Ally Kateusz

Awarded March 2018 Feminae Journal Article of the Month, this article is Part 2 in a series about the early tradition that Mary, the Jewish mother of Jesus, was a priest. Part 1, “Collyridian Déjà Vu,” appeared in JFSR (Fall 2013), and won the First Place Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza New Scholar Award. The current essay illuminates an early tradition in the Life of the Virgin that the women disciples were at the Last Supper, and that both Mary and her son sacrificed as priests at the meal. Consistent with this eucharistic model, early Christian authors in both East and West described a gender parallel co-priesthood. Confirming this model was orthodox, the two oldest surviving artifacts to portray people around the altar inside a real church, both early fifth-century, depict women and men in parallel — inside the second Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and inside Old Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

The iconography today called the "Ascension of Christ," which depicts an arms-raised Mary standing beneath Jesus inside an orb in the sky, originally depicted the ascension of Mary in the earliest Six Books Dormition narrative. This iconography is seen as early as the Christian catacombs of Rome.

Two Marys: One demure mother, one liturgical leader. One over the altar, one hidden.
PowerPoint at:
https://www.slideshare.net/DivineBalance1/art-as-text-12-two-traditions-two-marys?qid=74b201a7-251c-4895-ac11-a0c137c37265&v=&b=&from_search=8

Powerpoint illustrates that the mid sixth-century mosaics in the Euphrasiana basilica in Parenzo, Croatia dedicated as much space to women as to men.  PowerPoint is at:
https://www.slideshare.net/DivineBalance1/art-as-text-11-feminine-euphrasiana-basilica?qid=c1f64eae-52f7-4f64-b92b-da052a756358&v=&b=&from_search=3

PowerPoint illustrates that although the mosaic of a Christ-like boy is most famous, images of women are predominant in the early 4th c. Aquileia basilica mosaics.  Some women were depicted as officiants at the offering.
PowerPoint at:
https://www.slideshare.net/DivineBalance1/art-as-text-05-women-in-the-mosaics-of-the-basilica-of-aquileia?qid=c1f64eae-52f7-4f64-b92b-da052a756358&v=&b=&from_search=6

PowerPoint illustrates the change over time in the iconography of the Women with the Resurrected Christ, beginning with the very first depiction of this scene, which was carved on the early 5th c. S. Sabina wood doors in Rome.  PowerPoint at:
https://www.slideshare.net/DivineBalance1/art-as-text-03-women-witnesses-to-the-resurrection-28894229

PowerPoint illustrates two Early Christian traditions with respect to the depiction of the girl's mother at the Raising of Jairus's Daughter. In one, the mother is depicted standing next to her child.  In the other, she is shown prostrate.
PowerPoint is on Slideshare.net:
https://www.slideshare.net/DivineBalance1/art-as-text-02-two-early-christian-sarcophagi-two-traditions-about-women-28894211?qid=e5e73010-6511-456e-9406-1257121faebd&v=&b=&from_search=2

The purpose of this 2011 Nat SBL paper is to re-read the last genuine Pauline text with misogynist language -- 1 Cor 11:3-16 -- through the eyes of Paul’s followers who saw Christ as a long-haired androgyne.  In his 1974 article, “The Image of the Androgyne,” Wayne A. Meeks enumerates the wide variety of early Christian texts describing Christ as an androgyne. Perhaps explaining a Jewish origin of this myth, some rabbis described God and Adam as androgynous -- both male and female. Corinthians familiar with Plato’s creation myth of the androgyne would have understood Rabbi Paul’s teaching in Gal 3:28 that both male and female are in Christ. Reflecting these early teachings about the Androgyne Christ, fourth-century art depicted Jesus as beardless and long-haired -- sometimes even with breasts. Christ’s long “womanly” hair was such a common trope that it has persisted until today in art. Nonetheless, Paul’s question about long hair on men at 1 Cor 11:14 is today almost uniformly interpreted as patriarchal. Yet how might Paul’s early followers in Corinth have interpreted: “Doesn't Nature herself teach you that long hair on a man is shameful?” New Perspective Pauline scholars Stanley K. Stowers and Neil Elliott say Paul used indicting rhetorical questions like this in his dialectic against his opponents. When Christ is an androgyne, long hair is not shameful, it is Christ-like -- and it is fitting for a woman to prophesy to God with her hair unveiled. With this understanding, 1 Cor 11:3–16 breaks neatly into a classical dialectic in two voices with Paul arguing against a patriarchal opponent. In classical fashion, Paul presents his opponent’s argument first (3-10), then rebuts it with his own egalitarian argument in 11-16. This understanding of Rabbi Paul as egalitarian at 1 Cor 11:3-16 is consistent with Paul's language elsewhere in his genuine letters, which is the most egalitarian and inclusive language of the New Testament. This egalitarian Rabbi Paul is likewise consistent with other egalitarian rabbinical teachings that closely mirror Paul’s.  Bereshith 22.2 in the Middrash Rabbah, for example, mirrors 1 Cor 11:11 and Seder Eliyahu Rabba includes a teaching like Gal 3:28.  After Paul, however, some Christian scribes -- the faux Pauls -- subverted his egalitarian Jewish teachings.  Paul’s astonishing teaching at 1 Cor 9:4, that husband and wife have equal authority over each other’s bodies, for example, was subverted by the later pairings of wives and slaves in Col 3:18 and 22, Eph 5:22 and 6:5, and Tit 2:-4-5 and 9-10. These and other later Church teachings written under Paul's name overshadowed his original teachings about women and slaves.