174 FEMINIST VIEWS BASED ON UNTRUTHFUL CLAIMS
In Women and Men in Ministry: A Complementary Perspective,^11
Clinton Arnold and Robert Saucy report further evidence of the signif-
icant educational achievements of women in ancient Ephesus:
In a very important recent study, Paul Trebilco has accumulated and
presented the inscriptional evidence attesting to the role of women in
civic positions in western Asia Minor....^12
There is now inscriptional evidence that women served in some
of the cities in a position that would be a close functional equivalent
of our “superintendent of schools,” that is, in the capacity of a gym-
nasiarch (gymnasiarchos). The “gymnasium” was the center for edu-
cation in a Greek city.... The “gymnasiarch” had oversight of the
intellectual training of the citizens and for the general management
of the facility. Inscriptions dating from the first to the third centuries
attest to forty-eight women who served as gymnasiarchs in twenty-
three cities of Asia Minor and the coastal islands. This suggests that
women not only had access to education, but also that in many places
they were leading the educational system.
This evidence stands in contrast to what we generally know of
the plight of women at the beginning of the Roman Empire.... But
beginning in the late republic (2nd Century B.C.) and early Imperial
Period, a much greater array of opportunities opened up for women.
The famous British classicist, Michael Grant, observed that “The
Roman women of the late republic possessed a freedom and inde-
pendence almost unparalleled until the present century.”^13(2) The Bible never requires advanced degrees for people who teach
God’s Word or have governing authority in the church. The fact that
many women as well as men had basic literacy skills in Greek, Roman,
and Jewish cultures is enough by itself to disprove the egalitarian claims
(^11) Robert L. Saucy and Judith K. TenElshof, eds., Women and Men in Ministry: A
Complementary Perspective (Chicago: Moody, 2001).
(^12) Clinton Arnold and Robert Saucy, endnotes to “The Ephesian Background of Paul’s Teaching
on Women’s Ministry,” in Women and Men in Ministry, 366n4. Arnold and Saucy at this point
referred to Paul Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor, Society for New Testament
Studies Monograph Series 69 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), especially chap-
ter 2, “The Prominence of Women in Asia Minor,” 104-126.
(^13) Clinton Arnold and Robert Saucy, “The Ephesian Background of Paul’s Teaching on
Women’s Ministry,” in Women and Men in Ministry, 281-283. The quotation from Michael
Grant at the end of this statement was from Michael Grant, A Social History of Greece and
Rome (New York: Scribner, 1992), 30-31.