Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership

by Ally Kateusz

This book reveals new early Christian evidence that Mary was remembered as a powerful role model for women leaders--women apostles, baptizers, and presiders at the ritual meal.  Early Christian art portrays Mary and other women clergy serving as deacons, presbyters, priests, and bishops. This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND license.

Genres: Religion, History, Christian, Theology, Church History, Nonfiction, Womens

450 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 18, 2019

Reviews

[Deacon Tom (Feeling Better)]

A very powerful book. It goes into incredible depth on unpublished stories of Mary and the women surrounding her.

The overall thesis is that Mary, the Mother of Jesus was a true leader of the early Christian Church, not a submissive woman to the whims of Jesus.

Of course, this is controversial topic that is presented with the use of ancient artworks and references to books of the early church that have been dropped from our current scripture. The research was massive with over 100 pages of references.

It is the kind of book that I occasionally enjoy. It was difficult to read at times because of its technical nature and the need for my background in early church theology.

However, I recommend this challenging book to those who enjoy a challenge.

[Matt Miles]

This book is a bit dry in places and falls into the trap of being repetitive a few times, but the content alone is fascinating and important enough for me to recommend it to all Christians. The truth is undeniable: The early church was composed of both male and female leaders, and male church leaders later tried to hide it through deliberate deception. The consequences for the abuse of women (often on the grounds of “biblical” womanhood) are still being felt in the big cee Church today. Hopefully more people will read books like this and Junia is not alone, and hopefully the truth will set us free.

[James Crawford]

This is a very interesting book but one that you might even need to take notes as you read it. Basically what it does is present information on Mary Magdalene and how she was thought of in early Christian history. There is no doubt whatsoever that she and other women that were, at one time, leaders in the Christian community over time got written out by the victors who were men.

Books were burned. Some books were copied and references to women holding positions of importance were removed. The book also covers the subject of early art and how in some pieces there is no doubt that both men and women were involved in religious rituals. Over time, though, many of those art pieces were destroyed or buried and history was rewritten, again removing women from their position of importance.

Some specific points of interest:

Early on there were different forms of Judaism and different forms of Christianity. The importance of women in these forms varied.

In 1965 Vatican II demoted Mary and her statues were moved.

There are many instances of Mary and Mary, the mother of Jesus, preaching.

There are \ other women who were also preachers/priestesses such as Thecla and Irene,

There is evidence that women baptized people.

Sexual slurs were used against women who held leadership positions. This even went so far as the (absolutely insane) charge that some women put holds in babies, drained their blood and mixed it with the Eucharistic bread.

In 1916 the Holy Office prohibited any depictions of Mary garbed in priestly clothing.

One of the images that shows the importance of women (particularly in artwork) was when the women held their hands up in a prayerful pose.

There is a possibility that both Mary Magdalene and Jesus officiated at the last supper. It is also very probable that the last supper also included other men and some women.

85% of early Christian writings are gone; lost or burned.

This is just a very tiny portion of the information in this book. In addition the book includes notes, references and an index. If you want a book that shows how women were basically written out of Christianity then this is the one to buy.

[Dave Courtney]

It's hard to recommend this book because of its definite scholarly nature. It's not the kind of book the average reader, or average Christian, will pick up and be able to engage. It's a mix of historical and archeaological evidence fused together with plenty of images, notes, and demonstrations. As a purely informational read it definitely could be tedious to someone simply looking for the lessons to be gleaned from this wealth of information.

At the same time, I want to recommend this book to every Christian. The information is that vital, that important. At the end of the book she specificies that the reason she embarked on this research project was for "the little girls", the ones who have grown up and who will grow up never having the opportunity to engage in Christian practice and liturgy with an image of themselves at the table, doing the Priestly duties, empowering others as leaders and witnesses to the great faith.

If there is a single phrase that might sum this research project up it would be this: "the past is political. Therein lies its power." As this book looks to bring to the surface, the power of politics is censorship, and while "conesorship is seldom complete" what censorship does is gradually, over time, begin to cement a false narrative that can appear and seem impossible to dismantle.

And because this kind of censoring process tends to happen incrementally and over time, locating motivations for the creation, the perpetuating and the holding up of these false narratives is equally evasive. What a group of scholars and theologians and persons of power did in one time period morphs into something different for subsequent generations, thus unfolding into a reality in which "scribes were silent about their silencing", with this silencing act suddenly carrying on its shoulders the weight of an entire tradition. Dismantle this narrative and it might seem that the entire tradition is likely to fall with it. Thus intention forms into an act of either willful or unaware ignorance, a need to "erase memory" altogether. "It is intergral to the process of forgetting that it pretend not to be a repression at all, that it dissimulate itself", going on to say that "the scribal activity associated with the redaction of the markers of female religious authority functioned as a form of damnatio memoriae, but instead of obliterating a single powerful political foe or family from the written record, it attempted to erase the memory of powerful historical women who had exercised religious authority."

Perhaps a note of hope though can be found in a work like this through this statement: "The pendulum of cultural change always swings- perhaps not as far as where it started, but never still. Cultural change takes place under competing forces. It's graph is not not a straight line. It is a series of waves. No pope, emporer, theologian, or church council is ever so influential as to immediately change deeply embedded gender roles." If this is true, then the reverse is also possible. If a single voice has the power to begin to change the tide, perhaps a work like this has the power to begin to redirect the tide, to recapture what has been lost to time and history.

So, if I was to narrow in on the heart of the problem represented through Kateusz's research and this book, what more precisely would that be? How is that we move from here to there, from then to where we are now? This is going to be woefully inadequate at capturing the wealth of her research, the depth of what is primarily a historical argument, but at the very least let me try to summarize it in this way. Throughout the book Kateusz holds up two reigning pictures of Mary, one with her arms confidently raised and represented in the foreground, the other which features her in the background with her eyes looking at the ground in submission. The latter picture demonstrates the dominant view of Mary that has been passed down to us today- a woman who defined by virginity and purity and submission, while the former picture is demonstrative of "the very oldest surviving Christian inscription that can be dated with any certainty", which points to someone with liturgical authority, demonstrative of a high priest and associated with the founding figures of Israel and symbolically as a "new Abraham". This latter description is indicative of the views that would have defined the early Church and more specifically the world of Second Temple Judaism in which we located much of Jesus' own ministry, language and symbolism.

So how is it that many would percieve scripture itself to be supportive of the patriarchy and even theologically interested in the demotion of of women to submissive roles rather than leaders? The answer Kateusz proposes through her research has less to do with scripture and the world of the early Church and second temple Judaism and far more to do with scripture's scribal heritage. The fact is, scripture contains a wealth of evidence and material that depicts, supports and demonstrates not just the importance of women in the Tradition and the Church, but recognition of their roles as primary and equally positioned within the liturgical practice and preistly roles and duties. The reason for the discrepency is found in how early scholars, removed from the original text, came to interepret and restore these texts. What we have in scripture are short forms of what in their antiquity are "long narratives". Early scholars established a "rule of thumb" the presupposed this idea that "the shortest reading is the preferred reading" when trying to piece together these ancient sources. The reason for this is because short narratives were thought to be more reliable than lengthier texts by the simple nature that shorter texts are indicative of a "preserved" narratve. and these preserved narratives came to be seen as the best indication of the actual views and practices and words that they shared.

You can see this to a degree in how throughout history the canon came to be pulled and put together. Now, while this shouldn't undermine the text itelf (this pratice is par for the course when it comes to dealing with ancient documents), it should raise awareness to how we uncover a possible consequence of ignoring the lengthier texts. As she posits, "recent studies of the most ancient copies of the New Testament books have uncovered a striking fact: scribes omitted portions of the texts they were copying more often than they added to them. This finding is especially startling given the by now centuries-old-text-critical criterion lectio brevior potior (prefer the shorter reading). The outcome of this was that "later scribes excised depictions of female leadership and authority that did not accord with the later Christian gender model."

The simple answer to this then is to return to and reengage with the lengthier texts that modern Christendom tends to have relegated to the dusty corners of developed suspicion. The lengthier text can shed greater light and context on the preserved (shorter text), but to arrive there we need to shed the suspicion that the process of canonization has endeavored to bestow. We need to put aside feelings that engaging the lengthier text will somehow undermine the trustworthiness of scripture, and in doing so the reward can then be a richer picture of the textual context. More specifically with the concern of this book, the reward can be a richer picture of the many strong women who once adorned the pages and words of the Christian litrugy.

The focus of Kateusz is mainly on Mary, the mother of Jesus, but she uses her as a way into the stories not just of the second Mary, but of the stories of other women some erased entirely, and some on captured briefly in the short form and redacted form of the common text. What she ultimately desires to do is piece together the narrative that would have covered the understanding of the original audience, one that could even be seen as a raised matriarchy against the dominant form of patriarchy that surrounded first and second temple Israel. We miss the nuance even of Paul's own words and interests without this context, as we have been taught to narrow in on the shorter text and make it even shorter by way of isolating select verses that appear to position women as necessarily subservient and in submission and turning this into a universal law of what men are called to be (leaders) and what women are called to be (in service to the leadership of men).

Perhaps most freeing in the words of this book is the opportunity for Christian women to find in Mary a model for spiritual faithfulness as women called to the faith. The fact that we have such richly feminine language not only being vocalized in second temple Judaism (represented through it's diversity of expression) but also in the earliest depictions of the eucharist and the stories of Jesus themselves could be profoundly perspective changing for a gender long oppressed by the propping up of patriarchal myths. The fact that later developments of Trinitarian language, which developed from positions of power, formulated this three fold role entirely on a masculine premise hides the fact that their understanding of Yahweh in the ancient world was equally feminine in nature. The Father-Son relationship that emerges with Jesus connects to the detaching of the Spirit, a traditionally feminine descriptive, and thus gets rewritten into the dominant masculine language of later politicized forms. In reality, the feminine imagery of the spirit is as predominant as the masculine imagery of the Father, which for the early readers and authors and communities would have been tied specifically to the acceptance of equal roles and even the liberating of women leaders and figures. This interest of power and politics has left us with a fragmented understanding of this reality, which actually underscores the stunning reality that after all this time this witness is still present and aware even in the shorter forms of the text. We simply have to look for it and abandon that inherited need to interpret it out of the text according to societal expectations. This just proves the power of both the feminine spirit and the feminine Spirit.

[Eric Vanden Eykel]

A dense and excellent read filled with masterful analyses of art and literature. A must read for students and scholars of early Christianity, and for any interested in the question of women’s leadership in the early Christian movement.

[Lisa]

Very interesting, but highly scholarly.

[Ivette]

Es interesante la forma en que describe al papel de la mujer en la iglesia. Me ha gustado bastante para tener otro enfoque y sobre todo, el reconocimiento a las mujeres a lo largo de la historia d.C.

[Dana]

I have just finished reading Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership. The fundamental message that God allows women to be religious leaders who preach and give direction to men is true and deeply needed now in the Catholic/Christian faith. I wrote this review from the idea of writing a letter to the author. The best part of this book comes when the author’s (Ally Kateusz) hard work and courage reveal the long “hidden” stories of Christianity’s early female apostles (Romans 16:7) and deacons (Romans 16:1-2 and 1 Timothy 3:11). However, I would warn the author (and the readers) to have more faith in the actual Bible and to be more careful to separate the “wheat” from the “chaff” (Matthew 13:24-32 and Luke 3:17) in terms of the extra-biblical sources.

Spoiler alert! This book does not prove that women have ever received what the Catholic Church terms the “ministerial priesthood”. In my opinion, she does prove that the Catholic Church’s current conventional narrative (CCC 1577) about how the apostles only chose men as their ordained collaborators and only had men for liturgical service is false. She proves this in the chapter on women preachers and baptizers. However there is a conspicuous lack of narrative evidence that the women apostles Nino Thecla, and Irene ever conferred the sacrament of Confirmation (Acts 8: 14-17 and Acts 19:1-7) or Order (Acts 6:-1-7, Acts 13: 1-3)

To be fair there are some excellent novels and histories (2nd century) based on earlier oral traditions that were written down by early Christians. Unfortunately, later church authorities downgraded women's leadership and these true stories that were handed down from generation to generation were censored or destroyed. Kateusz tries to undo that damage. One of the gems of this book comes when Kateusz proves that honoring Mary as the mother of God (Theotokos) was universal among Christians before the Council of Ephesus.

Let the reader be warned! There is a lot of “chaff” in this book where the author completely brakes with the actual Bible and the Catholic faith.

Here is the case in point, Kateusz claims that Mary offers herself along with Christ at the Last Supper. Obviously, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John could not have forgotten that. If what Kateusz puts forward is true, then all she has done is call the reliability of the canonical Gospels into doubt. So, at that point she is basically adding whatever she likes to the Catholic religion. Second, she wants to throw 1 Timothy out of the Bible because she claims that it can't be reconciled with her thesis. The third instance of chaff in her book comes when she unfortunately sites doctrinally unreliable texts like the Acts of Phillip alongside good doctrinally sound texts like the Life of Thecla.
Here is some of the good “wheat” that is on display in Kateusz’s book. Kateusz argues persuasively that the Six Books written down in the 2nd century are based on older Apostolic oral traditions about Mary the Mother of God. The Six Books were read in Christian churches and are probably the most reliable extra biblical sources that the author analyzes. She looks for common events in Mary's life and ministry that are present in this source and the Dormition narratives of Mary’s death, as well as The Life of the Virgin associated with Maximus the Confessor, the Protoevangelium of James, and the Gospel of Bartholomew.

The chapter on women preachers and baptizers proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the women deacons from Roman 16:1 and 1 Timothy 3:11 were commissioned to preach, baptize, and oversee new Church communities in mission territory. It is believable that they could have been the religious leaders for these communities until male presbyters and apostles could arrive who would have been able to confirm the converts and set up local presbyters. It is notable that Kateusz cannot present a scrap of evidence that the female apostles were ordaining presbyters for their communities. Confirming and Ordaining are among the first things that Paul does when he arrives in a community.

Here are some other highlights

• The book confirms what Hans Urs Von Balthasar theorized about Mary being the greatest theologian. Kateusz shows that early Christian oral tradition describes Mary sending out a group of (male and female) missionaries from Jerusalem, supervising their preaching, and giving them further instruction.

• Many early Christians believed that Mary's religious leadership was fully equivalent to the male apostle’s “high priesthood”. This is demonstrated by how the Protoevangelium of James has Mary twice entering the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem Temple and by Romans 16:7. The Gospel of James or the Protoevangelium of James is always going to be a good witness to the Marian beliefs of Christians that lived in the first centuries however there are serious doubts about its historical reliability.

• Early traditions have Mary offering her prayers along with liturgical incense in an action that was later restricted to Ministerial Priests.

• The Life of the Virgin is part “wheat” and part “chaff”. It has some value in bringing out Mary's leadership in the early community. However, the author’s contention that Mary offered herself as priest and victim along with Christ at the Last Supper borders on blasphemy. Once again this isn't about being for or against patriarchal Catholicism this is just about being consistent in Catholicism’s understanding of the canonical Gospels. You simply cannot add Mary co- presiding at the Last Supper and still cite the canonical Bible as an infallible witness to Jesus’s life and ministry.

• Kateusz relies on early Christian catechisms like the (Didascalia Apostolorum) and written collections of oral tradition to conclude that it was common in the early church to have two presiders at the Eucharist one male and one female (father and mother). She thinks that this demonstrates that women were ministerial priests. However, there is no reason to think that a female deacon couldn't co-preside. This is much more consistent with the canonical New Testament than believing that females transubstantiated the Eucharist. Remember other than consecrating the Eucharist deacons (in the 1st century) basically could do everything presbyters did in the early Church. That is why St. John Chrysostom expressed confusion about whether he was in fact reading about the deacons (and not presbyters) in Acts chapter 6. They seemed to him to be demonstrating the managerial, pastoral, and other non-sacramental responsibilities that were only given to presbyters in St. John Chrysostom’s time.

One of the highlights of this book is learning how early Christian writing and art proves how Jesus and Mary are inseparable. It proves that doctrinally orthodox Christians venerated and prayed to Mary in the 2nd and 3rd centuries without any doctrinal guidance from the Church. Another joy is learning about how central Mary’s leadership was in the founding of Christianity.

I could see that the author probably has multiple PHD's in art history because she spent a lot of time analyzing the symbols inside historical church artworks. Her argument for women priests is basically this. Roman 16: 7 and reliable oral traditions from the 1st and 2nd century agree that women were given the extraordinary title “apostle”. Furthermore, the author's analysis of art history reveals that artwork inside Catholic churches and monasteries depicts women wearing a symbol of priestly ministry.

Artwork is clearly very subjective even if you do have multiple degrees in art history. For me the decisive point is this, if author’s argument for women priests were correct her Life of Thecla would have Thecla performing the sacrament of Confirmation (laying on his hands) as well as baptizing. That along with the fact that Paul easily could have included a simple one sentence note about women priests in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 just as he did with women deacons a few sentences later are the two fundamental reasons that I don't believe the author's argument for women priests. That being said I still enjoyed the majority of her book.

[Robin Morgan]

Just like women of the Jewish faith being members of the most orthodox sects, Christian women are also disenfranchised from full participation in some segments of the Christian faith by not being able to be part and parcel of the clergy. This is spite of the fact women are revered for the important part they’ve play, and the most revered of them all, had been Mary

Hail Mary, full of grace.
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

What the author and cultural historian, Ally Kateusz, has done here in her book has been to show her readers that women going back to the dawn of Christianity have played an important role. Art has always shown what life was like ages ago and Christian art is no exception as it shown women functioning as leaders of the Christian faith such as elders or ministers of Christian churches.

The author’s expertise focuses around the connection art had regarding between women and religion during the early Christian period and Late Antiquity through the utilization of visual images and symbols found in a work of art from this period of time.

And if we’re looking for evidence regarding a woman’s role in the Christian faith, I believe it can be found in ACTS 2:17-18 [ESV], where Peter is preaching to a crowd:

17 In the last days, God says, I will pour out My Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.
18 Even on My servants, both men and women, I will pour out My Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.

For having enlightening her readers as to role women have already played in the Christian, how can I not give Ms. Kateusz the 5 STARS she getting from this reviewer of Christian books.

[Karis]

Reads like a dissertation: bookends of thesis are strong and captivating (and righteously aggravating). Middle section reads like a results section: drives point home, repetitive.

[Tristan Sherwin]

There’s certainly plenty of interesting information in this regarding women’s leadership within the early church, drawing on extra-biblical textual and archeological evidence.

However, it’s the formatting of the book that really lets this down. Some editing would have helped immensely. As most chapters made clear, their contents were republished extracts of articles, and whilst the content is informative, this often created a sense of disjointed steps, as there was no real progression in the argument. Instead of evidence being pulled together into like categories and conclusions being drawn, it felt as if it was all jumbled together and lost in the midst of everything else. Therefore, the evidence loses its distinctive force both on an individual level and a cumulative level.

To be clear, I’m not criticising the point Ally Kateusz is making within *Mary and Early Christian Women*—I’m already biased towards her view. But because of the way that her sources are presented, I’m not sure it’ll do much to convince those who need convincing.

[Margie Dorn]

I have to say that this book was a hard slog, took me a very long time to actually read, a whole year, even though the book turned out to be much shorter than I'd expected. And yet, the closing chapter was so revelatory and important that now I feel like I need to re-read the first chapters. In other words, Kateusz might have done better to turn her last chapter into her first. The research itself is very well done, and the photos included in the book are fantastic and very supportive of her premise that women took part in leading and supporting eucharistic celebrations from the earliest days of the Jewish sect that became Christianity. Her research further shows how the developing church patriarchy suppressed the evidence as time went on. Her premise makes good sense, since the earliest practices of eucharist were based on meal fellowship, and it seem obvious that women would have been a logical part of the preparation and proceedings. At some point I intend to re-read this book, last chapter first.

[Hashim]

Most books about Christian women in the early church rely solely on written evidence from the scriptures and the writings of church leaders. "Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership" book is different. Ally Kateusz dives into depictions of women in Christian art, fiction, the and building inscriptions to unearth fresh insights.

The biggest surprise for me was that some of the evidence of women in ministry and leadership was redacted, obscured, or completely hidden over time. In a hunt for unvarnished truth, Kateusz quotes from enemies of the early church in order to highlight the prominent place women had in the spread of Christianity.

This book is on the scholarly side, so don't recommend it as the first thing you read on this subject. However, this book opened up several rabbit holes of people, events, and topics that I had never encountered before but want to study more.

[Connor Longaphie]

This book is very fun to read, and definitely interesting. Is it true though? A bit of a warning in that regard; kateusz repeatedly blends heretical groups in with orthodox groups, canonical scriptures in with heretical and false texts and uses it as collaborative evidence, and seeks to understand them and reamagine them (as she discusses in her methodological section). In that regard, she is not intending to speak of or from or to "orthodox Christianity" but to "imagine" the thjngs she believes we have hidden or changed over time , thus oppressing women. That is more or less her thesis. Worth reading to understand the hisotical findings and the "heretical" beliefs and practices mentioned, so long as one recognizes that they are not reading a "Christian" (in the orthodox or catholic sense) book

[Karen]

Well worth reading if you want to learn about the roles of women in the early Christian church especially 1st-3rd centuries. The author strives to show through early Christian art and ancient writings that women regularly participated in the leadership of churches and in officiating the sacraments of communion and baptism. It’s a fascinating study indicating that early Christians may have often had different practices than what we assume. It is helpful if you have already read a lot about analysis of early writings through manuscript copies, but even if this is your first time to delve into that, the book does a good job of explaining. It helps to look up or google references as you read.

[Carson Harraman]

Unbelievably compelling. Kateusz is a master of her craft and of the material. After doing much reading both on epigrams of early christian women in the diaconate as well as the development of marian theology, I was looking for a book that combined both scholarly streams. Kateusz puts the two disciplines together, not only providing a compelling, if not undeniable case for the historic precedent of women in church leadership, but also for the continued admiration and love for the Holy Theotokos, including the fact that her veneration came much earlier than 431. I highly reccomend this book to anyone interested in church history, women in ministry, or Marian theology.

[Hope]

A fascinating, paradigm-shifting study…

This book is a compilation of work done during the building of a doctoral dissertation. From that standpoint, it is a bit redundant at times, but I never lost interest. What an amazing body of solid, and geographically spread, evidence for the presence of strong female leadership in the early Christian church. The historical implications of this are profound. I do not consider myself a Christian, as most define it, but I found this utterly fascinating. Highly recommended.

[Elaine Ricker Kelly]

Convincing Historical Evidence

Seeing the examples of ancient art, carvings, mosaics, and frescoes, as well as quotes from ancient documents, provide convincing historical evidence of that Mary, mother of Jesus, and other women were leaders in the early church. Further evidence shows how the record of female priests, bishops, and overseers has been destroyed or hidden. Miraculously, some art was preserved because it was hidden in tombs or behind new construction. These records reveal the women's leadership that was hidden.

[Kaitlyn Haley Deisher]

This book made me mad. Mad at the centuries of male church leadership manipulating our vision on early Christian women. But it also gave me intense hope. Hope that God will continue to call and raise up God's daughter's to be ministers, pastors, and prophets. Thank you Ally Kateusz for this impressive and vital work. May it as you say, change the way our daughters are expected to behave, in the pattern of the Theotokos.

[Derek Kreider]

I am brand new to the archaeological evidence on the topic and I have to say I am blown away by the early elevation of women in the church. That being said, I question how much mention and elevation constitutes broad acceptance. Some evidence seemed normative, but others were unclear. There were a lot of aberrant views in the church which were corrected. I definitely want to learn more.

[Esther Dan]

Outstanding

I read this book in a day! As a student of history, where my Doctoral thesis was about women in church history when I graduated 20 years ago, I wished I had this book as my research. An excellent, well written, compelling read on how women played a crucial role in the formation of our history.

[Mike Briley]

Very scholarly and based on serious study. Unfortunately this researcher does not know how to write. The language is very dry. There are lots of repetitions and a basic lack of synthesis. This is a pity because the conclusions are interesting.

[Andy Febrico Bintoro]

Comprehensive female studies in Bible

The book is a collection of journals about female studies in Bible. The explanation was deep and backed up with actual sources. Half of the book was for footnotes and references.

[Katharine Heimbigner-Tenor]

A well written book on the role of women in the early church through the study of artifacts and written work outside of the Bible. The only weakness is some repetition between chapters as many of the chapters are based on articles appearing elsewhere.

[Niti Krishnakumar]

It's a historical exposition with archaeological evidences of Mary but nothing current or relevant for our walk. Definitely useful to historians and librarians due to its in-depth research and meticulous compilation (has over 350 pages!). I found the book a hard one...so passing on.

[Patrick Lacher]

I am no scholar of none conical literature so I cannot Evaluate the accuracy of this books arguments, however , I have no doubt that the 3rd and:or 4th century church may have downgraded the role of women in the church to fit with cultural believes about demons place in society.

[SW]

A must read for Christians

[Emily Wagner]

The majority of this book is incredibly academic and somewhat dense, but it has left me with a lot to think about.

[Deb]

Interesting and provocative reading that I dipped in and out of over several months.

[Richard Pütz]

Ally employs Art Theology, to help the reader appreciate the historical context of the period of time. Most excellent book