Synopses & Reviews
In ancient Roman law "you were what you wore." This legal principle became highly significant because, beginning in the first century A.D., a new kind of woman emerged across the Roman empire -- a woman whose provocative dress and sometimes promiscuous lifestyle contrasted starkly with the decorum of the traditional married woman. What a woman chose to wear came to identify her as either new or modest. Augustus legislated against the new woman. Philosophical schools encouraged their followers to avoid embracing her way of life. And, as this fascinating book demonstrates for the first time, the presence of the new woman was also felt in the early church, where Paul exhorted Christian wives and widows to emulate neither her dress code nor her conduct.Using his extensive knowledge both of the Graeco-Roman world and of Paul's writings, Bruce Winter shows how changing social mores among women impacted the Pauline communities. This helps to explain the controversial texts on marriage veils in 1 Corinthians,,instructions in 1 Timothy regarding dress code and the activities of young widows, and exhortations in Titus for older women to call new wives back to their senses regarding their marriage and family responsibilities. Based on a close investigation of neglected literary and archaeological evidence, "Roman Wives, Roman Widows" makes groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of first-century women, including their participation in public life as lawyers, magistrates, and political figures, which in turn affected women's ministry in the Pauline communities.
Synopsis
During the late Republic and early Empire, the new woman' made her appearance. This was a wife or widow of means who took part in life outside the walls of her house, including wider society, business and extra-marital affairs. Winter's specialised study investigates the reasons for this social change, asking what conditions had emerged that allowed women to have affairs with immunity and divorce their husbands, reclaiming their dowries. Initially Winter searches for evidence of the new woman' in the literature of the period, notably in the works of Catullus and Ovid, before examining in detail the place of women and marriage in law, the Roman ideal of the perfect wife, and the role of the Christian church in bringing wives back into the fold of their families and respectability .
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: The search for a setting -- Part 1: Chapter 2: The appearance of new wives -- Chapter 3: New wives and new legislation -- Chapter 4: New wives and philosophical responses -- Part 2: Chapter 5: The appearance of unveiled wives in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 -- Chapter 6: Deciphering the married woman's appearance, 1 Timothy 2:9-15 -- Chapter 7: The appearance of young widows, 1 Timothy 5:11-15 -- Chapter 8: The appearance of young wives, Titus 2:3-5 -- Chapter 9: The appearance of women in the public sphere.