This volume explores the differing views expressed in the New Testament letters about the position of women in first- and second-generation Christian communities. Contributors place the letters in their broader Jewish and Greco-Roman cultural, religious, and social contexts to better understand how gender roles, family life, and women's responsibilities for spreading the gospel changed over time. Essays envision the lived realities of women as wives, mothers, and widows-both the free and the enslaved and examine the theological and rhetorical function of female metaphors.