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Hello and welcome to the Spectator's Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor

of The Spectator, and this week my guests are the scholars Joan Taylor and Helen Bond,

whose new book is Women Remembered, Jesus' Female Disciples.

Welcome both.

Now, this is extraordinary and ingenious feat of scholarship and extrapolation,

because the one thing that really strikes most people, really the New Testament,

is that it's almost all bloke.

What set you off on the idea that there was something more there?

I think what set us off was a recognition that there were a lot of stories about women

and there's a lot of implied women.

But the gospels tend to shine the light on the men. But if you kind of think, we're in a room with a lot of people and the light is

hitting the men, mostly, but we became aware of all of the other women in the room and we

wanted to bring them out of the shadows.

And how did you go about that?

It's not very easy. I mean, the problem is, as you say, at first glance, the New Testament seems to be about men and the spread of Christianity through men. But actually, if you

look, if you kind of peel back the layers and

look very, very carefully, there are references to a great number of women, actually. I mean,

nowadays people are starting to know about Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of Jesus,

but we actually wanted to not focus on them. And there's all kinds of women.

There's women who are described as apostles, who are disciples,

women who are teachers, women who are healed by Jesus.

...