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A "Pauline" Defense of Women's Right to Baptize? Intertextuality and Apostolic Authority in the Acts of Paul

In early Christian studies, the Acts of Paul has gained attention as an expression of Pauline tradition in the second century. Indeed, in a study now over a decadeand-a-half old, Dennis R. MacDonald argued that the Acts of Paul and the Pastoral Epistles each borrowed from a common stock of oral legends about the apostle Paul, but applied them to very different purposes.1 The Acts of Paul seems to have been written in the context of ongoing eschatological expectations and a corresponding disruption of social conventions (e.g., rejection of marriage, ministry of women). By contrast, the Pastorals oppose such a vision of Paul’s ministry, and instead seek to endorse conservative social values and the development of an organized ecclesiastical leadership. The first known external reference to the Acts of Paul appears in Tertullian’s On Baptism (ca. 200 c.e.).2 In that treatise, Tertullian confirms that the author of the Acts of Paul wrote the work as an attempt to enhance Paul’s legacy, and that he brought together already existing material about the apostle in creating the work: