You'd think an historian searching for very early Christian evidence of gender equality would know about Galatians 3 and I Corinthians 7, but you'd be wrong

Am I missing anything by way of obvious sources? Put another way, without Romans 16 above all, and a couple of other comparable lists of “Say hello to” greetings in other letters, would any later scholar dared have portrayed very early Christianity in the gender-equal way that modern scholars suggest? Think how easily something like Romans 16 might have dropped out of the transmission history of that document, if an early scribe had decided it was just personal stuff, and not worth preserving. If that had occurred, just what would we know or think about gender roles in early Christianity then? 


 

 

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

 

-- Galatians 3:28

For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does.

 

-- I Corinthians 7:4