Holly J. Carey, Women Who Do: Female Disciples in the Gospels

Carey, Holly J. Women Who Do: Female Disciples in the Gospels. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2023. xi+225 pp. Pb; $29.99  Link to Eerdmans

Holly J. Carey serves as professor of biblical studies and chair of the Biblical Studies Department at Point University. In 2019, she published Jesus’ Cry From the Cross: Towards a First-Century Understanding of the Intertextual Relationship between Psalm 22 and the Narrative of Mark’s Gospel (LNTS 398; T&T Clark, 2009).

In Women Who Do, Carey argues that “as a whole, the women who followed Jesus were the ones who most consistently took action—who quite literally followed Jesus in ways his closest companions failed to do” (8). This active discipleship makes Jesus’s female disciples exemplars for Christians (9). To achieve this goal, she offers a comprehensive survey of female disciples in the Gospels and Acts through a close reading of the text and considering socio-cultural realities and challenges women faced in the first century. She does not select a few examples; she covers all examples, including characters who interact with Jesus and women who are used as hypothetical models (such as women in parables).

Carey does not offer explicit conclusions on women’s roles in the church. She wants to offer a body of evidence to consider, mainly that the gospels present women as exemplars of faith.  However, in the book’s conclusion, she suggests that her study implies that these women’s stories should be part of any discussion of women’s roles and leadership in the church. The discussion should include texts like 1 Timothy 2 or 1 Corinthians 14 and the many gospel stories of Jesus’s encounters with women that portray women as ideal disciples.

Chapter one sets the context by examining what it was like for a woman living in the Greco-Roman and Jewish culture of the first century. By examining some of these cultural norms, she can examine how Jesus’s female disciples were unusual or norm-breaking. This chapter faces several challenges. First, no first-hand records written by women exist. Men wrote about women’s lives for their own reasons and never just to “state the facts.” Second, the life of women in the 1st century is not monolithic. An elite Roman woman lived much differently than a Roman slave (or a Jewish woman). Third, the gospels are a mix of both Jewish and Greco-Roman cultures. Although Jesus was active in Jewish culture, each gospel represents the context of the Greco-Roman world in which it was written.

She divides the material into two sections. First, a woman had “worth by proxy.” Her value came through her marriage and family and was affected by widowhood. Second, Carey examines a woman’s place in the world. Here, Carey covers virtues such as modesty and loyalty and the expectations placed on women for running a well-ordered home. First-century women were often active in religious life, both in a Jewish and a Greco-Roman context. Although there were many limitations on women in the first century, there were avenues of influence for women through the practice of patronage. She cites an example of a first-century patroness from Pompei named Eumachia. This woman worked with her husband in the family business, and her name is listed as a benefactor on a large building dedication, not her husband (45).

Chapters 2-6 survey Jesus’s female followers in Mark, Matthew, Luke, Acts, and John. She begins by observing that Mark has the harshest criticism of the Twelve, and the women in Mark “serve as a foil for belief and understanding.” In the gospel of Mark, women display the qualities Jesus requires of his disciples, and the Twelve do not. Matthew portrays the Twelve more positively, yet women who followed Jesus function more like disciples than the Twelve. In Luke, women like Elizabeth, Mary, and Anna are faithful witnesses of Jesus and whose actions demonstrate their love for him. In Acts, Tabitha and Priscilla are singled out as exemplars of discipleship. The gospel of John features several women prominently, the Samaritan woman and Mary Magdalene, for example.

Conclusion. Women Who Do: Female Disciples in the Gospels is an excellent survey of all the women in the Gospels and the Book of Acts. Carey successfully provides a close reading of the text and proves her point that women are portrayed positively in the gospels, while the Twelve male disciples are not. In fact, I am not sure any women in the gospels are presented in a negative light (unlike the Pauline epistles).

NB: Thanks to Eerdmans for kindly providing me with a review copy of this book. This did not influence my thoughts regarding the work.