Women and ritual in Philippi: women's reception of Paul's letter to the Philippians

Abstract

As one surveys the scholarship on the canonical letter to the Philippians, one notices the lack of attention to women within the content of many scholars' analyses. To a certain extent, this is because ancient texts often leave out information about women. Using ritual studies, archaeology, and textual evidence, this work brings to life the ritual lives of ancient Philippian women in their own cultural context. Ritual studies provides new questions that shed more specific light on the lives of women in this fledgling Jesus group and therefore brings clarity to early Philippian women's reception of the letter. Furthermore, this ritual background is utilized in order to help the modern reader visualize a more diverse community of Jesus followers in Philippi as well as to provide a clearer picture of the struggles this nascent Jesus community was experiencing.