Abstract

Recent scholarship on the Pastoral Epistles shows that they are addressing several controversies. The author, on one hand, claims to be the legitimate heir to a long-standing Pauline tradition and, on the other, he seeks to advance a doctrine that provides important information about gender roles at the beginning of Christianity. The present article, drawing on Mary Douglas´ theory on the relationship between the social and the physical body, compares the gender ideals contained in the Pastoral Letters with those in the Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla.