(RNS) — Emerging from the narrow entrance to a cave south of Jerusalem, scholar Joan Taylor found herself saying a blessing for Salome.
Salome is described in the Gospels as following and ministering to Jesus and is named as one of many women present at his death and at his tomb after his resurrection.
Ancient Greek graffiti inside the cave also asks “holy Salome” for mercy, suggesting to Taylor and her travel companion, scholar Helen Bond, that Salome may have been remembered as a healer in the early centuries of the church, just as many of Jesus’ male disciples were.
“These early women disciples of Jesus should be celebrated. They should be restored somehow, as this place should be restored,” Taylor says, sitting outside the cave in the British Channel 4 documentary “Jesus’ Female Disciples: The New Evidence.”
“They were working alongside the men. They were as important to the early Jesus movement as the men were,” she continues. “They are clearly there in our texts, and to forget that is a shame. If it’s all about men and the band of 12 men around Jesus, we’re forgetting the other half of the story.”
Authors Joan Taylor and Helen Bond. Photo courtesy of Bond
The documentary gained unexpected attention, with the duo writing it had received more press coverage than any other religious program since the BBC’s “Son of God” in 2001.
Taylor and Bond — who also wrote the book “Women Remembered: Jesus’ Female Disciples,” which releases next month in the United States and details the scholarship that didn’t fit into their 50-minute film — aren’t the only scholars working to restore the picture of Jesus’ first female followers.
Several new books are taking a fresh look at the roles of women in Jesus’ ministry and in the early church.
“It’s not that we’re making new discoveries about women. It’s not that we’re trying to rewrite history. It’s simply that women have been obscured, and women’s actual roles in the Bible have been obscured,” said Beth Allison Barr, the James Vardaman Professor of History at Baylor University and author of the 2022 book “The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth.”
“It’s time when we’ve got to see them for how they really are,” she said.
That time comes as many Christians — particularly white evangelicals — are asking questions about how their faith was formed and what they were taught it meant to be a Christian, according to Barr. That includes ideas around women and gender roles.
“People are like, ‘Hey, maybe what I was always taught about this — maybe there’s more to the story.’ And, I mean, it’s such an encouraging moment,” Barr said.
Nijay Gupta — professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary and author of “Tell Her Story: How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church,” which was released in March with a foreword by Barr — said he was forced to reconsider his belief that the Bible forbid women from leadership in the church when he was in seminary.
Author Nijay K. Gupta. Courtesy of InterVarsity Press
Gupta had been warned to stay away from women studying for a Master’s in Divinity because they were being “disobedient,” he said. He ended up marrying one.
And the more women he met in seminary, the more he realized they believed the same things he did about the truth of the Bible. Two years of research into what the Bible said on the topic started with him writing a paper on why women shouldn’t be in ministry and ended with him writing a paper on why they must.
In the New Testament, Gupta encountered Tryphaena, who not only hosted a church in her home but is described in the same way church leaders are described elsewhere. When writing about her in “Tell Her Story,” he was tempted to name the chapter “The Most Important Early Christian You’ve Never Heard Of,” he said.
He also reencountered Mary, the mother of Jesus, whom he always envisioned frozen in time as a teenager in the Christmas story. But, he realized, she was there throughout Jesus’ life, at his death and even afterward among the disciples when the Holy Spirit arrived at Pentecost.
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Gupta started teaching and writing about the stories of women found in the New Testament because, he said, “I was wrong, and I was so sure of being right before.”
