Her Share of the Blessings: Women's Religions among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman World

The pickings are thin for a historian interested in the role of women in the religious life of the Greco-Roman world. Literary sources may not be accurate and tend to concentrate on the sensational. Both serious playwrights and satiric poets present women's participation in the rites of Dionysis or

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other exotic cults as perhaps dangerous to the public weal. Modern scholars have seen rites in which women may temporarily gather with other women and challenge their daily roles as a safety valve. However the evidence of temple inscriptions, writings on tombs and other public records indicate that wealthy women may have had more active roles in the running of temples, sponsorship of festivals and other religious acts. This is a scholarly book, heavy on social theory and careful to weigh evidence on all sides of controversial issues, such as the roles of women in Jewish and Christian communities. Footnotes, bibliography and index are extensive and useful. Kraemer continued to research in this area and in 2010 published a followup volume: Unreliable Witnesses : Religion, Gender, and History in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean.

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