Her Share of the Blessings

In this ground-breaking interdisciplinary study, Ross Kraemer considers the full spectrum of women's religious experience in the Graeco-Roman world. Examining the scriptural, literary, and archaeological evidence for the beliefs and practices of pagan, Jewish, and Christian women, Kraemer attempts to discover the relationship between these women's religious behaviour and the rest of their lives. She presents and analyses a bewildering diversity of activities, and finds consistent correlations between the religious behaviour of women and the constraints under which they live in an androcentric society. She goes on to argue that the religious experiences of women are importantly different from those of men, and that these differences are vital to a fuller understanding of the universal human phenomenon of religion.