The Double Message : Patterns of Gender in Luke-Acts

In this ground-breaking work, Seim provides a thoroughly researched study of the treatment of women in Luke-Acts, presented in a balanced tone from a moderate feminist perspective. She takes into account the historical critical paradigm of New Testament studies, recent literary studies, and the critique offered by her feminist perspective. The book looks first at the parings of men and women in Luke-Acts, then at the special references to women among Jesus' disciples, to women as a model of service (which is taken up as a role model for men and so in some sense taken away from women) and as providing corrective examples to male leadership models. This logical movement and progression sets up Seim's discussion about how the positive stories and saying about women in Luke-Acts were taken up in a society which was sharply segregated between appropriate male and female spheres and were gradually reworked so as to render women invisible and marginalized, excluded from significant leadership roles. Seim explores this last issue especially through careful analysis and discussion several key stories: the story of Mary and Martha (women in a male role as students or disciples, but not subsequently allowed to preach or teach); the women at the tomb, who were witnesses to the resurrection (women testifying to disbelieving male disciples who find it necessary to appoint a male successor to Judas as a witness to the resurrection); of women as prophetesses (implying asceticism and virginity or widowhood, which means that in being closely associated with the resurrection life they necessarily become abstracted from the heavily patriarchal family structures of the era). In short, women in the world of Luke-Acts are seen as enjoying a measure of freedom and responsibility--but only with difficulty, and always at a cost!