Women in the Bible The contents of the New Testament of the Christian bible, as we know it today, are a product of decisions made by the Church Fathers; the most important of these were active around the 4th century of the Christian era. Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, a Professor at the Harvard Divinity School, reckons that, as is always the case in the writing of history, this canonical New Testament is a document of the ‘historical winners.’ She considers that the Bible, as it has been passed down to us, is not verbally inspired revelation but a series of historical accounts, written within the context of a religious community, and therefore a product of the patriarchal culture of the time. She has referred to the example in Mark’s gospel where the most prominent male disciples are shown not to understand the suffering messiahship of Jesus, whereas the women emerge, in the passion narrative, as the true disciples who understand that his ministry was not about rule and kingly glory, but about service, suffering and death. Fiorenza has also written about a short incident in chapter 14 of Mark’s gospel – the supper at Bethany, during which Jesus is anointed by an unnamed woman, to whom he responds by saying ‘what she has done will be told in memory of her’. Feminist theology is reclaiming this story is an example of an account that has been virtually forgotten in biblical commentary, in favour of the story of the last supper. Feminist theologians claim that there are undoubtedly many other stories with women as central characters, which didn’t even make it as far as being considered for inclusion by the original writers of scripture, never mind making it through the process of putting together the final accepted version. I’m not sure if I can accurately call myself a Christian, I have beliefs and practices, which are not what would commonly be accepted as orthodox-ly Christian. However, Christianity is my story, the place where I first encountered God and the possibility of reaching beyond the material world. And, I think that, doing whatever is possible to reclaim the stories of women in the bible, is a necessary and exciting task. Maud Robinson Cover