Lesson video

Hello there, my young theologians.

My name is Ms. Marks and I'm going to be your religious education teacher today, and today we're going to be learning all about different women in the New Testament, some of the big stories that they were part of, and the different roles that they may have had, with a particular focus on the letters of St.

Paul.

So when you're ready, let's go.

So by the end of this lesson, you'll be able to explain the importance of women in the leadership of the early church and give different perspectives of this using the writings of Paul.

So firstly, our keywords.

Apostles, early Christian leaders responsible for spreading the message of Jesus.

The early Church, the Christian community in the first few centuries after the life of Jesus Christ.

Junia, a woman mentioned by Paul as well known among the apostles, depending on the translation.

Paul, an apostle who spread Christianity and authored many of the New Testament letters.

Pentecost, the event when the Holy Spirit came to Jesus' followers, marking the church's birth.

So watch out for those in today's lesson.

So our lesson today will have three sections.

Women at the Resurrection and Pentecost, Paul's letters to women as leaders in the church, and Junia, a case study.

So let's start with our first section, women at the Resurrection and Pentecost.

Rosalind Franklin was a groundbreaking chemist.

Her research was critical to the discovery of the structure of DNA, which you can see in the image here.

When three men were awarded a Nobel Prize for this discovery, they made no mention of her research, even though they had used it.

So Rosalind Franklin is a chemist who did some amazing research that wasn't mentioned when some men won a Nobel Prize for basically using that research.

Do you know of any other stories from history when the achievement and contribution of women has not been included, or it's been overlooked, or it's been forgotten? Or has it been hidden? Have a think about that, you could talk to the person next to you, or talk to me.

So we'll come back to the example of Rosalind Franklin later in the lesson.

So when we use the discipline of theology, which we are today, in religious education, we can look at different types of text and interpretations of them, which can then lead to different meanings.

When we read them, we can consider their origins and analyse what the author intended with the text, as well as how this may have been altered over time.

And this can help us to understand how different meanings of the text can be interpreted by readers and how these can inform debates in religion.

So as theologians, the texts that we look at are often from quite a long time ago and not necessarily written in the same language that we're reading, so we can see where they originated from, what they might have meant then, and how things might have changed over time as they've continued to be used as part of that religion as it grew.

So here I have a Bible bookshelf, because the Bible isn't really just one book, written by one person at one time.

It's got many different authors that were written over many different years.

So in a way we can think of it like a bookshelf which shows us each of the different books and how they're grouped, and you can see you've got the Old Testament and the New Testament here.

And the Gospels are part of the New Testament, and they tell the story of Jesus' resurrection.

The Book of Acts, which is the next one along, tells the story of Pentecost.

And you can see where they are here on my Bible bookshelf, so we've got Matthew, Mark and Luke and John as the gospels telling all the stories about Jesus and his followers, and especially Jesus' death and resurrection.

Then we have the Book of Acts, which starts to tell us about what Jesus's followers did after he ascended up to heaven, and the very early church.

Now there are several women called Mary in important stories in the Bible about Jesus, so I want us to work out which Mary we're talking about.

Two of them are Mary Magdalene, and Mary, mother of Jesus.

So Mary Magdalene was a close follower of Jesus during his ministry, and sometimes she's known as the apostle to the apostles.

Mary, mother of Jesus, is believed by most Christians to have had a virgin birth, and she's often known as the Theotokos or God-bearer, and we will meet both of these Marys in our lesson today.

Women are present at the Resurrection of Jesus, so when Jesus rises again from the dead, and it's a very important moment in the Christian story, Mary Magdalene is named slightly earlier in the text that we're about to read, so she's been mentioned and then we read this.

"The angel said to the women, 'Go quickly and tell his disciples he has risen from the dead.

' Suddenly Jesus met them.

'Greetings,' he said.

They came to him, clasped his feet and worshipped him.

Then Jesus said to them, 'Do not be afraid.

Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee and there they will see me.

'" So what message were the women told to give others? Have a think about that.

Pause the video and talk to someone next to you or you can talk to me.

So here we can see Jesus is saying to the women, who include Mary Magdalene, he has risen from the dead and to go to Galilee.

Who were they told to give this message to? Again, pause the video and have a think, and you can talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Well, we can see that they're told to tell the disciples.

They are told to go and tell the disciples what to do, and this piece of news.

This is important later.

So what then could this text tell Christians about the role of women in the church, if this is such a crucial moment in the history of Christianity, of Jesus rising from the dead, and that women have been entrusted with the news to go and tell the men? What could that tell Christians? Pause the video and have a think, and again, you can talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Well, the text shows Christians that women were entrusted by both an angel and Jesus to go and give the message of the Resurrection to others.

So this very important crucial moment in the Christian story is entrusted to women to go and tell it to the others, who are the men, the disciples.

So the word apostle comes from Greek and it has these stems. We've got apo and stle.

Apo and stle, apostle.

Apo comes from off or away from, so we've got, apostacy also has this, if someone leaves their faith, it is called apostacy.

So this idea of leaving and going away from, so something to do with going.

And then stle, coming from stellien, meaning to send.

So also we have a word sometimes used to do with the Bible, epistle, which is a letter that's sent, something that's sent away.

So we can see from this, you've got going away and being sent away.

So the apostles were the early Christian leaders and preachers who were sent away to go and help grow the church, so they're the ones who are sent out now with this message of what has happened with Jesus and the Resurrection.

Let's do a quick check.

Finish Jacob's sentence.

"Jesus' disciples and other followers of him were sent out to spread the message.

They were called," what? Was it, apostles, apostasy or epistles? Pause the video and have a go, and we'll see what you've written in a minute.

That's right, it was apostles.

I know I used the word apostasy and epistles earlier, but the apostles are the ones who were sent out to spread the message.

Well done.

So the Book of Acts comes after the Gospels, and it has the story of the Pentecost.

, and actually its full title was Acts of the Apostles, so it's telling us what those apostles did after the Resurrection.

And this book tells us that women were present at the Pentecost, with the appearance of the Holy Spirit, and sometimes this is called like the birth of the church now because it's going to be the start of the church, and it goes like this.

"They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.

Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.

They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.

All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit." So this is another really important bit of the Christian story of when the Holy Spirit comes to the followers of Jesus and then they're ready to go out and spread the message.

But where does this text tell us that women were present at this crucial event? Pause the video and have a look at the text, and you can talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

That's right, at the beginning it says they all joined together in prayer along with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus, so this tells us that they were present at this moment.

And generally scholars believe there was 120 people there, including the women and Mary and the disciples.

Does the text say that men or women or both were filled with the Holy Spirit? So let's pause the video and have a look again in the text for the answer to that, and you can talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Yeah, the text says that all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, so it's not just the disciples, it's not just the men, but everyone who was there, all 120, as scholars tend to believe, were filled with the Holy Spirit in that moment.

So this text shows that women were present at the Pentecost and they were filled with the Holy Spirit.

So now let's meet Fiona, an Anglican Christian, and Tamara, who's a Quaker Christian, and they're gonna explain their views on the significance of having women at the Resurrection and the Pentecost.

Why does this actually matter to them, that women were there? Fiona says, "Jesus entrusted women to go and tell others the most important message of all, his Resurrection.

This shows that women can have positions of leadership in the church." Tamara says, "The Holy Spirit descended on all 120 people at Pentecost, including the women.

This shows that everyone's equal to God and can be given those gifts of the Holy Spirit, no matter if they're male or female." So both Fiona and Tamara here are taking from the women being present at the Resurrection and Pentecost being really important to them as to why women can be leaders in the church.

So time for another check.

"Jesus instructed the disciples to go to the Sea of Galilee and tell Mary Magdalene that he had risen from the dead." Is that true or false? Pause the video and have a go and we'll see what you've done in a moment.

That is false, but why? Well, it's because the angel and Jesus told Mary Magdalene and the other women to go and tell the disciples he'd risen from the dead, not the other way around.

So let's do a practise task to see what we've learned so far.

Using these two images below as a prompt, explain how women were involved with both the story of the Resurrection and the Pentecost, and you're gonna write a paragraph.

You need to include disciples, Mary, message, and Holy Spirit in your answer.

So pause the video, have a go, and we'll see what you've written in a moment.

Well done, some fantastic work there.

So I asked you to use the images as a prompt to explain how women were involved with the story of the Resurrection and the Pentecost, and you needed to write a paragraph, and you may have included this.

"According to the Gospels and the Book of Acts, women were present at both the Resurrection of Jesus and Pentecost.

At the Resurrection, Mary Magdalene and other women were told by an angel and Jesus to bring the disciples the message that he has risen from the dead.

At Pentecost, Mary, the mother of Jesus, as well as other women, were present and filled with the Holy Spirit, along with the apostles and other followers of Jesus." So well done.

So onto our second section then, Paul's letters and women as leaders in the church.

So here we have our Bible bookcase again, and we've been talking about the Gospels and Acts, and we're now gonna move on to the letters section that you can see in the New Testament there.

The New Testament has many books which are letters written from the apostles to groups of Jesus's followers.

So as people are starting to follow the ideas of Jesus and the teachings and the story of Jesus, they want to know more about it and how to live, so the apostles write them letters to encourage them and talk to them about their religion.

Paul was an early convert to Christianity, and 13 of those letters in the New Testament are attributed to him.

So we've got all these ones here, Christians generally believe are written by Paul.

So why are Paul's letters so important then? Well, the Book of Acts of the apostles tells the story of the early followers of Jesus as they spread the message of what he did to others.

The story of Paul's conversion is believed to have taken within about five years of Jesus' death and resurrection, so very close to the dates of what happened with Jesus.

And the early followers of Jesus were persecuted for their new interpretation of Judaism.

Saul, who was also known as Paul, was a person in authority who was involved with this and even ordered the execution of a follower of Jesus, Stephen.

And he travelled around the area where he thought there were followers of Jesus in order to bring them back to Jerusalem for judgement.

And one day he was travelling to Damascus along a road called Straight, and a light brighter than the sun shone and caused everyone travelling to fall to the ground.

The story goes that Paul was now blind and instructed by Jesus to go to see someone in Damascus who would be able to restore his sight.

This moment caused him to convert and become a follower of Jesus.

He was baptised and started to spread the message of the Gospel by going on missionary journeys to both Jews and Gentiles, who are people who are not Jewish.

Paul wrote letters to these early followers of Jesus as they were working out how to live by Jesus' example now that he wasn't on Earth.

Whilst Paul wasn't a disciple of Jesus, he is seen by Christians to be an apostle, as he met Jesus on that road and he was sent out to spread the message of the Gospel to others.

Paul is traditionally believed to have written 13 of those letters in the New Testament, although some of them are disputed.

And we can see on the map here the different places where these letters were sent to as the religion of Christianity spread.

Let's do a quick check.

"Paul's letters were written to various groups of Christians in the first century CE." Is that true or false? Pause the video and have a think, and we'll see what you've done in a moment.

That is true.

Well done.

Now here are three texts from Paul's letters that are used in these discussions about whether women can be leaders or not in the church.

Remember, the letters were written to early Christian communities.

Firstly, "Women should remain silent in the churches, they're not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says." Secondly, "Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church." And thirdly, "I do not permit a woman to teach or assume authority over a man, she must be quiet, for Adam was born first and then Eve, and Adam was not the one deceived, it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.

But women will be saved through childbearing." So what could these texts tell us about Paul's views, particularly about the idea of women being leaders in the church? Pause the video and have another read of the text and think about what your answer could be.

You could talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Well, there's quite a lot we can unpack in here about Paul's views on women as it seems to be in these letters, and some of those things are, one of them is that women should remain silent and be submissive, from the letter to Corinthians.

We've also got the idea of submission again in Ephesians, with this idea of wives submitting themselves to the husband.

And then we have this idea in his letter to Timothy that women cannot be permitted to teach or have authority over men and must be quiet.

And then we have this letter to Timothy that says, "I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man and must be quiet," and Paul links this to the idea of Adam and Eve and when sin first entered the world, back in the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament, and the idea that Eve was the one who was deceived more than Adam, so perhaps she's weaker spiritually, therefore not able to lead.

He does, however, say that they could be saved through childbearing, so perhaps he does give a inkling of what he thinks the woman's role should be.

So we could see how texts like this from Paul could be used to suggest that he thought women should not be leaders in the church.

But is that all that he wrote about this? Well, let's see from some of the other letters that Paul wrote.

Many of the people Paul mentions in his letters have Greek names.

Remember, he's writing to people, he's writing about people, and he's sending many wishes to people who were doing things in the early church.

In the Greek language, the ending of a name can show if the person is male or female, and names ending in ah or a, show the person's female, and names ending in us, show the person is male.

So if you have a name and it ends in ah, then it tends to be, if it's from Greek, a girl's name, and if it's us, it tends to be a boy's name, Julius Caesar, for example.

"Meet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me.

They are outstanding among the apostles and they were in Christ before I was," he wrote to the Romans.

"There's neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus," he wrote to the Galatians.

And then we have, "Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my coworkers in Christ Jesus." "I commend you to our sister, Phoebe, a deacon of the church," he wrote to the Romans.

And, "Yes, I ask you, my true companion, help these women since they have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel," he wrote to the Philippians.

So what could these texts show us about Paul's views, particularly to do with women as leaders in the church? Pause the video and have a look at the text and see what you think.

You could talk to someone next to you or talk to me.

Well, maybe you noticed the names which end in A, that we spoke about a minute ago, Junia, Priscilla and Aquila, and we also have, "I commend you to our sister," and we know that Phoebe is female, because it says, our sister, Phoebe.

So we have these messages to women who were working for the church.

They may be apostles, coworkers for the cause of the Gospel, even as a deacon, which was a title given to a type of leader in the church.

And then we have this passage in Galatians, "Everyone is one in Christ Jesus," no matter what these different distinctions are.

Could that tell us something about Paul's ideas of women being leaders in the church? Well, let's see what some Christians think about this, because there's a diversity of views around this in the church today.

So Aisha's asking, "Do you think Paul accepted female leadership in the church?" And Danielle, who's a Roman Catholic, responds.

"These letters from Paul show that women can have an important role in the church, but that doesn't mean they should be in authority over men in religious matters." But Fiona says, "Well, this is how Paul was replying to specific groups of Christians at each time.

Each one had a different context to us and we have to look at the overall message of Christianity rather than just taking individual lines out of context." So Fiona may say that the overall message is that everyone is one in Christ Jesus, so therefore men and women could be leaders.

Daniel is saying here, well maybe women can have important roles, but ultimately the authority figures are going to be male.

Aisha goes on to ask, "How do you view Paul's letters about women as church leaders?" And Rachel, who's in the Plymouth Brethren church, replies, "The Bible is the direct word of God.

I believe each part of the Bible is there for a reason to help me to live as a Christian.

When Paul instructs women to be silent in church, I take that seriously." And the Plymouth Brethren is a church denomination where women are generally silent in church services to follow that instruction from Paul.

Fergus, who's a liberal Protestant, says, "Paul says we're all one in Christ, and this is how I read his letters.

Everyone is made in the image of God, no matter who they are.

Jesus also showed this in the way he involved women in his ministry," and we saw some important moments with women in the story of Jesus earlier in the lesson.

So time for another check.

Is this true or false? "There are no Christian groups in the world today who take the instruction from women to remain silent in church literally." Is that true or false? Pause the video and have a think, and we'll see what you've done in a moment.

That is false, but why? Well, whilst the majority of Christian groups don't take this literally, some groups, such as the Plymouth Brethren denomination, do, because they believe the Bible is the literal word of God and they want to follow each instruction.

So time for another practise task to see what we've learned then.

In the table below are two of those texts from Paul's letters, and for each one, you're going to write an explanation for how this could relate to a debate on women as leaders in the church.

You might like to use the following sentence stem.

"This text could support or oppose the idea of women as leaders in the church because." And the two texts are, "I commend to you our sister, Phoebe, a deacon of the church," and that's in the letter to Romans.

And, "Women should remain silent in the churches," that's in the letter to Corinthians.

So how could that relate to women as leaders in the church? A sentence for each of them.

Pause the video, off you go, and we'll see what you've done in a moment.

Well done, some really good thinking there about these letters from Paul.

So I asked you to look at each of the texts and decide how it could relate to a debate on women leaders in the church, and you could have said something like this.

"I commend you to our sister, Phoebe, a deacon of the church," in Romans.

You could have said, "This text could support women as leaders in the church because Paul is calling Phoebe, a woman, a deacon, which is a term often used for someone in leadership in the church, showing he supported a woman in this position." And we had, "Women should remain silent in the churches," in the letter to Corinthians.

"This text could go against women as leaders of the church, as Paul is instructing them to be silent and learn in submission to the men who can speak." So well done for your work there.

So onto our third section then.

Junia, a case study.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul sends greetings to various people that we just saw in the last section of the lesson, and one of those was, "Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me.

They are outstanding among the apostles and they were in Christ before I was." And remember, if it ends in us, it's a man, and if it ends in a, it's a female.

So what does this text tell us about Junia? Pause the video and have a think, and then we'll see what you've done in a moment.

Well, this text tells us that Junia is a Jew who follows Jesus.

Junia converted very early on, before Paul, and remember, he converts within about five years of Jesus ascending up to heaven.

And Junia is an outstanding apostle.

Junia has been imprisoned because of this.

So her actions are so great that she's been imprisoned because of what she's been doing for the cause of her religion and she is seen as being outstanding among the apostles.

This line from the book of Romans has been translated in different ways through Christian history.

So many translations have what we have here, "Send greetings to Andronicus and Junia," and then, "They are outstanding among the apostles." But other translations sometimes say this.

"Send greetings to Andronicus and Junius, known to the apostles." So what difference could these translations make to the text and the meaning that I might take from it when I read it? Pause the video and have a think.

You could talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Well, from changing the name Junia to Junius, we're changing it from a female name to a male name, so now it makes it sound like it's two men who are apostles who've been imprisoned because of this.

Also, changing the language from outstanding among the apostles to known to the apostles means maybe perhaps they weren't even apostles, they were just to them and they were good Christians along with them, but not necessarily apostles.

And I wonder if you could think why these changes might have happened? The name Junia is feminine, we said, because it ends in an A.

An early Christian tradition and the early Church Fathers accepted her as a female apostle, so we've got the letter that seems to be coming from Paul to her that supports that she is female and an apostle, and then also some of the early Church Fathers within a couple of hundred years of Jesus, those early church fathers also mention her by name and that she is a female apostle.

Fast forward about 1,000 years to about 1300 CE, and there start to be concerns about there being a female named as an apostle in the Bible, and we know that there were concerns about this because then the translations of the Bible from that time change her name to Junius.

And that wasn't really a name that was in use at the New Testament time, so it couldn't have been like accidental, that it was Junia to begin with, it was written wrong.

There were no other people called Junius at that time, so really scholars believe that this was kind of fabricated and made up to turn her from being a female possible apostle to male.

Nowadays, contemporary translations, if we were to read a Bible today, tend to use Junia, because that is seen as the authentic true thing that Paul wrote.

But some instead choose to translate that she was known to the apostles rather than one of them, so there are still some churches who would prefer to see her as someone who was an upstanding example known to the apostles rather than an actual apostle.

So let's have a quick check.

Which two statements are correct about the case study of Junia From Paul's letter? "The name Junia was changed to Junius in some translations of the Bible due to concerns about naming a female apostle." "All Christians today believe that Junia was an apostle in the church." And, "The early Church Fathers believed that Junia was a female apostle." Which two of those are correct? Pause the video and have a go and we'll see what you've done in a moment.

Well done, it was A and C.

The name Junia was changed by some translations, and the early Church Fathers did believe that she was a female apostle, we have writings from them that say that.

But what was not true is that all Christians believe she was an apostle today, because some don't believe that she was actually an apostle.

Well, the Reverend Dr.

Mike Bird, is a theologian who studies the New Testament and he also happens to be a Christian, and he's very interested in this story of Junia and how the New Testament has been translated in different times through history, and he says these things.

He believes the evidence is overwhelming that she was a woman.

He says the evidence is overwhelming she was a woman and she wasn't a man named Junius.

He says that some people translated Junia as a male name because of their bias, so this prejudice against one group of people.

He says they were prejudiced about women being leaders of the church and being able to be leaders, so they changed it.

And he says chauvinistic ideas led to the invention of Junius.

So if you're chauvinistic, you think your group is the best, and better than another group, and he says that's why Junius was invented, never existed, so that it looked like all the apostles were male, and there wasn't one named and mentioned who was female.

So what bias could be shown through changing Junia to Junius? Pause the video and have a think, and we'll see what you've done in a moment.

Well, Lucas and Aisha are discussing if the case study of Junia shows that she's a victim or a victor.

Lucas says, "Junia was a victim of bias translations of the Bible.

Often in history, the achievements and contributions of women are ignored or forgotten, and this could have happened to Junia," a bit like we read at the beginning of this lesson.

And Aisha says "The fact that translations today have kept her name shows she is a victor.

If earlier translators were so concerned about her being an apostle, this shows she wasn't just known to them, but she was one of them.

If those earlier translators didn't like there being a female name attached to that phrase, then maybe it shows she was actually an apostle." Do you think Junia was a victim or a victor, and why do you think that? Pause the video and have a think.

You can speak to the person next to you or talk to me.

So time for another check.

"The Reverend Dr.

Mike Bird believes that the evidence that Junius was a male apostle is overwhelming." Is that true or false? Pause the video and have a go, and we'll see what you've done in a moment.

That is false, but why? Well, it's false because he believes the evidence Junia was female is overwhelming, and that the translators who changed this to a male name in the past were biassed and chauvinistic.

Time for a practise task to see what we've learned.

So throughout this whole lesson, we've met Tamara, Fiona, Fergus and Danielle, who gave us some views they had about women in the New Testament, and here I have a point from each of them.

For each point that they've given, give a piece of evidence from the Bible to support it.

And the points they've given are, Tamara says, "Women have been given the gifts of the Holy Spirit as much as men and can use them." Fiona says, "The New Testament has lots of examples of women leading churches, including Paul's letters." Fergus says, "There's no difference for me between male and female church leaders." And Danielle says, "Women can have an important role in the church, but they can't be in authority over men." So for each of them, find something from the Bible that they could use to support it.

Pause the video, and off you go, and we'll see what you've got in a moment.

Well done, some great thinking there, really pulling together everything we've done in today's lesson.

So I asked you to look at the points given by each of our Christians we met in today's lesson and give a piece of evidence from the Bible to support their view.

So Tamara said, "Women have been given the gifts of the Holy Spirit as much as men and can use them," and you could have used the story of the Pentecost in the Book of Acts showing this as evidence.

Fiona says, "The New Testament has lots of examples of women leading Christians, including Paul's letters," and your evidence could be that Paul commends many women in his letters to the Romans, including Junia and Phoebe.

And Fergus says, "There's no difference for me between male and female church leaders." And the evidence could be in Galatians, Paul wrote that there isn't male and female, we're all one in Christ.

And finally, Danielle said, "Women can have an important role in the church, but they can't be in authority over men." And the evidence you could use for that is that Paul wrote in Corinthians and Ephesians that women should not have authority over men.

So well done for your hard work there.

So let's summarise everything we've learned today then.

Women in the New Testament.

Jesus appeared to women when he was resurrected and instructed them to go and tell the disciples.

Women were present at the Pentecost and filled with the Holy Spirit.

Women are commended in Paul's letters as leaders among the followers of Jesus.

Paul also wrote that women should be silent in church and not have authority over men.

In Romans, Paul greets Junia, believed to be an apostle, but over time, translations and interpretations of this figure have changed.

And I wonder what you think about women in the New Testament and whether these examples show us that women can be leaders in the church or not? So well done for your hard work today, and I can't wait to see you again soon.

Bye-bye.