Just because the gospels don’t tell the stories of Jesus’ female followers doesn’t mean they weren’t there, say Joan Taylor and Helen Bond.

When you hear the word disciple, what do you think of? Probably the 12 apostles, maybe some of the greater crowd following

Jesus in the gospels. A few readers may perhaps picture Mary Magdalene. But overall, our image of the disciples is of a group of men sharing Jesus’ life and listening to his teachings. 

Joan Taylor and Helen Bond, both professors of Christian origins, decided to challenge this dominant picture of who the disciples were and what they looked like. “When I Googled Jesus’ disciples, every single picture was of 12 men following along after Jesus,” Bond says. “Every now and then you get a stray woman, kind of like Maid Marian in pictures of Robin Hood. That’s clearly Mary Magdalene, but the only two women people tend to know about are Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus.”

Instead, Taylor and Bond say that there were just as many women as men in this group. Indeed, it would have been impossible for the gospel to spread as far as it did otherwise.

Read more in U.S. Catholic