Posted: September 13th, 2017

Women in early Christianity

Women in early Christianity

Preamble:
Research, identify, analyze and discuss the difficulty of working with ancient primary sources on the topic of Women in early Christianity.
For your mini research paper you are required to identify, analyze, and discuss the issues or problems associated with two primary sources used by scholars in the study of Women in early Christianity. This can involve investigating the historical documentation around a named or unnamed woman in the New Testament, or other early Christian writing, a named or unnamed woman in an inscription, or burial portrait in any media. Your sources may be ancient texts (sacred, literary, historical, polemical, apocryphal, gnostic, epigraphical, etc.), ancient works of art, or an archaeological site related to women. N.B. For a source to be considered a bona-fide archaeological site, you must be able to show that scholars (not media stars) have published articles in scholarly journals or books about the site (documentary films are not accepted as a substitute for scholarly articles or books).

Specific instructions for writing this mini research paper:
Generally, the types of issues with primary sources encountered by scholars include but are not limited to:
? Identification: how do we know the source is early Christian?
? Authenticity: how do we know the source is not a fake?
? Dating: what methods are used to date a text, work of art, archaeological site?
? Once we can satisfy ourselves that the original text/image falls within the specified time range, what internal problems does the text or image present? E.g. inconsistencies, anachronisms, interpolations, copying, repairing.
? What criteria can be used to assess whether a female character in a text or a visual representation of a female figure might be historical?