The Acts of Paul and Thecla Discussion

The Acts of Paul and Thecla – Transcript

Shirley Paulson:

Welcome everyone to our Tanho Monday Textual Study [Ed. – These events are now called the Bible and Beyond Discussions.] this month on the Acts of Paul and Thecla. I do want to remind you to turn your mute button on so that we don’t hear your household noises, but then do remember to turn it off when you’re ready to speak. So we’re talking about the Acts of Paul and Thecla tonight, which is mostly about a teenage girl in the first century who grew up into becoming a teacher and a healer. Around the edges of this story there is also the figure of Paul the Apostle, but the story is mostly about Thecla. Although this study of the Acts of Paul and Thecla provides some basic information about its writing and setting, it focuses on Thecla’s gender and sexuality.

Hal Taussig is leading the discussion tonight, and this is going to be recorded and archived so that those who couldn’t make it with us tonight, will be able to hear it later. Suggested gentle reminder, these programs do cost us money to produce, and if you’d like to support them, you’re welcome to make a donation to the Tanho Center from the link on the Early Christian Text website. And you can find more information about past and future study sessions on the Early Christian Text site on the events tab. So now I’m going to turn it over to Hal to tell us what it’s about.

Hal Taussig:

Thank you all for joining me. This is a very exciting moment for me as well. I’m in a new stage of studying the Acts of Paul and Thecla for the last year and a half. And so this represents a number of things that I’m working on, since a New New Testament‘s focus on her brought a lot of conversation and study from a number of people. So today, as often in these Monday studies, I will be laying out a few things about the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and especially the character of Thecla.

A lot of this depends on many other scholars that I am grateful for. And much of it are new thoughts from me that are complicated and I’m glad for all colleagues, including you, to help me rethink anything I say. So my thinking and work goes a lot better when we talk together and when we have critique and thoughts of your own. So please do that as often as you can today.

I’m quite sure that I have more material than we can ever cover in this hour, but I’m going to take them in portions and we’ll stop every five or ten minutes to basically begin to see what you’re thinking, what questions you might have, what objections you might want to raise as well. So first of all, we have a couple of things that we’ll just briefly go over. The Acts of Paul and Thecla we think is a document of the second century.

We don’t know who the author is. We do know that the Acts of Paul and Thecla were one of the most powerful writings of the Christ movements of the second century. They were popular all over the place and were in some cases inspiring a lot of people to think more about the character of Thecla and a lot of people to be a little frightened of the character of Thecla, because she was so free, so powerful, and so engaged in her life. You have seen online, small descriptions of the story. I’ll just do really probably the better part of several paragraphs to summarize that. And I hope I can apologize for not including all of the good stuff in just this summary. So, in the story Thecla is a teenager.

She encounters Paul, who is a traveling healer and teacher. This is the Paul in in the Bible texts, but he has a bit of a different character in The Acts of Paul and Thecla, but like he does in the letter of First Corinthians, he is a teacher of people, and he encourages people not to be married. It is this teaching that Thecla hears as a teenager and immediately grabs onto it, and wants as her growing up self to see that as the heart of who she is. She wants to be a healer and a teacher like Paul is, and she doesn’t want to be married. This immediately finds her fiancé, her mother and the government all against her. And throughout the story the government is trying to kill her in one way or another, mainly because she has followed Paul into a way in which the better way to be a human being is not to be married.

She then becomes, without Paul and with Paul, but generally on her own she becomes a successful healer and teacher. there are many times that the government tries to kill her. None succeeds, she dies of old age, and some say, and the Acts of Paul and Thecla say that she was buried within about a half mile of Paul’s burial. Alright, so that’s a little summary, and I’m gonna stop here to see what things that you want to know that I haven’t said, so we can make sure that people are at least in some ways, on the right understanding, at least to begin with, of this story.

Shirley Paulson:

Oh, I’m thinking Paul already. I think one thing that you could help us with is to clarify the difference between the Paul that we know who is a writer of text, and this text that was written so much later, is this meant to be the same person, or is is he changed in some way, or what’s the difference between that Paul and this Paul?

Hal Taussig:

It’s not clear, of course, that one would probably need to first say three ancient Pauls, at least. The Paul who wrote seven authentic letters to different communities, that is a Paul who writes, and we know that his letters are from him. Then there are a number of other letters in the New Testament and beyond, that say they’re written by Paul, but they are not. So for instance that, what we would call Pauline, character in the New Testament in let’s say Ephesians has different thoughts and beliefs and practices than the Paul who writes the letters themselves. Then there’s Paul in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and here he follows much of what he says in his own writings, and he especially focuses on the importance of not being married, being a healer, and being a teacher. So, thanks Shirley, for getting us off on that. Any other thoughts or questions about the basic story?

Sandi Justad:

This is Sandi Justed, and it sounds to me like you’ve covered it very, very well, and I’m eager to hear more.

Hal Taussig:

Hmm. And Sandi, did you read it in advance?

Sandi Justad:

I did read what was available in advance. The small parts.

So again, the actual document, the Acts of Paul and Thecla is easily available online. So in case some of you don’t know that.

Oh. Where would we find that?

Hal Taussig:

I think on Shirley’s website, Early Christian Texts, she’s given you those three places.

Shirley Paulson:

Okay, that’s right. Just to clarify, when you go to the events page and look for the Tanho discussions on this particular one, there are three links that have provided for us to take you to three or four different translations that are easy to find online. So just follow the links on that website.

Sandi Justad:

Thank you.

Hal Taussig:

Other questions about the story? Well, then let’s dive in.

Again, here, I’m going to be mostly focusing on a number of scholarly approaches to Thecla as a sexual figure and as a gendered leader of the first and second century. It’s really interesting that in some ways she is somewhat like a Marvel comic character. She has so much power and so much character. I’m sure she, like the Marvel characters, will also be in a movie soon. It is probably her successful rejection of suitors and people who want to marry her, that helps us think most about, about her in terms of her own sexuality. We’ll talk about that a bit later.

But now I want to focus on a particular scene in the story. And this is when she is brought into the arena by the governor, and she there is stripped naked, thrown out in the middle of the arena where the a a crowd of hundreds or thousands perhaps has come to see her killed by the wild beasts.

And the quick line on that is the beasts never get her. Some combination of other actions in the story including God’s action. She survives the arena. [There are] hardly any stories are about people who survive the arena. Most stories of the ancient world really [tell of] the gore and blood in which a hero is killed or a heroine.

But what I wanna talk about, in the way this story of her freedom in the arena, is how it matches her with other larger than life women. She is obviously a larger than life woman, but there are lots of other women in this story. For instance, when she’s brought before the court about how she has violated the need to be married, women from all over the city start yelling, saying let the city be destroyed for this lawlessness.

It is an evil judgment. A few of the women call her a sacrilegious women, but most of them are shouting. And even before she’s brought into the stadium, and then when she’s brought into the stadium, the women mourn and yell. And then as the animals are unleashed to kill Thecla, what happens is that all of the women cry out and they begin to throw flower petals and spices towards Thecla and the animals until the whole arena smells like perfume. Isn’t that an amazing thing? A great story. And this causes the animals to fall into a slumber so that in the first round of the animals attacking her, the flowers and the petals and the perfume that the women have thrown into the arena stop the animals. It seems to me that this is clear that who Thecla is as a woman and what her sexuality is, has to do also with who these women are and that they themselves claim a whole bunch of who they are as women with flowers and perfume, really interesting character that in fact saves her.

There’s another woman in the arena who actually took Thecla in, after she was arrested, for her last night before she was to be killed. This is a queen in Antioch, and her name is Tryphaena. And she comes to the arena, too just to to see how this all happens because she knows that Thecla has been sentenced to death. And at one point we see Thecla again being attacked by animals. And there is a lion who is to be attacking Thecla, but she comes to Thecla and protects Thecla, the lioness does. And so the lioness, for instance, finally kills a major lion who almost gets to Thecla. So the lioness and the lion are killed together, and Thecla is still saved. At this point, when the lioness has been killed, the Queen Tryphaena faints in the stands.

Now this makes the governor, who’s also there running the show, it makes him really worry because Tryphaena is a queen, and he’s afraid he will get in trouble with the emperor, if Tryphaena dies in the stands. She’s only fainted. And so the governor shouts, “Who are you? And what is it about you that not even one of the wild annals has touched you?” And Thecla shouts back from the ground of the arena itself. She says, “I indeed am the slave of the living God. For God is the refuge for those in a storm, freedom for the oppressed, and for the despairing, a shelter. So what?” And then she’s saved for good. [The Governor] says, “God hear me, Thecla slave of God, I release you!” And all the people cry aloud with one voice and give praise to God so that the whole city shook from the women’s voices.

So I think the first thing I want to understand about Thecla is her unity with all the other women in the city, and especially in the arena. This theory story, I think, clearly portrays a power of three aligned females in an even more pronounced kind of magical realism, Thecla, Tryphaena, and the women, and then the lioness, they’re inscrutably joined. It’s not, however, a whimsical alliance of all the female females, but again, a harmony whose drama has very tight meaning, although in other places, Thecla’s character is quite broad. Thecla, Tryphaena, and the lioness in the arena are bound together in strength and mutual loyalty. The lioness strength supplements that of Thecla, and at the one point, the lioness bows down before Thecla, the political power of Tryphaena helps sustain Thecla, just as Thecla’s closeness of Tryphaena’s daughter encourages Tryphaena. In other words, you have the women in the stands who are throwing petals, the queen, the lioness, and Thecla herself all together. Okay, that’s a mouthful. Let me stop and see what thoughts you may have.

Stephanie Duzant:

So I really identified when you said Thecla should be a Marvel character. Because for women’s series this month, I preached about Thecla and Paul and I showed the Tanho video before I preached my sermon. And the title was “Every Nw and Then, We Need a Hero that Looks Like Us.” I think it’s so significant that it was a harmony of women coming against a patriarchal system, that at times can be enforced by women being the character of her mother wanting to force her to marry, and being in agreement with her being thrown in the fire. Being destroyed because she went against the patriarchal system. and I think that’s what makes this story so great from a womanist feminist perspective. That the women in the community did what they could. They, the women in the arena, they didn’t come out with swords or, come out to be, violent on the field.

They used what they had to protect her, and it worked. And that’s, something great. And even the queen, dehumanization of her, that she’s a queen, but she sees Thecla because of her own personal loss and then she adopts Thecla in the end to protect her. It is just a great story. It’s just a great story, and a lot of young people (I preached it on Sunday, where young people from a Presbyterian church came to my church because they have to worship with different denominations and different religions) and even the people in my church who had never heard the story before thought it was so profound that Thecla is this hero that we never heard of before. And that Paul, she had an interaction with Paul, and Paul couldn’t save her, and Paul didn’t even make a real attempt to save her or try to help her. It just a great story. It’s just a great story, and I hope they do make a movie about it.

Hal Taussig:

Thank you so much Stephanie.

Deb Saxon:

Hey, Hal, can you hear me?

Hal Taussig:

Yes, I can, Deb.

Deb Saxon:

Okay, great. I was gonna say, this is Deb. There we go. Okay. I think was able to unmute everything. Okay.

So it’s right after this. I mean, if you’re gonna talk about this, we can wait, but isn’t it right after this scene or at the end of this scene that she baptizes herself?

Hal Taussig:

It’s in that scene.

Deb Saxon:

Yeah. Okay. So, you know, I never thought about it before, like, is it important that it’s at that point that she baptizes herself?

Hal Taussig:

Yeah. It’s…

Deb Saxon:

Like this perfect culmination of all this women’s empowerment and all this stuff going on, and then it’s like at exactly that point that she does that, right? And so it’s not some male priest or somebody else. She really takes things into her own hands at that point. And it just seems like, in thinking about that again, that that is the perfect time for that to happen is right after you’ve had all these other women who are involved, when there’s so many of them there to just say, okay. And now, here’s kind of the, the final amazing thing.

Hal Taussig:

Oh, thank you so much, Deb, that yes, that makes so much sense. And I had not made that connection. I’d been concentrating so much on the, the complexity of the unity of all the women there. But I do agree with you, and for those of you who don’t know this, part of the Acts of Paul and Thecla, one of the dimensions of Paul and Thecla relating to each other is that he, of course, is her mentor. Not always the best mentor, but she keeps asking him as she develops her skills of a healer and a teacher, she keeps asking him if he would baptize her. And he keeps saying, oh, later. And so finally in this, in this amazing picture of her almost being killed, it’s there that she jumps into a pool and baptizes herself. And so I think, Deb, you’re right, that the story at the arena is so thoroughly composed around the unity of women that you’re right. That baptism belongs to that unity of women.

Deb Saxon:

I guess the one quick thing I could add is that I have never known people not to like this story, even though I most recently had the chance to share it with a group of women in a small church in the countryside of Indiana. And it was a small… it was actually the mother-daughter banquet. So this was a church in the countryside, and they still do mother daughter banquets. They used to do those all the time when I was growing up, and it’s kind of become less common. And so here I was and they had never, I think, done any stories outside the canonical Bible. And this was just a completely new story. But of course, they knew Paul, and then when they heard this story, they just, they resonated with it. And I guess I’ve never had a…it just seems like one of the really good ways in to introducing people or sharing with people about extra canonical texts, because it just seems like so many audiences resonate with it. I think I was feeling that when you were talking Stephanie too, about your church. And so it’s really nice just to be kind of discussing it again here together.

Stephanie Duzant:

There’re so many things to resonate with as women. we know about patriarchy, we know about families trying to push women into roles that we don’t really feel that we wanna be in, because we know there’s more to life. The sexism when she gets away the first time from the first arena. And then she goes away, and then the sexism she encounters when the governor official comes after her and she says no. And she assaults him, for lack of a better word. And, and now she’s in the big arena again. And so it’s like so much to resonate with as women. And even the lion— you know, it’s so funny. I have allergies, but I’m a dog person, and so you can sometimes feel a difference with a female dog as opposed to a male dog, you know?

And so it, was so much to resonate with as women and that she was a teenager that she made a decision and she stuck to it. And she was like, this is who I am, and this is what I’m called to do. And nobody’s gonna get in the way. Not my parents, not the system, not my mentor. Not anybody’s gonna stop me. And so yeah, it’s such a great story. I think that’s why what I preached- I don’t really like to call biblical characters heroes, but it was around the same time that Wonder Woman came out not Wonder Woman Captain America, you know, it was the girl and so, yeah, she’s a hero because she stuck to who she was not a hero to save the whole world, but to save herself and to save her integrity that’s what makes that story so great, and that the universe answered and showed up for her, and God showed up for her. Yeah, I just love this story.

Hal Taussig:

Thank you. Other thoughts?

Shirley Paulson:

Well, yeah, I guess I’m gonna come back to Paul again then if you don’t mind, because I’ve always admired Paul. I love Paul. And yet it sounds like I know that he’s sort of like an ancillary character in the story. And I’m a little troubled by why he was not even being helpful. I mean, I love to lift up and celebrate the woman, but I also don’t wanna do that at the expense of men being useful. Is there any hope for Paul in this story, or why is he there like that?

Hal Taussig:

Yeah, I think really folks need to know the story better and think with it more before real clarity can be made on that. Because the story is so carefully casted, I tend to think that as a good writer does, one builds a character quite intentionally. And here, it seems to me that your question would assume that Paul is already great. And here, I guess what I’m seeing in this text is that it could be that Paul is simply a good teacher. He gets Thecla going and what the story’s writing is mostly about is her emergence as a leader. And that it doesn’t seem to me that one would necessarily need to say, oh, this cast Paul terribly. It would mean simply that Paul has a subordinate role— that of a mentor, and that actually most of us know that mentors are not the be all and end all anyway. So that would be a couple of my thoughts on that.

I did wanna then, Shirley, actually go on to another Paul related dimension of the text. And that is, just to think a little bit about how his relationship to Thecla begins. And that is as a teacher. And this is not in the story itself. The story assumes this in the first five chapters and in other writings of Paul like First Corinthians. But just to say that basically what Paul is teaching here, is— he’s urging young men and women to abandon their family, and especially the domination and unkindness of family in the particular ancient circumstances. This teaching effectively attracts Thecla into her eventual vocation of teaching and healing. So in some ways, Paul is a mentor to Thecla, and in particular, a mentor who successfully convinces her to get out from the domineering family model that gave parents complete power over what they could do, whom they could marry, and when.

I think we can’t ignore this character of family life. The main way Paul guided such young people as Thecla, was to describe a way for them to escape the tyranny of this kind of family by not marrying. Paul called this way outta family tyranny, both freedom and more ironically, slavery to God’s freedom. In this teaching of many early Christ Group teachers, including Paul, getting married inevitably put both husbands and wives in a system by which the men are in charge of the women, and the parents are in charge of their children, both when the children are little and when they’re adults. So the proposal of many early Christ teachers is that Christ groups become a non-blood line family for one another. Christ is the model for young people in the group. God, the parent of Christ takes on the role as head of the group itself.

This then makes Christ people free from bloodline family domination to be sons and daughters of God. So for the first, and perhaps the strongest part of Thecla’s relationship to Paul is that he’s a teacher who taught her to take God as her master and parent in opposition to her bloodline family, which finally tried to entrap her in marriage. Thecla and Paul’s relationship is then at least a part of a larger sexual path. Thecla learns from Paul about the way God and other children can protect one another, love one another, and keep one another free from persons and family systems that they will imprison. So let’s stop a little bit here and see what role Paul has and what he does about the formation of her own sexuality.

Shirley Paulson:

Well, then I might just ask you the question. We’re getting some

feedback. Is everyone else getting any feedback?

Hal Taussig:

I’m starting to get some.

Shirley Paulson:

Yes. Oh, dear. somebody needs to mute.

Hal Taussig:

Yeah, somebody needs to mute their phone. I think

Shirley Paulson:

What? I don’t know if it’s me. No, it’s not me. Okay. Oh, okay. Alright. Thank you.

On the line of family relationship then, you mentioned that Thecla was talking about being a slave not to the Roman system of family in patriarchy, but to God. But then Paul is talking about being the child of God, and it seems like there’s a difference between being a child of God and a slave of God.

Hal Taussig:

Yeah. Yeah. So, this text (and there are other texts in the early Christ movements that do this too), it plays on the word freedom and slavery. And there, what one really needs to understand is that there’s so many slaves in the Roman Empire, hundreds of thousands of slaves. And so in other words, a lot of slaves are becoming Christ people as a way out of the terror of slavery for them. And so therefore Paul is also of course breaking the slavery of family. And there he helps people get out of the slavery of family itself. So that for him in this, Paul says, you need to be free. And the only person you need to be a slave to is God. That will guarantee your social freedom from all kinds of slavery. This is such a a new thing to think with Paul and Thecla about, I’m really eager to have others join in, not necessarily agreeing either with Thecla, Paul or me.

Stephanie Duzant:

As I’m listening, because it wasn’t like when Thecla heard his teaching, she wasn’t in the room. She was listening from a window. So I still feel she resonated with that because what she was under, she was already in an arranged situation and when she heard Paul’s teaching, she felt connected to it. But was Paul telling that to everybody? And when I read this text and then I think about the Paul that I’ve read in the cannon, Paul was very methodical. He’s not my favorite person, right? So he’s a politician and because of who Thecla was socially, was he teaching that to everyone?

Hal Taussig:

So yeah, I’m proposing that we don’t know for sure, but that is in so many different places in other writings and within, the canon. It’s in First Corinthians. So for instance, in that long First Corinthians seven chapter, it’s quite interesting that Paul’s for the first time in a long time, unsure of himself because the question is— Is it good to be married? And in one part of that, in one section, he finally gets around ‘cause he’ll say, okay, I know some of you are still married, but you’re not having sex anymore because you wanna be free. I know that other people haven’t been married and are trying to stay unmarried. Some people have been widowed and now they’re liking not being married.

And then he says, you know, in the end, I think, yeah, it’s better not to be married. In other words, we don’t have the picture in First Corinthians that the Acts of Paul Thecla does. What the Acts of Paul and Thecla says over and over again is he is being appalled, is being thrown in jail because he’s an evil influence on the young people. And this is what he’s teaching. If you look at the first five chapters of Thecla, it’s all about not getting married.

Stephanie Duzant:

No. Right. I get that. But again, I guess I’m asking because even in Corinthians after he says all that- it’s better to marry than to burn, and so you shouldn’t get married, but if you gotta get married because you need to have that sex. Okay. Do it. And so and again, Thecla outside the window, right? She’s not in the room when she first hears all of this.

Hal Taussig:

Right.

Stephanie Duzant:

So who is that message for? Yes, they’re against him. You’re right. They’re against him. I don’t know. I guess I wanna know who was invited in the room, and then I think about how he treats her after. Like, oh yes, he loves that, the fact that she wants to get it and all of that. But then once he sees that she’s serious and she’s like, baptize me, he’s like, oh, no, not yet. No, not yet. And then after he sees, everything she’s going through and she survives, it’s clear that she’s got this anointing and he’s- oh, not yet. You know what I mean? And so I’m always seeing Paul as the politician. And so why does he not wanna bring her on board? What is his trepidation about not bringing her on board and making her a solid part of the team when it’s clear that God is with her, so I feel it’s because of who Thecla was socially.

Yeah. And this gets back to Shirley’s question too. Stephanie, I would tend to say that, Paul is portrayed in Thecla as making major mistakes relative to her.

Yeah.

Hal Taussig:

And in other words, the time that he’s brought forward is when he preaches, when he teaches this. I mean, he’s even in the first five chapters of Thecla before he even meets her and teaches, it already shows that for instance, his beatitudes are way different than Jesus’. And they focus on not marrying and being free and healed. So in other words, it feels to me as if here we also need to raise questions about, so who was Paul? And again, in the canonical Paul, he was always himself single, and he never speaks for marriage.

Stephanie Duzant:

Right. And I’m not disputing that, ’cause that is who Paul is in the cannon.

Hal Taussig:

But, and let me say one other thing. Excuse me, Stephanie. It seems to me like since in Thecla, the reason Paul gets put in jail is this.

Stephanie Duzant:

Right.

Hal Taussig:

And then in all the other canonical texts, he is being thrown in jail.

Stephanie Duzant:

Right? Right.

Hal Taussig:

So it very well could be that also, right at the heart of the text.

Stephanie Duzant:

Mm-hmm.

Hal Taussig:

Mm-hmm. I don’t know. But yeah, we’ve got to have a lot more of what you and I are talking about here.

Stephanie Duzant:

Yeah. Yeah.

Hal Taussig:

Yeah.

Stephanie Duzant:

Yeah. You talk about the sexuality pieces, there’s so much to that that has to be expanded because I mean, yes, they said Thecla lived to be a old woman and she was a teacher and everything. But does that mean she didn’t have sexual relations down the line?

Hal Taussig:

Yeah. Well, yeah, I think that’s good. And I would wanna just jump right on that about this. And I know you’ve worked on this too, Stephanie, this other thing very explicitly erotic in Paul and Thecla. And let me just read that key passage and say a few thoughts about it. So for the rest of you who haven’t seen this part of Thecla, I think it’s one of the parts that makes me really wanna work more on sexuality, Paul and Thecla. Here’s the text.

“The governor ordered Paul to be bound, and he was carried off to prison until the governor might have the leisure for a more careful hearing of him. But in the night, Thecla took off her bracelets and gave them to the gatekeeper in jail, and the door was open for her.”

So Thecla bribes her way into jail to see Paul. She went into the prison and gave the jailer a silver mirror. In other words, to get really to Paul. She went into Paul and sat at his feet and she heard the great things of God. And Paul feared nothing, having rights in this freedom of God. And Thecla strengthened her trust, kissing his chains.

And when Thecla was sought out by her own people, they pursued her through the street as one who was lost. And one of the fellow slaves of the gatekeeper disclosed that she had left in the night. And they questioned the gatekeeper, and he said to them, She has gone to the stranger in prison. And they went, as he told them, and found her bound in affection. They went from that place and drew together a crowd, and they together declared to the governor what had happened.

And Paul was ordered to be brought to the court, Thecla wallowed in the place where Paul taught as he sat in prison.

Now, for me, although this is the only time in the rather long Acts of Paul and Thecla, that Thecla is in any way intimate with Paul, it bears analyzing. I’ve been avoiding this part of the text for a long time, frankly, I was kinda embarrassed about it. But here’s some other thinking for me about it. The language, even within a culture unfamiliar to the 21st century Americans, does seem quite sensuous. The kissing, the lack of fear, the fullness of trust, Thecla being bound in affection and wallowing where Paul had taught her in prison. The story is interested in the physical and the relational character of their time together. Here, the intimacy is defined by the visceral, emotional, and interpersonal connection of the two.

It is far from a genitally focused or sexless event. Rather, it fits quite closely with the larger picture. What I’m trying to do is paint sexuality that encompasses various intimacy, common bonds, physicality, shared if not mutual responsibilities, and implicit and explicit ownership. Sexuality for Thecla here has a full mix of human engagement: thought, passion, and communication. One of the most striking parts, I think, of this prison encounter between Thecla and Paul is that she is clearly the initiator since men in the ancient Mediterranean were in charge of most life and often aggressive sexually. This portrait of Thecla and Paul’s intimate meeting is quite the exception. Here every aspect of the story focuses on her proactive stance and what it meant to her. And again, this is not the beginning of them getting married, this is not the beginning of them being in other ways intimate or erotic. This is simply one time at the heart of this story. So we only have like five more minutes, but let the floodgates open.

Stephanie Duzant:

So I think it’s important to look at this. Yes. Especially as leaders in churches as people called, that the energy that can happen between people.

Hal Taussig:

Right?

Stephanie Duzant:

And if people are not sensible, for lack of a better word, right? If people are, are not self-aware. That scene, you know, we look at it and there is some intimacy there. And, maybe Thecla realizes her call, but has this almost infatuation.

It makes me think of Martin Luther and his wife. And so Martin Luther was almost like Paul. He, even though in the reformation, he thought women and men should be married, but for his own self, he wasn’t going to take a wife. And so he found wives for everybody, found wife for Calvin, all the other theologians, found wives for everybody. And so his wife, he was trying to get her to marry somebody else. And so, you know, as I did some study on it he was intimate with her, but I’m gonna get you another husband.

And so she made it clear to him that if I don’t marry you, I’m not marrying anybody. And she was a woman of gifts, you know, spiritually, she really helped him when did the reformation and did church. But I think— he wasn’t Paul. He was trying to be this slave to God and only served God, but he wasn’t realistic. I feel he wasn’t honest with himself. He wasn’t realistic about what he was doing. And so they say really he had to marry her in the end, some believe because they believe she was pregnant. And so it’s this energy between people. And spiritually we have to be self-aware because it does happen, right? And so, and we are reading the text that she sat at his feet. And so some scholars like to say that that has another meaning.

Cause Ruth sat at Boaz’s feet, right? And, and Mary of Bethany sat at Jesus’ feet. And so they say it has another meaning. And so we do have to examine that. That is something that we do really have to look at in doing the work so that inappropriateness doesn’t happen. That people don’t get confused about their calls. I mean, that whole situation could have turned Thecla in a different direction, right? If not handled properly, if the call of God wasn’t so strong on her. And I wanna say if she had not experienced what she experienced with the other women, that whole energy of the other women. That kind of confirmed and affirmed her as someone called to minister and be a healer and a teacher. But yes, we do have to look at that because that can, if not dealt with properly, can really mess up people in the church, people in community, people’s spirituality. So it does have to be examined.

Hal Taussig:

Yes. And I, on the other hand, I guess I wanna say that the Acts of Paul and Thecla is quite comfortable with sensuality on a, on a number of fronts. So I myself don’t want to always start with what the dangers of physical intimacy are but it seems like the Acts of Paul and Thecla a is striking a really new kind of pose that contemporary regular Christians don’t even know about.

Stephanie Duzant:

True. Because like Martin Luther did marry his wife, right? And they did have a good marriage.

Hal Taussig:

Well, maybe even beyond marriage, they weren’t much in the marriage there,

Stephanie Duzant:

Right? But they were like a power couple, right? In the development of the Lutheran church. And so you are right. I think when we look at the non-canonical, there’s like the Odes, there’s so much sensuality in some of the Odes that I think in that time there was a comfort level that we lack in contemporary times.

Hal Taussig:

Yeah, yeah. You know your text so well in that regard. Thank you so much. And by the way, I’m almost certain that I’m not right on a bunch of these things.

Well, I’m aware that we have just done our whole hour and I know Shirley, you need to say some things before we sign off and say goodbye. But thank all of you. But frankly, especially you Stephanie, for being such a great colleague in this discussion. It feels like we get a lot. You and I should go on the road together on this. It’d be really great. So I’m gonna hand this back to you Stephanie, or not Stephanie. Shirley.

Shirley Paulson:

All right. Well, so just so everyone knows what we’re doing because we are archiving these wonderful conversations, I’m going to give a little sort of speech before and at the beginning and the end of this so that people who are just reading this or picking it up on the archive will know what’s going on. So bear with me. We’ll say goodbye to each other after I get this little speech. So just hang on a little bit here. So I’m just going to say this: Once a month between 8:00 and 9:00 PM Eastern time on Monday nights, generally the fourth of the month at the Tahoe Center, sponsors this presentation and discussion of one of the Early Christian Texts. Each session is led by a trained scholar of these texts and the discussion leaders share a well framed overview of the particular text.

All participants have opportunities to ask questions or share their own insights about the meanings and potential for these texts. There is no charge to participate in the discussions, but participants are invited to give donations, even small donations to the Tahoe Center via the link on the Early Christian Texts website. One does not have to attend every session, and anyone is welcome at any time. We look forward to your joining these textual studies. To learn more or participate in a next study, please visit us on Early Christian Texts on the events page. Thanks so much everybody.

Hal Taussig:

Goodnight,

Shirley Paulson:

Good day. Goodnight. And thanks so much, Hal. This was a great conversation. Just loved it.