RT Article
T1 Becoming Men, Staying Women: Gender Ambivalence in Christian Apocryphal Texts and Contexts
JF Feminist theology
VO 18
IS 3
SP 341
OP 355
A1 Stefaniw, Blossom 1977-
LA English
PB Sage
YR 2010
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1776894987
AB 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.
K1 Late Antiquity
K1 gender-ambivalence
K1 Early Christianity
K1 Apocrypha
DO 10.1177/0966735009360432