The author vividly recreates the religious lives of early Christian, Jewish, and pagan women. With many fascinating examples describing Greek women's devotion to goddesses, rites of Roman matrons, Jewish women in rabbinic and diaspora communities, Christian women's struggles to exercise authority and autonomy, and women's roles as leaders in the full spectrum of Greco-Roman religions, Kramer reveals the connection between the social constraints under which women lived, and their religious beliefs and practices.

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 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. Kraemer relies in particular on Mary Douglas' schema of group/grid. Within this schema societies are seen as having strong or weak grid and strong or weak group. The modern US would be an example of weak grid and weak group in that status is achieved rather than ascribed, and there is strong individualism. Men and women may compete in the same sphere. Early Christianity had strong group, i.e. persecution made Christians look to one another for support, while offering weak grid--with various status markers rejected or replaced gender distinctions may be minimized and sexual asceticism may flourish, freeing women from traditional roles of wife and mother. Footnotes, bibliography and index are extensive and useful. Kraemer continued to research in this area and in 2010 published a follow up volume: Unreliable Witnesses : Religion, Gender, and History in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean. ( )

Women's religions among pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman world.