Paul the Apostle and women
The relationship between Paul the Apostle and women is an important element in the theological debate about Christianity and women because Paul was the first writer to give ecclesiastical directives about the role of women in the Church. However, there are arguments that some of these writings are post-Pauline interpolations. Female disciples. The Gospels record that women were among Jesus' earliest followers. Jewish women disciples, including Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna, had accompanied Jesus during his ministry and supported him out of their private means. Although the details of these gospel stories may be  questioned, in general they reflect the prominent historical roles women played as disciples in Jesus' ministry. There were women disciples at the foot of the cross. Women were reported to be the first witnesses to the resurrection, chief among them was Mary Magdalene. She was not only "witness", but also called a "messenger" of the risen Christ. From the beginning of the Early Christian church, women were important members of the movement. As time went on, groups of Christians organized within the homes of believers. Those who could offer their home for meetings were considered important within the movement and  assumed leadership roles. Such a woman was Lydia of Philippi, a wealthy dealer in purple cloth. After hearing Paul preach, she and her household were baptized. The earliest Christian movement, most notably Paul’s movement, was very attractive for wealthy women and widows. They often opened their houses for worship by particular religious movements. According to Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, in the 1st century a woman's place was in the home and the otherwise private areas of life. Turning the private domestic setting into the public religious setting opened up opportunities for religious leadership. Pauline Christianity did not honour its  rich patron; instead, it worked within a "motif of reciprocity" by offering leadership roles, dignity and status in return for patronage. Through building up their own house church, women could experience relative authority, social status and political power and renewed dignity within Paul's movement. This concept is reflected in Paul's relationship with Phoebe, Chloe and Rufus's mother. Epistolary evidence. By the time Paul began his missionary movement, women were important agents within the different cities. Letters generally accepted as Paul’s are Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon. His casual greetings to  acquaintances offer solid information about many Jewish and Gentile women who were prominent in the movement. His letters provide vivid clues about the kind of activities in which women engaged more generally. In the Letter to the Romans, Paul sends greetings to a number of people and specifically mentions: According to Karen King, these biblical reports seem to provide credible evidence of women apostles active in the earliest work of spreading the Christian gospel. In , Paul wrote "nor is there male and female," hearkening back to Genesis 1, for all are one in Christ. Deaconesses. According to Thurston, there can  be no doubt that in their first institution the deaconesses were intended to discharge those same charitable offices, connected with the temporal well being of their poorer fellow Christians, which were performed for the men by the deacons. But in one particular, the instruction and baptism of catechumens, their duties involved service of a more spiritual kind. The universal prevalence of baptism by immersion and the anointing of the whole body which preceded it rendered it a matter of propriety that in this ceremony the functions of the deacons should be discharged by women. Ecclesiastical directives. Silence in church. The  letters of Paul, dated to the middle of the first century AD, were written to specific communities in response to particular questions or problems. Paul was in Ephesus around the year 56 when he received disquieting news regarding the church at Corinth. Factionalism had developed. At the fellowship meal some got drunk while others were left hungry. There seemed to be a preference for ecstatic prayer at the expense of works of charity, with a number of members all "speaking in tongues" at the same time. It was apparently reported to him that women were appearing at the assembly without  the head covering customary in contemporary Greek society, and may have been arguing over their right to address the assembly. The fledgling community appeared to be in disorder. 1 Corinthians 14:33–35 (NIV) states: Barbara Leonhard and others find this contradicts a statement in 1 Corinthians 11:5 that seems to presuppose that women are, in fact, praying and prophesying in the assembly of believers (but prefers they do it with the appropriate head covering). Leonhard notes that it is inconsistent with Paul's dealings with his co-workers in that women such as Prisca, Phoebe and Junia could not have functioned  as Church leaders and apostles if they were not allowed to speak in public. She and other such as Jerome Murphy-O'Connor believe this to be a "post-Pauline interpolation". According to Murphy-O'Connor, in the "New Jerome Biblical Commentary": However, David Odell-Scott disagrees with the modern interpolation hypothesis, and instead supports the notion that verses 34-35 are indeed an earlier Corinthian slogan which Paul is critiquing and correcting. Odell-Scott notes that the injunction for silence and subordination in verses 34-35 is immediately followed by an incredulous reply in the form of a negative rhetorical query  in verse 36 (RSV): By this interpretation, verse 36 is a Pauline refutation of a Corinthian opponent quoted and critiqued by the evangelist. Odell-Scott further argues that those western manuscripts that moved 34-35 to a different position (after verse 40) are the work of a patriarchal redactor seeking to "shelter" and protect the Corinthian slogan from Paul's emphatic critique in verse 36. By associating these verses with the "decency and order" of verse 40, the redactor undermined the egalitarian interpretation of the canonical version, and incorrectly presented the Corinthian voice as the voice of Paul. Thus the  ancient editor effectively harmonized the text with the parallel passage of 1 Timothy. However this variant version of 1 Corinthians was not canonized. Nonetheless, many English translations of verse 36 omit the key "heta" particle (translated as "What!" or "What?"). Translations may thus serve to diminish the contradictory tone of the interrogative verse 36, and preserve the sense of harmony with 1 Timothy. First Epistle to Timothy. The First Epistle to Timothy is presented as a letter from Paul in Macedonia to Timothy in Ephesus. It is termed one of the "pastoral epistles" in that it is not directed to  a particular congregation but to a pastor in charge of caring for a community of believers. 1 Timothy 2: 9-15 (NASB) says: Since the nineteenth century, the attribution to Paul of the "pastoral letters" has come into question. There are a wide variety of opinions as what extent, if any, Paul either wrote or influenced their composition. If Paul wrote them, the date of composition is likely 63–67; if not their date may be as late as the early second century. While acknowledging a degree of patriarchalism in Paul, according to Bernard Robinson, former Lecturer in Sacred Scripture at  Ushaw College, Durham, most scholars think that Paul is not the author; and that 1 Timothy probably comes from the end of first century, at a time when the church had become somewhat more institutional and patriarchal than it was in Paul’s day. Headship. A New Testament passage that has long been interpreted to require a male priority in marriage are these verses: "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord", and "the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church". Both Christian Egalitarians and Complementarians agree that the Apostle Paul  wrote that the "husband is head" and "wives, submit", and that he was divinely inspired to write what he wrote, but the two groups diverge in their interpretation of this passage. Christian Egalitarians believe that "full partnership" in an equal marriage is the most biblical view. As persons, husband and wife are of equal value. There is no priority of one spouse over the other. In truth, they are one. Bible scholar Frank Stagg and Classicist Evelyn Stagg write that husband-wife equality produces the most intimate, wholesome and mutually fulfilling marriages. They conclude that the Apostle Paul's statement  recorded in , sometimes called the "Magna Carta of Humanity", applies to all Christian relationships, including Christian marriage: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is "neither male nor female": for you are all "one" in Christ Jesus." Christian Egalitarian theologians also find it significant that the "two becoming one" concept, first cited in , was quoted by Jesus in his teachings on marriage. In those passages he reemphasized the concept by adding to the Genesis passage these words: "So, they are no longer two, but one" (NIV). The Apostle Paul cited the Genesis 2:24 passage . Much has been written concerning the meaning of "head" in the New Testament. The word used for "head", transliterated from Greek, is "kephalē"—which means "the anatomical head of a body". Today's English word "cephalic" (sə-făl'ĭk) means "Of or relating to the head; or located on, in, or near the head." In the New Testament, a thorough concordance search shows that the second most frequent use of "head" "(kephalē)", after "the structure that connects to our neck and sits atop our bodies", is the metaphorical sense of "source". The Complementarian (also known as Traditionalist or Hierarchical) view of marriage  maintains that male leadership is biblically required in marriage. Complementarians generally believe that the husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God's image, but that husbands and wives have different functions and responsibilities in marriage. According to this view, the husband has the God-given responsibility to provide for, protect, and lead his family. Wives are expected to respect their husbands' authority and submit to it. However, some Complementarian authors caution that a wife's submission should never cause her to "follow her husband into sin". Christian Egalitarian views. In , Paul maintains  that "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." Given the number of greetings to women in and the commissioning of Phoebe. In the first century when Paul was writing passages that now appear in the New Testament, people in Roman society were judged by two sets of criteria: When these categories collided, it created status inconsistency/dissonance when one's achieved status was greater than the status attributed to the person by culture and by law. Second -century deference to society. Elaine Pagels maintains that the majority of the Christian churches in the second century went with the majority of the middle class in opposing the trend toward equality for women. By the year 200, the majority of Christian communities endorsed as canonical the "pseudo-Pauline" letter to Timothy. That letter, according to Pagels, stresses and exaggerates the antifeminist element in Paul's views: "Let a woman learn in silence in all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or have authority over men; she is to keep silent." She believes the letters to the Colossians and  to the Ephesians, which order women to "be subject in everything to their husbands", do not express what she says were Paul's very favorable attitudes toward women, but also were "pseudo-Pauline" forgeries.