the elders, the house-church leaders of the early days who were known by a variety of titles including ἐπίκοποι. But the same process that led to these leaders being called the elders, led also in time to women being excluded from their number. ‘The elders’, we have argued, was a collective way of referring to a group of leaders acting representatively, and did not appear in the churches (because it was not appropriate) until the household congregations began to multiply and consolidate their position