egalitarian ideals to struggle against hierarchies that privileged one social grouping over another. Finally, I reflect on shifts in scholarly discourse that have required reframing the historical situation in Corinth. Here I note that scholarship over the past thirty years especially in the fields of gender criticism, queer theory, and intersectional theory has expanded and complicated women as a category. Thus, I propose that it may be more apt to characterize the social agents of interest to us as the Corinthian wo/ men prophets, with the slash indicating an expanded notion of the kinds of persons included under the sign, across a fluid gender continuum, marked by race and class as well as gender. 1 1.The neologisms wo/man and wo/men were coined by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (1999, ix) for the purpose of expanding and complicating the multiplicity of persons included under the sign, including nondominant men, and women whose identities are informed by intersections of class, race, sexuality, citizenship, and other identifying markers.
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This paper subjects the Lukan Jesus's prayer for Peter, along with other Lukan passages concerning Satan and the demonic, to a gender analysis. It shows the importance for Luke of staging the encounter with Satan and demons as a... more
This paper subjects the Lukan Jesus's prayer for Peter, along with other Lukan passages concerning Satan and the demonic, to a gender analysis. It shows the importance for Luke of staging the encounter with Satan and demons as a battle requiring a virile army, and thus an androcentric and exclusive army. It thus concludes that Jesus's prayer for Peter can be fully appreciated only if one recognizes the virile commission to "strengthen the brothers" that follows in its wake.
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In this article, I argue that references to the fleshly resurrection of Jesus in Luke and Acts, both those that tell of Jesus eating with his apostles and those that assert that Jesus’s flesh was “incorruptible” (Luke 24:36–53, Acts 1:4,... more
In this article, I argue that references to the fleshly resurrection of Jesus in Luke and Acts, both those that tell of Jesus eating with his apostles and those that assert that Jesus’s flesh was “incorruptible” (Luke 24:36–53, Acts 1:4, 2:31, 10:40–41, 13:37), share thematic continuity and are best understood as stemming from Luke’s concern for the exclusive authority of the twelve apostles. I assume that Luke has access not only to oral and written resurrection narratives but also to a collection of the Pauline Epistles and that Luke frames Lukan narrative as the result of the scriptural practices of one second-century textual community, among others. In mapping both divergences and convergences between Lukan understandings of resurrection and views often attributed to Marcionites and/or so-called docetists, I challenge the view that Luke’s assertions of fleshly resurrection represent (proto)orthodoxy’s incipient battle with heresy over the nature of the resurrection of Jesus.
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Three women in Josephus'sAntiquitiesare well known for their purported devotion to Jewish religious practices: Poppaea Sabina, the consort/wife of the emperor Nero, whom Josephus describes as “God-fearing” (θɛοσɛβής); Fulvia, a Roman... more
Three women in Josephus'sAntiquitiesare well known for their purported devotion to Jewish religious practices: Poppaea Sabina, the consort/wife of the emperor Nero, whom Josephus describes as “God-fearing” (θɛοσɛβής); Fulvia, a Roman convert of consular rank whom he pegs as the source of the expulsion of Jews from Rome under Tiberius; and Helena, Queen of Adiabene, also a convert to Judaism. In this article, I show that the stories of these three Gentile noble women, who share an interest in Jewish religious practices, are part of a larger narrative pattern in theAntiquitiesthat repeatedly characterizes Gentile women of high standing as saviors and benefactors of the Jewish people. According to Josephus, imperial women intercede on behalf of Jewish aristocrats before every Julio-Claudian emperor, often with ramifications for the entire Jewish people. He also claims that Domitia, the wife of the emperor Domitian, was one of his own patrons. Patronage on behalf of the Jewish community is integral to the stories of both Fulvia and Queen Helena of Adiabene. Furthermore, the salvific acts of foreign noblewomen feature prominently in Josephus's retelling of the story of Moses early in theAntiquities.
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Copyright © 2005 by T & T Clark International All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including... more
Copyright © 2005 by T & T Clark International All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopy-ing, recording, or otherwise, without the ...
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This paper subjects the Lukan Jesus's prayer for Peter, along with other Lukan passages concerning Satan and the demonic, to a gender analysis. It shows the importance for Luke of staging the encounter with Satan and demons as a... more
This paper subjects the Lukan Jesus's prayer for Peter, along with other Lukan passages concerning Satan and the demonic, to a gender analysis. It shows the importance for Luke of staging the encounter with Satan and demons as a battle requiring a virile army, and thus an androcentric and exclusive army. It thus concludes that Jesus's prayer for Peter can be fully appreciated only if one recognizes the virile commission to "strengthen the brothers" that follows in its wake.
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order by opting for ascetic Christianity is a common motif in the Apocryphal Acts of the second and third centuries C.E. The crystallization of resistance in female form is particularly stark in the Acts of Thecla, where even the female... more
order by opting for ascetic Christianity is a common motif in the Apocryphal Acts of the second and third centuries C.E. The crystallization of resistance in female form is particularly stark in the Acts of Thecla, where even the female lion in the arena sides with the ascetic and against the city, reverencing Thecla rather than devouring her. As stories of women's resistance in the early cen turies of Christianity, the Apocryphal Acts in general and the Thecla text in particular provide vehicles for illustrating some of the contentions among fem inist and other historians of women and gender in the discipline of early Chris tian studies. In this article I discuss three "women-centered" monographs on
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Three women in Josephus's Antiquities are well known for their purported devotion to Jewish religious practices: Poppaea Sabina, the consort/wife of the emperor Nero, whom Josephus describes as “God-fearing” (θɛοσɛβής); Fulvia, a... more
Three women in Josephus's Antiquities are well known for their purported devotion to Jewish religious practices: Poppaea Sabina, the consort/wife of the emperor Nero, whom Josephus describes as “God-fearing” (θɛοσɛβής); Fulvia, a Roman convert of consular rank whom he pegs as the source of the expulsion of Jews from Rome under Tiberius; and Helena, Queen of Adiabene, also a convert to Judaism. In this article, I show that the stories of these three Gentile noble women, who share an interest in Jewish religious practices, are part of a larger narrative pattern in the Antiquities that repeatedly characterizes Gentile women of high standing as saviors and benefactors of the Jewish people. According to Josephus, imperial women intercede on behalf of Jewish aristocrats before every Julio-Claudian emperor, often with ramifications for the entire Jewish people. He also claims that Domitia, the wife of the emperor Domitian, was one of his own patrons. Patronage on behalf of the Jewish c...
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In this article, I argue that references to the fleshly resurrection of Jesus in Luke and Acts, both those that tell of Jesus eating with his apostles and those that assert that Jesus’s flesh was “incorruptible” (Luke 24:36–53, Acts 1:4,... more
In this article, I argue that references to the fleshly resurrection of Jesus in Luke and Acts, both those that tell of Jesus eating with his apostles and those that assert that Jesus’s flesh was “incorruptible” (Luke 24:36–53, Acts 1:4, 2:31, 10:40–41, 13:37), share thematic continuity and are best understood as stemming from Luke’s concern for the exclusive authority of the twelve apostles. I assume that Luke has access not only to oral and written resurrection narratives but also to a collection of the Pauline Epistles and that Luke frames Lukan narrative as the result of the scriptural practices of one second-century textual community, among others. In mapping both divergences and convergences between Lukan understandings of resurrection and views often attributed to Marcionites and/or so-called docetists, I challenge the view that Luke’s assertions of fleshly resurrection represent (proto)orthodoxy’s incipient battle with heresy over the nature of the resurrection of Jesus.
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Copyright © 2005 by T & T Clark International All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopy-ing,... more
Copyright © 2005 by T & T Clark International All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopy-ing, recording, or otherwise, without the ...
Research Interests: History and Old Testament
Copyright © 2005 by T & T Clark International All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopy-ing,... more
Copyright © 2005 by T & T Clark International All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopy-ing, recording, or otherwise, without the ...
Research Interests: History and Old Testament
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Dieser Artikel spürt den methodologischen Problemen jener neutestamentlichen Forschung nach, die darauf besteht, dass sich in Korinther 11,2–11 und Galater 3,28 keine Gleichberechtigungskämpfe der frühen Christusgläubigen spiegeln. Es... more
Dieser Artikel spürt den methodologischen Problemen jener neutestamentlichen Forschung nach, die darauf besteht, dass sich in Korinther 11,2–11 und Galater 3,28 keine Gleichberechtigungskämpfe der frühen Christusgläubigen spiegeln. Es wird aufgezeigt, dass die antike androzentrische Ideologie, die sich in diesen Texten äußert, nicht als eine allgemeingültige verstanden werden sollte, sondern dass es plausibel ist, die Geschichte der korinthischen Prophetinnen als eine Geschichte des Widerstands gegen diese antike Ideologie zu verstehen. Insofern unbedeckte Häupter von Frauen mit geschorenen oder sehr kurz geschnittenen Haaren verglichen werden, untergräbt die Praxis des Entschleierns nicht nur eine Gendernorm, sondern ebenso Normen, die mit den Kategorien von Status, Klasse und womöglich Ethnizität zusammenhängen. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------While feminist approaches to reconstructing the history of ...
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This paper subjects the Lukan Jesus's prayer for Peter, along with other Lukan passages concerning Satan and the demonic, to a gender analysis. It shows the importance for Luke of staging the encounter with Satan and demons as a battle... more
This paper subjects the Lukan Jesus's prayer for Peter, along with other Lukan passages concerning Satan and the demonic, to a gender analysis. It shows the importance for Luke of staging the encounter with Satan and demons as a battle requiring a virile army, and thus an androcentric and exclusive army. It thus concludes that Jesus's prayer for Peter can be fully appreciated only if one recognizes the virile commission to "strengthen the brothers" that follows in its wake.
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Taking a cue from the African American Theologian James Cone, who argues that contemplating the crucifixion of Jesus makes possible a fuller understanding of Christian identity, white supremacist violence, and the legacy of slavery in the... more
Taking a cue from the African American Theologian James Cone, who argues that contemplating the crucifixion of Jesus makes possible a fuller understanding of Christian identity, white supremacist violence, and the legacy of slavery in the contemporary U.S. context; I argue that the inverse relationship also holds: scholars of the ancient Roman Empire might consider modern lynching practices, as a means to understand more fully the workings of ancient crucifixion. This paper focus on the speech of the Good Thief from the cross in Luke, who states that while Jesus has been crucified unjustly, his own crucifixion is just and meritorious. It searches for analogues in ancient literature for this understanding that crucifixion is an appropriate punishment in certain cases, and asks why biblical scholars as a whole have never been troubled by this Lukan framing of ancient Roman torture.