Gender Mobility - 7 Ideas About Gender in the New Testament Period

What if our long-held understandings of gender have less historical basis than we imagine? In Gender Mobility, Susan E. Hylen argues that the Roman gender order was definitively non-binary. She makes a compelling case that freeborn men, freeborn women, freed men, freed women, enslaved men, and enslaved women all constituted different genders. And the possibility that some people could change gender -- what Hylen calls "gender mobility" -- was a standard feature of the period.

List of contents

• Acknowledgments


• Abbreviations


• Table of Contents


• Introduction


• Idea #1: Women Were Complex


• Idea #2: Men Were Complex


• Idea #3: Men and Women Were Not Opposites


• Idea #4: Gender Was Not Fixed


• Idea #5: Gender-as-Social-Status


• Idea #6: Gender Was Not Binary


• Idea #7: Gender Mobility


• Conclusion


• Index

About the author

Susan E. Hylen is Almar H. Shatford Professor of New Testament at Candler School of Theology, Emory University. She is the author of three other books on gender: Finding Phoebe: What New Testament Women Were Really Like (2023), Women in the New Testament World (2018), and A Modest Apostle: Thecla and the History of Women in the Early Church (2015). She has also written three books on the Gospel of John, including Imperfect Believers: Ambiguous Characters in the Gospel of John (2009). Hylen serves as general editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature.

Product details

• Authors: Susan E Hylen, Susan E. (Almar H. Shatford Professor of Ne Hylen, Hylen Susan E.
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 27.06.2025
• EAN: 9780197797334
• ISBN: 978-0-19-779733-4
• No. of pages: 192
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology > Christianity; RELIGION / Biblical Studies / History & Culture, RELIGION / Sexuality & Gender Studies, Religious issues & debates, Religious aspects of sexuality, gender and relationships, Religious aspects of sexuality, gender & relationships, Religious issues and debates, Old Testaments