
Mark 15.40-41, Matthew 27.55-56, Luke 23.49, John 19.25.
Various Christians like to point out, “There were actually two groups of people following Jesus: There were the disciples, and there were the women.” Though y’notice they seldom bring up the women till we get to one of the stories in the gospels about the women.
With some due respect to these Christians, there were not two groups following Jesus; there was one. His students. The people who supported him, served him, and listened to his teachings.
Yes, history describes Pharisee rabbis as only instructing young men—and I remind you in Jesus’s culture you were “a man” at age 13, which is why I keep referring to his students as kids. That was their expectation, anyway: If men were gonna
But rabbis didn’t just get teenage students. Friday nights, when they held Sabbath synagogue, people of any age showed up. And sometimes throughout the week, these same people might show up and listen to a lesson. And bring questions.
Synagogues segregated women in the back, and in open-air classes like Jesus taught, they’d still customarily sit in the back or on the sidelines. Ostensibly they were waiting for their brothers or spouses or kids, or were only there to tend to the rabbi’s needs. In reality they were also getting an education.
So the women were Jesus’s students too. Same as the boys. So they weren’t among the Twelve; why should this stop anyone from likewise sharing Jesus with the world? Or stop Jesus
Okay. This said, I oughta point out the women who were at Jesus’s cross, the women who watched him die, were not necessarily students. One certainly was:
Mark 15.40-41 KWL - 40 There were women watching from far away,
- among them Mary the Magdalene, Mary mother of little James and Joses, and Salomé.
- 41 When in the Galilee, these women followed Jesus and served him.
- Many other women had traveled with Jesus to Jerusalem.
Matthew 27.55-26 KWL - 55 There were many women there, watching from far away,
- who followed Jesus from the Galilee, who served him.
- 56 Among them was Mary the Magdalene, Mary mother of James and Joses,
- and Salomé mother of Zebedee’s children.
Luke 23.49 KWL - Everyone who knew Jesus were standing far away, watching this,
- including the women who followed him from the Galilee.
John 19.25 KWL - Standing by Jesus’s cross were his mother, his mother’s sister Salomé,
- Mary wife of Clopas, and Mary the Magdalene.
So according to John, Jesus’s mother was there. And according to all the gospels, so was Mary, the wife of Joseph’s brother Clopas, the mother of his apostle James “the less”; and Salomé (some ancients called her “Mary Salomé,” maybe mixing the aunts together), Jesus’s mother’s sister, the wife of Zebedee and mother of his apostles James and John.
Yep, family. Now you see why they stuck around.
Watching from afar.
Since various Christians don’t recognize the family connections, they make various other assumptions as to why the women stuck around but the men didn’t. And maybe—maybe—there’s some legitimacy to some of them. But probably they’re just reading their own cultural assumptions into things.
Fr’instance cracks about their level of commitment. Because
I’ve heard people claim the men had to go into hiding lest the Romans suspect them of being fellow revolutionaries; but the women could be out in the open because the Romans would never suspect them. It’s a profoundly naïve statement. Have none of them read about Yaél?
Judges 4.17-22 KWL - 17 Siserá fled by foot to the tent of Yaél, Khevér the Qeyni’s woman.
- (There was peace between king Yavín of Khachór, and Khevér the Qeyni’s house.)
- 18 Yaél went out to meet Siserá, and told him, “Master, come in; don’t fear.”
- He went inside her tent. She covered him with a rug.
- 19 Siserá told Yaél, “Please give me a little water to drink; I’m thirsty.”
- She opened a skin of milk, gave him a drink, and covered him again.
- 20 Siserá told Yaél, “Stand at the tent door.
- If a man happens to come and ask you—to say, ‘Is there a man here?’ you say no.”
- 21 Then Yaél, Khevér’s woman, took a tentpeg, and put a hammer in her hand.
- She came to Siserá quietly, and pounded the peg through his temple into the ground.
- He was sleeping soundly, and weary. He died.
- 22 Look, as Barák pursued Siserá, Yaél came out to meet him,
- and told him, “Come. I’ll show you the man you’re seeking.”
- He came into her tent, and look: Siserá lay dead, the peg in his temple.
If you’ve never read
The women wisely stayed back, not just ’cause of the Romans, but because they likely knew themselves: They‘d want to intervene, interfere, and get killed for their efforts. All they could really do was stand back and watch the horrifying spectacle.
It had to be hard for Jesus to know they were watching. He knew the end of the story—and really so should they, ’cause he foretold it more than once. But like his other students, the women likely didn’t believe it. And either way, watching Jesus die had to be awful. Christians

