A snapshot of daily life for first-century women in the Roman Empire and the Christian Church
PORTRAIT OF A ROMAN LADY. This mosaic comes from Pompeii, Italy, and depicts a woman from the late first century B.C.E. or early first century C.E. Photo: Dominik Matus/CC by SA-4.0.
What was life like for women in the Christian Church during the first century C.E.? When the books of the New Testament were being written, how did women contribute to and participate in the Church?
In her article “Women in the Early Church,” published in the Summer 2020 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Holly Beers of Westmont College looks at some of the ways women served in the early Church. The Bible expounds on many of these, and archaeological and historical sources identify others. Before delving into the specifics, Beers first establishes what constituted normal life for women in the Roman Empire.
During the first century C.E., the average woman in the Roman Empire spent the majority of her day providing for her family’s basic needs. This primarily constituted household work and food preparation. Elite women had time for luxuries and may have learned to read and write, but the average woman would have been busy with work from sun up to sun down.
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The movements of elite women were often restricted, and they stayed primarily in the private sphere. In contrast, the average woman would have moved through public and private spheres. Beers explains, “The necessity of feeding all the hungry mouths in the household would require women to be in the fields working the land and then preparing the agricultural product for consumption or in the public marketplaces buying and selling food, clothing, and other necessities. In this way, women’s work likely hinged on the labor of men in the family.” In the New Testament, we see examples of women in the marketplace (e.g., Lydia in Acts 16:14) and working in the family trade (e.g., Priscilla in Acts 18:2–3).
For many women, life was fraught with difficulties and dangers. Childbirth was perilous; about 10–15 percent of women did not survive, marking it as “the riskiest activit[y] women would encounter in their lives.” Further, women living in cities had to wrestle with unsafe housing and poor sanitation, which often led to disease.
These realities reveal the resilience of first-century women.
Although the majority of the Roman Empire’s population (about 85–90 percent) lived in rural areas during the first century C.E., cities were centers of business, trade, politics, and religion. As such, most of the early Christian churches began in cities.
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These are a few of the ways women served in the first-century Church. Learn more about first-century women’s lives in Holly Beer’s article “Women in the Early Church,” published in the Summer 2020 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, and in her book A Week in the Life of a Greco-Roman Woman.
Subscribers: Read the full article “Women in the Early Church” by Holly Beers in the Summer 2020 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
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[a] See Steven Shisley, Biblical Views: “From Supper to Sacrament: How the Last Supper Evolved,” Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2017.
Biblical Views: Tabitha and Lydia—Models of Early Christian Women Leaders
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This story was first published in Bible History Daily in June, 2020.
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If I may, I share here an article I wrote about the claim that there are no female pastors in the New Testament: https://vidaemabundancia.blogspot.com/2025/03/nao-ha-pastoras-no-novo-testamento.html?m=0 (The article is in portuguese, but you may activate the automatic translation at the right top menu.)
Priscilla and Aquilla, as a couple, instructed Apollos in private for the purpose of correcting doctrinal error. this is not an instance of women holding teaching authority over the church. The early church, especially at Corinth, was practicing many things wrongly which Paul attempted to correct in his letters to them. Just because they may have done something, doesn’t mean it was God’s will. Many times in scripture it is commanded that women should not hold teaching or leadership positions within the church. This mimics the relationship between husband and wife at home. Why would God command wives to be in submission to their husbands at home, but permit them hold authority over their husbands in the assembly? Makes no sense.
The only way that women would have been allowed to lead hymns and read and interpret Scripture in the first century church would be in female only assemblies. Apostolic teachings forbade women teaching, preaching, or taking leadership roles in mixed assemblies (see 1 Cor. 14:34-36 and 1 Timothy 2:8-15).
You need to reread Acts 18: 24-26.
What about it? It doesn’t say women did those things in the church (meetings), which is the context of 1 Cor 14 and 1 Tim 2.