Was the Woman with the Flow of Blood Drunk? An Exploration of the Possibility that She Was Viewed as an Anus Ebria

Abstract

This article offers a new reading of the story of the woman with the flow of blood in Mk 5:25–34 that focuses on the intersection of gender and social status. Moving away from gynaecological analysis, I use the representation of the anus ebria (drunken old woman) figure in Greco-Roman literature, drama, and art to explore how ancient readers might have responded to her conduct. Using this material, I argue that many readers would have understood the woman’s behaviour as conforming to this ancient type. The distinction is important, I contend, because, unlike widows, the anus ebria was an unsympathetic figure in ancient drama. This more intersectional reading of the woman’s social status, in turn, sharpens our reading of the revolutionary character of Jesus’s ministry in Mark.

Introduction

The story of the woman with the flow of blood (Mk 5.25–34; Mt. 9.20–22; Lk. 8.43–48) is, at its core, the story of a marginalised woman’s suffering. ¹ The story, found in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, details an unnamed woman who had endured ‘a flow of blood for twelve years’ (Καὶ γυνὴ οὖσα ἐν ῥύσει αἵματος δώδεκα ἔτη). The woman, who had unsuccessfully sought healing from physicians, instead ‘grew worse’ (ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον εἰς τὸ χεῖρον ἐλθοῦσα). She seeks assistance from Jesus, a man she had only ‘heard about’. The reader clearly understands the woman’s intentions as she says, perhaps to herself, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well’ (ἐὰν ἅψωμαι κἂν τῶν ἱματίων αὐτοῦ σωθήσομαι). ² The bleeding immediately stops. Interestingly, Jesus is unaware of what has happened; he only knows that a ‘power had gone forth from him’. Mark shows Jesus questioning the crowd, asking ‘who touched my clothes?’ (Mk 5.30). The woman, whose haemorrhage had now stopped, came forward when questioned and ‘fell’ at Jesus’s feet (Mk 5.33). In all three accounts, Jesus demonstrates compassion to the woman, crediting her healing to her ‘faith’.

In this article, I will propose a new reading of the story that allows us to view the woman, and her unfortunate circumstance, in a new light. I suggest that we can understand the woman with the flow of blood more deeply in light of the popular anus ebria character. The stock ancient character—a ridiculed, old, and inebriated woman—provides one potential model for how the woman was understood by ancient auditors. By using this framework, I hope to present the woman as an embodied character whose personal history and socioeconomic status are significant for our understanding of her condition and her conduct. Building upon earlier studies, this re-reading prioritises an intersectional understanding of womanhood. My goal is to move beyond reductive interpretations of the woman that reduce her to a walking womb. ³

I will begin with a brief survey of previous scholarship on this passage before turning to an overview of the social status and cultural construction of women in antiquity. The latter will focus on the experiences of the most socially disadvantaged and vulnerable women in ancient Mediterranean societies. Finally, I will reread the woman through the lens of the anus ebria figure and argue that viewing the woman in this way provides a more nuanced account of her behaviour and specific interpretation of Jesus’s actions. Moreover, it pushes past generalisations about Jesus’s attentiveness to women in the Gospels and encourages us to see him subverting cultural scripts with respect to marginalised women, in particular.

History of Scholarship

Earlier examinations of this pericope have tended to focus on one of three significant but narrow aspects of the woman’s story: (1) the woman’s supposed ritual impurity, (2) the nature of the woman’s illness and healing, and (3) the characterisation of her actions in light of ancient social norms. ⁴

There is a broad agreement among scholars that the nature of the woman’s condition was gynaecological. The Greek language for “flow of blood” (ῥύσις αἵματος) used in Mk 5.25 is found in Greek medical literature as a descriptor for menstruation and other genital discharges (Aristotle, HA 3.19; D’Angelo 1999; Collins 2007: 280). Consequently, and in light of biblical regulations regarding ritual purity (Lev. 15.7,11, 21–30 and Num. 5.1–5), a number of scholars have been interested in the woman’s ritual status (Selvidge 1984; Buck 2001; Kazen 2010; Branch 2013; Thiessen 2020; McGrath 2021). According to prescriptions in Leviticus and Numbers, those whose bleeding exceeded the period of menstruation (i.e., a zavah) were considered to be the ‘most impure of those with flows’ (Kazen 2010: 128–29). ⁵

The physical contact between the woman with the flow of blood and Jesus raises questions about whether Jesus himself had broken purity regulations (Haber 2008: 126). The perceived violation of purity laws is, in the view of Marla Selvidge, a narrative symbol of the ‘early Christian community’s break with the Jewish purity system’ (1984: 619). She argues that, whilst women were ‘restricted’ by the purity regulations imposed on them, Jesus disregards the regulations in this pericope (Selvidge 1984: 623). Building upon her work, Gertrude Buck (2001) and James McGrath (2021) agree, arguing that the patriarchal purity system unfairly burdened and isolated women from the rest of the community. The effectiveness of this argument turns on the extent to which the zavah was socially isolated in antiquity (on which, see Cohen 1991: 278–79).

Moving the conversation in a significantly novel direction, Matthew Thiessen argues that the zavah and her male counterpart were excluded from the Temple for their own good and the good of their community (2020: 79–78 building, to an extent, on Marcus 2002: 357 and others). In some scholarly assessments, Jesus is seen as working within the system of purity regulations—for example, in MK 5.34 where Jesus instructs the woman to show herself to a priest (Haber 2008: 135; Thiessen 2020: 85–93). In others, Jesus is seen as ‘indifferent to’ the transmission of ritual impurity (Collins 2007: 284).

For our purposes, the question of the woman’s ritual status is less important than her social status, but given that they are connected, it is important to exhibit some caution here. As Mary Rose D’Angelo and others have noted, conversations about this passage and efforts to emancipate or liberate the woman often rely upon highly pejorative descriptions of Judaism (Fonrobert 1997; D’Angelo 1999; Thiessen 2020). Broadly speaking, for the various groups who lived around the ancient Mediterranean, extended postpartum bleeding and unpredictable gynaecological complaints were a cause for social alienation and ostracization. The woman would have experienced social alienation and her ability to marry or stay married may have been compromised (Moss and Baden 2015). Physical discomfort and social isolation would have contributed to the woman’s loneliness and emotional distress (McGrath 2021: 122). Whilst I concur that the woman’s ritual status would have impacted her lived experience, it is through this broader discussion concerning her social status and wider social context that I hope to bring more nuance to the conversation.

The woman’s social alienation brings us to the nature of her actions. While some have seen the woman as quasi-deceptive and irresponsible, feminist scholarship has tended to describe her as courageous. This characterization stems from Jesus’s reference to her ‘faith’ (πίστις) in Mk 5.34. Elizabeth Struthers Malbon writes that she ‘distinguishes herself from the … crowd; she is bold, for her faith is strong’ (1983: 36). Similarly, Charles Powell identifies her as a religious revolutionary whose desperation leads her to take an active role by disregarding purity conventions (2005: 71). This active role, as Susan Hylen notes, subverts the traditional gender hierarchies of the time (2018: 25). ⁶

Finally, there is question of the woman’s ailment itself and its relevance to the woman’s fertility and, thus, social capital. Here two lines of argument have emerged. Susan Haber argues that the woman’s healing ‘restored’ the woman to health such that she could ‘bear children’ (2008: 138). The healing, in her reading, shows how ‘life prevails over death, along with the distinctly feminine potential to bring forth new life’ (Haber 2008: 139). This interesting interpretation builds upon the prevailing ancient view that motherhood and childbearing were the ideal for women in the ancient world, as well as a central path to salvation (Myers 2017: 3). Candida Moss argues that the woman’s healing should be understood differently (Moss 2010). Drawing upon Greek medical literature and the language of ‘drying and hardening’ in the account, she argues that the woman undergoes a ‘masculinizing’ transformation from a ‘sodden, leaky, malleable body into a dry, hard one’ (Moss and Baden 2015: 202). The effect of the healing, in Moss’s assessment, is to render the woman barren.

Most interpretations of the passage assume that the woman’s condition was the result of a congenital condition, postpartum complication, or other form of infection (D’Angelo 1999; Moss and Baden 2015: 202). It is worth raising here the possibility that the woman’s condition may also have stemmed from trauma or the result of what in other contexts would be called a professional injury. Moreover, and given my interest in social status and alienation, it is worth noting that if the woman was rendered infertile then her marital prospects (if she was unmarried) had not markedly improved (Moss and Baden 2015: 188–202).

Marginalized Women in Antiquity

Our understanding of this story turns on how we situate the woman with the flow in the broader context of ancient Mediterranean societies. It is not possible to conduct a full survey of women’s experiences here, but the pericope itself helps to narrow our focus on marginalized women. The Gospel narrative implies that the woman is largely alone in the world without male protection, that her gynaecological issues have impacted her place in society, and that whatever wealth she may have had has now diminished (Mk 5.25–34). Given these parameters, I will focus on impoverished women, enslaved women, sex work, and widowhood. ⁷

Broadly speaking, it is well known that women in antiquity were generally understood as inferior to men in all areas of life and had many ‘restrictions imposed’ on them (Marsman 2003: 129; Stol 2016: 691). Ancient Greco-Roman gender norms held that women were ‘weak and unsteady’, and in ‘need of protection’ (Vuolanto 2019: 45). ‘Roman gender norms … emphasized modesty, chastity and domesticity’, which women were expected to uphold in their daily lives (Hemelrijk 2016: 896). Women lacked legal power, remaining under the guardianship of their husband, father, or remaining male relative for most of their lives to the extent that a woman’s lone ‘appearance in public’ would not be ‘self-evident’ (Vuolanto 2019: 44–5). ‘The relationship between norms and daily practice was a complicated one’, however, as ‘Roman women at once observed, reproduced and manipulated the traditional norms’ (Hemelrijk 2016: 896). As Hylen has written, ‘some of these norms required women to remain at home, submit to their husband’s authority, and remain silent’ (2018: 35). Yet, others ‘encouraged women to pursue the interests of their families’ regardless of whether this included ‘participation in economic and social life’, in which their place is not immediately clear (Hylen 2018: 35). In reality, therefore, women’s lives were far from monolithic and depended on their geography, social status, abilities, and profession (Hong 2016: 676; Vuolanto 2019; Warren et al. 2021).

Ancient Mediterranean people, including both Jews and Romans, accepted the practice of enslavement (Heszer 2000; Bradley and Cartledge 2011). Enslaved women were more common and less valuable than enslaved men. While some enslaved men became highly educated and, subsequently, wealthy, women were less likely to have been educated. In the Roman context, but likely more broadly as well, enslaved women were particularly utilized as support staff and in domestic spaces. Many worked as ‘spinners, weavers, clothes makers’ and ‘wet nurses’, with some enslaved women being exploited as midwives (a practice that exploited a woman’s procreative abilities and separated her from her own children) (Pomeroy 1995: 191–92). For impoverished women who lived in a state of financial precarity, the risk of self-enslavement may have been particularly devastating because the enslavement of women was frequently associated with sexual exploitation (Pomeroy 1995: 190). As Sarah Pomeroy puts it, the most common employment of female slaves, ‘either in addition to their other domestic responsibilities, or as a primary occupation’ was that of prostitution (Pomeroy 1995: 192). The motivation for employing one’s slave in the sex trade was high, as slave owners could make ‘great profit’ from situating a female slave in a brothel (Pomeroy 1995: 192).

Sex work was part and parcel of daily life and was paid particularly poorly (Moss and Baden 2015: 178). Our evidence does not always permit us to distinguish between free born or freedwomen sex workers and those who were enslaved and forced into the sex trade. ‘Many unskilled poor women maintained themselves through prostitution’ as they were left with little other means (Pomeroy 1995: 201–202). Ancient definitions of sex work do not line up with modern ones. Enslaved women who did not receive payment for their work might still be classified as sex workers, while enslaved women who were sexually coerced in the homes of enslavers might or might not have been classified as sex workers (Perry 2013: 29–30). Matthew Perry, thus, suggests a definition in which a woman who carried out or advertised her sex work ‘openly’ and ‘indiscriminately’ was classified as a ‘prostitute’ (Perry 2013: 29–30). Fundamentally, and given the poor working conditions in brothels, the lives of women sex workers should be considered lives of vulnerability, violence, and abuse (Åshede 2016: 934–36; Glazebrook 2016: 704).

What freeborn or freed sex workers shared with enslaved women was lack of status or sexual honour. Among enslaved women, professional sex workers were seen to occupy ‘the lowest station’ (Perry 2013: 29–30). In the Roman Digest, Ulpian ‘morally condemns’ prostitution, claiming that ‘a woman’ who ‘openly practices prostitution … manifests no regard for her modesty’ (Dig. 23.3.43 and Åshede 2016: 932–33). Sex workers were viewed as ‘less than human’, and the terminology (e.g., ‘leather hide’ in Macrob. Sat. 2.2.6 and ‘she-wolf’ in Novius 7) both dehumanized and debased them (Bradley 2000; Åshede 2016: 938). Given that the woman in Mk 5.25–34 appears without a male protector but appears to have had some means (Mk 5.26), it is possible that she was at some point a sex worker. If this reading of the woman is correct, then we should reconsider the origins of her condition. Sex workers, whether enslaved or not, had little autonomy over their own bodies and were habitually subjected to sexual violence that had profound physical and psychological consequences (Åshede 2016: 936). Perhaps the woman’s significant and ongoing bleeding is a result of an earlier life dominated by the damaging and hazardous occupation of sex work. Her apparent lack of family only furthers this interpretation. In this reading, her condition is the result of the physically demanding and violent conditions of her profession, a profession into which she was almost certainly forced. ⁸

Widows form a large and highly visible category of vulnerable women in antiquity and in biblical texts (Stol 2016: 277). A widow, in this context, is not merely a woman whose husband had died but one who ‘had no male relative who was responsible for caring for her’ (Byron 2010: 40). The differing ages at which men and women married in antiquity meant that widowhood was a more common predicament in antiquity than the present (Stol 2016: 277; Hemelrijk 2016: 901). A woman could easily find herself alone, without resources and with children to support. In Hebrew the term for widow (‘almanah’) means ‘to bind’ or ‘to be silent’. In his work, John Otwell suggests we take the voicelessness of women seriously as an indicator of the widow’s exclusion from legal and economic life (Otwell 1977: 123). It is precisely because the mistreatment of widows was so common that we find so many biblical injunctions to treat them with charity and justice (Leeb 2001: 64).

In her study, Carolyn Leeb stresses that biblical injunctions referring to women refer to ‘post-menopausal woman, with no remaining reproductive potential’, for whom widowhood and childlessness ‘presented a greater threat to survival’ (Leeb 2001: 64). Reproduction was arguably the central role for women, and those women who had outlived their reproductive capacity were socially vulnerable (Marsman 2003: 48; Byron 2010: 20; Moss and Baden 2015: 202; Hong 2016: 676). Sex with infertile women was sometimes compared to bestiality and engaging the services of a sex worker (Philo, Spec. Laws 3:36; m. Yeb. 6:5; Satlow 1995: 225). In the cultural grammar of antiquity, therefore, infertile women, including widows, had no obvious ‘purpose’ and, thus, were those with the greatest need for protection (Leeb 2001: 64; Moss and Baden 2015).

Just as we might assume that the woman with the flow of blood in Mark 5 was enslaved, a sex worker, or possibly both, so too we might infer that she was a widow. Widowhood, sex work, and enslavement are not mutually exclusive categories: vulnerable women often turned to sex work to provide for themselves, and self-enslavement was a phenomenon in antiquity. All we know is that the woman is alone. The reader is given no clue about her social status; we are only told that at some juncture she had funds that have since been depleted. There are, however, other aspects of her conduct that were open for reading in antiquity. Thus, from here we will turn to the more specific figure of the anus ebria and its relevance for ancient understandings of the woman’s social status.

Reading the Woman with the Flow of Blood as Anus Ebria

As numerous scholars have noted, the actions of the woman are striking. Modern scholars call them ‘bold’, ‘desperate’, and even identify them as ‘subversive’. I wish to consider how ancient audiences would have understood the woman’s behaviour and what assumptions this would have led them to make about her social location. I will diverge from the work of earlier scholars by interpreting the woman’s behaviour in light of the ancient trope of the anus ebria.

The anus ebria or ‘drunken old woman’ was a popular literary and artistic trope in cultural artefacts produced ‘from the Hellenistic period to the third century A.D.’ (Hemelrijk 2016: 901). The figure appears in literature, drama, and art, with at least one famous ancient sculpture of the figure being replicated and disseminated in Rome (Waldhauer 1946: 242). The trope combines several ‘prejudices against old women’ and ‘poverty’ with a fundamental ‘lack of self-control’ (Hemelrijk 2016: 901). The character’s lack of ‘self-control’ often manifests itself through excessive drinking and the inability to limit one’s intake (Cokayne 2003: 145).

This lack of self-control is seen clearly in Plautus’s portrayal of Leaena in the play Curculio. Leaena, who is occupied as the ‘keeper of the door’, is a ‘great drinker of undiluted wine’ (Pl. Cur. 77–79). Her animalistic drive for wine is mocked by Phaedromus, who suggests that a couple of drops of wine outside the door leads her to appear ‘straightaway’ (Pl. Cur. 80). Lucilius perhaps most successfully demonstrates the lack of self-restraint, which is characteristic of the anus ebria, in his proverb on backsliding. The proverb ‘Thence to me, thence—you’re welcome; back goes the old woman to the wine-pot’ suggests that this characterisation of the woman was notorious in mainstream thought (Luc. Sat. 28. 831–32). Leaena, alongside further contemporary portrayals of the anus ebria, was presented ‘with little empathy as a stock figure [who was] both funny and disgusting’ (Hemelrijk 2016: 901). ⁹ As a result, the anus ebria invariably occupied a humble, even liminal, position in ancient society (Dickie 2005: 87). The anus ebria is part of a wider category of maligned characters and intersects with cultural cast members such as witches and ‘bawds’ (lenae) (Petrova 2019: 166). ¹⁰

Though the anus ebria is a source of humour in Roman comedy, there are ‘serious undertones’ to her representation, particularly with respect to the lived realities of women and their ability (or not) to ‘fulfil [their] traditional role and duty in life’ (Cokayne 2003: 145). ¹¹ The relationship between the caricature and reality is not clear cut (Hemelrijk 2016: 902), but it does pick up on more broadly held social conventions governing the consumption of alcohol and women’s diet, in particular.

Given the wide availability and consumption of wine, it is unsurprising that drunkenness might occasionally have become a problem (see, for example, the accusations against the disciples in Acts 2:15). Though in ‘civilized’ circles wine was usually diluted with water, there were some groups who were known to consume it neat (Thompson 2010: 7). Generally speaking, more alcohol was consumed by men than women as there was a strong ‘prejudice against women drinking wine’, which ‘can be traced back to the early second century BC’ (Dickie 2005: 179). This double standard, especially for respectable women, lasted into the early empire and was undergirded by the common cultural association of drunkenness and sexual immorality (Dickie 2005: 179–80). Drunkenness affected the intellect and produced senselessness and ‘out-of-the-ordinary behaviour’ (Cokayne 2003: 146). In women, in particular, alcohol was thought to lead to adultery (Dickie 2005: 180). Among women, drunkenness was particularly associated with old age. Matthew Dickie argues that ‘there can be no question that old women were a byword for drunkenness and loquacity’ (2005: 178; also see Henderson 1987: 120). As a consequence, the anus ebria was viewed as morally ‘aberrant’ (Barrow 2018: 68).

In the Gospel of Mark, the woman’s behaviour was socially transgressive. By boldly touching Jesus’s garments while in a state of ritual impurity, the woman endangers both herself and Jesus (Thiessen 2020). An ancient reader attuned to the social conventions and ritual ramifications of her actions may well have assumed that she was intoxicated. ¹² In women, writes Karen Cokayne, the ‘lack of self-control’ induced by alcohol was connected to ‘wetness’ (2003: 140). Given that the woman in Mark 5 was leaking blood, her physical condition seems almost to exemplify the state of wetness.

In her work, Cokayne uses contemporary analyses of alcoholism to reinterpret the figure of the anus ebria. She argues that drinking problems among the ancient elderly may well have been motivated by experiences of ‘depression, isolation and loneliness’ (Cokayne 2003: 146). In the case of the woman in Mark 5, we might infer that a painful and socially marginalizing condition may well have supplied the impetus for a drinking problem (Mk 5.26). The same social isolation that leads some interpreters to identify her as a widow (Stol 2016: 277) might equally—in the minds of ancient readers—have led her to drink.

Alternatively, her putative alcoholism may have been imposed upon her. As recent work on enslavement in the mid-Republican period by ancient historian Dan-el Padilla Peralta has shown, ‘the over-generous dispensation of alcohol to Roman slaves’ during religious holidays and rare periods of rest ‘facilitated ... holiday stupefaction’ (Padilla Peralta 2017: 327). Reading between the lines, we may see evidence of enslaved interest in alcohol in the Gospels themselves: the ‘wicked slave of one parable beat his fellow-workers and drank in taverns’ (Mt. 24.49). It was, in other words a form of social control that allowed enslavers to manipulate and exploit the enslaved population. So, too, Dickie proposes that ‘drinking was an acceptable element in the lives of high-class prostitutes’ as it ‘made them merry, sociable and free with their favours’ (Dickie 2005: 180). For Dickie, in his reading of Ovid, the advantages cut both ways: enslavers could use alcohol to exploit women and women could use alcohol as a coping mechanism (2005: 180). For poorer sex workers and for impoverished women in general, alcohol was a ‘cushion against the grim realities of life and helped women who constantly lived on the verge of destitution to forget the true horror of their situation’ (Dickie 2005: 180). Read against this backdrop, the emboldened actions of the woman with the flow of blood may not only direct us to her social isolation, loneliness, and desperation but also to a personal history that involved exploitation.

A central element of the anus ebria was her age. Her depiction relies upon the ‘prejudices’ against older women (Hemelrijk 2016: 901). Age, of course, is a relative category. Jeffrey Henderson forthrightly asserts that ‘a woman was old when she was no longer defined in terms of procreative or erotic sexuality, that is, when she stopped bearing children and so ceased to be a source of anxiety for the men of the household’ (1987: 108). So, too, Bremmer (1987: 203) writes that ‘an old woman resembled an object that had passed its usefulness and could now be discarded’. See Pratt (2000) for an alternative view of post-menopausal women in ancient Greece. Whilst there is contention over the reproductive capabilities of the woman with the flow of blood, we can assume that for the entirety of her years spent with a gynaecological ailment, the woman ceased being ‘defined in terms of procreative or erotic sexuality’ (Henderson 1987: 108). Moreover, we can infer from the information provided in the Gospel accounts that the woman had been bleeding for at least twelve years (Mt. 9.20; Mk 5.25; Lk. 8.43). This bleeding may have begun some period of years after the woman’s first menstrual cycle, perhaps when she became sexually active. We might picture the woman with the flow of blood in her thirties, at least, at the time of her healing. If, for men, ‘forty was … the canonical end of youth’ (Henderson 1987: 108), the woman is comfortably nearing, or situated in, middle to old age.

Whilst the reproductive capabilities of the woman with the flow both pre- and post-healing are debated, during her illness her ‘utility,’ whether to a husband or enslaver, was in question. In a specific commentary on a statue of the anus ebria now housed in Munich, Elizabeth Pollard (2008: 146) sees the wine amphora in the woman’s lap as a play on the woman’s womb. Greco-Roman artistic and medical depictions of the womb figure it as an upturned jug. The off-kilter and potentially empty jug in the woman’s lap suggests that ‘this old hag’s womb is not only dried up, it is external and turned on end’ (Pollard 2008: 146). It may well have been the case that the anus ebria was broadly figured as infertile, even if this physiology of infertility sat in tension with the sodden imagery of drunkenness. ¹³ In the story of the woman with the flow of blood, the woman’s putative infertility is on display, particularly in the mechanics of hardening and drying utilized in her healing (Moss 2010).

The barrenness of the anus ebria contrasts with her reputation for sexual desire. Rosemary Barrow (2018: 69) writes that the anus ebria was humorously portrayed as having a ‘sexual appetite but … lack of sexual charm’. Sexuality in one’s older years was viewed with disdain, particularly for women (Cokayne 2003: 140). In her reading of the Munich statue, Barrow suggests that the anus ebria was an aging courtesan past her prime (2018: 67). We do not know anything about the woman with the flow of blood’s sexual appetites, but to ancient readers, her boldness in touching Jesus may well have gestured to the graceless sexual overtures of the anus ebria type.

In this way, the anus ebria was a social outcast who was ‘trebly marginalised’ (Cokayne 2003: 152). She ‘was old (and no longer considered as useful), female and nobody’s wife, mother or sister’ (Cokayne 2003: 152). So too, the woman with the flow of blood was ‘marginalised’: she was a woman, who was ritually impure, alone, and seemingly ‘nobody’s wife, mother or sister’ (Cokayne 2003: 152). In artwork the liminal nature of the anus ebria is articulated spatially. In the anus ebria statue from Munich, the woman is shown in a ‘seated position … characteristic of beggars and suppliants’ (Barrow 2018: 67). In Mark, the woman approached Jesus from behind and touched the hem of his clothing, implying that she was positioned below Jesus, close to the floor (Mk 5.27). In Luke’s version, once Jesus had realised that ‘power had gone out from’ him, the woman approached him, ‘falling down before him’, arguably in a classic suppliant fashion (Lk. 8.46–47). The artistic heritage of the Synoptic story in early medieval visual culture replicates this positionality (Baert 2010: 68–70).

The lone and downtrodden presentation of the haemorrhaging woman suggests that her status is one of subordinance, most likely enslavement. Perhaps her gynaecological injuries were caused by a traumatic experience of forced sex work, a common occupation for enslaved women. These injuries would likely have caused her immense pain, perhaps resulting in her withdrawal from society. She might have feared how her injury impacted her social prospects, as few men would consider marrying an impure and infertile woman. Her chronic pain and social isolation may have led her to self-medicate through excessive drinking, that is if she was not already consuming alcohol in her life as a sex worker, whether voluntarily or not. Her drunken disposition would have only exacerbated her social marginalisation, as older women who consumed alcohol were viewed with disdain. The woman’s desperation and drunkenness may have eased her decision to seek out Jesus, as she could act resolutely, without fear of the social implications and potential consequences of her actions. Yet, Jesus accepts the woman unquestioningly, rejecting the prevalent antipathy for such women.

The haemorrhaging woman’s encounter with Jesus may also shed light on the woman in Mark 14.3–9. The similarly unnamed woman anoints Jesus’s head with a ‘very costly ointment of nard’ in the house of Simon the leper (Mk 14.3). Whilst her actions led ‘some’ to scold her, Jesus concretely defends her and recognises her actions as indicating his forthcoming death (Mk 14.5–8). Meaningfully, Jesus proclaims that ‘wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her’ (Mk 14.9). The unnamed woman has long been identified as a sex worker, with many pointing to the perfumed oil as indicative of her social status. This popular reading of the woman proves an interesting comparison to my reading of the haemorrhaging woman, as both women are similarly marginalised. In both interactions with Jesus, the women are fully accepted by him. Jesus does not rebuke them, but perhaps most importantly, nor does he advise against their continuation in sex work. Thus, the Gospel of Mark’s depiction of Jesus shows him to be holistically empathetic and inclusive, as he rejects the social norms governing society.

Conclusion

Viewing the woman with the flow of blood as an anus ebria has consequences for our perception of Jesus in the pericope. Throughout the Gospel of Mark, and Gospels in general, Jesus interacts with a range of socially marginalized characters who were impoverished, outcast, and ritually impure (Miller 2017: iv). Jesus’s subversion of social hierarchies and outreach to the disenfranchised is one of the hallmarks of his ministry and one of the things for which he is best known, even today. While some people (e.g., sex workers and lepers) were socially marginalized, instances of compassion embody preexisting biblical ideas about social obligations (Anderson 2013).

My reading of the pericope of the woman with the flow of blood, and proposed reinterpretation of the woman as an anus ebria, adds depth and clarity to this general picture. In this story, Jesus integrates a socially inappropriate person back into society. Nearly every aspect of the anus ebria’s condition was a source of scorn and derision in society (Hemelrijk 2016: 902). Under normal circumstances, the woman with the flow of blood’s transgressive (and potentially drunken) behaviour would have been heavily criticized.

The nature of the woman’s ailment may have signified to her contemporaries that she was entangled in ancient sex work. Although Jesus interacts with women assumed to be sex workers elsewhere in the Gospels (see Lk. 7.36–50; Mk 14.3–9), this story focuses on the woman’s embodied experiences. The compassion Jesus extends towards her is revolutionary in as much as it overturns contemporary attitudes towards elderly drunken women. While widows were a focal point for empathy, the anus ebria did not elicit sympathy in antiquity. Jesus’s rejection of these social norms models a new posture for the reader or auditor. Rather than mocking or marginalizing elderly women, sex workers, infertile women, or people with substance abuse issues, he embodies a new set of attitudes for readers both ancient and modern. Though later generations of Christians would impose lifestyle requirements upon female recipients of charity, Jesus here does not do the same. He is, in the best of ways, indiscriminately empathetic.