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Association with women
One of the most remarkable features of Jesus' ministry was his relationship with women. Rigid boundaries between men and women marked the world in which he lived. Although intensified by the politics of holiness, such boundaries were not unusual in most cultures of those times. However, practicing Judaism in Jesus' time had its own peculiarities.
Although a good wife was much appreciated, women as a group were not thought well of. The synagogue prayer recited at each service included the words, "Blessed art thou, O Lord, who hast not made me a woman." In synagogues, women were required to sit in a separate section and were not counted in the quorum of ten people needed to hold a prayer meeting. Neither were they taught the Torah. Young women were often completely secluded until marriage and even after marriage, they could go out in public only if veiled.
A respectable Jewish man and especially a teacher of religion was not to talk much with women, apparently for two reasons. Women were viewed as not being very bright and as preoccupied with trivia. Also they were considered to be seductive. Thus women were systematically excluded from both the religious and public life of the social world.
Against this background, Jesus' own behavior was extraordinary. The itinerant group of immediate followers included many women. The sight of a sexually mixed group traveling with a Jewish holy man must have been very provocative. Similarly, the particular occasion on which a woman who was a "sinner" washed Jesus' feet with her tears and dried them with her hair as he reclined at a banquet given by a Pharisee was, to the Pharisees present, quite shocking. (TUB 147:5; 150:1; 150:5)
From The Urantia Book: "Of all the daring things which Jesus did in connection with his earth career, the most amazing was his sudden announcement on the evening of January 16: "On the morrow we will set apart ten women for the ministering work of the kingdom." At the beginning of the two weeks' period during which the apostles and the evangelists were to be absent from Bethsaida on their furlough, Jesus requested David to summon his parents back to their home and to dispatch messengers calling to Bethsaida ten devout women who had served in the administration of the former encampment and the tented infirmary. These women had all listened to the instruction given the young evangelists, but it had never occurred to either themselves or their teachers that Jesus would dare to commission women to teach the gospel of the kingdom and minister to the sick….It was most astounding in that day, when women were not even allowed on the main floor of the synagogue (being confined to the women's gallery), to behold them being recognized as authorized teachers of the new gospel of the kingdom. The charge which Jesus gave these ten women as he set them apart for gospel teaching and ministry was the emancipation proclamation which set free all women and for all time; no more was man to look upon woman as his spiritual inferior.
This was a decided shock to even the twelve apostles. Notwithstanding they had many times heard the Master say that "in the kingdom of heaven there is neither rich nor poor, free nor bond, male nor female, all are equally the sons and daughters of God," they were literally stunned when he proposed formally to commission these ten women as religious teachers and even to permit their traveling about with them.
The whole country was stirred up by this proceeding, the enemies of Jesus making great capital out of this move, but everywhere the women believers in the good news stood staunchly behind their chosen sisters and voiced no uncertain approval of this tardy acknowledgment of woman's place in religious work." (TUB 150:1)
Again, on an occasion when Jesus was a guest in the home of two sisters, Mary and Martha, Martha played the traditional woman's role of preparing the meal, while Mary related to Jesus as disciple to teacher. Jesus endorsed Mary's behavior. In a first-century Jewish social context, it was a radical point. Jesus treated women and men as equally capable and equally worthy of dealing with sacred matters. (TUB 162:8)
In a time when a respectable sage was not even to converse with a woman outside of his family, and when women were viewed as both dangerous and inferior, the behavior of Jesus was quite startling.
This radically transformed attitude toward women continued in the early church for the first several decades, according to both Acts and the letters of Paul where women in many of his churches were prominent enough to be greeted by name. Paul's own position was consistent with the radicalism of the Jesus movement: "There is neither Jew nor gentile, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28) (TUB 150:1.4)
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