The role of women in the early church reflects the role of women in the Bible, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament. The attitudes shown toward women in scripture and in the way the early church developed show a certain ambivalence, seeing women both as a treasure to be protected and as a source of potential evil. These attitudes begin in Genesis with the story of the Creation and the Fall, and indeed much of what follows in terms of how women are viewed can be traced to the belief that Eve brought disease and death into a world that had been perfect before she was seduced by Satan. In the early church, women were relegated to a subordinate position for both reasons--they needed the protection of men, and they were not quite trusted because of their potential for sin. An examination of how women are treated in biblical writings will be connected directly to how women were treated in the early church and to the roles they were given as well as to those they were denied.
The role of women in the bible is ambiguous. Women have a secondary position from the beginning. The creation stories in Genesis indicate that the human being was created by God and provides a specific description of this process. According to the biblical text, there are three elements involved in being in the image and likeness of God: 1) dominion over the rest of creation; 2) creation male and female; and 3) the command to be fruitful and multiply. Sexual differentiation is addressed in the Priestly account, and being created in the image of God is related directly to being created male and female. One consequence of this is that our humanity is always something profoundly greater than we are as individuals, and this is highlighted by sexual differentiation. Yet man was created first and woman second, and this is the way the two are viewed generally in the Bible.
Strong women do challenge the established order, marked by the above noted ...