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Women and Knowledge in Early Christianity Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae texts and studies of early christian life and language Editors-in-Chief D.T. Runia G. Rouwhorst Editorial Board J. den Boeft B.D. Ehrman K. Greschat J. Lössl J. van Oort C. Scholten volume 144 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/vcs Women and Knowledge in Early Christianity Edited by Ulla Tervahauta Ivan Miroshnikov Outi Lehtipuu Ismo Dunderberg leiden | boston This title is published in Open Access with the support of the University of Helsinki Library. This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided no alterations are made and the original author(s) and source are credited. Further information and the complete license text can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ The terms of the CC license apply only to the original material. The use of material from other sources (indicated by a reference) such as diagrams, illustrations, photos and text samples may require further permission from the respective copyright holder. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 0920-623x isbn 978-90-04-35543-9 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-34493-8 (e-book) Copyright 2017 by the Authors. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect the publication against unauthorized use and to authorize dissemination by means of offprints, legitimate photocopies, microform editions, reprints, translations, and secondary information sources, such as abstracting and indexing services including databases. Requests for commercial re-use, use of parts of the publication, and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Contents Contributors vii Women and Knowledge in Early Christianity: An Introduction 1 Outi Lehtipuu and Ismo Dunderberg part 1 Women and Knowledge in Social-Historical Contexts 1 Women and Independent Religious Specialists in Second-Century Rome 21 Nicola Denzey Lewis 2 “She Destroyed Multitudes”: Marcellina’s Group in Rome 39 H. Gregory Snyder 3 Some Remarks on Literate Women from Roman Egypt 62 Erja Salmenkivi part 2 Afterlives of Women in Biblical Narratives 4 Women, Angels, and Dangerous Knowledge: The Myth of the Watchers in the Apocryphon of John and Its Monastic Manuscript-Context 75 Christian H. Bull 5 Jezebel in Jewish and Christian Tradition 108 Tuomas Rasimus 6 Mary and the Other Female Characters in the Protevangelium of James 133 Petri Luomanen 7 What Happened to Mary? Women Named Mary in the Meadow of John Moschus 154 Ulla Tervahauta vi contents part 3 Women in Ancient Intellectual Discourse 8 “For Women are Not Worthy of Life”: Protology and Misogyny in Gospel of Thomas Saying 114 175 Ivan Miroshnikov 9 “Women” and “Heresy” in Patristic Discourses and Modern Studies 187 Silke Petersen 10 Astrological Determinism, Free Will, and Desire According to Thecla (St. Methodius, Symposium 8.15–16) 206 Dylan M. Burns 11 Monastic Exegesis and the Female Soul in the Exegesis on the Soul 221 Hugo Lundhaug part 4 The Feminine Principle in Myth and Philosophy 12 Life, Knowledge and Language in Classic Gnostic Literature: Reconsidering the Role of the Female Spiritual Principle and Epinoia 237 Tilde Bak Halvgaard 13 “Wisdom, Our Innocent Sister”: Reflections on a Mytheme 253 Michael A. Williams 14 The Virgin That Became Male: Feminine Principles in Platonic and Gnostic Texts 291 John D. Turner Bibliography 325 Index of Ancient and Medieval Sources 362 Contributors Tilde Bak Halvgaard is Assistant Professor in New Testament Studies, University of Copenhagen. Her academic interests cover New Testament, early Christianity, the reception of Pauline cosmology, Nag Hammadi writings, epistemology, and the ancient philosophy of language. She is the author of Linguistic Manifestations in the Trimorphic Protennoia and the Thunder: Perfect Mind (Brill, 2016) and several articles on the reception of the Johannine Logos in the Trimorphic Protennoia and the concept of fullness in Paul and the Pauline tradition. Christian H. Bull is Marie Curie Research fellow, Researcher at the University of Oslo, and Vis- iting Post-doctoral Research Associate at Princeton University. His research interests include Hermetism, late Antique religions, and Coptic literature and apocrypha. He is currently revising his dissertation, “The Tradition of Hermes: The Egyptian Priestly Figure as a Teacher of Hellenized Wisdom,” for publi- cation in the Brill book series Religions in the Graeco-Roman World. He is the co-editor of Mystery and Secrecy in the Nag Hammadi Collection and Other Ancient Literature: Ideas and Practices (Brill, 2012). Dylan M. Burns is Research Associate at the Egyptological Seminar at the Free University of Berlin. Co-chair of the Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism program unit at the Society of Biblical Literature, he is the author of Apocalypse of the Alien God: Platonism and the Exile of Sethian Gnosticism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), collaborative editor of Gnosticism, Platonism, and the Late AncientWorld: Essays in Honour of John D.Turner (Brill, 2013), and guest editor of Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 15/1: Esotericism and Antiquity. Nicola Denzey Lewis the Margot L. Goldsmith Chair of Women’s Studies in Religion at Claremont Graduate University, works on the intellectual and social history of Christian- ization in the context of the Roman Empire, with a special attention to Gnos- ticism, lived religion, and practices around death and burial. Her main area of focus is the city of Rome. She is author of Cosmology and Fate in Gnosticism and the Greco-Roman World (Brill, 2013) and Introduction to “Gnosticism”: Ancient Voices, Hidden Worlds (Oxford University Press, 2013), among other books and articles. viii contributors Ismo Dunderberg is Dean and Professor of NewTestament studies at the Faculty of Theology, Uni- versity of Helsinki. He has published extensively on Johannine literature, early Christian gospels, Valentinian Christianity, and Nag Hammadi writings. His publications include Gnostic Morality Revisited (Mohr Siebeck, 2015), Beyond Gnosticism: Myth, Lifestyle, and Society in the School of Valentinus (Columbia University Press, 2008), and The Beloved Disciple in Conflict: Revisiting the Gos- pels of John and Thomas (Oxford University Press, 2006). Outi Lehtipuu is Academy Research Fellow and University Lecturer at the University of Hel- sinki. Her scholarly interests include early Christian representations of life after death and resurrection, as well as questions pertaining to gender criticism and reception history. She has recently published Debates over the Resurrection of the Dead: Constructing Early Christian Identity (Oxford University Press, 2015) and co-edited People under Power: Early Jewish and Christian Responses to the Roman Empire (Amsterdam University Press, 2015). Hugo Lundhaug is Professor of Biblical Reception and Early Christian Literature at the Univer- sity of Oslo, Faculty of Theology. He has published books and articles on Cop- tic texts and manuscripts, Egyptian monasticism, cognitive theory, and new philology, including Images of Rebirth: Cognitive Poetics and Transformational Soteriology in the Gospel of Philip and the Exegesis on the Soul (Brill, 2010) and, with Lance Jenott, The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices (Mohr Siebeck, 2015). Petri Luomanen is Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Culture and Literature, Uni- versity of Helsinki. He has worked extensively on early Christian gospels and Jewish-Christianity and is interested in socio-cognitive approaches to the study of early Christianity. He is the author of Recovering Jewish-Christian Sects and Gospels (Brill, 2012) and co-editor of several volumes on early Christianity, most recently Christianity and the Roots of Morality: Philosophical, Early Christian, and Empirical Perspectives (Brill, 2017). Ivan Miroshnikov is Post-doctoral Researcher at the University of Helsinki and Research Fellow at the Center of Egyptological Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He works on Coptic literature and manuscripts, including the Nag Hammadi contributors ix writings. He is currently revising his dissertation, “The Gospel of Thomas and Plato: A Study of the Impact of Platonism on the ‘Fifth Gospel,’” for publication in the Brill series Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies. Silke Petersen is Associate Professor (außerplanmäßige Professorin) of New Testament at the University of Hamburg. Her research interests include canonical and apoc- ryphal gospels, especially the Gospel of John, Mary of Magdala, feminist exe- gesis and hermeneutics, gender studies, and traditions concerning Jesus. Her recent publications include Maria aus Magdala: Die Jüngerin, die Jesus liebte (Evangelische Verlaganstalt, 2011) and Brot Licht und Weinstock: Intertextuelle Analysen johanneischer Ich-bin-Worte (Brill, 2008). Tuomas Rasimus is Docent at the University of Helsinki and Associate