Discussions of discipleship in the gospels often focus on male disciples, neglecting the women, while discussions of women’s discipleship in foundational Christian documents tend to focus on certain (deutero-)Pauline texts and neglect the Gospels. Holly Carey seeks to address both of these imbalances in her book, Women Who Do. She aims not merely to fill gaps in the scholarship but also to address an ecclesial failure to promote women “as leaders or … models of discipleship” (2). The book thoroughly engages with relevant secondary literature and is a model of clear and accessible scholarly writing. It is filled with engaging and convincing readings of texts, at times moving towards conclusions as to how gender functions in a given work as a whole without ever allowing a desired conclusion to overshadow the bounds and limitations of the text.

Before turning to the biblical text, Carey opens with a chapter surveying the world of women in the 1st-century Mediterranean world. This chapter starts by clearly presenting the general context of androcentrism and male-supremacist attitudes and practices prevalent in this period. Carey then highlights how women nevertheless exercised agency within that cultural matrix. She is attentive to the intersectionality of other aspects of identity such as enslavement, and considers how Jewish women’s experiences may have differed from their neighbors.

Carey then examines the four gospels in their likely order of composition, beginning with Mark. She successfully demonstrates her thesis that “female discipleship in Mark models what it means to be a follower of Jesus” (72), often in contrast to imperfect male disciples, especially those who comprise the Twelve. However, I was left looking for an explanation of why Mark chooses to present female disciples as so exemplary when the men’s failings are so visible. Additionally, some data complicates this claimed pattern: Mary hardly seems to be exemplary in Mark (see 3:31–35), and Mark highlights Bartimaeus’ discipleship as a central model (10:46–52).

In her chapter on the Gospel of Matthew, Carey has to deal with the fact that this gospel uses the Greek term μαθητής (disciple) almost exclusively for the (all-male) Twelve. However, she convincingly argues both that Matthew has other ways of talking about the concept of discipleship and that 27:57 contains a reference to women as disciples. She shows that Matthew’s Passion and Resurrection narrative, in particular, highlights the exemplary nature of the several women’s discipleship.

Carey considers Luke and Acts in two consecutive chapters. One highlight of her analysis of Luke is a careful examination of the Martha and Mary scene (10:38–42), arguing that Luke’s superlative evaluation of Mary’s posture of active listening does not detract from the positive evaluation of Martha’s activity. In this chapter, Carey also provides an answer to the “Why?” question that was left unanswered in her Mark chapter: Luke’s presentation of exemplary women disciples fits with his tendency to look to the margins of society. Turning to Acts, Carey treats the presence of prophesying women at Pentecost (2:17) as foundational. While Luke often downplays the actions of women in mixed groups, Carey still finds several influential female disciples in Luke’s second volume to discuss in this chapter.

Carey’s chapter on John has a clear thesis statement: “Although no one fully gets it in the Gospel of John the female disciples get closest … to the truth of who Jesus is” (172). Carey demonstrates the presence of step parallelism, whereby female characters often exceed the insights of the narratively nearest male disciple. This insight is sometimes verbally expressed, sometimes performed in other ways, such as when Mary’s anointing of Jesus’ feet precedes his witness and command to engage in foot washing (12:1–8). I was left wondering, though, how Thomas’s climactic confession (20:28) fits with this claim.

Overall, this is a well-argued book that fills a gap in the literature. An undergraduate class could read the book with profit, especially if they were encouraged to not get bogged down in the footnotes, which are more directed to Carey’s peers in the academy. It is interesting to imagine an introductory class on the gospels that paired this text with one of the Christology of the Gospels. The result might be a class of students of all genders inspired and ready to do discipleship!