Diakonoi, Nevi'im, and Other Illustrious Women: Understanding the Role of Women in the Early Church

This paper explores the status of women in their original social and cultural contexts, starting with the early Jewish faith and working its way through the Greco-Roman world, ending with the early Christian movement of the 1st and 2nd century C.E. This paper illustrates that men and women alike were equal in the early church but, they became unequal due to cultural gender norms present in Greco-Roman society.