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The Entrepreneurial Widows of 1 Timothy

Thesis

First Timothy furnishes fascinating evidence of leadership roles by women in

emergent Christianity. Specifically, in an extended discussion of ‘widows’ (1 Tim. 5:3-16) it
offers us a view onto a conflict centred in a concern to regulate unmarried women. In the
ancient world, the Greek term χήρα could refer to any woman who chose to live without a
man, whether one whose husband had died or a single woman, an equation that also is found
in early Christian literature (for example, Ign. Smyrn. 13.1), and in Egyptian census records
also is applied to divorced single women (Thurston 1989: 9-17; Stahlin 1974; Methuen 1997:
285-98; Hanson 2000: 149-65). As I hope to show, 1 Timothy, a pseudonymous letter (like 2
Timothy and Titus) written as late as the middle of the second century (Dibelius and
Conzelmann 1972: 1-5; Campenhausen 1963: 197-252; Hoffmann 1984: 281-307), speaks to
a situation in which single (‘widow’) entrepreneurial female merchants act as patrons of
Christ believing assemblies and as a consequence exercise important roles of leadership. To a
degree this pushes against or nuances a widely held interpretation that the author's discussion
of widows centres on their adoption of celibacy as an expression of a Pauline rejection of
marriage through which they have found social agency, status, and power otherwise closed off
to them (Bassler 1984: 23-41; 2003: 122-46). While new possibilities of social identity not
only for women but arguably also slaves and children were a probable outcome of Paul’s and
others’ teaching, this kind of reading has neglected attention to the role of entrepreneurial
ummarried women as benefactors and patrons. A broader consideration of the roles of
business women as patrons of differing kinds of groups (Greco-Roman associations, Jewish
synagogues, and also early Christ believing assemblies described elsewhere in the New
Testament and contemporary literature) reveals an urban social world where entrepreneurship
and patronage offered women avenues of power and recognition outside of the traditional
gender roles prescribed for them as wives and mothers. The second century pseudonymous
letter addressed to Paul’s protege Timothy seeks to delimit the social power and ecclesiastical
authority of Christ believing women, expressly young enterprising widows, by exhorting
them to marry and thereby deliver control of their material assets to husbands, and in doing so
offers us insight into an institutional arrangement relating to a group of women in emergent
Christianity in their ancient urban contexts.
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The Rhetorical Construction of Widows in 1 Timothy

Traditionally the Pastoral Epistles have been interpreted as evidence for the
institutionalization of the early church. For example, some scholars identify them as a turning
point in the movement toward ‘early Catholicism’, namely the replacement of a charismatic
church order alleged to belong to an earlier generation of the church with a new institutional
organization of presbyter-bishops/overseers and deacons (Kasemann 1969: 236-51;
Campenhausen 1969: 118). Evidence of this, they argue, is attested by a shared vocabulary to
describe a similar set of hierarchical and institutionalized leadership structures found in other
emergent Christian second century literature (Maier 2002). Other scholars adapt this
developmental paradigm by arguing that the letters reflect a shift from a democratic
movement of leadership elected from a pool of believers irrespective of gender to one of
permanent ecclesiastical appointments amongst male leaders of households, even a movement
from 'ekklesia'to ‘oikos' (Schussler Fiorenza 2002: 286-90; Horrell 2001: 306-10; Taniguchi
2002: 194-95). In this argument it is telling that the author of 1 Timothy instructs listeners
‘how they should behave in the household of God [πως δει έν οί'κω θεού άναστρέφεσθαι]’
(3:15) and devotes a great deal of attention to the way a male Christ believer’s household
should be governed and what behaviours a leader should expect from his wife, children, and,
presumably, slaves.

In its treatment of leadership the focus is squarely on men: a man can aspire to the office of
bishop if he is the husband of one wife, is virtuous, and is a good ruler of his household (1
Tim. 3:1-7; also Tit. 1:3-5). Deacons likewise should be univirate and ‘manage their children
and households well’ (1 Tim. 3:8-13). Wives are to be adorned with good works rather than
jewels and to seek their salvation through bearing children (2:9-15).

In the case of readings of the Pastorals as evidence of the early Catholicism, the letters
have been interpreted too simplistically as straightforward descriptions of ancient realities. It
is more likely, as has recently been argued in the case of 1 Timothy (Taniguchi 2002: 194-96),
that they are a highly charged authorial creation of a ‘rhetorical situation' (Bitzer 1968) that
create an exigency 'Paul' seeks to resolve. The strong language in 1 Timothy advocating for
exclusively male leadership and the instruction commanding wives to be submissive to their
husbands (2:11), prohibiting them from having authority over men (v. 12) and exhorting them
to bear children (v. 15), probably reflects a social situation in which these regulations are
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either not being followed or are in need of creation for those the author seems most concerned
about, namely the very women the letter exhorts to obedience.

In 1 Timothy evidence of a perceived need for regulation is especially evident in a

longer passage that outlines regulations for widows (5:3-16). The passage distinguishes
between three kinds of χήραι (Thurston 1989, 36-55). The first type (vs. 4,8,15) comprises
single women who have family to support them whose care is the responsibility of relatives.
The second (vs. 3,5,9-10) identifies ‘the real widow [η όντως χήρα]’ (3,5) as a woman who
must be at least sixty years old, a univira and mother with a good reputation for hospitality,
and caring for members of the church (9-10) in order legitimately to be what the author
describes as ‘enrolled [καταλεγέσθω]’ (9). Enrollment here may refer to being on a register to
receive common funds or other distributions of the kind described in Acts 6:1, which is the
implication of the exhortation in v. 16 to families to support their widowed relatives so that
‘the church not be burdened.' The third kind constitutes ‘young widows [νεωτέραι χήραι]’ (vs.
11-15) to which the Pastor gives the most attention. He prohibits their enrolment (11) and
goes on to contrast the virtuous household activities of ‘real widows’ (having brought up
children, practised hospitality, washing feet, and relieving the afflicted presumably through
home visitations) with women who are ‘idlers, gadding about from house to house, and not
only idlers but gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not [άργαί μανθάνουσιν
περιερχόμεναι τας οικίας, ού μόνον δέ άργαί άλλα καί φλύαροι καί περίεργοι, λαλοϋσαι τα μη
δέοντα]’ (13). Further, ‘when they grow wanton against Christ they desire to marry, and so
they incur condemnation for having violated their first pledge [καταστρηνιάσωσιν του
Χριστού, γαμεΐν θέλουσιν εχουσαι κρίμα οτι την πρώτην πίστιν ήθέτησαν]’ (12), probably a
reference to a commitment to be univira or to remain celibate in dedication to Jesus. These
vices are at home in stereotypical accounts of gossiping, talkative, and promiscuous women in
ancient Greek and Latin literature (Kartzow 2009: 67-116,144-74). The Pastor commands that
they ‘marry, bear children, rule their households, and give the enemy no reason to revile us
[γαμεΐν, τεκνογονεΐν, οικοδεσποτεΐν, μηδεμίαν άφορμην διδόναι τω άντικειμένω λοιδορίας
χάριν]’ (14).

These regulations for and concerns about ‘young’ (i.e. younger than sixty) widows are
remarkable for two reasons. First, they expressly contradict Paul’s advice to ‘the unmarried
and widows’ to remain single (1 Cor. 7:8). Second, they directly echo regulations for potential
male leaders. The author restricts the offices of presbyter-bishop and deacon to univirate men
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(1 Tim. 3:2; Tit. 1:6). Further, the concern with widows being reviled parallels the Pastor’s
instruction that the legitimately appointed elder/bishop ‘must be well thought of by outsiders,
so that he may not fall into disgrace and the snare of the devil [μαρτυρίαν καλήν εχειν άπό
των εξωθεν, ϊνα μή εις όνειδισμόν έμπέση καί παγίδα του διαβόλου]’ (3:7). Notably, this
concern with the devil parallels the representation of some younger unmarried women who
‘have already strayed after Satan [έξετράπησαν όπίσω του σατανα ]' (5:15), a charge
consistent with the portrait of the unregulated widow as ‘self indulgent’ and ‘dead even while
she lives [σπαταλωσα ζωσα τέθνηκεν]’ (v. 6). A concern with widows remarrying and bearing
children so as to avoid censure by the ‘enemy”’ probably reflects adherence to imperial law
advocating remarriage for widows under fifty (D’Angelo 2003: 139-65; Portefaix 2003: 147-
58). These parallels can hardly be coincidental: the author is directly contrasting the
illegitimacy of certain widows with the legitimacy of male leadership. His case for their
illegitimacy is built on a set of stereotypes associated with a widespread set of notions
associated with the wanton widow, in Antiquity the butt of satire and pantomime alike
(Wolcot 1991: 5-26; Bremmer 1995: 42-3). As I will show directly, the rhetoric may indicate
that it derives from patterns of benefaction and hospitality that Greek and Latin inscriptions
celebrate entrepreneurial women who were also widows for performing. In the light of that
evidence, we may posit that these widows are acting as patrons of assemblies the author is
trying to control in a way analogous to that found in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, where
the bishop from Syria tries to limit ‘legitimate’ meetings to those either conducted by the
person he identifies as ‘bishop’ of the local community or one permitted by the overseer. Thus
in Ign. Smyrn 8.1, Ignatius instructs, Only that Eucharist which is under the authority of the
bishop (or whomever he himself designates) is to be considered valid.’ Earlier in in 6.2 he
complains that some abstain from the Eucharist he endorses because of docetic beliefs. In
Phld. 4.1 he exhorts believers “to participate in one Eucharist.’ Taken together, these
statements suggest a situation in which there are assemblies Ignatius considers illegitimate,
and it is likely that these other gatherings are hosted or patronized by one or more benefactors.

Alongside these regulations for χήραι, ITimothy presents a possible concern with false
teachers. In 1 Tim. 4:3 the Pastor states that ‘in later times’ some will come who, amongst
other things, ‘forbid marriage and enjoin abstinence from foods [κωλυόντων γαμεΐν,
άπέχεσθαι βρωμάτων].’ There is a parallel description in 2 Tim. 3:6, where the author
describes opponents who ‘make their way into households and capture weak women [οί
ένδύνοντες είς τας οικίας καί αίχμαλωτίζοντες γυναικάρια σεσωρευμένα]’ (2 Tim. 3:6). And
in Tit. 1:11 the writer refers to men who ‘upset whole families by teaching for base gain what
 5
they have no right to teach [οϊτινες Ολους οίκους άνατρέπουσιν διδάσκοντες α μη δεΐ αισχρού
κέρδους χάριν].’ By assembling these references together with the commandments to single
and widowed women to (re)marry - a methodological procedure that has come under criticism
(Williams 2002; Rudiger 2003; Herzer 2009: 489-536), scholars have argued that the
Pastorals reflect a concern with ‘widows’ who have found new avenues to social agency by
rejecting marriage and pursuing lives of continence thanks to the influence of certain teachers
whom they have received into their homes. The second and third century Apocryphal Acts
furnish the general historical context for this reading (Davies 1980: 95-109; Burrus 1987;
MacDonald 1983: 4653 for specific links with the widows of the Pastorals). In them, an
apostle who preaches sexual continence arrives in a town where he wins the devotion of a
betrothed woman who then rejects marriage and becomes a disciple. Striking parallel features
shared between the Pastoral Epistles and the second-century Acts of Paul and Thecla indicate
that there is a literary relationship between the two documents, either of one copying from the
other, or, more likely, both drawing on a common set of traditions to present a profile and
biography for Paul (MacDonald 1983: 62-66). The writings share an overlapping set of
characters and there is a concern with domestic discord that arises from the abandonment of
marriage. The story of Thecla who, having decided on account of Paul’s teaching to be
continent, throws off her affianced to follow the apostle has been interpreted as evidence of a
Pauline tradition where women exercised roles of leadership and possessed authority derived
from ascetical devotion. The fact that the Pastorals polemicize directly against this kind of
thing by having Paul write a set of regulations to control women and to promote the marriage
of young widows has led to the suggestion of competing Pauline traditions and domestic
practices associated with each (Merz 2004: 218-22, 318-22, 374-75). In this case, the Pastoral
Epistles and 1 Timothy in particular have as their chief aim the control of women, specifically
young widows (in the broad sense) and create a counter legend to combat stories associated
with Paul that teach the rejection of marriage and the pursuit of sexual continence. The letters
marshal a pro-family and marriage portrait of Paul to combat an antimarriage one.

Entrepreneurial ‘Widows’ in the Roman Empire and the Exhortation to (Re)marry

The parallels between the Pastorals and the Paul and Thecla traditions are striking and
the function of continence as a means of securing independence through religious agency in
the Apocryphal Acts is noteworthy, but a sole focus on continence may only tell a part of the
story and as a consequence result in a too limited account of the widows of 1 Timothy. I want
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now to expand the account of widows in 1 Timothy by considering them in the light of
evidence of tradeswomen and entrepreneurial widows in the ancient world and then to use
that as backdrop for reading references in the New Testament to businesswomen. My aim in
what follows is to argue that the young widows whom the author of 1 Timothy seeks to
control by having them marry and bear children and conform to the behaviours he describes
for an obedient virtuous wife can be understood against a backdrop of entrepreneurial
widowed women who were acting independently as merchants in control of property and who
acted as patrons and officers of various kinds of ancient gatherings, especially trade and
religious associations.

There is abundant evidence for entrepreneurial women from across the Roman Empire
(Tod 1950: 3-36), but the largest corpus or evidence comes from Roman Italy, where a large
body of inscriptions and iconography attests to the presence of women active in the imperial
economy, albeit of a smaller proportion than men (Joshel 1992; Kempen 1981; Becker 2016:
915-31). There were many avenues to artisanship for imperial women (Groen-Vallinga 2013:
304-9). Female slaves in well-to-do homes were trained in various skills in order to advance
the domestic economy of their masters (Treggiari 1975: 48-77; Holleran 2013: 314-16;
Kempen 1981: 29-32). Once freed, many used their training to make a living in rented
tabernae or shops (Joshel 1992: 106-112). Alternatively, a free woman could inherit property
or a business from her father, which she then administered on her own behalf thanks to laws
that granted freedom from the guardianship of relatives to any (widowed) woman who had
born three children - a state of affairs that from the first century C.E. onward afforded women
access to independent economic power (Thomas 1992: 133-36). Or, she could marry an
artisan, receive on the job training, and ply the household trade or (more usually) a retail
assistant (Holleran 2013: 314-17; Becker 2016: 916-18), or even conduct her own business as
a means of contributing to what Groen-Vallinga (2013: 302-4) calls ‘the adaptive family
economy’, a term that describes the desire to maximize economic output by all family
members, including children. Once widowed, she could continue her husband’s trade either by
practising it herself or hiring others to do so (Treggiari 1979: 76-78). Taken together, these
avenues toward entrepreneurship were means by which freed and free women joined what
Meyer (2014: 66-85) has called ‘the taberna economy’ of Roman imperial cities and the
creation of an independent ‘class’ of merchants.

By reading the widows of 1 Timothy in the context of a social world in which

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unmarried women are autonomous entrepreneurs who engage in benefactions or who take on
the control of a husband's business after his death, we find a larger social context in which the
concerns found in the letter can be seen to find a home. Here the focus is not so much on
women using continence as a means of independence and social agency, but rather on those
who through patronage and hospitality act like the presbyter-bishops whose offices the Pastor
restricts to men.

It is arguable that such single women acted as patrons of assemblies of Christ believers, a
practice that 1 Timothy sought to eliminate through exhortations to marriage and rules
establishing governance by male householders alone. This would help to make sense of the
striking parallels and echoes between the Pastor’s descriptions of presbyter-bishops and
widows cited above. Indeed, it is arguable that the impetus to have ‘young’ widows marry and
bear children is motivated by a desire to keep them not only from exercising the roles of
leadership the Pastor restricts to men, but curtailing their economic independence. Further,
given levels of mortality in Antiquity, the rule that a ‘true’ widow could only be a woman over
sixty assured that virtually no women would be widows and established that almost every
unmarried woman would seek (re)marriage.

The author’s exhortation to (re)marry gains relief when considered in the light of the
urban taberna economy in which women were active. Since wives in this period were
typically ten to fifteen years younger than their husbands and because rates of mortality were
high and life expectancy low, there was a high likelihood not only of a sizable number of
widows under sixty, but also of some of them commanding enough (albeit modest, as we will
see below) wealth to exercise patronage and even leadership functions in ways analogous to
female patronage of other kinds of gatherings found amongst Greeks, Romans, and Jews such
as associations and synagogues (Hemelrjik 2015: 181-270; 2008: 115-62; Brooten 1982: 5-14;
Ascough, Harland, Kloppenborg 2012: 394; Bain 2014: 116-23). (Re)marriage and
inheritances are important when considering the implications of the Pastor’s instructions to
(re)marry. In the case of inheritances from a predeceased husband, Roman law as well as
Greek laws in the eastern Mediterranean frowned upon his assets being handed down to his
wife, with the result that they usually went to children. The surviving wife together with
another appointed guardian (usually a male reative) typically administered inheritances until
the age of majority, but mothers had the right of usufruct (i.e. use of assets without ownership)
in accordance with terms of a will (Grubbs 2002: 219-62). In the case of marriage without
 8
manus (that is in which a wife was not formally adopted into the household of the
paterfamilias and hence subject, together with her property, to her husband - a usual case in
the period of the Pastorals), Roman law preserved a wife’s ownership and control of any
wealth she possessed from inheritance from her own family, earlier marriage, or -- in the case
of freedwomen -manumission, but the custom was for the husband to manage her wealth
alongside his own, a sign of a harmonious relation of trust and good will (Grubbs 2002: 101-
2). Such regulation, if followed, would have had the legal result of women managing
inheritances for their children (together with another male guardian) and having control of her
own wealth and practically ceding control of any property or money she had acquired to the
household economy overseen by her husband. In the case of artisan women who took control
of their predeceased husband’s (usually meager and rented) shop who remarried, her
continued occupation in it depended to a large degree on her husband and the needs of the
household economy (Treggiari 1979:76-78). These observations invite a consideration of the
regulation that widows (re)marry that moves beyond the theme of sexual continence as the
key for understanding a kind of ‘battle for Paul’ 1 Timothy in particular and the Pastorals
collectively may represent. It also places whatever specific ascetical component the Pastor
opposes in a larger socio-economic context. Finally, they invite a broader consideration of
New Testament references to entrepreneurial women, to which we now turn.

Entrepreneurial Widows and Wives in New Testament and Early Christian

Literature

The Pastor’s instructions to widows contrasts sharply with the evidence of the
independence of Christ believing women from the first two centuries. New Testament and
early Christian literature refer to numerous entrepreneurial women. A few of them are directly
referred to as widows and in some instances it is reasonable to assume they were single
women (i.e. χήραι). It falls outside the limits of this discussion to offer a complete account of
the evidence of businesswomen in the New Testament which has been undertaken well
elsewhere (Osiek, MacDonald, and Tulloch 2006: 214-19), but a few important examples help
to furnish the context for the broader discussion to follow. The most important example is
Phoebe, whom Paul describes as διάκονος (minister or servant) of the church at Cenchreae
and προστάτις (patron) of him and many (Rom. 16:1-3). The term προστάτις is telling and has
led scholars correctly to agree that she is most probably a business woman and patron of Paul
 9
and probably the nascent Christ movement, who also acts on behalf of Paul during a trip to
the capital (for example, Kearsley 1999: 189211; Jewett 2007: 194-97). Another important
instance of an entrepreneurial woman is Prisc(cill)a (Rom. 16.3; 1 Cor. 16:9; Acts 18:2-
3,18,26; see 2 Tim. 4:19). The author of Acts describes her a tradeswoman who works
alongside her husband as a tentmaker or weaver in a shop where Paul also labours; the
description of husband and wife plying the same trade fits in well with inscriptions gathered
together by Becker that describe similar artisan couples (2016: 918-19). In1 Cor. 16:19, Paul
presents her and Aquila as patrons of a household assembly, which, given the description of
Acts, would indicate some kind of gathering in an artisan’s dwelling - probably a typical
modest and rented one room taberna (possibly with a mezzanine) that numbered in their
thousands lining the streets and market squares of first century imperial cities and towns.
Another entrepreneurial woman and host is purple manufacturer or retailer Lydia who acts as
a patron of Paul and Silas in Philippi (Acts 18:14-15,40). The description of her and her
household being baptized without any reference to a husband may indicate she was a single
woman. Even allowing for the fact that she may be fictional or perhaps a rhetorical device as
has recently been insightfully argued by Alexandra Gruca-Macaulay (2002), the
representation of her assumes a female portrait of an unmarried artisan and patron
recognizable to the author’s audience. It is these references that allow us to make sense of the
story of Tabitha (Dorcas) in Acts 9:36-43. In v. 36 she is named “a disciple... full of good
works and acts of charity.” Later the author states she made tunics for widows (v. 39), thereby
arguably representing her as an artisan weaver, an occupation which is amongst the most
frequently named in imperial Greek and Latin inscriptions that name trades practised by
women (Treggiari 1979: 67-70; Becker 2016: 919-20). Although she is not named as such,
another candidate for a widow functioning as patron of a Christ assembly is Nymphas whom
the author of Colossians names as host of ‘the church in her house”’(Col. 4:15). Outside the
New Testament, Ignatius in Ign. Smyrn. 13.2 greets Tavia (or Gavia) and her household and
Alce both of whom Schussler Fiorenza (2002: 314) speculates were widows and patrons of
the Smyrnaean church. In Acts of Paul and Thecla 39, Thecla evangelizes an aristocratic
single woman of Iconium named Tryphaena who welcomes Thecla into her home and acts as
her legal protector and upon her (Tryphaena’s) conversion patron as well as benefactor of the
poor (41). The narrative emphasizes Thecla’s continence and spiritual power and Tryphaena’s
widowhood and benefaction. In both cases unmarried women (χήραι in the wider sense) enjoy
agency outside of male control. Unlike Phoebe, Lydia, Prisc(ill)a, arguably Tabitha, and
perhaps Tavia and Alce, however, Tryphaena is a woman of noble birth. With the exception of
Tryphaena the references to entrepreneurial women match with the second century pagan
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polemicist Celsus’s rhetorical pillorying of Christians as recruiting members in ‘the wool0
dresser’s shop, or [at] the cobbler’s or the washerwoman’s shop’ (Against Celsus 3.55; trans.
Chadwick 1980), that is amongst poor urban artisans, and economic description to which I
now turn in order to correct some misrepresentation of the level of socio-econoic status 1
Timothy’s reference to widows probably indicates.

‘Relatively Wealthy’ Women

New Testament scholars often use the phrase ‘relatively wealthy’ to represent these
women. In the case of Tryphaena, it is clear that she is a women of considerable economic
power and status. However, as Steven Friesen has argued (Friesen 2004: 323-61), there has
been over the past decades a tendency amongst New Testament scholars to inflate the
economic level of first and second century Christ believers, effectively converting them into
middle class mirrors of European, British, and North American New Testament scholars. We
have too often been invited by New Testament scholars to imagine early Christ believers
gathering in villas or larger courtyard houses of the Mediterranean east and reclining at well-
serviced banquets where at worship and meals hierarchical household relations are
temporarily suspended. A recent study by Bruce Winter (2003) is typical of this consensus
concerning the presence of wealth in amongst first and second century Christ believers.
Winter argues that the Pastorals were composed in part to combat ‘new Roman women’,
namely wealthy women who were breaking free of traditional domestic roles to participate in
practices that were traditionally the exclusive domain of men (for example, taking part in
banquets and symposia; Winter 2003: 97-109). His study reflects the way in which ‘relatively
wealthy’ has been interpreted and illustrates well the need for a correction that has direct
bearing on the question of female leadership this essay in exploring.

A second study by Steven Friesen and Walter Scheidel (2009: 61-91) argues for a
considerable revision of the economic level of imperial women that would otherwise make
Winter’s reading of the Pastorals compelling. They distinguish between a fraction of the
imperial population (below 1.5 %) that controlled 20% of the empire’s wealth, a ‘middling
group’ of approximately 10% that commanded another 20% and the vast majority (88%) who
hovered just above subsistence, at, or just below it, amongst whom 60% of the Empire’s GDP
was produced and managed. In much New Testament scholarship the phrase ‘relatively
wealthy’ has been used to describe the artisans that belong to what Friesen and Scheidel
 1
would describe as the middling group. All things are relative of course, but one derives a1
sharply contrasting picture if one measures relative wealth in comparison to the 1.5% or to the
88%. Scheidel and Friesen show that it is the latter that furnish the correct index for
comparison. They present a compelling economic analysis that divides the 10% between a
fraction of people (2%) living four to ten levels above subsistence, and the remaining 8%
living between subsistence and three levels above it. This is a stark picture that moves us out
of villas and courtyard houses into rented workshops that typically lined urban streets or
crowded hired rooms in insulae, amidst the squalor and filth of the typical Roman imperial
city or town. It is a picture that Paul furnishes of himself in his autobiographical description
of his work as a man who labours night and day with his hands (1 Thess. 2:9), which presents
a sobering picture of urban artisan poverty (Miguez 2012: 64-71). It is further important to
note that the imperial artisan population, like the poor in general, were subject to extremely
high levels of mortality as sicknesses like malaria in the Spring whose arrival decimated
urban populations already weakened by malnutrition (when the wealthy retreated to the
relative safety of rural estates; Scheidel 1994: 151-75; 1996: 1-184). It is logically fallacious
to reason from the general to the specific (in this case, from the middling group of Friesen and
Scheidel to the Christian artisan women we have identified above), but it is not logically
problematic to state that given this data set, unless there is a compelling reason to do
otherwise, we ought to measure relative prosperity according to the spectrum their model of
subsistence suggests. In such a situation, we can assume not only that there would have been a
sizeable population of previously married women in any given community, but that in the case
of artisans, such widows, the majority of whom were living not very far above susbsistence,
after having lived and worked alongside their husbands would have taken over their small
rented shops in order to continue a probably meager urban existence. This throws into some
question the idea that women found in Christian ascetical teaching freedom from traditional
gender roles and domestic regulation, since the enforcement of such gender rules requires a
certain level of economic power to function. Even taking into account that women were
excluded either by law or social conventions from certain professions, mercantile transactions,
usually membership in collegia (although there were exceptions to this; Piccotini 1993: 111-
23; Wilson 1996: 1-15), as well as elected offices in the ancient world (Becker 2016: 922-24),
those who shared in an adaptive domestic artisan economy first as wives and then widows
would not have required an ascetical teacher to justify their agency and independence; as poor
urban women who labored alongside their husbands they had already enjoyed a degree of
agency, more so after the death of their partners. The picture of Prisc(ill)a and Aquila laboring
alongside Paul as weavers is an instructive illustration of this point.
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Industrious Widows and Female Patrons 2

We should expect that just about every material trace of the vast majority of the male
and female urban poor of the Roman world has disappeared. As Natalie Kempen remarks,
“The ordinary round of life for women of the lower strata [of the Roman Empire] remains
largely shrouded in darkness” (Kempen 1981: 29). Amongst the data that has survived is
testimony to artisan and other 'wealthier' widows through inscriptions, funerary iconography,
and - in the case of Pompeii and Herculaneum -- tabernae advertisements, which attest their
social roles of patronage, business ownership, and urban artisanship (Becker 2016: 918-22:
Kempen 1981: 33-85). This evidence forms an important corpus of evidence that shows
women acting as urban manufacturers and in command of their own economic affairs, as well
as engaging in acts of benefaction for various groups of artisans (Heimelrijk 2008: 115-62),
including holding offices in trades associations and domestic religious cults, as in the case of
an association dedicated to Dionysios hosted in the home of the aristocrat Pompeiia
Agrippinilla (Scheid 1986: 275-90; IGUR I 160). Taken together, the evidence points to the
agency of women amongst whom we should expect there were a number of χήραι in a variety
of spheres and their participation in the ‘epigraphic habit' of their male contemporaries,
namely the garnering of honour through public recognition in exchange for evergetism. We
see women celebrated for their donations to synagogues and collegia, and in some cases
enjoying an official title of leadership because of them. We see them occupying the offices of
their deceased husbands in associations and forming their own official gatherings (Hemelrijk
2015: 207-22). We encounter images of them plying their trades on funerary images. These
are industrious widows.

In the space available here, three examples will suffice to draw out a profile of female
benefactors and in one case an officer in a synagogue. In the case of early imperial Judaism,
Bernadette Brooten has assembled the inscriptional evidence showing that Jewish women
who acted as benefactors of synagogues were accorded titles, in her argument indicating that
they were also office holders. An oft-cited epigraphical example from the urban Judaean
diaspora is the Smrynaean woman Rufina (CIJ 741; Brooten 1982: 5-11), a wealthy and
arguably women (a husband is nowhere mentioned), which describes her arrangements for the
burial of her freedmen and domestic slaves. She bears the title of synagogue ruler
(άρχισυνάγωγος), an office that entailed use of private funds for the communal activities.
Brooten argues that this was not a purely honorific title but indicates that she held a leadership
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office. In the case of trades associations, widows could inherit the office titles of their 3

husbands (D’Arms 2000: 126-44) or form associations. For example, a lengthy third century
BCE inscription erected by a wealthy widow named Epikteta prescribes the creation after her
death of an association of her male relatives together with their wives and children annually to
sacrifice to her predeceased husband and herself (IG XII,3 330; Harland, Ascough,
Kloppenborg 2012: 145-50). Others were honoured with inscriptions for their benefactions to
collegia, as in the case of second century BCE women (husbands are not named) at Rhodes
for their patronage of an association of immigrants (IG,I 127; Harland, Ascough, Kloppenborg
2012: 159-60). Finally, there is an inscription that refers to a collegium in the house of Sergia
Paullina (collegium / quod est in domu /Sergiae Paullinae; CIL,VI 9148) a first and second
century CE Roman aristocratic woman who acted as patron of an association on her Roman
estate (for other examples, Last 2017). Here the reference to her household either refers to a
property she possessed as widow after the death of her husband Cornelius Severus or
independently controlled as part of her patrimonium from her father. What is important in
each of these cases is that each of these women acted as patrons of various kinds of
associations; one was expressly a widow, in the other two cases, even if they were not single,
they acted as their own agents as benefactors, in one case, to a group meeting in her house.

The Control of Single Female Artisans

What motivated the concern in 1 Timothy to have single women under sixty to marry
is not stated, outside of a dubious reference to their desire for sex - a stereotypical suspicion
of widows as single and sexually available -- and an equally suspicious fear of a violation
against a pledge, presumably to remain unmarried. Given the recurring life situation of
enterprising widows as patrons and office holders in associations represented in the data just
described, we can expect that these unmarried women potentially exercised the kinds of
offices and tasks the Pastor reserved for men alone. One of the ways to delimit these practices
was to assure that single women (re)married, thereby assuring that such activities would
cease, or at least fall more firmly under the control of their husbands. The likelihood that such
prescriptions were followed is uncertain, but the considerable energy the author expends in
castigating these women and in outlining the duties of the virtuous wife suggests that the
Pastor had an uphill battle. The daily life of the male and female urban poor working
alongside one another in an adaptive household economy would have also weighed heavily
against it. The canonical location of 1 Timothy has meant that the exhortations to and
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4 the
admonitions against single (arguably enterprising) women have had an historical influence
author could not have imagined. Given the probable frequency of women working alongside
their husbands and then taking over their tabernae when they died, it is more likely that the
Pastor’s commandments have enjoyed a greater success in their afterlife than in the immediate
situation they were crafted to address. Widows most probably continued to enjoy
independence and leadership roles that their economic circumstances, however meager,
opened for them.