How did Jesus treat women?

The World Jesus Entered

To understand how radical Jesus's treatment of women was, you have to understand the world he entered. In first-century Jewish and Greco-Roman culture, women occupied a sharply subordinate position in public life. In Jewish law, the testimony of women was considered legally unreliable — they could not serve as witnesses in a court of law. A man could divorce his wife; a wife could not divorce her husband. Women were largely excluded from formal religious education. The daily prayer attributed to some Jewish men included thanks to God for not making them a woman.

In Greco-Roman culture, women were legal minors, dependent on a male guardian (a father, husband, or son) for virtually every legal transaction. A respectable woman stayed out of public view. Public conversation between men and women who were not family was considered improper.

Against this backdrop, Jesus's behaviour was not merely countercultural. It was, in the eyes of his contemporaries, scandalous.

He Taught Women as Disciples

In first-century Judaism, religious education was for men. Rabbis did not take women as disciples. The idea of a woman sitting at a rabbi's feet to learn Torah would have been deeply unusual.

In Luke 10:38–42, Jesus visits the home of Martha and Mary. Martha is preparing food — the expected role for a woman with guests. Mary "sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said" — the posture of a disciple receiving instruction from a rabbi. When Martha complains and asks Jesus to send Mary back to help, Jesus refuses: "Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her" (v. 42). Jesus explicitly defends a woman's right to receive theological teaching rather than being sent back to domestic service. He is saying, in effect: women belong in the classroom, not only the kitchen.

The word used for Mary sitting "at the Lord's feet" (παρακαθεσθεῖσα, parakathestheisa) is the same expression Paul uses in Acts 22:3 to describe his own formation "at the feet of Gamaliel" — the language of formal discipleship. Jesus was making Mary a disciple.

He Spoke Openly with Women in Public

John 4 records one of the longest recorded conversations Jesus has with any individual in the Gospels — and it is with a Samaritan woman. Two social barriers are crossed simultaneously: she is a woman, and she is a Samaritan (a group Jews considered ethnically and religiously impure). The disciples, when they return, are astonished: "They were surprised to find him talking with a woman" (John 4:27). Even his own disciples understood this was deeply unusual.

Jesus asks her for water, engages her theologically, exposes her history without condemnation, and reveals to her one of his most explicit self-disclosures in any of the Gospels: "I, the one speaking to you — I am he" (the Messiah, John 4:26). He did not reveal this to the Pharisees. He revealed it to a Samaritan woman with a complicated past. She then goes and tells her whole town — becoming one of the first evangelists in John's Gospel (John 4:39).

He Healed Women and Restored Their Dignity

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus heals women with the same authority and compassion he heals men — which was not guaranteed in a culture that valued men's health more than women's.

The woman with the bleeding issue (Mark 5:25–34) had been ceremonially unclean for twelve years under Jewish law — which meant social isolation, exclusion from worship, and the inability to be touched without making others unclean. She touches the edge of Jesus's cloak in a crowd and is immediately healed. Jesus does not rebuke her for making him "unclean." He stops, finds her in the crowd, and says publicly: "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering" (v. 34). The word "daughter" is a term of deep affection. He restored not just her health but her belonging.

The bent-over woman (Luke 13:10–17) had been disabled for eighteen years. Jesus sees her in the synagogue on the Sabbath, calls her forward, and heals her — then defends his decision to the synagogue ruler who objects. He calls her "a daughter of Abraham" (v. 16) — a title of dignity and full covenant membership that Jewish men claimed for themselves but rarely extended to women.

The widow of Nain (Luke 7:11–17) has lost her only son — which in the ancient world meant losing her primary economic protection. Jesus does not wait to be asked. He sees her, is "filled with compassion" (v. 13), and raises her son — not because of the son's faith or the crowd's faith, but because a woman was in grief and he could not pass by without responding.

He Defended Women Against Exploitation

In Matthew 5:27–28, Jesus raises the standard on the treatment of women in a way that was entirely unexpected. He tells the men in his audience: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." In a culture that placed the entire burden of sexual purity on women (requiring them to be covered, secluded, and kept from public life), Jesus places the responsibility on men. The problem of lust, in his framework, is men's problem to deal with — not women's burden to prevent.

In John 8:1–11, the scribes and Pharisees bring a woman "caught in the act of adultery" before Jesus and ask whether she should be stoned. Note what is missing: the man. The Law of Moses required both parties to be punished (Deuteronomy 22:22), but only the woman is dragged into the temple courts. Jesus refuses to participate in the selective enforcement. He challenges anyone who is without sin to cast the first stone. They leave one by one. Jesus stands alone with the woman: "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?... Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin" (vv. 10–11). He offers forgiveness — but he also does not allow a woman to be used as a theological trap while the man walks free.

He Entrusted Women as the First Resurrection Witnesses

Perhaps the most striking fact of all: every Gospel records that women were the first witnesses to the empty tomb and the first to encounter the risen Jesus. Matthew 28:1–10, Mark 16:1–8, Luke 24:1–10, John 20:11–18 — all four agree on this.

This is remarkable for a specific reason: in first-century Jewish law, women's testimony was not admissible as legal evidence. If the resurrection story had been invented, no one fabricating it in the first century would have chosen women as the primary witnesses. The "criterion of embarrassment" — a standard historical tool — says that when ancient sources include details that are embarrassing or counterproductive to their case, those details are more likely to be authentic. The choice of women as resurrection witnesses is exactly this kind of detail.

In John 20:11–18, the risen Jesus appears first to Mary Magdalene. She is weeping at the tomb when he calls her name: "Mary." She turns and says "Rabboni" — Teacher. Jesus then commissions her: "Go... and tell them" (v. 17). She becomes the first person to proclaim the resurrection — what the early church would call the "apostle to the apostles." A first-century invented story would not have been built this way.

What This Means

Jesus did not write a treatise on gender equality. He did something more effective: he lived it. He taught women, spoke with them publicly, healed them, defended them against exploitation, and chose them as the first witnesses to the most important event in human history. In every case, he treated women as persons of full dignity, full intellectual capacity, and full standing before God — not as a lesser category of human being.

Historian N.T. Wright has argued that the evidence of the Gospels, read in their first-century context, shows Jesus as one of the most radical figures in history with respect to the dignity of women. Dorothy Sayers — the 20th-century novelist and Christian thinker — put it bluntly: "Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man — there never has been such another."

"There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." — Galatians 3:28 (NIV)

For further reading, Dorothy Sayers's essay Are Women Human? (Eerdmans, 1971) remains one of the sharpest treatments of Jesus and women ever written. Katharine Bushnell's God's Word to Women (1923) and Scot McKnight's The Blue Parakeet (Zondervan, 2008) both engage the biblical material on women with care. For the historical context, see Joachim Jeremias's Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (Fortress, 1969).