Video Transcript: Q & A with Henry Reyenga

Henry - Carolyn, as I listened to this, I'm fascinated by the connection between the  immigrants of today, the people who migrate today, women to migrate today, and how that  pattern was so clear back then. I mean, like, I remember my stories. I'm a second generation  American I remember stories in my own family. They were came from the Netherlands, Dutch. First, they all spoke Dutch. So they went to the public school. And then all of a sudden the  children taught parents English. So you have the Dutch and English, I'm the last born in the  family by the time I came along, Dutch faded away, I had to take it in college because it  wasn't in the family system. But certain Dutch traits still existed. I would imagine this is what  we have here. It's like things are in flux. But even culturally, Judaism, Greek understandings,  Roman understandings, and here comes Christianity into this mix that must have been  extremely disruptive for women too.  

Carolyn - That's right. It's, it's part of the whole pattern that was going on of migration.  Differences of language, I already said that Greek was the language on the street. But there  were people speaking Aramaic and other languages from other countries that they came  from, you know, we haven't even talked about the northerners from from Gaul in Germany,  those people were also in the empire as migrants and coming with their own languages. So it  was, it was a kind of a mixture, you know, There's a famous saying of a Roman writer that the  Arantes flows into the Tiber, the Arantes is, is a river in Syria. And the Tiber, of course, is the  river at Rome. And so what he means is that all of Syria is moving to Rome. So and this is  from the perspective of a Roman who's not happy about that, so you know, echoes of things  going on today?  

Henry - Do you feel like the women in that culture? How did they fit with that mix? Like did the men quickly accomodate, and the women still had their old patterns of that origin of birth?  And then men brought their wives? And was there sort of a bifurcation at times? Or did that  really just move on at wherever people  

Carolyn - that's very hard to say, I know, we just don't have the the documentation on that.  But in in general, it would be the men who would have to go out and labor. And there there  have been studies, for example, on unskilled labor in Rome, people coming in to Rome, for  

work, and it would be the men who would have to do that. And whether the women even  came along or not or whether they stayed in the villages. We don't know. So we don't know  what the patterns are.  

Henry - One more question about women and religion. So you had mentioned that there that  many of the women, there was a civil religion or a local locale, religion, and there were  festivals to the matron, married and so forth. But you know, in the Bible, we see that too, like  Diana, Diana, worship of Diana, or whatever, different things like that. What influence did the  women's religion play in the cultures?  

Carolyn - Yeah, women's religion fostered, I think, a kind of solidarity among women of the  same social level. Okay. And not so much sure, you know, vertically, but certainly among the  the people of the same social level, there would be a kind of a camaraderie of women  together with each other and being able to talk about their, their problems and their  situations and, and getting out of the house, away from their husbands.  

Henry - They were allowed to do that that was a opportunity for them. Yes. Does that actually  just my last kind of hurt so that somehow that trait come to Christianity? Where women on  the solidarity with other women in Christianity, too?  

Carolyn - We hope it did. Again, the voices of women, we don't have them. So so we don't  know that for sure. But we can assume that I think,  

Henry - Okay, very good. This is very exciting. I can't wait to hear the next presentation.