This volume explores the differing views expressed in the New Testament letters about the position of women in first- and second-generation Christian communities. Contributors place the letters in their broader Jewish and Greco-Roman cultural, religious, and social contexts to better understand how gender roles, family life, and women’s responsibilities for spreading the gospel changed over time. While some essays envision the lived realities of women as wives, mothers, and widows—both the free and the enslaved, others examine the rhetorical and theological function of female metaphors. Contributors include Bernadette Brooten, Christine Gerber, Annette Bourland Huizenga, Marianne Bjelland Kartzow, Beate Kowalski, Dominika Kurek-Chomycz, Peter Lampe, William R. G. Loader, Elisa Estévez López, Heidrun E. Mader, Marinella Perroni, Silke Petersen, Uta Poplutz, María José Schultz Montalbetti, Michael Sommer, Angela Standhartinger, Miklós Szabó, Korinna Zamfir, and Silvia Zanconato.

Korinna Zamfir is Professor of Biblical Studies and Ecumenical Theology at the Faculty of Roman Catholic Theology of the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania, and research fellow at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Uta Poplutz is Professor of New Testament Studies at the Institute of Catholic Theology at the Faculty of Humanites of the Otto-Friedrich-University in Bamberg, Germany.