Did Jesus call women into discipleship in the same way Jesus called men?
Or did women simply start following Jesus of their own accord, with no formal call?
Can we say, for instance, that Mary of Bethany was actually a disciple, or was she simply acting like a disciple when she sat at Jesus’s feet?
In the same way, was Mary of Magdala only acting like an apostle to the apostles, as she is sometimes called, or was she actually sent by Jesus as an apostle?
Three years ago, as I sat down to read the Gospel of John in Greek, I didn’t know what to expect. I just knew that I had always loved this Gospel, and the Greek employed in all of John’s works is at a level I could read.
But as I read, the seeds of understanding about Jesus and women began to grow. I found myself often mulling over the words themselves, and the way they are phrased. I also found myself reading as a Bible student, taking note of the way the writer had arranged his material. As you can see here, there is a clear calling narrative in the first chapter, where Jesus gathered five men to become his first disciples.
Then, I saw this same pattern happening in chapter 4, which is about the Samaritan woman who meets Jesus by a well outside of her hometown.
To my surprise, I saw this same pattern emerge at the end of John’s Gospel, with Jesus meeting Mary of Magdala alone in the garden, by his tomb.
As I thought about that, I realized there are actually five women who act as disciples in John’s Gospel, balancing the five men. Though I have not looked for this calling pattern with the other three women – Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary of Bethany and Martha of Bethany – it seems as though John must have done that on purpose. Five and five, with the longer disciple stories actually being about the women.
Here begins my odyssey, trying to piece together a story John has been asking us to see for two thousand years.
There is added upon information on these women and their relationship with Christ. My understanding is Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany are one and the same person and She was Married to Christ. Reference: Eyes Wide Open by Julie Barnett pp 230-233 also The Gospel of The Beloved Companion, the complete gospel of Mary Magdalene by Jeanne De Quillan where it put more of the relationships together. I invite you to check them out. Thank you for sharing your study also Joanne
Pamee 🤗
Thank you for your citations, I appreciate that. I take a more conservative approach with my sources, staying with the Bible as best I can.
You are right in hearing that Mary of Bethany and Mary of Magdala have been, in the past, interchanged as the same person. I keep them as separate based on the Gospel of John’s and the Gospel of Luke’s accounts.
Thank you for taking time to write in. Grace and peace to you, Joanne
Hi Joanne, l’ll definitely be checking out the YouTube video later which you connected to this post. An initial thought I have (and forgive me if you already discussed this) but the terms “disciple” and “apostle” are two different roles. The way I see it, according to Jesus, is that anyone can be a disciple should they choose to give up everything and follow Him. So of course women are included in this. My initial thought about women as apostles would be that there were 12 apostles Jesus chose out of many of His disciples/followers. He stayed in prayer all night before He called them. After Judas deceived & died, the apostles chose Matias to take Judas’s spot as the 12th apostle. However, I believe Paul is also considered an apostle and I’m not sure who else in Acts were formally considered “apostles.” In effect, I don’t see where women can wear the term “apostle” but certainly a disciple and even a deaconess. I would love to hear your thoughts on this… or if anyone else wants to chime in. I’m all about having discussions! 🙂
Thank you both for your thoughts and your question.
In the third video I do talk about the 12 apostles–in fact, that is itself a whole conversation, that Jesus knowingly chose and appointed Judas as an apostle in training, gave him the extra responsibility of being the treasurer with all their money (held in a common purse), and endowed him with the power to cast out demons and heal as well as evangelize unsupervised, knowing Judas would betray him -and- knowing Judas was embezzling the whole time. It gives one pause.
But that’s an aside. There is one named woman apostle in Romans 15, Junia, lauded by at least one early church father as a woman apostle, but a thousand years later dismissed as a typo for a man’s name.
Mary of Magdala was named an apostle to the apostles also by an early church father.
Both women and men today are called to apostolic mission, which is how I usually phrase it in the rest of the videos, differentiating between those called The Twelve in the Gospels, and others who have since answered Jesus’s call to apostleship, or apostolic mission, small case “a.”
There are some commentators who feel Peter made a mistake in wanting to immediately fill Judas’s empty spot. They basically give three reasons. (1) Jesus told them to wait. Peter instead acted. (2) they drew lots, which was Biblical in a way. There’s a Proverb about God guiding the draw, but never again do the believers resort to that after they receive the indwelling Spirit. After that, they prayed. (3) Paul refers to himself as the last apostle, if weirdly born. For some commentators, that signals Paul pointing to himself as the 12th. (4) There is a fourth, if weaker reason, that we never hear of Matthias again.
Anyway, thank you, I appreciate you writing. Grace and peace to you, Joanne
There’s definitely a lot to unpack here. I’ve heard the perspective that Paul should’ve been the official 12th apostle and I think it aligns for sure.
I have a lot of thoughts of women in ministry and their scope of what biblically is ideal in what capacity they serve, teach, etc.
Like I said, I have tons of thoughts on this and I’ll share one with you: I don’t believe it’s a woman’s place to pastor a church, however, I am disappointed (in my general church experience) that there have not been more women invited to share their testimony or words of wisdom/encouragement with the congregation. I think that the typical church congregation is more than 50% women and in many cases contains substantially more than 50% women, and yet, it’s still as though they’re not allowed to even share from the pulpit. I do wonder what others think because I don’t hear this talked about.
Yes, there -is- a lot to unpack! I’ve been studying this issue for at least 12 years, if not longer, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the evidence is strong for women pastoring churches in the first three centuries of the church. If we were to return to the ways of the early church, then whoever was the head of household (which was sometimes a woman) would host a church in their home and officiate over the “love feasts” which included the Lord’s Supper.
In the Christian Testament, women were disciples, ministering right alongside Jesus and traveling with him. Women taught, prophesied, and led. There was a very popular extra-biblical book written in the 2nd century called the adventures of Thecla and Paul that described a woman who was discipled Paul. The popularity of the book shows how deeply involved women were at every level of the early church. In fact, that was one of the complaints concerning the church in those early centuries, that it was run by women and enslaved people, considered the lowest of the low.
Part of the work I have been doing is studying the women of the Bible and writing their stories with the research I’ve done. If we want to be absolutely biblically accurate, then we need to take a close look at how the Lord considered women in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Testament. It’s a bit mind-blowing, for me, anyway.
Thanks, Joanne. I’d love to hear more about the women pastoring in the earlier church. Breaking down semantics for certain terms would help (e.g. host, pastor, deacon, teacher, elder, officiants, etc.)
And so you know, I just joined WordPress and this world of blogging a few days ago. My main objective is to actually have some intentional discourse regarding all kinds of topics that I find interesting. I love hearing other viewpoints and discussing them. What is the 2-4th century book you refer to?
Am glad you’re here on this site, engaging with me and with this work, thank you.
The book is called the “Acts of Paul and Thecla”* and describes a woman preaching the Gospel, baptizing herself, dressing in men’s clothes, teaching, working miracles, and acting as an apostle. The account can’t be trusted as a “real” story, but the fact that it was so popular is compelling. Even as women were active leaders throughout the churches in the first few centuries of the church, there was a growing movement among men to remove women from leadership. They succeeded. The author of “Crispina and Her Sisters,” which I talk about in my books section, researched many inscriptions and papyri unearthed in the 19th and 20th centuries, and tells the story those ancient writings reveal.
*There are a number of links, and all of them somewhat biased. Here’s one link https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Acts_of_Paul_and_Thecla, though am sure you can find many more.