Paul must have had serious respect for business-women. Priscilla was in the leather-trade. In Philippi he met Lydia, a capable woman in what we might call the rag-trade or perhaps rather the Philippian fashion industry. Luke tells us that she was a dealer in purple fabric who came from the city of Thyatira. She was good at what she did. She made money. She also took belief in God seriously and was open to the new way that Paul was proclaiming. She generously insisted on offering hospitality to Paul and his associates.
In this respect she is not unlike Mark’s mother Mary, who took in Peter after his escape from jail and was clearly given to welcoming Christian believers into her household. We have the illuminating little sidelight of Rhoda, one of Mary’s maidservants, who found Peter at the door and was in such raptures to see him alive and well that she forgot to invite him in.
Quite otherwise was Paul’s encounter with a slave-girl who had developed some money-making expertise in the matter of fortune-telling. Her owners derived great benefit from her activities. She, too, must have been doing quite well out of it. As far as Paul was concerned, she was a number one all-time embarrassment. Luke tells us that she was dominated by a spirit of divination; this led her to proclaim day after day her understanding that Paul and his associates were servants of the Most High God. In a sense Paul could hardly complain about this but you can have too much of a good thing. She trailed along behind them making a nuisance of herself. Finally Paul was so put out that he commanded the evil spirit to come out of her. The high-powered publicising ceased abruptly. Her owners were furious at losing their source of profit.
Higher up the social scale was Bernice. Born in the purple, she was the sister and probably lover of King Agrippa and had been married to her uncle. She met Paul when he stood before her as a man accused of serious offences. He was being interrogated by the governor Porcius Festus. Arraigned as a trouble-maker, Paul had already made his case before Festus’s predecessor Felix (who found Paul too hot to handle and bequeathed him to Festus). Festus wanted to hear Paul for himself. As did King Agrippa. So it was that Paul found himself speaking in his own defence before Festus, Agrippa and Bernice. Bernice kept quiet and took it all in. And that is about it. Worldly-wise and high-placed, she knew better than to interfere – at least openly – in men’s matters.
In her day Bernice would have been better known than any woman in the early Church. Her influence on events was, we must suppose, zero. She is just a name, even more of a nonentity than her puppet-king husband. To adapt Luke’s account of Jesus’ question in Luke 10.36: ‘Which of these three would you rather have as neighbour?’
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