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Women Officeholders in Early Christianity: Epigraphical and Literary Studies. By Ute E. Eisen. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2000. viii + 322 pp. $49.95 (paper).
While feminist reconstruction of early Christian history is now well established, Ute Eisen's work on women holders of ecclesiastical office gathers more data on this topic than any previous single source, and breaks new ground in its emphasis on epigraphy-evidence from inscriptions.
This is not the first case where evidence from non-literary sources has provided surprising alternatives to conventional views of antiquity. It is nonetheless among the more surprising and important. While literary sources often seem to deal with the "genus `woman"' (p. 2), epigraphy reveals something of individual women; where treatises deny the possibility of women as presbyters, etc., inscriptions refer to them as facts. This is not to say that Eisen treats epigraphical evidence as a direct reflection of reality, but its references to concrete persons are invaluable.
Most of Eisen's book is arranged in terms of the offices or roles themselves....