From Storytelling to Written Text: The Loss of Early Christian Women's Voices
Scholars today generally agree that women were more prominent in early Christianity than the evidence of the Second Testament suggests. In this article I argue that a major reason for the loss of early Christian women's voices was the shift from an oral to a manuscript medium. The few men who w...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
1996
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| In: |
Biblical theology bulletin
Year: 1996, Volume: 26, Issue: 2, Pages: 71-78 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | Scholars today generally agree that women were more prominent in early Christianity than the evidence of the Second Testament suggests. In this article I argue that a major reason for the loss of early Christian women's voices was the shift from an oral to a manuscript medium. The few men who were literate tended to minimize and trivialize the stories about women in composing the written manuscripts. First I retell an ancient story, then briefly describe literacy and orality in antiquity. Then I discuss the question of oral vs. written media and access to authority. Next, I describe what happened to women's folk tales as they were transformed into the print medium by men. Finally, I describe the traces of similar minimalizing and distortion of stories about women to be found in the Gospels. |
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| ISSN: | 1945-7596 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Biblical theology bulletin
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1177/014610799602600203 |