Holy Misogyny

DeConick (Isla Carroll & Percy E. Turner Professor of Biblical Studies, Rice Univ.; The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says) begins her new book by briefly tracing the hints of a "lady God" in the Hebrew scriptures, noting a few echoes in the Wisdom literature, the Kabbalah, and elsewhere, before her disappearance altogether. The author then notes similar trends in Christianity, beginning with Jesus's call of female disciples—a departure from Jewish tradition and practice—to increasing restrictions upon female leadership as the early church developed. She articulates clearly the progressive degradation—partly under the influence of Roman culture—of women's bodies and women's leadership in the second and third centuries C.E. She then demonstrates how views of women have influenced Christian Trinitarian doctrine, polity, and subsequent Christian history even into the 21st century.