Imagining the Matthean eunuch community: Kyriarchy on the chopping block.

Publication: Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion

Publication Date: 22-MAR-06

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This article identifies the eunuch saying in Matthew's Gospel as a gender metaphor that suggests women in Matthew's communit(ies) continued to experience the same equality in marriage and leadership roles as the women in Jesus's Galilean basileia movement. The elevation of women's status created tension within the Jesus movements, discernable by reading the eunuch logion in its larger literary and social contexts. By examining the eunuch saying and Matthew's Gospel in the context of the ancient Mediterranean world--where kyriarchal structures determined gender roles and eunuchs symbolized neither male nor female--the author concludes that this Jesus saying challenged traditional male power rooted in kyriarchal marriage and households. The article consequently criticizes recent feminist historical-Jesus research that rejects the antikyriarchal and emancipatory nature of the basileia movement named after Jesus.

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Is it possible to reread Matthew's eunuch saying as evidence that emancipatory struggles for equality in Jesus's Galilean movement were still operative in the Matthean house churches near the end of the first century in Syria? (1) I will argue so and maintain that the eunuch saying has special significance for imagining the status and role of women in Matthean communit(ies). (2) Women in Matthew's time were hardly marginalized--they experienced equality and functioned as leaders--yet they sometimes met with antipathy from traditional power brokers. (3) This tension surfaces rhetorically in Matthew 19:3-12, a passage in which Jesus argues with some Pharisees and confronts his own disciples about marriage, divorce, and remarriage. The passage ends with the eunuch saying cited here:

And he said to them, "Not everyone receives this word even though it has been given to them. For some are eunuchs from birth; others have been made eunuchs by men; and some have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can." (Matt. 19:11-12) (4)

I maintain that Jesus's call for men to "make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven" challenged male power and helped to redefine social roles for women in the Jesus movement. The preservation of this difficult saying suggests that the Matthean communit(ies) wrestled with Jesus's ideal for male and female relationships in his basileia (5) movement.

To imagine such a scenario, I rely on various feminist biblical scholars and especially the work of Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza, who characterizes her approach as rooted in historical and rhetorical biblical method as well as feminist theory. (6) Schtissler Fiorenza's emphasis on a "sociological-theological model for the reconstruction of the early Christian movement" avoids weaknesses found in much current historical-Jesus research, to which I will return. (7) I have also embraced her neologism kyriarchy to address the wider social context of the Matthean households and her characterization of the Jesus movement as an "emancipatory basileia-movement" against which the eunuch saying would have been understood. (8)

Kyriarchy in the Ancient Mediterranean World

Deciphering the eunuch logion depends on insights about kyriarchy. Mediterranean societies were dominated by a kyriarchal sociopolitical system that gave control to the emperor/lord/master/father/husband over male or female subordinates and subjugated peoples. (9) Kyriocentric symbols of male superiority and dominance permeated cities and households. (10) Such kyriocentrism manufactured artificial distinctions between male and female to legitimize and sustain male ascendancy. This sexual dimorphism established gender roles by which both men and women were judged. Gender status was blatantly correlated to biological differences in male and female anatomy, beginning with the genitalia. Interpreted sociopsychologically and underscored by kyriarchal religion, the male body became the symbol of culture's masculine ideals. Kyriocentric cultures grant power and privilege to those born with testicles. This distinction broke down, however, when men failed to fulfill their manly virtues or when women attained social status traditionally held by men. (11) Masculinity in the ancient Mediterranean world was measured more by mastery over certain passions (enkrateia) and attainment of a higher societal status than by biological differences. (12) Women did attain power over some men and would ironically become more "masculine" than these males (13) based on the very kyriocentric symbolic gender constructions that were intended to subordinate females simply by their physiognomy. (14) The fluidity of the gender equation grows even more intriguing when one recognizes that a woman who acquired power and status apart from an ascribed elite status by birth had to do so without the benefit of testicles. (15)

Even in modern societies, few people think twice about the attention immediately given to a newborn's genitalia so that the infant's sex can be interpreted according to pre-determined gender roles. The ancient Mediterranean world invested much more precision and control over ascribing gender roles and status. It began within the context of kyriarchal households, where the head of the household, usually a father, either performed or submitted the child to a human life-cycle ritual. These rituals determined kinship and encoded gender distinctions. Beginning at birth and throughout one's life, rituals attached meaning to biological relationships. (16) The father in ancient Greek households performed the amphidromia rite, in which he carried his child around the hearth, as part of his decision to accept the child as a legitimate heir. (17) The Roman father (paterfamilias) inherited the responsibility for all religious rituals in his household; thus, he held a priestly status. Jewish fathers circumcised their infant sons under obligation of the Law of Moses, following the example of Father Abraham (Gen. 21:4). Rituals such as marriage and banquets effectively continued the household's kyriarchal sociopolitical and economic structures founded on the symbolic significance of testicles. (18) Consequently, as Schussler Fiorenza concludes, "household and marriage relationships generate the social-political inferiority and oppression of women." (19)

Ancient Mediterranean households reflected the city's kyriarchal religious patterns and social life on a microcosmic scale in the same way that the city mirrored the cosmos. Just as rulers found religion a reliable ally for administering the empire's political and economic agendas, fathers likewise had divine sanctions for sustaining their households. But Jesus in Matthew's Gospel not only departs from these kyriarchal features of households but he also challenges them with an alternative model. This departure did not involve the total emasculation of ancient Mediterranean culture. After all, the Matthean Jesus refers to God as "Father" (pater; Matt. 23:9), and Matthew calls Jesus "Lord" (kyrios; 7:21-22) and "the Son of God" (ho huios tou theou; 1@16).

This nuance serves as a reminder that Jesus and the movements he inspired in Galilee and Syria were part of two complex cultures: Jewish and Hellenistic. The crucial question in the historical reconstruction of Jesus is not whether syncretism between these cultures took place but rather which model most shaped Jesus's life and teachings: a traditional Israelite culture or a Roman-Hellenistic one? Jonathan Reed expresses it this way:

In terms of culture, whether Galilee was Hellenized--that is to say Greek-speaking and conversant in the art, architecture, and thought of the broader Greco-Roman world--or essentially Semitic--that is to say Aramaic-speaking, aniconic, provincial in its architecture, and steeped in rabbinic teachings--makes a difference in the way scholars view the preservation of [Jesus's] sayings by his disciples and their interpretation. (20)

Archaeological data from Galilee prior to the second century C.E. continue to suggest that the population was mostly Jewish and that most villages remained distinctively Jewish. Even the urban center Sepphoris, once thought a bastion of Hellenism, now appears to have been a predominantly Jewish city crafted in Hellenistic style. (21) And although Roman imperialism was the chief means of Hellenization, "it was surprisingly accommodating to various indigenous forms," according to Reedy. (22) Additionally, these Galileans appear to have been staunchly independent, even showing signs of hostility toward Jerusalem's hegemonic efforts represented by "the scribes and Pharisees" (Matt. 23:1-39). (23) Richard Horsley finds little room for a thoroughly Hellenized Galilee during the first century C.E.: "If anything, the increased economic pressures of Antipas's rule and his imposition of Roman-Hellenistic political culture would have driven the Galileans into deeper attachment to their traditional Israelite heritage." (24)

Kyriarchy and the Jesus Tradition

Although the movements in Galilee and Syria remained Jewish, (25) they would have been distinctive from each other in various ways. These two socio-religious Jewish movements would have functioned differently: the former as a prophetic renewal movement within Israel and the latter as a missionary Jesus movement within a Greco-Roman city. (26) However, they shared an essential and overriding similarity. Both created tension and conflict with the dominant cultural ethos of the Greco-Roman world based on Jesus's vision of the basileia of God. (27) According to Schussler Fiorenza, the basileia movement in which Jesus participated was emancipatory and egalitarian, with women playing central roles in the struggle for justice. The Jesus movements were not alone in this regard. Women functioned instrumentally in other ancient social movements from "Greek, Roman, Asian, and Jewish cultures." (28) One should, therefore, understand Jesus and these intra-Jewish movements in their sociopolitical context as being neither unique nor anti-Jewish but rather antikyriarchal and anti-imperialistic. (29)

Each of these intra-Jewish movements interpreted Jesus's theological-social-political-economic vision for Israel and integrated it into its households. Matthew's Gospel gives us one such memory and interpretation of the Jesus tradition from the perspective of Matthew's alternative households. Matthew has several sayings of Jesus that disrupt and displace kyriarchal households and marriage, the eunuch saying among others. (30) Deconstructing these sayings in order to capture the place and experience of women requires a "historical imagination" enlivened by feminist theory. (31) We can assume that women played decisive roles in Matthew's households in the first place because of similar examples from the ancient Mediterranean world. Hellenistic religious cults, funeral societies, voluntary associations, and Jewish synagogues also used houses for assembling. The rigid separation between private and public space collapsed in these households, giving women new opportunities and undermining kyriarchy. (32)

The transition from a kyriarchal household to a Christian house church meant first...

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