Women of the New Testament

While the story of Jesus of Nazareth, humble carpenter and acclaimed Son of God, takes centre stage in the New Testament of the Bible, followed closely by such devoted disciples and missionaries as Peter, John, and Paul, few hold more prestige beside Christ than a multitude of women who both paved his way and preached his message. Some, like his mortal mother, have been lifted above the ken of mere mortality, while others have been virtually ignored in their faith and good deeds. However, many of these women proved themselves more than equal to the challenges and trials of the day.

Perhaps the most famed and adored of all the Biblical women is the Virgin Mary, who was Christ’s temporal mother. In fact, no flesh-and-blood woman in the history of the world has ever been raised as high as this humble, unassuming country girl from Nazareth. Little is known about her life, except that she was engaged to marry a local carpenter named Joseph, until her fateful encounter with the Angel, informing her that she had been chosen to be the mother of the Messiah. From that point until after Jesus’ presentation at the Temple, Mary’s life comes to the forefront of the Gospels. Then, after the emotional presentation of the Christ child before Simeon in the Temple, Mary once again fades into virtual obscurity, not to re-emerge until Christ’s crucifixion. For a woman who appears so seldom in the story of the Christ, her place as the woman who gave birth to him has lifted her to an honoured place as a bountiful mother of mercy and blessing.

For all of Mary’s piety and distinction as Jesus’ mother, there was a woman who had been actively searching for the Messiah, though neither her faith in his coming nor her devoted affirmation of his arrival have ingratiated her to the annals of memory. The Bible calls her Anna, and she was both a prophetess of Christ’s coming, and the first person mentioned to ever proclaim Jesus as the Christ and Saviour.

From all accounts, Anna was a gentle, elderly woman of supreme faith and commitment to God and His works. She was a scholar of the Torah, and believed whole-heartedly in the proclamations of Isaiah and Micah.

Anna’s faith, however, was primarily in the coming of the Messiah, and it was to this pursuit that she devoted the majority of her time. It was at the presentation of the Christ child to the Temple, forty days after his birth, that Anna steps briefly into the light of history. Looking upon the infant Jesus, she turned to bystanders and declared that here was the Messiah Isaiah had prophesied. After that historical declaration, Anna the prophetess again fades into obscurity, and is never mentioned again. In all likelihood, she never lived to see the public manifestation of Christ’s miracles, or the tragedy of his crucifixion, though she might already have been granted the vision from God to know what would become of Christ. If she had been granted such a vision, that would certainly explain why, though she declared his presence, no mention is ever made of her actually celebrating the arrival of this Messiah she had spent her whole life in search of.

While Anna awaited his coming, and Mary of Nazareth brought him into the world and raised him, neither woman was to play a vital role in the adult life of the Christ, or in his miracles and ministries. However, there were many women who did play important roles during that point of his life. Prominent among them were two sisters whose faith would prove more enduring than many men’s. Their names were Martha and Mary, and they were to be indispensable to the ministry of Christ.

Martha and Mary were as different a loving sisters could be, yet they shared, without incident, the same home in Bethany, along with their brother, Lazarus. From all evidence, they were both women of means, likely inherited from parents or, in Martha’s case, a wealthy husband. For all their wealth, however, they gave selflessly not only of their money, but also of themselves. Examples of this devoted service and generosity can be seen in both Martha’s open-hearted acceptance of the role of hostess and in Mary’s impulsive anointing of Jesus with her own costly ointment.

To Mary goes the honour of this final act of devotion before Christ left Bethany for his fateful, and final, Passover in Jerusalem. Through this loving attention, she showed evidence of her knowledge of his power and wisdom, more deeply than even his disciples might have understood. Mary is raised up as one of the most spiritually sensitive women in the Bible, for the depth with which she trusted in both God and in Christ. She was the more pensive of the two sisters, and tradition alludes that she never married, more devoted to Christ and to her faith than she could ever be to any man. She is often hailed as the founder of the holy orders whose memberships would one day become known as nuns.

For all Mary’s saintly ways, it was to world-worn, practical Martha that Christ first declared himself to be the Messiah and “the Resurrection and the Life.” It was also Martha who was to utter one of the greatest confessions of faith in the history of the written word, just before her brother, Lazarus, was raised from the dead in John 11:27. She, along with her sister, Mary, also became the first named woman recorded to witness Jesus weep. Martha and Mary, by all evidence, were leaders among the faithful, both during Jesus’ ministry, and after his ascension.

For all the faithful who followed Christ without question or doubt, there were multitudes who did not believe, or had never heard of his works. Among these latter were women whose lives Christ would touch, and change. Some would go on to be number among the faithful, while others would fade back into the obscurity from which they briefly emerged.

One woman whose life was changed by Christ went on to become one of the key figures in his Resurrection. Her name is Mary Magdalene, and hers is a story of salvation, devotion, and betrayal unparalleled.

Mary Magdalene was, according to the Gospels, an influential woman in her hometown of Magdala, afflicted with possession by seven demons. When Christ cast out the demons, she threw herself zealously into his cause, both gratefully and faithfully.

It was Mary Magdalene who first discovered the empty tomb after the Resurrection, and she was also the first to both see the risen Christ and to testify to what she had seen. In fact, she is mentioned a total of fourteen times in the story, the most of any one disciple, a significant testament to her importance. Rarely is a woman mentioned so often in the Gospels, either.

Since Medieval times, Mary Magdalene has been maligned by the Church she helped to found, scholars connecting her to the unnamed harlot who washed Jesus’ feet at the home of Simon the Pharisee, in Luke 7:36-50.

Among the many women who played roles in the life and death of Christ, few have done so little and yet gained so much fame as the wife of the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate. Indeed, only thirty-eight words appear anywhere in the Bible in connection to her, yet those words are among the most powerful words ever written. It is in her ability to testify to Christ’s righteousness and innocence, at a moment when even his most loyal disciples had deserted him, that this unnamed woman wrote herself into the annals of history.

On the night when Christ was arrested in the Garden of Gesthemane, Pilate’s wife dreamed a very prophetic dream. While the exact content of her dream remains a mystery, and it has been speculated that the reason for this is that she never actually revealed the content of her dreams completely, those dreams were enough to prompt her to send a message to her husband the very next morning. It was the morning of Jesus’ hearing before Pilate, and the procurator received his distraught wife’s anxious message even as he sat on the seat of judgement, deciding Christ’s fate. Small wonder he paused as he read her chilling proclamation: “Have naught to do with that just man, for I have suffered many things this day in dreams.”

Of course, tradition says that Pilate’s wife leaned toward Judaism, and that she may have even been one of Christ’s many secret followers. However, this could be little more than wishful thinking, for no records of the day tell us what, if anything, she believed, beyond her certainty that Christ was innocent and that Pilate should have nothing to do with his condemnation. Whether she was a follower or not does not matter, either. She has been revered in the Church for her attempt to halt Christ’s predetermined execution, and for her declaration of faith through innocence. Her intervention led to Pilate’s hesitation to actually pronounce judgement on Christ, himself, leaving that final self-condemnation to the jeering mob in the courtyard. Her words and premonitions also inspired Pilate’s emphatic and unhesitating statement which has become legendary: “I wash my hands of it all.” Her words may even have wrought the words Pilate scrawled on the parchment to be nailed to the cross over Christ’s head, the first official Roman acknowledgement that Jesus of Nazareth was “King of the Jews.”

Where the actions of Pilate’s wife seem strange, for her time and position, and where her motives seem at least partly selfish, there was one woman to whom giving of herself and her talents was neither strange nor selfish, and she gave without reservation in her quest to spread the teaching of Christ by honouring his commandment to aid the elderly and infirm. She is referred to in the Bible as either Dorcas or Tabitha, and she gave so generously of herself that her name has become, in some circles, synonymous with unsolicited acts of charity.

Another famous leader of the early Church was a Jewess who came out of Rome with her husband, Aquila, to live first in Corinth, and then in Ephesus. Her name was Priscilla, and she was both a tent maker and one of the most learned women in the Bible. She, along with her husband, was a close personal friend of the Apostle Paul, and she alone was the teacher of the eloquent and learned scholar, Apollos. It is even suggested, though never proven, that Priscilla was the author of the Biblical Book of Hebrews.

Priscilla was an industrious woman and a charismatic leader, as well as being a dedicated scholar. However, it is her tremendous courage in the face of adversity that most distinguishes her, as evidenced by her strong, unwavering faith and dedication amidst persecution. She was well-known within the Church of her day, and the local Church met in her home in both Rome and, later, Ephesus. That alone speaks for her courage, as she could have been arrested, and even executed, had it ever been discovered. It even speaks for her esteem that, though reference is often made as to how she and Aquila worked together, she is mentioned first on three out of five occasions.

These women were all touched by the hand of God, and were full of faith, determination, and courage that helped them to overcome the adversity of the prejudiced era in which they lived.