Corpus-Paul

[Patrick Nugent <nugenpa AT earlham.edu>]

Title: Widows

Erroll Smith wrote:

>Are you referring to the supposed "order" of widows ? I suspect that Paul is *not* describing a formal role/title but rather
>encouraging a responsible attitude to the needs of the destitute

I'd thrown my two cents in to say that since so many of the qualifications for widows (though not all) resemble the qualifications for EPISKOPOI, perhaps we are talking about widows of EPISKOPOI who might succeed their husbands in those duties?  This is a casual suggestion I heard Ray Brown make in a public lecture once, though I don't know if he ever argued it in print.  He was playing with the idea that EPISKOPOI / PRESBUTEROI were expected, as part of their office, to provide meeting-space (see the brief remark in Intro, 657), so that their death raised the question of whether their widows could continue to provide that space and perhaps carry on the other duties of presbyter-overseers.

I can't follow the suggestion that "Paul" was only 'encouraging a responsible attitude,' because he so clearly worries about widows who are enrolled and those who are not (1 Tim 5:13-16).  Because they are responsible for 'washing the feet of the saints,' there may be an echo here of Jesus's deed in John's gospel, suggesting not just an ordinary ritual of hospitality but a fairly widespread, specifically "Christian"  ritual of servanthood that perhaps was thought to imitate Jesus; such a ritual would likely be the provenance of a person in authority.  The association here with the practice reflected in John may be too tenuous; I don't know research on the currency of that practice in the late 1C.  Even without that piece of speculation, it's hard for me to see "widows" having a sheerly ordinary meaning here.

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Patrick J. Nugent
Department of Religion
Earlham College
Richmond, Indiana 47374 USA

(765) 983-1413
nugenpa AT earlham.edu
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