Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 28:2 (Spring 2014)
Article: Editor’s Reflections
Author: William David Spencer

PP 28:2 (Spring 2014) p. 2

Editor’s Reflections

William David Spencer

Is it difficult to take Priscilla Papers to the beach? Not exactly light summer reading? Maybe not, but this issue introduces you to an interesting collection of individuals, any of whose stories would make some novels pale in comparison.

Each in her or his own way, some intentionally, and some not, has made a lasting contribution to the egalitarian thought of our authors as they lived lives so remarkable that they have, in their own sphere, become significant figures of history and, in some cases, of legend.

The first we consider are those heroic women who stood up for Jesus, despite the cost of the social approbation some of them may have faced, as our opening author, Angela Ravin-Anderson, reminds us. We often think of the liberating joy of being with Jesus that these first female followers experienced, but we do not always realize that it came with a price from the disapproval of family, certainly from society shrinking back from the cross, and in the sometimes fierce governmental persecution that followed. Worthwhile to remember is that one of the earliest reports of an active church outside the New Testament was in a letter from AD 112, written by the Governor of Bythinia, Pliny the Younger, asking the emperor Trajan whether to torture two women ministrae (ministers or servants) he had arrested for leading a “nest” of Christians,1 a popular pagan slur for early churches. This acknowledgement of the active leadership of women in the church is so early that it may have occurred while John the Apostle was still alive, since John’s own disciples tell us he died during the reign of this same Trajan (98-117 AD).2 Then, as now, serious and called Christian women were working steadfastly for the advancement of Christ’s reign, even in the face of general disapproval.

The next woman we meet has indeed become so enmeshed in legend that we wonder if she ever really existed. Andrea Lorenzo Molinari, whose book on the heroic Perpetua and article for Priscilla Papers on women martyrs back in 2008 (vol. 22, no. 2) were so well received, is back in our pages to discuss the building of the legend of Veronica, which has so eclipsed this faithful disciple of Jesus herself. In a fascinating tour from myth through fact, the dean of the Blessed Edmund Rice School for Pastoral Ministry suggests one possible referent is no one less than the Bernice or Beronikē who is better known as the woman healed of the issue of blood in Mark 5:25-34. That this woman was a real, breathing human being whom Jesus cured and not just the figment of a miracle story...