Women Remembered:
Jesus’ Female Disciples

Author Joan Taylor & Helen Bond
Publisher Hodder & Stoughton £16.99
Format hbk
ISBN 9781529372595

This is an exciting read. Bringing together a wealth of scholarship, the authors give fresh insights into the lives of biblical women, and the roles they played as disciples. There was much I didn’t know about first century Jewish society – for example that polygamy was still acceptable. The authors make the point that the masculine pronoun is always used in Greek for any group, no matter how large, in which even a single male is present. Centuries of translation without taking this linguistic quirk into account have simply erased women from the record. Many of the conclusions seem obvious when the original language and context are examined. The only one by which I was not entirely convinced was the idea that ‘the twelve’ disciples sent out by Jesus consisted of twelve men each accompanied by a female co-worker. I would have liked to have seen more evidence. These authors have the gift of communicating in a manner that engages everyone. The book was written to accompany a television series. I hope its success will lead to the series being repeated

Reviewed by NANCY MAY

Biblical analysis, Feminism