Video Transcript: Roman-Greek-Jewish Cultural Blends

 In this segment number four, we're going to pull together Roman, and Greek and Jewish  women, and to make a cultural blend. And let's talk about some more of the issues that we  were talking about before. First of all, and I've made this point before, the Jewish women were part of this whole world, that they don't operate in a vacuum. It would be a mistake to think  about Jews as living separately from their Greek and Roman neighbors. We do think that in  most of these major cities, cultural groups tended to live together as they still do today in  many places. And so you would have a neighborhood that might be predominantly Syrian, a  neighborhood in Rome, let's say, another neighborhood, that would be predominantly people  from Egypt, and another that would be predominantly Jewish. But they're all living as part of a large cultural blend. And so Jewish women are part of this, I mentioned, Elephantine, that's  that Island, near Aswan in Upper Egypt. And we have some information from that place about  the Jewish community. For one thing, they had a temple, the Jewish, the temple was not  limited to Jerusalem. And we think that this one actually was built at the time when the  Jerusalem temple the First Temple was destroyed, in the late sixth century, and in BC, and the  community Elephantine left some literary documents, referring to their temple there. But one  of the interesting things with regard to women is that it had been thought that according to  Jewish law, women could not initiate divorce. The there is nothing in the legislation in the Old  Testament that would suggest that they could, that men could decide there is men could  could decide they were going to divorce their wives, and how do they do it by giving an  appropriate piece of a document appropriate legislation. And so we sort of thought that Jewish women couldn't initiate divorce on their own. Now, in fact, what we do know every just about  everywhere, is that a Jewish woman who wanted a divorce could go to the, the the leaders,  the leaders of the of the synagogue, and ask them to intervene and to issue the divorce and  that would happen but at this place in Elephantine Jewish women are initiating divorce. And  so it's one of these things that makes us ask the question, okay, you have a written text that  says something, but what's really going on. And so, that could be the case, really, all over the, in the Jewish communities of the Empire. urban and rural differences. Here, we could perhaps  look at something like Galilee, a place like Galilee, or other places that are more rural and  urban and ask whether society was not more conservative, shall we call it or traditional there,  than in places like Alexandria, or Rome, or Ephesus, or some of the the cities of the Empire,  and that's quite possible. That in, in some of these rural areas, and if you're talking about  Jewish women in in the home country, you know, in Galilee, or in or even in the countryside in Judea, that people who are not quite as under the influence of the larger Roman culture  would, would live more traditionally. And we'll talk more about that when we get to women in  the gospels, but that is certainly a question to ask, but the trouble is always we have very  little evidence from rural places, we have very little evidence from illiterate people, you know, so, so that is always a problem. I do though, want to talk about levels of of literacy. And that's  something that's very debated. There are scholars who will say that in the entire Roman  Empire, that literacy never goes above about 30%. We know that there were teachers, there  were there were men who made a living, being teachers, and they would send boys to school. We know that from from literary texts, we have even some of the copy books that that boys  had to use to learn handwriting. And, and some of them describe exactly what what they  have to do, they have to get up in the morning and they eat their breakfast, and they go to  school, and they do their lessons. And they come back and do their homework and the whole  description of what a boy's life is, like, while he's going to school. And so certainly, there were  parts of the population that were literate, now what about women. very sparse evidence, very sparse evidence of women doing something like that going to school as girls. However, in  households that could afford it, there certainly were instances in which women were tutored  and, and became literate. Also, as children. In very upper class, wealthy elite households,  they definitely were educated and highly educated in literature. Some of the Roman satirists  will complain that they go to a to a dinner party and the women are spouting literature and  wanting to talk about all kinds of aspects of literary interpretation. And so we know that that  there certainly were some women who were highly educated, but there we're talking, we're  talking about a small number, and we're talking about elites. Did the average woman on the  street who's selling her vegetables know how to write? Maybe not? Did she know how to 

count enough to get her money? You bet she did. So when we talk about literacy, there are all kinds of levels. And a basic level is just getting along to do what you you need to do. And  there are different levels. I mean, there's there's reading, and then there's writing, which are  not the same thing. Some people could read and probably not write. But it goes all the way up into a very highly educated level as well. So so the question of literacy is, is an interesting  one. And another thing that kind of throws confusion into this is the evidence from the city of  Pompeii. Pompeii was a city on the Bay of Naples, south of Rome, that was destroyed by the  eruption of Vesuvius, probably in August of the year 79. Though there's some evidence it  could have been in October instead of August, but in the year 79. And there are a number of  towns there that were destroyed and and by the volcano, and were rediscovered in the  beginning in the late 1600s 1700s. And excavations going on various times through the  centuries, and still excavations going on now. But here's the thing about literacy. all over the  walls of the buildings along the street, there are campaigns, election campaign signs, vote for so and so. So and so and so and so, advocate, this candidate vote for this candidate, written  up on the wall. If only 30% could read those, why put them out there. And it raises the  question of a higher level of literacy for basic things like that, just reading sentences and, and these sentences are, there's a formula I mean, they're very repetitive in the way they say  things. But having spending the time and money you know, to have your candidate plastered  on the wall, sounds as if there's a higher level of literacy and in that but women of course, did not vote. So maybe that doesn't say anything about literacy for women, but it certainly does  for men? So this whole question of levels of literacy is something that that's very debated. So  the point is that this first generation of Christian women are part of all of this. The first  generation of people in the church are, some of them are Jews certainly are. That's the, that's  the matrix. That's the beginning matrix. Paul's pattern, according to Acts, this is at least the  way it's described in Acts. And that that Paul and his traveling companions, other itinerant  missionaries, they're Jewish, they seek out the Jewish neighborhood, in a city where they  arrive. And they're visiting scholars, visiting people who seem to have something to say. And  so when they go to the synagogue on the Sabbath, they're invited to say something. And they do. And they start from the scriptures and distinct passages in Scripture. And they couldn't  have carried Bibles with them because Bibles were, you know, huge things and very  expensive. But they must have carried with them certain passages that they wanted to use a  kind of a little a little collection of passages. Isaiah, the suffering servant is one of the  favorites certainly. And from an and, you get this in the preaching in Acts, what are the  Scripture texts they start out with? And from there, then they would preach Jesus. And they  would get various reactions. Some people would say, we don't want to hear any more about  this goodbye. And others would say, Yeah, we, we do want to hear more about this. And well  come come to our house for dinner tonight. And a group of people would gather and this, of  course, is the origin of the house churches. And we'll we'll say more about that later. Now,  how are women involved in this? Are women in the synagogue? This is one of the questions. If you look at Luke 13, and Jesus healing the bent over a woman in the synagogue, he sees this  woman in the synagogue on the Sabbath. And so, you know, are the men and the women all  mixed in together? Or is there a women's gallery as there is today in traditional synagogues, a different place for women, but visible from the men? This is the kind of a question and the  presence of women in synagogues in ancient synagogues is is, is a very interesting topic. And we just we don't know completely how that answered how that worked. But but certainly  women are part of this whole thing. They're hearing of what what these people are saying,  and they're part of the households in which then they begin to meet so. So women are, are  very much part of this whole. This whole way in which Greco Roman culture worked, and in  which the gospel was first preached. And we're going to have a lot more to say about that.