“The Gendered Economy of Early Christianity in Macedonia”

Jennifer Quigley, Emory University

The economy of the ancient Mediterranean is a site where gender is both constructed and constrained, and early Christ followers participated in these constructions and constraints in diverse and often localized ways. In early Christ groups in Macedonia, language of labor, including labor for and with the divine, is a prominent feature in the letters of Paul (including 1 Thessalonians and Philippians). This paper explores the possibilities and limitations of thinking with objects for our understanding of gender, labor, and religion, especially within a particular region. Using labor language in Philippians as a focus, I argue that attention to the overlap of gender, labor, and religion in the ancient Mediterranean world requires filling in gaps in evidence and giving attention to the labor of those whose work is often minimized or erased in both scholarship and the ancient historical record. Contemporary theories of labor help draw our attention to the labor of those whose work is often unacknowledged, and they help us ask different questions about the entanglements of theological imaginaries, constructions of gender, and economic practices in early Christian literature.