Kraichgauer wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
shrox wrote:
"... women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says." -- the Apostle Paul (ne Saul), in his first letter to the Corinthians (1CO 14:34)...."
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That is nonsense. There is nothing in the Torah that requires women to be silent to be be submissive to their husbands. Not in the written law and not in the oral tradition.
Paul was a D- student of Rabbi Gamliel. Two things you should never do with Paul. 1. Believe what he says and 2. Invite him to dinner. Your silverware may go missing.
ruveyn
To be sure, though, I wouldn't call any ancient Middle Eastern or Mediterranean civilization pro-women's rights. The only place ancient people who had afforded anything like equality for their women were the Sarmatians of the Eurasian steppe. Sarmatian women were allowed to go into battle with the men, and were regarded as peers. Seeing Sarmatian women fighting alongside the men, in fact, may have inspired the Greeks to create the myths of the Amazons. I would imagine, though, that those women (who probably constituted a majority) who stayed at home to cook and rear children were probably considered inferior.
Other tribal cultures of Europe outside the sphere of classical civilization's influence had included the Celtic tribe of the Iceni in Britain, where the heroic queen Boudicca had led her warriors into battle from her war chariot, in their Anti-Roman uprising. As well, Germanic myth has female warriors such as Valkyrie and Shield Maidens, who may have been based on Roman observation of some women accompanying the men into battle, which is memorialized in Roman sculpture. But even among the Celts and Germans, most women were regulated to home and hearth. Still, it's commonly felt that they probably had had considerably greater freedom than their Middle Eastern and Graeko-Roman counterparts.
That is, till Christianity arrived, with its southern and eastern cultural influences.
Sorry, but once you get an Aspie going on a particular obsession, you can't get him or her to shut up - - or stop typing.
-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer
I think you should have kept going.
Actually, priestesses and prophetesses are recorded in the NT, so I don't think that it's really fair to accuse Paul of misogyny. I'll get to that later...
The thing about women in the Bible just goes back to the way women in general were treated in ancient cultures. Biblical law assumes the wickedness of men's hearts and the desire to subjugate women. There was certainly a long-standing pattern of it in the ancient world. So it seems to me that laws regarding women and slaves merely had to do with the fact that women were commonly seen as property and that slavery was a long-standing institution. That Eve was taken from Adam's side indicates an intention that men and women pull together equally rather than one dominating another. So only as sin becomes pervasive in the world is there even an issue of male dominance. So rather than issuing an edict that would threaten to rip apart the fabric of the early Israelite community, special provisions are made protecting women and regulating the slavery institution. Slavery is effectively discouraged, though not outlawed, since Israelites have a personal experience from having been enslaved as an entire nation.
This carries forward into the NT, also, and Paul would have respected the special status of women in his own culture. There's no reason to think he wouldn't have had the same sentiment regarding other cultures as well.
So apparently what he wrote regarding women had nothing to do with how he felt about their status, but rather destructive behavior happening in a particular church. Early Christian observances were patterned after the more intellectual pursuits of Hellenistic Jewish religious leaders and Greek philosophic schools of thought. Women of wealth and social status were apparently afforded similar positions of status and influence within the church. They would have been encouraged to join in religious debates alongside men and to learn as much as they could. The problem is that without some kind of set structure, a church service erupts into chaos. So rather than supporting their husbands, the women were using teaching time to interrupt their husbands with questions, some of which they may not have been ready to answer. A teacher really has no effectiveness, even if he knows what he's talking about, if someone in the audience constantly makes him look like an idiot. Even worse if that's his own wife. The instruction to be quiet and submissive has less to do with subjugation and more to do with just plain respect. Women are thus instructed to ask their questions at home rather than in public where they'd really be disruptive, not really constructive at all.
At other times Paul tells women to keep their hair neat. Oh, and he essentially tells the men the same thing. But in regards to women, one fact of Greek life was the worship of many gods/goddesses and going to church would have been impossible without passing by a pagan temple or two. The temptation would really be to include Christianity as "just another god," and one could conceivably go to church right after or before participating in some other temple ritual. It would then be important that women NOT look like other women associated with other religions--especially if those women happened to be temple prostitutes. Thus abstaining both from worshiping other gods AND looking like those who do would have been imperative in distinguishing one's self as a Christian. It has nothing to do with a real or perceived lower status of women.
21 Aug 2011, 6:55 pm
