Chapter 7: What if They Had Been Canon?
They were there from the beginning: speaking, singing, teaching, leading. Some, like Miriam and Aisha, appear in the very core of scripture. Others, like Mirabai and the Therīgāthā poets, left verses so powerful they could not be erased—only recontextualized. Still others, like Mary Magdalene or Sita, were reshaped across centuries, bent into roles that diminished their agency or rendered them symbolic rather than human. What links them all is not just presence but transformation: their original authority was obscured, softened, or subordinated as sacred texts were canonized and institutional control tightened.
Across the five major religious traditions explored in Part I—Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism—we see a common pattern. Women appear in foundational texts and early oral traditions not as marginal figures but as prophets, judges, teachers, household theologians, poets, mystics, and reformers. Over time, however, the recording and interpretation of those roles passed largely to men. Women's words were abbreviated, their deeds attributed to others, their bodies made metaphor, their names lost or confined to ritual niches. Even where female figures were retained in scripture, their portrayals often reflect the anxieties and priorities of later editors more than their original significance.
And yet, the sacred persisted in their voices. If one listens closely, the textual record does not lie—it simply mumbles when speaking of women. The challenge is to read carefully, compare traditions, and attend to the spaces where silence speaks.
Scholar Debate: How Central Were Women to Sacred Text Formation?
This scholarly debate centers on a contested question: were women truly central to the formation of sacred texts, or primarily involved in interpretation and practice? Did institutional redaction erase active female authorship, or were women's roles more often informal and therefore less subject to erasure?
Karen L. King (Harvard Divinity School) argues that texts like the Gospel of Mary and Gnostic writings reveal a deliberate suppression of female apostolic authority, suggesting that women's early textual contributions were more central than later canons admit. "The silencing of women like Mary Magdalene," King contends, "was not incidental but systematic—part of a broader effort to consolidate male ecclesial control."¹
Tikva Frymer-Kensky (University of Chicago), writing on the Hebrew Bible, agrees that women once held spiritual authority but emphasizes that the scriptural authors were almost entirely male, and thus women's roles were shaped more by inclusion and omission than by direct textual authorship. "We must distinguish," she argues, "between women's religious authority and women's literary agency—the former was real, the latter largely denied."²
Asma Sayeed (UCLA) notes that in Islam, women like Aisha were not authors but vital transmitters of hadith and interpreters of law. She argues their authority came from proximity and memory, not textual production, and that later restrictions reflect social shifts rather than original design. "The marginalization of women's interpretive authority was gradual," Sayeed observes, "tied to the institutionalization of Islamic learning in male-dominated madrasas."³
Ruth Vanita (Ashoka University) challenges rigid boundaries between sacred and non-sacred text in Hinduism, emphasizing that female saints like Mirabai created devotional literature that functioned as theology, regardless of whether it was canonized. "The distinction between scripture and devotional poetry," Vanita argues, "often serves to diminish women's theological contributions while preserving male Brahmanical authority."⁴
Karma Lekshe Tsomo (Sakyadhita) argues that early Buddhist nuns were active teachers, authors, and institutional founders, and that their marginalization came with later monastic hierarchies and commentarial traditions, not the earliest phases of Buddhist scripture. "The Therīgāthā demonstrates that women's enlightenment experiences were once considered authoritative Buddhist doctrine," Tsomo notes, "their later marginalization represents institutional choice, not theological necessity."⁵
Together, these scholars illuminate the layered nature of erasure. Some women were cut out. Others were never written in. Still others were transformed—amplified in piety, diminished in voice.
What Would Have Changed?
What might have shifted if these women's original voices had remained fully present in the formation, teaching, and interpretation of sacred texts? These possibilities are grounded in early sources and scholarly reconstructions of what was lost:
Apostolic Succession Would Look Different: If Mary Magdalene and Junia had been publicly affirmed as apostles, the Church's theology of ordination—and the exclusion of women from priesthood—might have evolved differently. As Ann Graham Brock argues, "The competition between Peter and Mary Magdalene in early Christian texts suggests that female apostolic authority was a live option that was deliberately suppressed rather than naturally absent."⁶ The clerical structure itself could have been shaped by a more gender-inclusive apostolic model.
Islamic Legal Thought Would Be Broader: Had Aisha's interpretive authority been institutionalized rather than constrained, the fiqh tradition might have featured more expansive rulings on gender, family, and ritual—anchored not only in male analogies but in embodied female experience. Mohammad Akram Nadwi's research demonstrates that over 8,000 women served as hadith scholars throughout Islamic history; their systematic marginalization represented "an enormous loss of intellectual and spiritual capital."⁷
Hindu Devotional Theology Might Have Centered Female Saints: If Mirabai, Andal, and Akka Mahadevi had been included in formal Vedic or Vedantic commentaries, Hindu theology might today speak more fluently in the language of resistance, interiority, and gendered longing for the divine. Vasudha Narayanan suggests that "the exclusion of women's devotional voices from formal theological discourse impoverished Hindu intellectual tradition by privileging abstract philosophy over embodied spiritual experience."⁸
Buddhist Education Might Elevate Female Enlightenment Equally: Had the Therīgāthā been taught alongside foundational monastic texts, Buddhist understandings of enlightenment and discipline might reflect a more embodied and relational framework—one that resists the gendered binaries inherited from later scholasticism. Rita Gross argues that "the marginalization of the Therīgāthā contributed to Buddhism's overly intellectualized approach to liberation, losing the grounded wisdom of women's awakening experiences."⁹
Jewish Prophetic Tradition Might Be More Inclusive: If figures like Miriam and Huldah had been given fuller treatment in biblical texts and later commentary, Jewish concepts of prophecy and religious authority might have developed with less gender restriction. Judith Plaskow contends that "the minimization of female prophets established a precedent that excluded women from religious leadership for millennia, despite early evidence of their spiritual authority."¹⁰
These are not speculative fantasies but grounded possibilities, supported by early sources and scholarly reconstructions. The exclusion of women's authority was not inevitable. It was the outcome of decisions—textual, institutional, theological.
Yet the work of recovery cannot remain purely historical. As contemporary scholars across traditions demonstrate, the reinterpretation of these women's legacies continues to reshape religious thought today. Jewish feminists like Rachel Adler and Muslim scholars like Amina Wadud draw on figures like Miriam and Aisha to argue for expanded women's roles. Buddhist teachers like Ayya Tathaaloka invoke the Therīgāthā to support full nun ordination. Hindu theologians like Vandana Shiva connect devotional poets like Mirabai to contemporary eco-feminist spirituality. The recovery of these voices is not just about the past—it is about reimagining religious authority for the future.¹¹
The women within sacred texts did not lack insight or faith. They lacked scribes who saw their speech as scripture. Canon did not grow only by inspiration—it grew by inclusion and omission, citation and silence. And those choices shaped religious memory for millennia. Yet the recovery of these women is not merely an act of justice. It is an act of theological clarity. What they said—and what we failed to preserve—still echoes through the sacred. The question is whether we are ready to listen.
Notes
- Karen L. King, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle (Polebridge Press, 2003), 15–25.
- Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Reading the Women of the Bible (Schocken, 2002), 23–31.
- Asma Sayeed, Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 58–61.
- Ruth Vanita, "The Self Is Not Gendered: Sulabha's Debate with King Janaka," NWSA Journal 15, no. 3 (2003): 76–93.
- Karma Lekshe Tsomo, ed., Buddhist Women Across Cultures: Realizations (SUNY Press, 1999), 66–72.
- Ann Graham Brock, Mary Magdalene, the First Apostle: The Struggle for Authority (Harvard University Press, 2003), 145–167.
- Mohammad Akram Nadwi, Al-Muhaddithat: The Women Scholars in Islam (Interface Publications, 2007), ix–xv.
- Vasudha Narayanan, "Brimming with Bhakti, Embodiments of Shakti," in Feminism and World Religions, ed. Arvind Sharma and Katherine K. Young (SUNY Press, 1999), 25–77.
- Rita M. Gross, Buddhism After Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism (SUNY Press, 1993), 87–105.
- Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (HarperSanFrancisco, 1990), 25–56.
- For contemporary applications, see Rachel Adler, Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics (Jewish Publication Society, 1998); Amina Wadud, Quran and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective (Oxford University Press, 1999); Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development(Zed Books, 1988).
Further Reading
Karen L. King, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle (Polebridge Press, 2003). Foundational analysis of early Christian women's authority and its suppression.
Asma Sayeed, Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Comprehensive study of women's roles in Islamic scholarship and their historical marginalization.
Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Reading the Women of the Bible (Schocken, 2002). Systematic examination of biblical women and their theological significance.
Karma Lekshe Tsomo, ed., Buddhist Women Across Cultures: Realizations (SUNY Press, 1999). Comparative study of women's roles in Buddhist traditions globally.
Rita M. Gross, Buddhism After Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism (SUNY Press, 1993). Pioneering feminist analysis of Buddhist tradition and women's marginalization.
Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (HarperSanFrancisco, 1990). Foundational work of Jewish feminist theology examining women's exclusion and recovery.