Abstract

Feminist biblical scholarship has re-evaluated the status and influence that women held within early Christian communities. Recent studies of the participation of women in early Christianity have come to include texts that appear to provide women with roles of leadership and the opportunity to participate in activities that were previously restricted to men. An examination beyond the texts that reinforce traditional Greco-Roman roles permits an individual to examine the actual or incidental status, participation and influence of women within early Christian communities as opposed to their prescribed participation found in later, potentially misogynistic texts that uphold traditional Greco-Roman values (Kraemer 1992). In a continuation of this methodology, this thesis will examine the nature of eschatology and its impact on early Christian communities. Through the examination of primary and secondary documents, the research in this study will reveal that women in different early Christian communities were not treated in the same manner. An examination of the Pauline and Pastoral epistles demonstrates that a change in eschatological beliefs played a changing role in the status accorded Christian women during the first century. This thesis demonstrates that women who lived in early Christian communities which held imminent eschatological expectations were granted greater participation within their communities than those women that lived in communities that established permanent long-term structures.