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The Public Behavior of Women Prophets in Early Christian Popular Literature

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The Public Behavior of Women Prophets in Early Christian Popular Literature Lusitania Sacra . 40 (julho-dezembro 2019) 215-239 doi: https://doi.org/10.34632/lusitaniasacra.2019.9760 Silence and subversion: the public behavior of women prophets in early Christian popular literature NAIARA LEÃO PhD student of Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean at the University of Iowa naiara-leao@uiowa .edu https://orcid org/0000-0003-0014-6942. Abstract: Women portrayed in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, in the Acts of Paul (and Thecla), in the Acts of Thomas and in the Gospel of Mary of Magdala have visions, dreams, auditions, and bodily experiences that they deem divinely inspired or related to the “Spirit ”. These are prophetic experiences – understood in the ancient Mediterranean as a communication process between humans and the divine with the aim of reaching a larger audience – despite not being traditionally labeled as such . To validate their prophetic activity, women in these stories adopt changes in attire, disregard family and marriage, and adopt public functions . Such behavior, as well as their silence outside of moments of ecstasy, is a way of asserting publicly their identity as prophets . Keywords: Prophecy, Early Christian women, Early Christianity . Silêncio e subversão: a postura pública de profetisas na literatura popular cristã antiga Resumo: As mulheres da Paixão de Perpétua e Felicidade, dos Atos de Paulo e Tecla, dos Atos de Tomé e do Evangelho de Maria Madalena têm visões, sonhos, audições e experiências corporais sensoriais que consideram divinamente inspiradas ou relacionadas com o Espírito Santo . Estas são experiências proféticas – entendidas no Mediterrâneo antigo como um processo de comunicação entre seres humanos e o divino com o objetivo de atingirem uma audiência mais ampla – apesar de não serem tradicionalmente nomeadas como tais . Para validarem estas atividades, as profetisas dessas histórias adotam mudanças em vestimentas, uma atitude de negligência em relação à família e ao casamento, e executam funções religiosas públicas . Tais comportamentos, assim como o facto de se manterem silenciosas fora dos momentos de êxtase, validam publicamente o seu caráter profético . Palavras-chave: Profecia, Mulheres e cristianismo antigo, Cristianismo primitivo . 215 NAIARA LEÃO Introduction In the popular literature of early Christianity, women oftentimes have divinely inspired dreams, visions, bodily experiences, and give inspired speeches. Perpetua, from the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, gets to know the fate of her group of friends in a dream where she climbs a ladder to heaven1. She also sees her dead brother in a vision, as an encouragement to pray for his suffering in the afterlife. Similarly, Tryphaena from Acts of Paul and Thecla communicates with her deceased daughter in a dream that prompts her to support the female apostle of Paul, in order to get intercession in favor of her daughter2. Thecla herself has a vision of the Lord sitting in the form of Paul among the multitude. Furthermore, Mygdonia, the ascetic disciple of Judas Thomas in theActs of Thomas is a dream interpreter3. These are only a few examples. In the late Mediterranean world where these stories were produced, dreams, visions, ecstasies, divination, and prophecy were abundant and seen as parts of the same phenomenon: the communication with the divine. The comparative scholar of ancient Mediterranean religions Martti Nissinen proposes a prophetic model that describes prophecy essentially as the transmission of a message from the divine realm to a person, and from this person to a larger audience4. Scholars of early Christianity corroborate that there was a widespread ancient perception of prophecy as a communication process between humans and the divine5. However, studies on early Christian prophecy largely tend to narrow their focus of attention on primary sources from New Testament canonical writings – such as the book of Acts and debates around women speech in pseudo‑Pauline letters – and on Patristics commentaries of the Montanist movement6. 1 The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, I 3. 2 Acts of Paul and Thecla, 28 and 21, respectively . 3 Acts of Thomas, 91 . 4 Martti Nissinen – What Is Prophecy? An Ancient Near Eastern Perspective . In Inspired Speech: Prophecy in the Ancient Near East: Essays in Honor of Herbert B. Huffmon . London; New York: T & T Clark International, 2004, p 17–37;. Martti Nissinen – Ancient Prophecy: Near Eastern, Biblical, and Greek Perspectives . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, p . 3-54 . 5 Laura S . Nasrallah – An Ecstasy of Folly: Prophecy and Authority in Early Christianity . Harvard Theological Studies . 52 (2003) 1-28 . 6 The classic and most comprehensive study on the topic is still today David E . Aune – Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World . Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 1983 . Other examples that focus on Biblical literature are Laura S . Nasrallah – An Ecstasy of Folly…; Jill E . Marshall – Women Praying and Prophesying in Corinth: Gender and Inspired Speech in First Corinthians . Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament . 2 . Reihe 448 . Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017 . On Montanism, see Christine Trevett – Montanism: Gender, Authority and the New Prophecy . Cambridge: Cambridge Univ . Press, 1996; Antti Marjanen – Female Prophets among Montanists . In Prophets Male and Female: Gender and Prophecy in the Hebrew Bible, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Ancient Near East . Ed . Jonathan Stökl and Corrine L . Carvalho . Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013, p . 127–43 . Rex Butler – The New Prophecy and “New Visions”: Evidence of Montanism in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas . Mountain Home, AR: BorderStone Press, LLC, 2014 . 216 Silence and subversion: the public behavior of women prophets in early Christian popular literature On the other hand, studies about women prophets in the popular literature of early Christianity are scant. Instead, women are most frequently analyzed under the lenses Biblical prophetism, and of authority and church offices for their roles as widows and ascetics. Therefore, despite the evident connection between ancient prophecy and women’s experiences of dreams, visions, sensorial experiences, inspired speech or messages described in the apocryphal acts, gospels, and martyrdom accounts, women in this body of literature are not commonly associated to the prophetic tradition. They are not labeled as prophetesses neither in the textual sources nor in the scholarly field of ancient Mediterranean prophecy. Does that mean they were not performing prophecy? What work is the label doing, especially in relation to gender? Does the praxis of naming legitimate certain practices? In this essay, I depart from these observations and inquiries to analyze women’s relationship to prophecy in four texts from the 2nd and 3rd century: the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, Acts of Paul, the Acts of Thomas, and the Gospel of Mary of Magdala. Here, they are presented under the rubric of “popular literature of early Christianity”, a designation suggested by Richard A. Norris Jr. for texts that were never actual candidates for official or canonical status but were undoubtedly popular, achieving considerable influence on early Christian practice and belief7. I purposefully select texts outside of the Biblical canon to expand the scope of the scholarship that has been traditionally concerned with the topic of prophecy. Are there women prophets in these stories at all? What makes a prophetess in early Christianity? Are women engaging in particular forms of behavior that makes them recognized or not as prophetesses? How does this dynamic of recognition and labeling operate in primary sources and in scholarly discourse? These are questions I explore here. My purpose is not to pose an exhaustive discussion of prophecy in each of the texts, nor to analyze in detail the context in which they were produced evaluating to which extent these literary works can offer evidence of historical practices. Instead, my goals are to look at how the topic appears throughout this body of literature, and how it relates to broader discussions of power, gender and speech in early Christian debates. At last, to qualify these texts as objects of study of prophecy. On discussions about early Christian women prophets, see Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity . Ed . Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Pamela J . Walker . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998; Women & Christian Origins . Ed . Ross Shepard and Mary Rose D’Angelo . New York: Oxford University Press, 1999 . In terms of primary sources, we can observe much attention is given to the mention of the daughters of Phillip in the book of Acts, Pauline and pseudo-Pauline letters; Tertullian’s treatises On Baptism, On the Veiling of the Virgins, and Prescriptions against Herectics; Eusebius’s History of the Church 3 and 5 and Epiphanius’s Panarion 49 . 7 Richard A . Jr . Norris – Apocryphal Writings and Acts of the Martyrs . In The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature . Edited by Frances Young, Lewis Ayres, and Andrew Louth . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p . 28–35 . 217 NAIARA LEÃO Identifying prophecy Martti Nissinen defines prophecy as a scholarly construct that attempts to explain a common phenomenon found throughout the ancient Mediterranean and that is present in Near Eastern, Greek and Biblical sources. Building upon the work of another Near Eastern scholar, Manfred Weippert, Nissinen defines prophecy as a social
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