Gender Mobility: 7 Ideas about Gender in the New Testament Period

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Susan Hylen (Almar H. Shatford Professor of New Testament, Candler School of Theology, Almar H. Shatford Professor of New Testament, Candler School of Theology, Emory University)

Gender Mobility

7 Ideas about Gender in the New Testament Period

Susan Hylen (Almar H. Shatford Professor of New Testament, Candler School of Theology, Almar H. Shatford Professor of New Testament, Candler School of Theology, Emory University)

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English

Oxford University Press Inc
16 August 2025

Religious issues & debates; New Testaments; Christian aspects of sexuality, gender & relationships

What if our long-held understandings of gender have less historical basis than we imagine?

The gender norms and sexual distinctions of the first century world that produced the New Testament were not strictly binary, as we might think. Although some ancient writers did indeed contrast male and female attributes, other social norms created considerable overlap between men and women.

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. Further, specifically non-binary genders like eunuchs held a place within Roman gender norms and systems. And the possibility that some people could change gender -- what Hylen calls ""gender mobility"" -- was a standard feature of the period.

Hylen also shows that, for the most part, gender options were not freely chosen, and moreover that gender norms were dominated by familiar forms of oppression -- a social domination that favored freeborn men and women over other groups. In this way, Hylen redirects our contemporary thinking about gender roles to the ancient past, while simultaneously opening our imaginations to other ways that societies have constructed gender. This thought-provoking book serves our own current moment as we continue to debate gender norms and the institutions that maintain them.

By: Susan Hylen (Almar H. Shatford Professor of New Testament Candler School of Theology Almar H. Shatford Professor of New Testament Candler School of Theology Emory University)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States [Currently unable to ship to USA: see Shipping Info]
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9780197798478
ISBN 10: 0197798470
Pages: 192
Publication Date: 16 August 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

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.