Note: February 2021 ended up being the month of Phoebe. I spent the first two weeks writing a previous post about her, re-read it and was dissatisfied, and so spent another two weeks trying again.
This past January, I attended the ordinations to the diaconate of three seminarians I’d spent the past three years working with. This took place at the Episcopal cathedral in Garden City. I was there at the invitation of the students, and in my capacity as executive director of Episcopal Divinity School at Union. During the service, a passage from Luke’s gospel that has long been associated with diaconal ministry was read. This passage was that of Luke 22.24-27 and it is one that speaks to how the spirit of reversal so embodied in Mary’s Magnificat continues throughout Luke, both on theme of wealth and, in this case, power and authority.
The passage begins with the disciples fighting again, arguing among themselves who is the greatest and who had the most authority (Luke 22.24). Jesus begins to respond to their griping by first observing that ‘kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those over them are called benefactors,” (Luke 22.25). But greatness, power, and authority within this new movement must operate along entirely different lines: “But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves,” (Luke 22.26-27).
Part of the reason this is read at diaconal ordinations is because of that final sentence and, more particularly, that very last word. The English “to serve” is derived from Luke’s Greek “diakon?n”. This notion that “deaconing” is connected to serving – including the serving at tables – is further reinforced by Acts 6:1-6 in which seven are chosen ‘to serve.’ There, the disciples are once again overly concerned with their egos and authority, and despite Jesus’ earlier identification with the one who serves, they gripe that, “It is not right that we should neglect the word of God to serve at tables,” (Acts 6:2). They therefore go about choosing seven – later interpreted as the first deacons – to serve at the tables in the Jerusalem church’s daily distribution of food to widows (Acts 6:1).
As was the case on that day in late January, this passage from Luke is read at diaconal ordination because it captures the way power and authority is to be wielded by Christians. There is little to suggest that this passage was intended solely for deacons, but is rather intended for all Christians. The ordinands are stepping into a role of greater authority within the community, and yet the most powerful expression of this is not “lording it over others” or wielding the power of your typical benefactor, but rather becoming like the unnamed table server. The next time you are seated in a formal meal or meeting, in addition to observing who is seated at the head of the table, note who is serving in the background. Against all typical definitions of greatness, it is that frequently unnamed person who Jesus identifies himself with, as his expression of faithful power and authority.
In all this we can once again sense the spirit of reversal of the Magnificat which this book began discussing. Jesus’ pointing to the server is another example of how Jesus goes about “scattering the proud in the thoughts of their hearts” and “exalting the lowly” throughout his ministry, and even throughout time. The church uses wealth and gilded flash to signal who and what has power and authority and seems to have forgotten about the server working in the background. This passage wasn’t intended to be solely for deacons, but about what Christian power and authority looks like in general. As I stood there observing the three students entering into diaconal ministry, I wondered how they might come to embody this role of the unseen server.
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As stated to by Jesus in this passage and then in Acts 6:1-4, power, authority, and wealth are profoundly intertwined concepts. Jesus critiques the way the “kings of the Gentiles lord it over them,” and those over them “who are called benefactors,” (Luke 22.25). Jesus is describing how acting like kings and benefactors is the exact opposite of how Christians are to express power and authority. This then raises interesting questions when Christian communities – including those of Luke’s community – needed wealthy benefactors to survive.
The curious case of Phoebe has to do with Paul’s usage of these two titles of diakonos and prostatis in the same sentence. As described above, the former has to do with occupying a servant-like role whereas the latter is decidedly about patronage and prestige. Garrison breathlessly asks: “How could this woman take on the role of diakonos (a term suggesting servant status) and prostatis (a term suggesting wealth and privilege)? The former term implies subservience, even social stigma, while the latter implies independence and status, perhaps even economic power. Even if these were not clearly defined as distinct positions (or offices such as that of bishops in the second century) in first-century Christianity, does the Gospel tradition suggest that such combined ministry was encouraged?”[1]
His intriguing answer is, essentially, yes -- the Gospel tradition’s dream of a reversal resulted in a Christian reimagining of the role of patrons and benefactors, including the leadership role and patronage of women. He argues that many of the stories Luke tells and its spirit of reversal were known by Paul and the assemblies Paul founded, and this ultimately resulted in the early Christian assemblies thinking extensively about ‘the service of a patron’, and what a wealthy benefactor’s role in an assembly comprised of the mostly poor might be. There is evidence that women patrons like Phoebe in Romans 16:1-2 and Lydia of Thyratira mentioned in Acts 16:14-15 may have especially embodied this through hospitality, for hospitality itself is a paradoxical act wherein patrons/benefactors become servers as hosts.
Women deacons
Paul’s introduction of Phoebe in Romans 16:1-2 suggests that by the mid to late 50s CE, there were moderately wealthy women who were serving as both deacons and as benefactors/patrons of the church, although Phoebe represents the only instance in which a woman is referred to using both terms. Paul describes Phoebe as a deacon (diakonos) of the church at Cenchreae, which was a village in Corinth, and patron/benefactor (prostatis) of “many and of myself as well.”
A great deal of hand-wringing and conservative gnashing of teeth has resulted from Paul referring to Phoebe as diakonos, particularly from those quarters of Christianity that insist on the historicity of male-only ecclesiastical leadership. Yet there is abundant historical evidence of women occupying significant leadership roles in the early church, including as deacons. In Paul’s seven authentic letters, “various women are named as office holders: amid the large number of people whom he lists as sending greetings to the Romans are Phoebe the deacon (administrative officer or assistant) in the Church of Cenchrae (a port near Corinth), Prisca, a ‘fellow worker’ and Tryphaena and Tryphosa, ‘workers in the Lord’ – descriptions also applied to men in the same passage. Most strikingly, there is Junia, a female ‘apostle’, so described alongside another ‘apostle’ with a male name…”[2] Historian John Anthony McGuckin adds that “Pliny the Younger in the early second century tells us that in the course of investigating the Christian communities in Bithynia, in the time of the emperor Trajan (98-117), he put to torture two female deacons, who gave him information about the early eucharistic rite.”[3]
In the case of Junia, later readers of Romans considered the notion of a woman apostle so appalling that her name was simply changed to a male form in later manuscripts, or simply considered a man’s name without any further justification. [4] Similarly, Phoebe’s title of diakonos has insistently been translated as ‘servant’ or simply as ‘helper’ despite the fact that when applied to males, this same word was translated as ‘deacon.’ New Testament scholar Joan Cecilia Campbell notes of Romans 16:1, “the King James Version, the New King James Version, the New International Version, and the New American Standard Version all employ the word ‘servant’ for diakonos.”[5] A more subtle dampening of women’s leadership in the early church has been to refer to Phoebe as a deaconess, yet there is no linguistic justification for such differentiation: “While in English usage the title ‘deaconess’ designates female deacons, the Greek noun diakonos is masculine and has no feminine form in the New Testament.”[6] Historian Diarmaid McCullough argues that “this is probably reading back from the third and fourth centuries, when female deacons were restricted to roles necessarily reserved for women, like looking after scantily clad female candidates in services of baptism. First- and second-century Christians may not have made such a distinction between male and female deacons or the part that either played in the life of the Church.”[7] As the focus of this post is on wealth and poverty, I am not going to go too far down this road. However, there needs to be a greater recognition of the simple fact that, as Campbell puts it, “Phoebe is diakonos of an ekklesia (a gathering of believers), a reference that seems to imply an official role for her among members of the Jesus group at Kenchreai (Rom 16:1).”[8]
But what did it mean to be a deacon? It appears a deacon’s role may have been a combination of functions including that of a server, administrator, and intermediary. Bruce Malina writes, “A deacon in Hellenistic society was a person who functioned as an agent of a higher-ranking person, either as an intermediary in commercial transactions or as a messenger or diplomat. A deacon was a person in the service of some supervising manager.”[9] Joan Campbell would seem to agree that a “diakonos is ‘one who serves as an intermediary in a transaction, an agent, intermediary,’ that is, ‘one who gets things done at the behest of a superior, an assistant’ and the verb diakonein means “to function as an intermediary’ or ‘to act as a go-between or agent.’”[10] This definition of a deacon as both server and administrative intermediary may also help to explain why there appears to be a striking connection between the diaconate and the episcopate from early on. “From earliest times the office of deacon was attached to the episcopate as an administrative helper (Phil 1:1; 1 Tim 3:8).”[11] Indeed, deacons frequently went on to the episcopacy (bishops) without ever becoming presbyters (priests), but I digress.
Romans 16:1-2 is the only place in the New Testament where a woman is referred to as both a deacon and patron/benefactor, and it’s the combination of the two terms in the same breath that makes Phoebe’s role so intriguing. In their social science commentary on Paul’s letter, Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh seem to strain against known definitions of both roles when they wonder aloud: “Perhaps a deacon such as Phoebe was a person in the service of the supervisor of the Jesus group in Cenchrae (the seaport of Corinth) or of the Jesus group in general (doing the service of patron, as noted in the next verse).”[12] This raises the question of what the ‘service of a patron’ could possibly be.
The service of a patron(ness)
In her book exploring the titles that Paul uses to describe Phoebe, New Testament scholar Joan Cecilia Campbell observes that, unlike the term for deacon, prostatis (patron/benefactor) is a specific term for a female patron/benefactor, and thus that Phoebe’s patronage should be understood through the lens of women’s patronage in first century Roman society. Contrasting the feminine form prostatis with the masculine term prostatēs, Campbell writes “While prostatēs often refers to the sponsor of a private association and includes the notion of social protection provided by that sponsor, prostatis is attributed to patron-goddesses and means ‘protectress’. More generally speaking, prostatēs connotes ‘one who looks out for the interests of others, defender, guardian, benefactor’ while prostatis refers to ‘a woman in a supportive role, a patron, or benefactor.’”[13]
This image of women as benefactors/patrons is in keeping with broader understandings of women’s changing roles in first century Rome. Campbell notes that “During the first century, the women of Kenchreai, one of the major Roman ports in Corinthia, likely enjoyed a relatively high degree of social freedom, particularly if they, like Phoebe, were women of means.”[14] She continues, “Women, it seems, were able to act as patrons of individuals and to engage in civic benefactions. Their influence in public matters was strongest in areas such as Corinth, Philippi, and the Roman province of Asia where Roman influence heavily outweighed any other.” [15]
One interesting example of non-Christian women’s patronage comes from the mid-first century in Corinth as well. This pertains to a decree praising Junia Theodora of Corinth, a prostatis of the people of the Lycian city of Telmessos, for her service of patronage through hospitality. “In this decree she is said to have welcomed Lycian travelers and citizens in her own house, supplying them with everything.”[16] Junia Theodora also appears in another decree from another city, the Lycian city of Patara, as also being praised for her hospitality.[17] This decree in praise of Junia aligns with the argument that women’s patronage generally focused on “offering hospitality, hosting group meetings, and providing ‘material and cash gifts, food and dinner invitations, lodging, favorable recommendations and appointments, help in matchmaking, and bequests and inheritances.’ Often their resources went to less fortunate individuals and Jesus groups.”[18]
With this in mind, we can return to the question of how Phoebe was able to occupy both “the role of diakonos (a term suggesting servant status) and prostatis (a term suggesting wealth and privilege).”[19] One way to resolve this tension is to note how women’s patronage may have successfully threaded the needle of being both service and patronage at the same time through hospitality, functioning as an intermediary, and by offering financial gifts in support of a community. According to Bruce W. Winter, such ‘threading of the needle’ was happening more frequently in first century Rome in general, as women were able to “present petitions to her husband about matters of public policy, to intercede with him on behalf of individuals, to lend money to people outside her own family, to make generous gifts of cash both to cities and individuals, to undertake building projects in her own name and at her own expense, and still to be presented in public as the embodiment of a wife’s traditional virtues.”[20] Much like the women who had to delicately balance expressing real power and authority within the traditional gender roles, the diaconate and patronage of Phoebe was expressed in such a way that she was a leader in the church of Corinth, was likely an intermediary and or host for Paul in Corinth, as well as being a financial patron of Paul and many others as well.
Phoebe's wealth
When Paul speaks of Phoebe as a patron of himself and many others as well, what is the level of wealth and power that he is speaking of? Was she a member of the Roman aristocracy and imperial elite?
In Remember the Poor, Bruce Longnecker places Phoebe within the economic category of the 7-15% of the Roman population of “merchants, traders, freedpersons, artisans (especially those who employed others) and military veterans who primarily lived in urban areas and enjoyed some moderate surplus of wealth.”[21] In this she may have been in a similar economic category to Lydia of Thyratira of Acts 16.14-15, who is described as “a dealer in purple cloth.”
Insomuch as Phoebe and Lydia were among that category of those enjoying moderate surplus wealth, they were therefore not members of the 1-3% of the Roman population that constituted the imperial & aristocratic elite. This serves as a helpful corrective to feverish imaginings of Roman aristocrats hosting gatherings of what was still very much a movement of the poor. While there were certainly people of moderate surplus wealth in the early Christian church, including women merchants and widows who served as benefactors/patrons of assemblies and house gatherings, it isn’t until the mid-third century that decorative funerary evidence signals the arrival of the Roman elite at church.[22]
But if Phoebe wasn’t a member of the elite, neither was she a member of the vast majority of the population who comprised "the poor.” Phoebe’s moderate surplus wealth meant she was able to stand apart from the 75-90% of the Roman world that lived close to subsistence level -- near, at, or below -- who were struggling for survival and sustenance on a daily basis.[23] Significantly, scholars like Helen Rhee hold that this latter category of “the poor” would have comprised the majority of the early Christian assemblies, and so even with moderate surplus wealth Phoebe could have served as a patron to the church in Cenchraea and to Paul and many others as well.
Imagining Phoebe as hosting a house church in Corinth
Given that Phoebe is mentioned in only two lines of Paul’s letter to the Romans, there is a lot of heated debate about how exactly Phoebe expressed both her diaconate and patronage. There are some who have insisted that her patronage would have only been through financial support and networking given that she is not explicitly referred to as a “host” in the two verses.[24] Others have pointed out that insomuch as Paul is essentially asking the Romans to extend hospitality to Phoebe when she arrives, Phoebe’s primary form of patronage must have been extending hospitality in Cenchreae.[25] Others have pointed to the intermediary nature of the diaconate and Phoebe’s upcoming trip to Rome to suggest that she was therefore the person who delivered his letter. It strikes me that we’ll simply never know for sure, and that attempts establish absolute certainty about Phoebe’s role is a bit like trying to squeeze out still more juice from a dried-up orange.
And yet, this has never stopped imagining what Phoebe’s role might have been.
There is, in fact, a longstanding tradition of imaginatively interpreting Phoebe’s “service as a patron” through hospitality in subsequent centuries. The fifth century theologian Theodoret of Cyrus wrote, “And so large was the congregation of the assembly [ekklesia] of Cenchreae that it even had a woman deacon [diakonos], one both famous and celebrated.” Later he writes, “Now, by patronage I am inclined to think [Paul] refers to her hospitality and care, and he rewards her with multiple compliments. I mean, it is likely she received him into one house for a short time—namely, the period he spent in Corinth—whereas he introduced her to the world, and on all land and sea she became famous: not only the Romans and Hellenists knew of her but also all the barbarians.”[26] In keeping with Theodoret, then, perhaps I’ll add my own imaginative speculation about Phoebe as one of the hosts of the church of Cenchrea.
In “The ‘House Churches’ in Corinth”, Bruce Button and Fika J Van Rensburg offer a glimpse into what some of the earliest forms of gatherings of Christianity might have looked like. They argue that when Paul spoke of “the church” he was speaking of a single entity that gathered in both larger assemblies in public spaces and in smaller meetings at patrons’ homes.[27] They cite Acts 2:46 as describing this relationship between larger assembly and house church, for there we hear “Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.”[28] They argue that unlike the larger, public assembly at the temple, the gatherings that occurred in homes would likely have been of more specific groups of people ranging between five and twenty, depending on the size of the home of the patron.[29]
This smaller scale interpretation of house churches is in keeping with the Bruce Longnecker’s argument that patrons like Phoebe and Lydia would not have been extremely wealthy and were of the more moderate wealth of merchants. “The general assumption in the literature is that ‘house church patrons’ were well-to-do, and this leads to an attempt to identify wealthy Christians in Corinth and to attach ‘house churches’ to them. It is obvious that a potential host for a home-gathering had to have accommodation at his or her disposal, but the above discussion on the meaning of oikos shows that this requirement does not imply the need for as much wealth as is often supposed.”[30]
If Phoebe expressed her patronage by being a deacon and host of the church of Cenchrae, we are likely talking about a relatively small gathering in the home of a person of moderate wealth. The church was still an assembly of mostly poor folks with a few patrons – including women patrons – who offered their homes for smaller group meetings alongside the larger public assemblies. These house gatherings may have even been primarily composed of the members of the household themselves meaning this would have been a gathering of “people from all stations in life - household heads, women, children, slaves and other dependents.” [31] They argue that even in this smaller setting, “since Paul insisted repeatedly on the Gospel's obliteration of social distinctions (1 Cor 12:13; Gal 3:28), it is inconceivable that he would have allowed the home-based gatherings to distinguish between different classes of people.” [32]
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When I was in college, I had a wonderful mentor, Dr. Jane Grovijahn, a scholar of Roman Catholic feminist theology. It must have been in one of our many long conversations that she mentioned how Roman Catholic women have frequently expressed agency and leadership throughout the centuries as the hosts of gatherings at homes. Her point was that while leadership has tended to focus on who is at the table, and male leadership models has obsessed over who is speaking as the head of the table, there’s a longstanding, underappreciated, and surprisingly powerful role of the person who invites people to and sets the table in the first place. This is the underappreciated leadership role of the host -- a person who may not ever end up sitting at or speaking at the table, and yet, unbeknownst to many, has already framed the conversation.
Could this have been what Phoebe was up to?
In this lengthy journey to try to wrap our minds around Phoebe, deacon and patron of the early church, I began at the ordination of three students to the diaconate, an order of ministry long associated with Jesus’ emphasis on service as Christianity’s most profound expression of greatness and authority. In Luke 22.24-27, Jesus pointedly contrasts such service with the way kings and (male) patrons/benefactors tend to lord their power over others.
Intriguingly, however, Phoebe is described by Paul in Romans 16:1-2 as somehow embodying the role of both deacon and patron/benefactor at the same time. New Testament scholar Joan Cecilia Campbell’s description of women’s patronage in first century Rome – with its emphasis on offering hospitality, serving as an intermediary, and financial support – speaks to how Phoebe may have managed to thread the needle of offering ‘the (diaconal) service of a patron.’ From Bruce Longnecker’s exploration of Phoebe’s wealth, we know that we’re still talking about a church comprised mostly of poor people supported by a few patrons of moderate wealth, and this aligns with studies arguing that the house gatherings which took place in Corinth and elsewhere were relatively small. This would be in keeping with the sizes of the homes of patrons such as Phoebe and Lydia, women who appeared to have played significant leadership roles within the early Church.
Of course, with only two verses to work with (Romans 16:1-2), it is impossible to know exactly how Phoebe expressed her leadership and patronage, nor can we be sure that Paul himself knew fully what Phoebe may have been up to. Was Phoebe preaching regularly? Would Paul have ever known this? Every study I’ve cited here assumes Paul had a clear sense of what was taking place in the church in Corinth, though Paul elsewhere writes the Corinthians scandalized by what he has just heard from “Chloe’s people.” My own gut sense – or is it simply a hope? - is that Phoebe was extremely skilled at wielding her significant power and authority the way many marginalized people do – that is, on a slant. Creatively, perhaps indirectly and intentionally confusingly, like a person walking on snow carefully brushing away their tracks.
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1 Roman Garrison’s chapter in Wilson, Stephen G., and Michel Desjardins. Text and Artifact in the Religions of Mediterranean Antiquity?: Essays in Honour of Peter Richardson. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e025xna&AN=1423926&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Page 63
2 MacCullough, Diarmaid. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. 117
3 McGuckin, John Anthony. Christianity: The First Thousand Years. 991
4 MacCullough, Diarmaid. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. 117
5 Campbell, Joan Cecelia. Phoebe (Pauls Social Network) (p. 59). Liturgical Press. Kindle Edition.
6 Campbell, Joan Cecelia. Phoebe (Pauls Social Network) (p. 59). Liturgical Press. Kindle Edition.
7 MacCullough, Diarmaid. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. 117
8 Campbell, Joan Cecelia. Phoebe (Pauls Social Network) (p. 77). Liturgical Press. Kindle Edition.
9 Malina and Pilch’s Social Science Commentary on the Letters of Paul, Page 292
10 Campbell, Joan Cecelia. Phoebe (Pauls Social Network) (p. 78). Liturgical Press. Kindle Edition.
11 McGuckin, John Anthony. Christianity: The First Thousand Years. 992
12 Malina and Pilch’s Social Science Commentary on the Letters of Paul, Page 292
13 Campbell, Joan Cecelia. Phoebe (Pauls Social Network) Liturgical Press. Kindle Edition. Page 91
14 Campbell, Joan Cecelia. Phoebe (Pauls Social Network) Liturgical Press. Kindle Edition. Page 101-102
15 Campbell, Joan Cecelia. Phoebe (Pauls Social Network) Liturgical Press. Kindle Edition. Page 101-102
16 Ng, E. Y. L. (2004). PHOEBE AS PROSTATIS. Trinity Journal, 25(1), 3-13. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/scholarly-journals/phoebe-as-prostatis/docview/212920650/se-2?accountid=10226, pages 9-10
17 Ng, E. Y. L. (2004). PHOEBE AS PROSTATIS. Trinity Journal, 25(1), 3-13. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/scholarly-journals/phoebe-as-prostatis/docview/212920650/se-2?accountid=10226, pages 9-10
18 Campbell, Joan Cecelia. Phoebe (Pauls Social Network) Liturgical Press. Kindle Edition. Page 103-104
19 Roman Garrison’s chapter in Wilson, Stephen G., and Michel Desjardins. Text and Artifact in the Religions of Mediterranean Antiquity?: Essays in Honour of Peter Richardson. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e025xna&AN=1423926&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Page 63
20 Campbell, Joan Cecelia. Phoebe (Pauls Social Network) Liturgical Press. Kindle Edition. Page 101-102
21 Longnecker, Bruce. See pages 241-242 and then pages 45 and 51 for an explanation of the ES4 and ES5 categories
22 McCullough, Diarmaid. 160
23 Rhee, Helen. Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich: Wealth, Poverty, and Early Christian Formation, pages 5 and 11
24 THE "HOUSE CHURCHES" IN CORINTH Author(s): M. Bruce Button and Fika J Van Rensburg Source: Neotestamentica , 2003, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2003), pp. 1-28 Published by: New Testament Society of Southern Africa Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43048456, Pages 17-18
25 Ng, E. Y. L. (2004). PHOEBE AS PROSTATIS. Trinity Journal, 25(1), 3-13. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/scholarly-journals/phoebe-as-prostatis/docview/212920650/se-2?accountid=10226
26 Robert Charles Hill, trans., Theodoret of Cyrus: Commentary on the Letters of Saint Paul, vol. 1 (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2001), 135.
27 THE "HOUSE CHURCHES" IN CORINTH Author(s): M. Bruce Button and Fika J Van Rensburg Source: Neotestamentica , 2003, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2003), pp. 1-28 Published by: New Testament Society of Southern Africa Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43048456
28 THE "HOUSE CHURCHES" IN CORINTH Author(s): M. Bruce Button and Fika J Van Rensburg Source: Neotestamentica , 2003, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2003), pp. 1-28 Published by: New Testament Society of Southern Africa Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43048456, Pages 8-9
29 THE "HOUSE CHURCHES" IN CORINTH Author(s): M. Bruce Button and Fika J Van Rensburg Source: Neotestamentica , 2003, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2003), pp. 1-28 Published by: New Testament Society of Southern Africa Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43048456, Page 16
30 THE "HOUSE CHURCHES" IN CORINTH Author(s): M. Bruce Button and Fika J Van Rensburg Source: Neotestamentica , 2003, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2003), pp. 1-28 Published by: New Testament Society of Southern Africa Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43048456, Page 13
31 THE "HOUSE CHURCHES" IN CORINTH Author(s): M. Bruce Button and Fika J Van Rensburg Source: Neotestamentica , 2003, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2003), pp. 1-28 Published by: New Testament Society of Southern Africa Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43048456, Page 15
32 THE "HOUSE CHURCHES" IN CORINTH Author(s): M. Bruce Button and Fika J Van Rensburg Source: Neotestamentica , 2003, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2003), pp. 1-28 Published by: New Testament Society of Southern Africa Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43048456, Page 15
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