Becoming Men, Staying Women: Gender Ambivalence in Christian Apocryphal Texts and Contexts
The motif of women becoming men, taking on manly characteristics, or being made male appears in several Christian Apocryphal texts. This essay investigates the reasons behind this motif in terms of the cultural context without evaluating whether the attitude towards women which this particular motif...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Sage
2010
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| In: |
Feminist theology
Year: 2010, Volume: 18, Issue: 3, Pages: 341-355 |
| Further subjects: | B
gender-ambivalence
B Early Christianity B Apocrypha B Late Antiquity |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Electronic
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| Summary: | The motif of women becoming men, taking on manly characteristics, or being made male appears in several Christian Apocryphal texts. This essay investigates the reasons behind this motif in terms of the cultural context without evaluating whether the attitude towards women which this particular motif might be understood to reflect demonstrates that Christian communities were more or less misogynistic than the rest of society. The ‘becoming male motif can reasonably be expected, because of its oddity relative to modern views of gender and its distinctly late-antique roots, to help to reveal the relevant social and cultural assumptions about the relationship between gender and spiritual authority which lie behind its appearance in Apocryphal texts. These assumptions in turn explain why the motif is one of ambivalence rather than equality or neutralization. |
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| ISSN: | 1745-5189 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Feminist theology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1177/0966735009360432 |