This book examines the roles and functions that women assumed in the early Christian communities from AD 33 to the Council of Nicaea. It surveys, too, the views about women held by various New Testament authors including Paul and the Evangelists. In a careful and judicious study, Ben Witherington shows in Women and the Early Church, that early Christianity was neither unreservedly patriarchal nor adamantly feministic its view of women and their roles, but rather charted a middle course which combined a reforming of the predominantly patriarchal framework of society with an affirmation of new religious roles for women. Ben Witherington III is Associate Professor of Biblical and Wesleyan Studies at Ashland Theological Seminary, Ashland, OH.
