Susanna and Salome

Luke 8:1–3 (NLT)

1 Soon afterward Jesus began a tour of the nearby towns and villages, preaching and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom of God. He took his twelve disciples with him, 2 along with some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases. Among them were Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons; 3 Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s business manager; Susanna; and many others who were contributing from their own resources to support Jesus and his disciples.

Apart from this one reference we no nothing more of Susanna.

She simply disappears into history.

Which is a shame because Luke must have had a reason for including her as one of the three he names in this passage.

Perhaps he knew her personally and hence she was included.

But we will never know.

What we do know is that the name was not uncommon amongst the people of the time.

In the Apocraphal books associated with the book of Daniel in the Old Testament a Jewish woman of great beauty and virtue is the heroine of the story when she resists the unwelcome advances of some evil elders.

Because she rejects their advances they accuse her of adultry and she is condemned to death.

The young Daniel comes to her defence and proves that the testimony of these evil elders is false.

Susanna is freed and the men condemned instead.

All this proves is that it was a name associated with virtue in the Jewish culture.

So let’s look at another woman who is mentioned in the Scriptures as among the close female disciples.

Salome was present at the crucifixtion and afterwards visited the tomb of Jesus.

And when we compare Mark 15:40 “40 Some women were there, watching from a distance, including Mary Magdalene, Mary (the mother of James the younger and of Joseph), and Salome.” with Matthew 27:56 “56 Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary (the mother of James and Joseph), and the mother of James and John, the sons of Zebedee.”

So it would appear that the mother of James and John the sons of Zebedee is actually Salome.

A few commentators have gone further and putting these passages together with John 19:25-27 have suggested that Salome was the sister of Jesus’ mother and therefore Jesus’ aunt which would make James and John, the sons of Zebadee, his cousins.

But the Bible doesn’t mention such a close relationship and one would think that it would so the idea is generally rejected.

We see these female disciples as faithful and brave and perhaps you might think that they are different from us to day.

Somehow more Holy and special because they are spoken of in the Bible

But interestingly Salome being present in the list gives us an opportunity to see that just like us these women had ambition in their lives.

If it is correct, which seems to be the case that Salome was the wife of Zebedee and therefore the mother of James and John we see real ambition for her sons in this account in Matthew 20:20 -21 where she approaches Jesus and asks that her sons sit at his left and right in the kingdom.

Matthew 20:20–21 NLT

20 Then the mother of James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus with her sons. She knelt respectfully to ask a favor. 21 “What is your request?” he asked. She replied, “In your Kingdom, please let my two sons sit in places of honor next to you, one on your right and the other on your left.”

Not only is the request based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the kingdom, but in context of what had previously occured it is also seen as an attempt to supplant Peter as the leader of the group.

It would seem that the women were not immune to the power plays between the men, which the sons must have surely put their mother up to.

We possibly see more evidence of the rivalry between the men in John 21:20 where after his resurrection Jesus is walking along the beach with Peter and looking behind him Peter asks Jesus about John.

It appears that they hadn’t yet grasped that the Kingdom was not an earthly one.

Salome, being one of the group of women disciples travelling with Jesus is pulled into this rivallry by her ambitious sons.

A mother wants her children to succeed so when the sons asked her to approach Jesus she agrees.

Maybe they thought that Jesus being loving towards women would respond favourably to their mothers humble request.

They were wrong.

These women were faithful but let’s not make them somehow super spiritual.

Just like the male disciples they were human and didn’t always get things right.

Again and again the Scriptures are open about the weaknesses and failures in the lives of those it also upholds as heros of the faith.

But it also expects us to learn from both their successes and failures.

Repeatedly success is represented as trusting in God and being obedient to his commands in the face of difficulty or prosperity.

Repeatedly failure is represented as trusting in our own strength, disobeying his commands and not pursuing righteousness no matter the situation

Wether it be Salome, Susanna, Joanna, Mary Magdelene or the male disciples, they like us, had to wrestle with what it meant to trust Jesus and live out his teaching in the face of the struggles of life.

Yes being there may have made the depth of understanding easier, but being there also made living for Christ decidely dangerous.

Of the male disciples all but John became martyers and John was exiled to the Island of Patemos.

We simply don’t know how many of the women met similar fates but it would have been many.

We also have to wrestle with the fact that all this occured in a setting where the role and value of these women was widely downplayed.

As I explained a coupe of weeks ago the role of Mary Magdalene has been historically discounted by conflating her identity with that of sinful woman in the preceeding passage.

Jane Schaeberg calls the damaging conflation “an extremely important distortion in the imagination of Western Christianity” (“Luke,” in WBC, 374).

No biblical evidence exists to conflate Mary of Magdala with the unknown woman who had once sinned, or with any act of prostitution.

This biased portrayal damages a true reading of the sacred text.

Most significantly, it harms the portrait of Mary of Magdala and her apostolic authority within the Church.

This last point is very important because it has had a negative effect on leadership roles for women in certain Christian churches since that time.

As Rosemary Radford Ruether notes, “the tradition of Mary Magdalene as a sinner was developed in orthodox (western) Christianity primarily to displace the apostolic authority claimed for women through her name” (Women-Church, 286 n. 1).37.

Women did function in authoritative positions in the early Church, as demonstrated by some of the authentic letters of Paul.

Named women such as Chloe, Prisca, Euodia, Syntyche, Apphia, and Phoebe were leaders associated with Pauline communities.

101 Questions & Answers on Women in the New Testament, p 42 (2 times)