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sock puppet wrote:So if such a sensory observation of the resurrected Jesus is the sine qua non for being an 'apostle', and Mary Magdalene, a woman, was the first person to experience seeing the resurrected Jesus and meet that indispensable requirement to be an 'apostle', is not Mary Magdalene in fact the first 'apostle'?

sock puppet wrote:So if such a sensory observation of the resurrected Jesus is the sine qua non for being an 'apostle', and Mary Magdalene, a woman, was the first person to experience seeing the resurrected Jesus and meet that indispensable requirement to be an 'apostle', is not Mary Magdalene in fact the first 'apostle'?

Was the very first apostle Mary Magdalene, a woman?

Hippolytus, Commentary on Song of Songs 25.6, Georgian Manuscript Translation wrote:And after this with a cry the synagogue expresses a good testimony for us through the women, those who were made apostles to the apostles, having been sent by Christ: those to whom first the angels said, "Go and announce to the disciples, 'He has gone before you into Galilee. There you shall see him'" (Mark 16:7) But in order that the apostles might not doubt [that they were sent] from the angels, Christ himself met with the apostles, in order that the women might become apostles of Christ and might complete through total obedience the failure of old Eve. For this reason [she] listens obediently that she may be revealed as perfected.

MsJack wrote:sock puppet ~ This may be of interest to you:

Hippolytus, Commentary on Song of Songs 25.6, Georgian Manuscript Translation wrote:And after this with a cry the synagogue expresses a good testimony for us through the women, those who were made apostles to the apostles, having been sent by Christ: those to whom first the angels said, "Go and announce to the disciples, 'He has gone before you into Galilee. There you shall see him'" (Mark 16:7) But in order that the apostles might not doubt [that they were sent] from the angels, Christ himself met with the apostles, in order that the women might become apostles of Christ and might complete through total obedience the failure of old Eve. For this reason [she] listens obediently that she may be revealed as perfected.

Mary Magdalene is definitely included in this group (see the context in the link).

Hippolytus' commentary is only preserved in a Georgian translation and some fragments from other languages plus citations in the ECFs. If the Georgian translation authentically preserves this section of the text, then this comes from the early 3rd century.

MsJack wrote:sock puppet ~ This may be of interest to you:

Hippolytus, Commentary on Song of Songs 25.6, Georgian Manuscript Translation wrote:And after this with a cry the synagogue expresses a good testimony for us through the women, those who were made apostles to the apostles, having been sent by Christ: those to whom first the angels said, "Go and announce to the disciples, 'He has gone before you into Galilee. There you shall see him'" (Mark 16:7) But in order that the apostles might not doubt [that they were sent] from the angels, Christ himself met with the apostles, in order that the women might become apostles of Christ and might complete through total obedience the failure of old Eve. For this reason [she] listens obediently that she may be revealed as perfected.

Mary Magdalene is definitely included in this group (see the context in the link).

Hippolytus' commentary is only preserved in a Georgian translation and some fragments from other languages plus citations in the ECFs. If the Georgian translation authentically preserves this section of the text, then this comes from the early 3rd century.

Nightlion wrote:
Angel sent is not apostolic. Nice try. Beautiful sentiment, artsy and poetic. If fully apostolic where then was their valiance evermore? ..............probably got married and had babies. Not that having babies fails of great valiance, heaven forbid.

.... the women, those who were made apostles to the apostles, having been sent by Christ ...

And one of the main things we know about religion in Ephesus is that the main religion – the biggest Temple, the most famous shrine – was a female-only cult. The Temple of Artemis (that’s her Greek name; the Romans called her Diana) was a massive structure which dominated the area; and, as befitted worshippers of a female deity, the priests were all women. They ruled the show and kept the men in their place.
Now if you were writing a letter to someone in a small, new religious movement with a base in Ephesus, and wanted to say that because of the gospel of Jesus the old ways of organising male and female roles had to be rethought from top to bottom, with one feature of that being that the women were to be encouraged to study and learn and take a leadership role, you might well want to avoid giving the wrong impression. Was the apostle saying, people might wonder, that women should be trained up so that Christianity would gradually become a cult like that of Artemis, where women did the leading and kept the men in line? That, it seems to me, is what verse 12 is denying. The word I’ve translated ‘try to dictate to them’ is unusual, but seems to have the overtones of ‘being bossy’ or ‘seizing control’. Paul is saying, like Jesus in Luke 10, that women must have the space and leisure to study and learn in their own way, not in order that they may muscle in and take over the leadership as in the Artemis-cult, but so that men and women alike can develop whatever gifts of learning, teaching and leadership God is giving them.

We should not be surprised that Paul calls a woman named Junia an apostle in Romans 16.7. If an apostle is a witness to the resurrection, there were women who deserved that title before any of the men. (I note that there was a huge fuss in the translation and revision of the New International Version at the suggestion that Junia was a woman, and that not a single historical or exegetical argument was available to those who kept insisting, for obvious reasons, that she was Junias, a man.)

I think in particular of the woman who anointed Jesus (without here going in to the question of who it was and whether it happened more than once); as some have pointed out, this was a priestly action which Jesus accepted as such. And I think, too, of the remarkable story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10. Most of us grew up with the line that Martha was the active type and Mary the passive or contemplative type, and that Jesus is simply affirming the importance of both and even the priority of devotion to him. That devotion is undoubtedly part of the importance of the story, but far more obvious to any first-century reader, and to many readers in Turkey, the Middle East and many other parts of the world to this day would be the fact that Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet within the male part of the house rather than being kept in the back rooms with the other women. This, I am pretty sure, is what really bothered Martha; no doubt she was cross at being left to do all the work, but the real problem behind that was that Mary had cut clean across one of the most basic social conventions. It is as though, in today’s world, you were to invite me to stay in your house and, when it came to bedtime, I were to put up a camp bed in your bedroom. We have our own clear but unstated rules about whose space is which; so did they. And Mary has just flouted them. And Jesus declares that she is right to do so. She is ‘sitting at his feet’; a phrase which doesn’t mean what it would mean today, the adoring student gazing up in admiration and love at the wonderful teacher. As is clear from the use of the phrase elsewhere in the New Testament (for instance, Paul with Gamaliel), to sit at the teacher’s feet is a way of saying you are being a student, picking up the teacher’s wisdom and learning; and in that very practical world you wouldn’t do this just for the sake of informing your own mind and heart, but in order to be a teacher, a rabbi, yourself. Like much in the gospels, this story is left cryptic as far as we at least are concerned, but I doubt if any first-century reader would have missed the point. That, no doubt, is part at least of the reason why we find so many women in positions of leadership, initiative and responsibility in the early church; I used to think Romans 16 was the most boring chapter in the letter, and now, as I study the names and think about them, I am struck by how powerfully they indicate the way in which the teaching both of Jesus and of Paul was being worked out in practice.