Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 31:2 (Spring 2017)
Article: Book Review: "Women’s Socioeconomic Status And Religious Leadership In Asia Minor In The First Two Centuries C.E." By Katherine Bain (Fortress, 2014)
Author: Jeff David Miller

Book Review:
Women’s Socioeconomic Status And Religious Leadership In Asia Minor In The First Two Centuries C.E. By Katherine Bain (Fortress, 2014)

Jeff Miller

Jeff Miller is editor of Priscilla Papers and teaches biblical studies at Milligan College in eastern Tennessee. He holds a PhD and an MDiv. He has attended several CBE conferences and plans to attend the July 2017 conference in Orlando, Florida. He writes for Arise as a member of CBE’s blog team. Miller has published articles in Priscilla Papers, Mutuality, Bible Translator, Christian Standard, Leaven, Restoration Quarterly, and Stone-Campbell Journal. He has been a youth minister and, more recently, a worship minister.

This book is a PhD dissertation, published in Fortress Press’s selective “Emerging Scholars” series. Indeed, it reads like a dissertation, and only specialists will resist the urge to skim through the survey of scholarship and explanation of method in the introduction and first chapter. (That is not to say these sections are of no value.)

Bain’s approach builds on the “kyriarchy” of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Bain’s main doctoral professor at Harvard University. Borrowing its first syllable from a Greek word for “master” (kyrios), kyriarchy is “a model of the comprehensive structure of domination and stratification in the Roman Empire” (14). One principle of a kyriarchal approach is that literary sources tend to adhere to stereotypes more than inscriptions (such as tombstones) do. Bain thus argues that “the view from below in kyriarchal analysis highlights subordinated persons who remain invisible in other models of socioeconomic status” (171). Simply put, inscriptions give a clearer picture of marginalized people than literary texts do.

In short, Bain’s study demonstrates first that studying women in the Hellenistic cultures of the first two centuries AD is more complex than has typically been recognized. Gender is not an isolated indicator of status. Rather, gender, marital status, and socioeconomic status are interwoven. An understanding of women’s religious leadership therefore rests on integrated knowledge of these and other factors. Second, Bain makes a compelling case that the number of women who functioned as heads of households, possessors of wealth, and leaders in civic and religious arenas is greater than is often supposed.

Chapter 2 concerns “Wealthy Women and Household Status.” Here Bain surveys images and inscriptions that describe women as heads of households, citizens, professionals, and as women with civic status and legal liability. She goes on to add similar insights from the Socratic dialogue Oikonomikos, written by Xenophon of Athens (c. 430-354 BC) and from tw...