No child of this century, women’s liberation existed as a Christian movement in the 2nd century. In this first study of the social context that produced the Apocryphal Acts, Stevan L. Davies contends that women wrote the Acts and that the Acts appear to have been a striving by Christian women for both a mode of self-expression and a way to preach rebellion for the sake of sexual continence.” These early rebelscalled widows because they left their husbands for the churchrefused absolute subservience to the male hierarchy of the church.
The three parts of Davies’s study include an investigation of the magical world view of late 2nd-century Christendom; a close look at the people the Acts describe as new Christian converts; and a summary and analysis of the nature of the authors of the Acts. These women, like their sisters today, were seeking equal standing with men in the Christian church.

The Revolt of the Widows: The Social World of the Apocryphal Acts

Politics & Social Sciences

Davies Ph.D., Assistant Professor Stevan L.

Philosophy

Southern Illinois University Press

Discovered in Egypt in 1945 as part of the Nag Hammadi Library, the Gospel of Thomas was long considered irrelevant to the study of Jesus' teachings. Stevan Davies' influential The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom overturned this view, and enabled the Gospel of Thomas to be taken seriously as a source for the earliest Christianity. This Bardic Press edition brings a classic work of accessible scholarshp back into print. A entirely new forty page introduction discusses recent developments in scholarship, looks at Thomas' independence from the New Testament gospels, discusses the role of Mary Magdalene in the Gospel Thomas, and offers a variety of valuable insights. A fascinating additional essay speculates that Thomas may have been used as an oracle text in a similar way to the I Ching.

The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom

Religion & Spirituality

Christian Books & Bibles

Bardic Press

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Books by Davies Ph.D., Assistant Professor Stevan L.