The Revolt of the Widows

No child of this century, women's liber-ation existed as a Christian movement in the 2nd century. In this first study of the social context that produced the Apocryphal Acts, Stevan L. Davies con-tends that women wrote the Acts and that the "Acts appear to have been a striving by Christian women for both a mode of self-expression and a way to preach rebellion for the sake of sexual continence." These early rebels--called widows because they left their husbands for the church--refused absolute subservience to the male hierarchy of the church. The three parts of Davies's study in-clude an investigation of the magical world view of late 2nd-century Christen-dom; a close look at the people the Acts describe as new Christian converts; and a summary and analysis of the nature of the authors of the Acts. These women, like their sisters today, were seeking equal standing with men in the Chris-tian church.