The “Believing Woman” and Her ekklēsia : Rethinking Intersectional Households and Manuscript Variations in the Widows’ Tale (1 Tim 5:3–16)

Listing and Categorization

The Pastoral Epistles are familiar with widows, their potential qualities, and their capital. According to many ancient sources, the widow was a potential threat to stability and order: she was sexually awakened, but without male protection. She could be explosive, dangerous, and scandalous, or poor and needy. ⁸ In the Pastorals, widows are presented in an ambiguous way, as weak but also resourceful, as left alone but also very connected, as active on several fronts but also contemplative, as loose women but also exemplars. Interpreters do not find rest with these widows. Few passages in the New Testament give female characters this much attention, and this is one of the reasons for claiming that the passage is “surprisingly long.” ⁹ It has been suggested that the description of the widows in 1 Tim 5:3–16 presents them as the primary advocates and best organized opposition to the ideals of the “Pastoral Paul.” ¹⁰ Does this passage give readers “a rare glimpse into early Christian economics,” as Barclay argues, or does it tell something significant about women? ¹¹ Can the widows’ tale at all work as a source saying anything about early Christian women, or are women primarily useful to think with? ¹² I will return to these questions later. First, I will first look for the structure and potential meaning of this passage, before discussing some interpretative tendencies in New Testament scholarship.

1 Timothy 5:3–16 has been seen as a series of loosely connected sections, with chēra (often translated “widow”) as the unifying theme. This term covers a wide spectrum of women in ancient texts: virgins, women living apart from their husbands, divorced women, and women whose husbands were dead are all called widows. ¹³ Such an inclusive use is perhaps also the case when widows are mentioned in the Pastoral Epistles. ¹⁴ In vv. 3–8 the question of care for widows is addressed. Verse 9 commences a new section dealing with requirements for the “office” of widows, with limitations, qualification, and reasons for rejection. Verse 16 is a separate section dealing with the special arrangement indicating that a believing woman had widows in their households, a key verse I will return to later. ¹⁵

Widows are divided into various categories according to certain dichotomies: young/old, poor/rich, with/without children, with/without relatives. ¹⁶ This intersectional variety is of great interest: widow is a subcategory of woman, but also among widows, a whole set of other parameters intersect, such as age and status, constructing variety and difference. ¹⁷ If this passage is divided into separate units, that solves some problems for interpreters, such as how to deal with the confusing difference between “real widows” and enrolled widows. ¹⁸ Instead of discussing whether 1 Tim 5:3–16 is a single thread or consists of separate units, I will argue that the Pastoral Paul in this passage collects and uses various discourses for a specific rhetorical purpose. The passage appears inconsistent and has logical gaps due to the fact that it does not describe one social reality but is involved in various discourses.

Good widows with proper skills and merits shall be accepted on the list, based on age, duties, marriage record, reproduction, and sexuality. The young ones, who grow wanton and turn towards Satan, shall be rejected. Both positive and negative standards and gender stereotypes are employed to draw caricatures of both good and bad widows: they pray night and day, are married only once, have washed the saints’ feet, or they are gossips and busybodies. ¹⁹ But what does it indicate to be on that list? Or to be refused? Where do they live? And with whom? The contrast between various options when it comes to housing and social arrangements is as interesting as the good-bad contrast, and this is where “the believing woman” potentially plays such an important role.

At first the list for the ideal widows (1 Tim 5:9–10) seems similar to the lists for other groups in the Pastorals, especially those for bishops (1 Tim 3:1–7) and male deacons (1 Tim 3:8–13): just as a bishop can be married only once, a widow has to be “wife of one husband,” and both for the bishops and the widows a good reputation among those outside of the community is important. A widow must also have shown kindness to strangers and those in need. She must have reared children properly and washed the feet of the saints. However, the list for widows is different from her male counterparts in many ways, and particularly three elements are noteworthy: 1) No other list includes criteria for rejection. Several reasons are given for not enrolling women in the list: if they are young they will be tempted to marry, and they will be idle busybodies and gossips, gadding about the houses (1 Tim 5:11–13). ²⁰ 2) A distinction is drawn between “true” and “false” widows; this distinction is not found in the corresponding lists for bishops or deacons. ²¹ 3) In no other list is age mentioned as a criterion: the enrolled widow must be over 60 years (1 Tim 5:9). Already these unique features in the only list in which women are thoroughly addressed, give a hint that something important is at stake in the widows’ tale.

Prominent Women or Overestimating Gender and Power?

The disagreement among scholars about this passage goes along many lines. The Pastorals as such have attracted interest from conservative theologians and feminists, groups of interpreters who normally do not share much in common. ²² Recent trends, however, show that most interpreters do agree on the historical context in which the letters can be located, but disagree on what is at stake and accordingly what interpretative perspectives or theories to apply. Broadly speaking: is the task of the interpreter to understand “the Pastor” and the challenges he was facing or to read against the grain and look for alternative voices or visions?

Jouette Bassler suggests that the primary aim with 1 Timothy 5 was to limit the influence of a powerful order of women:

Membership in the widows’ group was obviously an attractive option for women, for its members had grown beyond the church’s ability and willingness to support them. Part of this attractiveness was probably linked to the fact that it permitted a life free from the restrictions of patriarchal marriage and closer to the ideal that Paul had expressed …(Gal 3:28). ²³

This suggestion again has been rejected by other interpreters, who argue that gender is given too prominent of an interpretive role. The purpose of this passage was, instead, to solve the problem that the church had limited resources and needed to find another solution for the widows who needed support. Luke Timothy Johnson disagreed with the feminist approach and did not see the Pastorals as a second-century patriarchal reaction to the proto-feminism of the Jesus movement or Paul, as expressed in Gal 3:28. He opposed the argument that this passage could play a role as a key interpretive lens for “woman’s issues.” For him, to argue that “[t]he widows are not simply impoverished women cared for by the assembly…they are an order of women who practice an active ministry” is misleading. ²⁴ Johnson continues: “To suggest that this passage is fundamentally about power rather than possessions is, in my view, to misread it.” ²⁵

Barclay picks up on this well-known interpretation of the passage. He argues: “1 Tim 5:3–16 offers, in fact, a rare glimpse into early Christian economics in the selective allocation of resources. It draws our attention to the intersection of gender, household, and the material support offered by the church at the turn of the second century.” ²⁶ As with Johnson, Barclay argues that feminist interpreters make too much out of power. The intersections he highlights are of a different kind:

What threatens him [the Pastor] the most is not so much (or not only) the power of women, but the encouragement of an ideology of celibacy that bypasses or undermines the household and therefore, in his view, creates a church of an altogether different kind. ²⁷

If I understand him correctly, he wants to shift focus and argue that ecclesiology and economy are at stake here, while the question of women is not of primary concern. This is faulty logic, because “the believing woman” represents alternative intersectional space, and the manuscript witnesses attest to obvious concerns about the issue of gender throughout this unit. This “church of an altogether different kind” may unintentionally come to surface in the different variants of v. 16.

Barclay comes up with four useful “household rules” to explain this paragraph. The first rule he suggests deals with household networks as the primary system of support (vv. 3–8). The standard system for who shall take care of widows is outlined. Children and grandchildren shall take care of the widows; otherwise they are worse than unbelievers. The second rule declares that they shall only register exemplary house managers (vv. 9–10). The ideal widows are described based on merits and skills. The third rule says they should not support those who take a non-household option (vv. 11–15). Younger women shall not be enrolled, but this has obviously not always been practiced: it seems as if the Pastoral Paul already has had some bad experiences with the younger ones, as their sensual desire and their wishes to marry made them violate their first pledge (vv. 11–12). The comment in v. 15, “someone has already turned away to Satan,” supports that he intends to report on how he has experienced the young women who previously have been enrolled. The Pastoral Paul is not so concerned about telling what the enrolled widows are doing, as is also the case with other office-holders like bishops and deacons. ²⁸ He is rather describing the ideal qualifications for enrollment and argues that the young widows are unqualified due to what they did when they were enrolled (vv. 11–15). ²⁹ The fourth household rule Barclay refers to is concerned with how women believers should take widows into their support networks (v. 16), a reading Barclay finds support for among many manuscripts: “According to the best texts … the primary responsibility lies on the female believer…” ³⁰ Only those widows falling outside of the network support system, as seen in these four household rules, should be taken care of by the church, since there were limited resources.

Although I support Barclay’s attempt to explain this passage through the lens of ancient social networks, I think he misses the strong gender rhetoric here. He reads with the author, the Pastoral Paul, and not against the grain. In addition, he spends too little time on v. 16. This whole unit is a misogynistic mess.

There are (at least) two different conversations going on at the same time in the widows’ tale, building on contrasts and differences. The most obvious contrast is between the good and the bad widows, the old and the young ones, as spelled out in the core of the paragraph (old, vv. 9–10; young, vv. 11–15), observed by most interpreters. Even more interesting, there is another contrast, described in the sections before and after, in the opening and the ending of the paragraph: it starts out with clear advice to the children and grandchildren of widows that they should take care of their own. They shall provide for their relatives and family members, or they are worse than unbelievers (vv. 4 and 8). This has to do with where and with whom a widow shall live, but it also has to do with space and institution. At the end of the paragraph, a rather different social arrangement is singled out for widows: “If a believing woman has widows…” (v. 16). These are likely two alternatives for where widows can live: either with their children, family and relatives, or with a believing woman. In the discussions on housing and living, nothing is mentioned about good and bad widows, about merits or qualifications, about old or young. The contrast, however, is between the unbelievers and the believers among those who take widows into their houses. The children and grandchildren who take care of their own and the believing woman who cares for widows are on the right side of the scale. They are true believers, as a contrast to the unbelievers, who either reject their own widows or turn away to Satan and pleasure.

It Is All in The Details: Rethinking Verse16 and the Believing Woman

In this section I will leave behind the discussion of the good vs. bad widows and focus on the two opposite alternatives described in the paragraph, between those living in households with their children and grandchildren, and those who in some ways are connected to a believing women. Verse 16 is the focal point. Although we know next to nothing about what concrete arrangement this community of women represented, I ask: Can we here see some glimpses of an imagined female ekklēsia? ³¹

1 Tim 5:16 reads:

ei tis pistē echei chēras, eparkeitō autais, kai mē bareisthō hē ekklēsia, hina tais ontōs chērais eparkesē. ³²

If any believing woman* has [relatives who are really] widows, let her assist them; let the church not be burdened, so that it can assist those who are real widows. ³³

What does it mean that a female believer “has widows”? Does it mean that she had them living with her, in her house, indicating she was well off, in a house of some size? Does it mean she took care of them, in one way or another? Did she feed them, treat them as her family or colleagues; did they work for her or with her? Was this believing woman also some kind of spiritual or intellectual leader? Did they construct some kind of a female community, as a separate alternative or as part of community mentioned in the last part of the verse? I will argue that the verb used here echei (she “has”) can deal with social, spatial, and religious connections.

Benjamin Fiore argues that those who “have widows” may refer to those relatives (v. 8) who have to take care of their own; otherwise they are worse than unbelievers. ³⁴ A second option, which he finds less likely, is that this may parallel the communities of women and widows described in Acts (Tabitha/Dorcas in Acts 9:36–42). This is also attested in later sources, where charity homes for widows appear or where women are described as taking widows into their houses. Fiore see this as ways in which widows could earn some kind of independence. In the Pastorals, here in v. 16, this practice may well be encouraged. Although Fiore does not find parallels here, he admits it may explain the manuscript variations: “The situation, from the viewpoint of traditional household management, might have led to the addition of pistos before piste in some manuscripts at this point.” ³⁵

I will try out the option Fiore finds “less likely” and argue (later also with the manuscript variation he mentions) that this verse constructs an alternative female community of early Christian women, not connected to each other as relatives, but by other ties. Instead of connecting widows to children and grandchildren (v. 4), the believing women who has widows represents another kind of arrangement. The first relates to reproduction, generation and family, while the other is based on a different set of criteria. When a widow is taken care of by her family, this probably means a responsible male relative, e.g., her son, son-in-law, or male grandchild will be in charge. The situation is different for those who end up with a believing woman, with whom no man is mentioned. In v. 4 widows are safely placed in the household with a pater familias on top, while not in v. 16.

The difference between these two alternatives is central to the whole paragraph. This approach is located in the verbal echo between what Edward Said calls filiation and affiliation. His point is that the first represents continuity in reproduction and biological terms, while the latter deals with institutions, associations, and community. ³⁶ Moving from filiation to affiliation may be a journey from biology to world vision, from nature to culture, as Said sees it. ³⁷ The believing woman who has widows represents a different myth and symbol than the mother/grandmother widow, who is a typical filiation figure, being the ideal mother (and former wife). She represents “biology,” while the believing women is world vision. The widow who stays with her own children is taken care of due to her position as having (former) reproductive capital. Her relatives have enough resources, when it comes to space and economy, to take care of her. The widow who ends up with a believing woman benefits on female capital related to faith, in addition to, most probably, space and money. The grandmother is taken care of by a male relative within a conventional household, while the widows in v. 16 are taken care of by a believing sister, in a female ekklēsia.

If we imagine a group of widows, old and young, with different backgrounds, who were connected to a believing woman, they represent an intersectional female community. In contrast to both those widows who remarried and reproduced or to those who stayed with their relatives, children and grandchildren, these widows belonged to a different institution, a very different social arrangement. The fact that the woman is described as tis pistē, a believer, means that it is her faith that is highlighted and seems to qualify her. Accordingly, this verse witnesses to a woman with religious authority, with skills, qualifications and merits, who is acknowledged for taking on an important role for the ekklēsia. She has others connected to her by affiliation. She does not belong to a footnote and should not be reduced to an appendix, but rather be highlighted and praised. She should be listed among other prominent early Christian women, for not only helping the church, but for opening her house and her heart, sharing her gifts and her capital, with other women. ³⁸ But as we will see, not everyone agreed about her prominence.