[Nell]

Originally Posted by Trapped

A while back I had to dig into some of the known cringey verses about women in the church....you know the "be silent, it's shameful for you to speak" ones. I know there are many people who have tripped over these verses, and in some cases they have been partly responsible for their leaving the faith.

I came across this simple, unassuming video on YouTube, and frankly......I've found it to be the absolute best explanation so far that 1) makes sense, 2) jives with other parts of scripture, 3) doesn't crush women, and 4) doesn't make me shut up my conscience to consider it as a real possibility.

What is additionally cool for me about this interpretation is that it also makes sense of a few verses that used to drive me up the wall......the ones where Paul says tongues are a sign for unbelievers, and then turns around and says that if unbelievers walked in to a meeting and heard tongues they would think everyone was insane. Two totally contradictory irreconcilable statements.....and they get cleared up when read in this interpretation.
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Trapped

Here is another perspective on Paul's uncomfortable verses about women, from Katherine Bushnell and her research of the matter.

To be sure, one should not carelessly assume that anything in the Bible is of exceptional and temporary import only. Yet we are now dealing with a personal letter, and advice given to one individual, and given in a time of exceptional peril, and these facts ought to count for a great deal. Again, while we should not thoughtlessly assume that the Bible is to be read in the light of *profane history, and corrected by it; nevertheless, the Bible, when carefully tested by well-known ancient customs or conditions set forth in reliable profane history, will be found to ring true to contemporary facts. We might have suffered a stagger to our faith in Paul’s tenderness and prudence, if not a stagger to our faith in the Bible, if, in a time of such supreme peril to Christian women, Paul could be represented as urging women to the front of the fight, and putting on them equal ecclesiastical responsibilities with men, when he knew that the cost to them would be far heavier than to men.

Rather, we find in Paul’s letter to Timothy precisely that sort of natural advice that a tender over-pastor under such conditions would give to one in charge of a church in his jurisdiction: “I should not allow a woman to teach or control a man. They (Roman adversaries of the day) are attacking our reputation for common decency, and we must meet it by separating the women from the men, and having them keep very quiet.”

All history testifies that women did not shirk martyrdom for Christ’s sake, but Paul says: “However willing they may be, I do not permit it. We men must take the lead: Adam was first formed, then Eve, and besides, Eve, being immature, got involved, unwittingly, in transgression through her immaturity and inexperience. So are our women immature and inexperienced; they do not even understand fully the terrible dangers that confront them.” Thus might the Apostle, who, ten years before, wrote to the Corinthians about women “praying and prophesying,” and to the Galatians about the same time, to the effect that there could be no distinctions as regards sex in the Christian body, now consistently write after this manner to Timothy, for he must have regard for the situation under Nero, and the relations of Christian to the social order about them. It seems to us far more sensible, then, to ascribe Paul’s precautionary advice to the then existent perilous times, especially for women, than to go back to Eve, or to creation to find a reason. God's Word to Women, by Katherine Bushnell, Lesson 42, Para. 326.

*Profane history: the history of secular affairs as opposed to Sacred history, which deals with the events in the Bible narrative.)

Nell