Saint Priscilla

Romans 16:3: “Give my greetings to Priscilla and Aquila, my co-workers in the ministry of Christ Jesus.”

Saint Priscilla was a first-century missionary and one of the earliest known Christian converts who lived in Rome. She is widely regarded as the first example of a female preacher or teacher in early church history. Coupled with her husband, she was a celebrated missionary, and a friend and co-worker of Paul.

Priscilla’s story is described (alongside her husband Aquila ) in the New Testament. She and her husband lived, worked, and traveled with the Apostle Paul, who described them as his "fellow workers in Christ Jesus", acknowledging his indebtedness. Some scholars have claimed that Priscilla was the author of the Book of Hebrews. Although acclaimed for its artistry, originality, and literary excellence, it is the only book in the New Testament with author anonymity.Hoppin and others suggest that Priscilla was the author, but that her name was omitted either to suppress its female authorship. This would not be surprising - as Virginia Woolf famously said, “for most of history, anonymous was a woman.”

Priscilla and her husband are mentioned six times in four different books of the New Testament, always named as a couple and never individually. However, of those six references, Aquila's name is mentioned first only twice. Priscilla's name is mentioned first on four occasions; this may indicate her equal status with her husband, or even possibly that Priscilla was thought of as the more prominent teacher and disciple.

Acts 18:26: When Priscilla and Aquila heard him preaching in the synagogue, they took him aside and explained the way of God even more accurately.

The Christian Church, beginning with Jesus, had a radical view of the status of women. Jesus demonstrated that he valued women and men equally as being made in the image of God. Luke clearly indicates Priscilla's "agency and her interdependent relationship with her husband. She is certainly not Aquila’s property - as was customary in Greco-Roman society - but rather his partner in ministry and marriage".

Like Paul, Priscilla and Aquila were tentmakers. They were amongst the Jews expelled from Rome in 49AD. Paul lived with Priscilla and Aquila for approximately 18 months. Then the couple started out to accompany Paul when he proceeded to Syria,  but stopped at Ephesus in the Roman province of Asia, now part of modern Turkey. In Romans 16:3-4, Paul sends his greetings to Priscilla and Aquila and proclaims that both of them "risked their necks" to save Paul's life.

Some have also suggested that her biblical prominence suggests that she held the office of presbyter. This couple were among the earliest known Christian missionaries in the first century. In Acts 18:24-28, Luke reports the couple explaining Jesus' baptism to Apollos, an important Jewish-Christian evangelist in Ephesus. Amongst churches today, this passage is often held in perceived tension with 1 Timothy 2:12-14, in which Paul writes, "I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor." Misogynists have used this to suppress female power in the church and exclude women from leadership roles within the church. However, well-known scholars have used Priscilla as an example which disproves this and shows that in early Christianity women actually did take a crucial role in the formation of the church.

Advocates of female pastorship perceive Paul’s sexist assertation as a reflection of the legal and social standards of the day. For example, elsewhere Paul writes: "Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God".

Tradition reports that Priscilla was martyred alongside her husband, and both have now been canonised as Christian saints.