Cressida Connolly

Jesus’s female disciples remain women of mystery

If the Marys and Salomes are hard to distinguish, the word ‘diakonos’ and the vagaries of the Greek masculine plural are equally problematic

‘Jesus in the house of Martha and Mary’ by Henryk Siemiradzki. [Alamy] 
issue 12 March 2022

Is there a patron saint of conjecture? Perhaps it is a name known only to Bible scholars, who have rich cause to guard it jealously. Even if such a saint is invoked by the academy alone, the petitioning must be pretty constant. Lucky, then, that this account of the early female followers of Jesus is jointly authored, for it takes more than one person to dream up the vocabulary required for 200 pages of guesswork.

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