Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 31:2 (Spring 2017)
Article: Dismantling Socio-Sacred Hierarchy: Gender And Gentiles In Luke-Acts
Author: Moyra Dale

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PP 31:2 (Spring 2017) p. 19

Dismantling Socio-Sacred Hierarchy:
Gender And Gentiles In Luke-Acts

Moyra Dale

Moyra Dale has worked in education and ethnography in the Middle East for over two decades. Now based in Melbourne, Australia, she teaches, trains, and supervises students in the fields of cultural anthropology and Islam. She holds a Doctor of Theology from Melbourne School of Theology as well as a PhD in education from La Trobe University.

The Question

Without question, women are more prominent in Luke’s writings than in any of the other three Gospel writers. The interpretation of their presence, however, is contested. In recent years, significant attention has been given to the role the women play in the narratives of Luke and Acts. The silence of their voices after the first few chapters of Luke makes one commentator label it, “an extremely dangerous text, perhaps the most dangerous in the Bible.”1 Can we read Luke as promoting the participation of women in the newly inaugurated Christian community? Or are women present but, after the Gospel prologue, relegated increasingly to silent supportive roles through the rest of Luke’s Gospel and Acts? While Mary sings solo, must Priscilla and others be drowned out by a male choir?

Luke’s Gospel bursts into action with God-obedient, Spirit- filled women, exuberantly prophesying the coming of God’s Anointed One.2 With the other Gospel writers, he records those women who come to Jesus, and the presence of women around Jesus during the passion narrative, and as crucial (even if not credited) witnesses to the resurrection.3 In Luke and Acts, women continue to receive considerable space in the text. One prominent occupier of this space is Luke’s male-female pairs.

But what role do the women play in Luke’s narrative? After the first chapter, as the kingdom of God is inaugurated and unfolds through the pages of the Gospel and Acts, are the women confined to traditional roles of prayer and service? Do the male-female pairs disappear in Acts, where the central place is taken by male preachers and apostles while women’s voices are silenced? Does Luke show women in the early Jesus community involved in roles that stand in contrast to the surrounding society? Or does Luke’s account suppress leadership roles of women to those commonly assumed by women within Roman Empire norms? What are the implications for women and men in different cultural contexts, even as Luke and Acts are read today?

A Woman’s Place

Paul’s declaration in Gal 3:28 (“There is no longer Jew or...

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