Many women undoubtedly accepted their fate without much resistance because they lived in a society with rules enforced by men and passed through a lineage of Jewish patriarchs. Their lives mirrored the lives of their mothers and grandmothers. Yet the less fortunate women who had no men to define them and their place in society, such as widows, and those who were lame, chronically ill, slaves, or prostitutes became disenfranchised. They had no safety net and no easy way out of their miserable existence. In Jesus, they saw a new kind of man, one who accorded them respect, empathy, and the means of health and empowerment.

Jesus challenged the patriarchy in its treatment of women. He witnessed every day how women were treated in his world. A woman was not allowed to let a man other than her husband see her with her hair unbound, eat with a strange man, or talk with a man in public. Yet Jesus explained the Scriptures to women, offered them hope (as the woman at the well in John 4:4–42), protected them from being stoned to death, and healed them.

Until Jesus came along, they were cast off, ostracized, and disenfranchised. He showed a remarkable, radical egalitarian treatment of women. He treated them with respect. He accepted them even when they were considered ritually unclean or filled with sin. Jesus did not abuse them or treat them as servants or as sex objects. He never dehumanized or depersonalized them. He spoke to them in public, and also in private, and they taught him things. Women around him were grateful. They anointed him with perfumed oil and provided for him out of their means. They became his disciples. One woman — Mary of Magdala — became his closest friend and confidante (as the Gnostic Gospels argue), was eyewitness to his resurrection, and served as his designated messenger to the male apostles who, according to popular belief, may have fled into hiding after Jesus' death in fear of their own lives. Jesus may not have intended to emerge as a social reformer and he did not change Jewish law, but he showed through example a more equitable way to treat women.

As the first Christian communities grew, the Gentile communities expanded faster than those of the Jewish Christians. However, when the faithful gathered, they most likely did so in small groups so as not to alert the authorities. They met in house churches at table fellowships modeled upon the Jewish table tradition. Men and women worshipped with prayer and prophecy, healed, and did whatever they had known Jesus to do. They likely shared food and drink after their worship session in a communal fellowship. Because there were Jewish Christian groups that ate kosher foods and Gentile groups that consumed a more open diet, the evolution of the church away from its Jewish roots into the Gentile realm likely found the food choices becoming less restrictive. The New Testament Gospels depict Jesus at table fellowship with people who were disenfranchised or marginalized in the Palestinian society of the first century. His social interaction with such individuals, disregard for washing purification before eating, and lack of regard for tithed bread rankled Jewish leaders, who labeled Jesus a glutton. The fourteenth chapter of the canonical Gospel of Luke shows how Jesus felt about the restrictions put upon him and others in Jewish society. In one instance he challenges the status quo by naming those who should be invited to a feast.

Three women traveled with Jesus. Luke 8:2–3 mentions Mary Magdalene, Joanna (wife of Chuza, Herod's steward), and Susanna. In the Gospel of Philip 59:6–11, there were three who always walked with Jesus, and they were all Marys. Presumably many other women also followed him. He brought them words of wisdom in the parables, sayings, and prayers that he taught them. In the Lost Gospel of Q, also known as the Sayings Gospel Q, Jesus speaks the true sayings that are attributed to Wisdom. That Gospel shows how closely Jesus is associated with Wisdom, a feminine attribute of God. In the Dialogue of the Savior, he reveals that whatever comes from truth does not perish.