Brief Thoughts on Paul's Writings About Women Being Silent in the Church

      I am going to posit something that will be highly controversial among Bible folk. After nearly coming to the end of 1 Corinthians 14, I'm no longer at all certain that Paul actually wrote 33b-35, or that it was originally a part of his letter to the Corinthians. I'm probably wrong, but there's just something not right here. First, the context. He had just been talking about an order of how to do tongues and prophecy from verse 26 to 33a, and verse 36 seems to actually immediately conclude this train of thought. If you pull 33b-35 out, there's no break in continuity and it flows as a single continuous progression of thought. 33b-35 however actually breaks this train of thought. It looks shoehorned in, and there's something unpauline about him using "just like the Torah says" in verse 34 to back up a regulation about service practice. That feels much more like what a Judaizer would say than Paul who went to great lengths to explain why the regulations of the Torah shouldn't be imposed on Greeks, and he is writing to Greeks here.

      There's just something really off about this, something very unlike Paul here, that I didn't see before now. For reference, the passage in question is the one about women keeping silent in the church and only questioning their husbands if they want to learn something.

      So, after entertaining the possibility that Paul himself did not actually write 1 Corinthians 33b-25, where it tells women to be silent (really, to shut up) in the churches, and that someone added it after the fact, I decided to look at the other passage in 1 Timothy 2:11-12 which seems to echo this sentiment.

      On the surface, this is clearly Paul's writing, at least in my opinion. But how it is generally translated, I think, coupled with the questionable section in 1 Corinthians 14, is what is at issue. The word in that passage means "to be quiet, to be silent, to shut up" specifically. Here, the word normally translated as "be silent," or "in silence" refers to being at rest, still, quiet. It's the root word for the word "Hesychasm," which is an Eastern Orthodox practice of meditation not too removed from the practice of Zen, and is still practiced today as an integral part of deep, Orthodox meditation and prayer. Another point is that the word translated as "have authority over literally means, "to have FULL authority over" or "to commit murder," and the closer meaning is the murder one, as the cognate word meaning "one who does this" literally means "murderer." Also the word translated as "permit, allow" literally means "to turn towards, to be inclined to." So, lets re-translate these two verses, and remember the context is the women adorning themselves with good works and modesty instead of jewelry and cosmetics as befitting devout women:

      "Let a woman learn with stillness with all submission; yet I'm not inclined towards a woman teaching neither murdering [probably more like "holding full authority over"] a man] but to be with stillness."

      Notice also that he doesn't say, "with all submission to the men," he just says, "with all submission." Are not the men too also to be submissive to Christ?

      Paul was a man of his time period. I certainly don't believe he was a misogynist, because, as he wrote, there is neither male nor female in Christ Jesus, something he would have been keenly aware of. But men and women did have certain roles in Greco-Roman society, and Paul was keen on not causing offense to those on the outside of the church with behavior outside of the normal protocols and cultural etiquette from those inside the church. Thus, he strongly encouraged the women to veil. Thus, he wasn't inclined towards women teaching or murdering... er, I mean, having full authority over the men. It wasn't about suppressing or enslaving the women, it was about being above reproach in the society in which they lived. Thus also he sent Onesimus back to his slave owner and offered to pay Philemon, a fellow Christian, anything that was owed him out of his own pocket, even after encouraging the church at Corinth to use the opportunity for freedom if it presented itself (Onesimus would later become the bishop of Ephesus if I remember right).

      The bottom line here for Paul is that our lives, men or women, are no longer ours but Christ's, and the priority was displaying Him to the world, not our own rights or desires.