The Gospel of Matthew and women

Abstract

Matthew obviously reveals no concern with gender roles and issues about female leadership. This Gospel simply perceives such issues from the perspective of conventional patriarchal terms within the Roman household ideology, at best believing “collegiality” to be proper for his community. In order to avoid biblicistic and/or fundamentalistic theological reflection these issues should be acknowledged in our “wrestling” with Scripture. At the same time Matthew’s vision of God and the abundant righteousness demanded allow us to go beyond Matthew’s treatment of women and radicalise not only the implicit call to equity in our tradition but even our own context’s emphasis on equality.