Women Remembered: Jesus’ Female Disciples

Inspired by their popular Channel 4 documentary Jesus’ Female Disciples, historians Helen Bond and Joan Taylorexplore the way in which Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Mary, Martha and a whole host of other women - named and unnamed - have been remembered by posterity, noting how many were silenced, tamed or slurred by innuendo - though occasionally they get to slay dragons. Women Remembered looks at the representation of these women in art, and the way they have been remembered in inscriptions and archaeology. And of course they dig into the biblical texts, exposing misogyny and offering alternative and unexpected ways of appreciating these women as disciples, apostles, teachers, messengers and church-founders.

At a time when both the church and society more widely are still grappling with the full inclusion and equality of women, this is a must-read for anyone interested in the historical and cultural origins of Christianity.

Helen K. Bond is Professor of Christian Origins and Head of the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on the social and political history of Judaea under Roman rule, the historical Jesus and the canonical gospels. She is the author of Pontius Pilate in History and Interpretation (CUP, 1998), Caiaphas: High Priest and Friend of Rome? (Westminster John Knox, 2004), The Historical Jesus: A Guide for the Perplexed (Bloomsbury, 2012), Jesus: A Very Brief History (SPCK, 2017), The First Biography of Jesus: Genre and Meaning in Mark’s Gospel (Eerdmans, 2020), and a number of shorter studies and articles. She has contributed to over 50 TV and radio documentaries, including acting as historical consultant to The Nativity (BBC, 2010) and co-presenter (with Joan Taylor) on Jesus’ Female Disciples (Channel 4, 2018).

Joan Taylor is Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at King’s College London. She has authored numerous books and articles about Jesus and his world, notably The Immerser: John the Baptist within Second Temple Judaism (1997), Jesus and Brian: Studying the Historical Jesus via Monty Python’s Life of Brian (2015) and What did Jesus look like? (2018). She has studied questions of women and gender: Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria: Philo’s Therapeutae Reconsidered (2006); with Ilaria Ramelli, Patterns of Women’s Leadership in Early Christianity (2021). She is currently writing a Very Short Introduction to Mary Magdalene for the Oxford series. She also works in radio, television and film, and co-presented, with Helen Bond, Jesus’ Female Disciples: The New Evidence (2018) for Channel Four.