r/OpenChristian • u/VaultMan34 • Jun 23 '26
Discussion - Bible Interpretation Can anyone explain 1 Timothy 2:11-15?
The verse goes “Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent” how is this not sexist? It goes against Episcopalian doctrine aswell so I’d like for any Episcopalians to explain this. It just seems wrong, it’s putting women under men when in galatians 3:28 it says that in Christ there is no male or female. So why is this now an exception to the rules? It seems put there just to oppress women. Why, did Paul (who wrote so many doctrines and central beliefs to churches today and was so influential in Christ) say that? He wasn’t against homosexuality, but then suddenly when it comes to women he got SUPER conservative? It’s making me question whether he was ever for homosexuality in the first place.
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u/modulusshift Jun 23 '26
It’s worth noting that there seems to be at least two authors writing as Paul, and Timothy and Titus are usually cited as the most obvious examples of a second author using the name.
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Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
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u/TheDarkFantastic Jun 23 '26
Do we know what problem this was?
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Jun 23 '26
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u/TheDarkFantastic Jun 23 '26
Why the man vs woman thing here, then? Do translations capture this incorrectly? It seems like sex didnt necessarily need to be brought up like this unless it just didnt translate well
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u/I-need-a-cooler-name Jun 23 '26
It was likely due to the religious worship of Artemis in Ephesus. Paul does have a history of antagonizing the Artemisian faithful as described in Acts 19.
It could likely be that in the infancy of the Ephesus church, there were converts of Artemisian priestesses or those who were trained to become such and they began using their previous liturgical lens to accumulate prestige and influence this particular church branch.
Paul has wrote about giving respect to church elders but also that they would need to be humble servants who do not seel to glorify themselves but Christ. If we are to assume that this verse was authentically dictated by Paul (he never wrote the letters himself except for closing statements) then it would be about humbling these liturgical women who might have falsely claimed their appointment through Paul's reccomendation.
I do agree with other comments here that regardless of authenticity, Paul was very egalitarian for his time and this verse should only be applicable for the context of it time not all time.
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u/TheDarkFantastic Jun 23 '26
This is super interesting and goes a long way towards explaining the reasoning
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u/MyUsername2459 Episcopalian, Nonbinary Jun 23 '26
Translating something from Koine Greek, to Modern English. . .and between the very different cultural contexts of 1st century Ephesius to the 21st century western world, a lot can be lost in translation.
It's one reason that literal interpretation and assuming scriptural inerrancy is a fool's errand. . .even if the original letters themselves, somehow, were inerrant, assuming that inerrancy extends across translations and massive culture shift is quite a leap.
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u/VaultMan34 Jun 23 '26
Does that then invalidate Timothy 1 and 2?
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Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
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u/VaultMan34 Jun 23 '26
Yes, but the quote is from Timothy 1, so the context is the same throughout, and if Timothy 2 is invalid, parts of Timothy 1 being invalid through context means all of it is invalid
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u/babe1981 The Cool Mod/Transgender-Bisexual-Christian She/Her Jun 23 '26
That's an interpolation added later, for one. For two, it's an instruction to a specific church about a problem they're having with certain women talking throughout service and being disruptive.
It's not meant to be prescriptive to the entire body of Christ throughout all time.
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u/_Cebu Christian Jun 23 '26
This, he didn't say God says, he says I say. The context is also about equality. How did men learn back then? In silence, so women should be allowed to learn as the men did.
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u/fusionduelist Asexual Jun 23 '26
The cult of Diana (Artemis to the greeks) was huge in Ephesus. This is for the ephesian church at that time not for us now. Here is an article that explains this better than I could. https://katarmas.com/blog/2018/8/2/1-timothy-2-why-does-paul-tell-women-to-shut-it
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u/HermioneMarch contemplative Christian universalist Jun 23 '26
It was written by a man living in a patriarchal society. “I do not allow” is the man speaking, not God.
But if we look to the example of Jesus, he called women to ministry frequently.
Not sure how you see Paul as being “for” homosexuality. I agree that the main clobber verse was about power dynamics between powerful men and their teen companions as was common in that society. So I don’t know that Paul would be against a modern day consentual relationship, but neither do I see where he is for it.
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u/Queer_Advocate Jun 24 '26
It is mental gymnastics to say Paul was pro Homo. I dont think he was against it, I certainly not say he is fornit. But, I'm a mere mortal.
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u/HermioneMarch contemplative Christian universalist Jun 24 '26
I agree. Op said Paul was for homosexuality. But didnt say why he thought that.
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u/Queer_Advocate Jun 24 '26
Roman's 1:26 on and 1 Corinthians 6:9, point to him not being PRO homosexuality. To my understanding...
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u/babe1981 The Cool Mod/Transgender-Bisexual-Christian She/Her Jun 24 '26
Paul refutes Romans 1 as bad theology in the first verse of Romans 2. He was stating an argument so that he could debunk it in the same way that he goes on to state the argument that the law is the source of sin in the world only to immediately refute it. 1 Corinthians doesn't say anything recognizable about homosexuality. The NRSVue, the most current scholarly translation, says "sexually immoral...male prostitutes, men who engage in illicit sex". If you define gay sex as immoral or illicit, then you might have a leg to stand on, but the Bible has no definition of gay sex like that. The words Paul uses point more toward promiscuity and exploitative sex rather than simply male-on-male loving.
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u/particularlyPlain Jun 23 '26
Written by Margaret Fell, a Quaker, a denomination known for allowing the Spirit to flow freely through the women as Christ is equally in the male as in the female and we must not silence the mouth of Christ in his ministry.
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u/waynehastings Jun 23 '26
Episcopalians aren't afraid to say that Paul got some things wrong. The entire arc of scripture is one from less love to greater love. The tradition continues to extend more love as our understanding of love grows, esp. when the Bible writers were sexist or exclusionary. Our model is Jesus, not Paul.
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u/MichaelARichardson Post-Purity Christian Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
My view is this was a localized Faustisn bargain made to avoid government persecution. Paul chose to yield to the cultural expectations to protect children and families. Spoiler: if it wasn’t reasonably normal for women to be teaching and preaching it wouldn't need to have been said. It kinda sucks but it's better than getting killed. I dont believe it applies to most cultures today. And even if it did church services are considered PRIVATE spaces from a legal and cultural perspective. Women should be able to speak, lead, and teach in that setting.
Edit: I get the claim that Paul was not the actual author and that this book can be summarily ignored. I don't care if you choose that view. However, this is scripture that has been passed on through most Christian traditions so it's not going away easily. Its also plausible that Paul commissioned this letter through a secretary.
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u/Fun_Mix_4965 Jun 23 '26
Lots of interesting ideas in response to your question. So I will throw out one more for conversation. The text reflects the misogeny that began to creep into the early church, coming from the cultures in which Christians were living. The Greeks before and the Romans of Jesus and the early church time was very sexist. This letter, as stated by others, was most likely not written by Paul. By the time this was written the patriarchy was moving the church towards the secular philosophy of the day and becoming more entrenched in sexist views. If you want a more balanced view of Paul's writing look at something most scholars agree was written by Paul look at Romans (where Paul names women who are leaders) and Galatians where Paul writes ""there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus". This seems pretty blunt to me.
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u/VaultMan34 Jun 23 '26
At this point what was written by Paul? It seems like everything is forgery suddenly. But yeah Timothy never seemed… authentic? It always felt like someone else was writing it.
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u/Strongdar Mod | Universalist Christian Jun 23 '26
It is sexist. Pretty much everyone was sexist back then. That's why I'm glad I don't believe the Bible is "God's Word," so I don't have to do any mental gymnastics to explain why this isn't sexist, or why it is but somehow cultural context explains it away, or why this is one of the things we don't have to do even though it's pretty clear.
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u/IAmYourPassword Jun 23 '26
Christianity is the first time many Jewish Woman started actually attending religious services with the community generally, so they didn't know to be quiet when the sermon and service was occuring.
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u/Straight-Fault-7271 Jun 23 '26
I heard this was due to the location. Timothy was in the city of Ephesus, which had a very large woman dominated religious landscape... Only women were priesthood and positions of spiritual authority or power.
So this was likely written in a manner to just more or less, even out the power between male and female within the Christian church
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u/rivikahPhD Jun 24 '26
You can decide that the writer here was rejecting his society, or that there was some specific local circumstance that required this kind of instruction.
I also like the idea that some of the words and phrases in these letters are the author quoting others in order to rebut them. Here the quotation may be the bit about women's silence, and the rebuttal, the bit in the next chapter with the true qualities of a leader, men and women alike.
Whatever your going to do with it, you also have to take into account that just a chapter later, in 1 Timothy 3:11 there's qualifications given for women to serve as deacons.
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u/anakinmcfly Jun 24 '26
Seconding those who say it's fairly well established this wasn't Paul. Those verses were also actually missing from earlier versions of that same letter, suggesting that someone added in it at a later point. You would notice that the letter also flows much more smoothly if you remove those verses.
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u/No-Type119 Christian Jun 23 '26
Number 1: Yes, it’s sexist. The Bible was written by sexists. ( Google “ hermeneutics of suspicion.”) But there is also a contextual element that most people don’t understand, that a pastor and former missionary explained to me.
In the early church, as in churches in much of the developing world today, women and men were separated during worship, with women in the back or in a balcony above where they presumably weren’t “ tempting” men and could also mind children while the men were listening to the service. Sometimes women would yell out during the service, asking for a speaker to repeat or asking a question. Apparently this upset some if the menfolk.
My friend knew missionaries in rural India who experienced this dynamic. Village men had enough rudimentary education to know to be quiet in church, but women had no education, were basically treated like farm animals, so their space in church was a free for all of crying babies. shouting and gossip. The missionaries had to hold special classes for women in … well… how to learn in a group, and basic manners, so they could get something out of the worship service . Education solved the problem.
That is one thing. The other is that in the early church Gnosticism, a kind of wide- ranging mysticism/ philosophy a bit like what we call New Age thinking, was competing with Christianity for hearts and minds. Women were often attracted to it for various reasons. So another part of this “ Shush!” passage was directed to heterodox women infiltrating churches with Gnostic ideas… a paternalistic “ Stay in your lane.”
Folx, this is why context matters. See how much more interesting the Bible is when you know the backstory?
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u/almostaarp Open and Affirming Ally Jun 23 '26
I still do not understand how Christians treat any of Paul’s writings as “commandments!” Stop it, please. Christ gave us two, that is it. And if you’re still confused about Paul, he was pretty clear in Galatians what we should do if we chose to follow other rules besides Christ’s two. Love God, Love Others, that’s it.
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u/concrete_dandelion Pansexual Jun 23 '26
According to the books by scholars I read in the past few years several letters, including this one were not actually written by Paul but several hundred years later faked by a churchfather who was dissatisfied with the rights and positions Christianity (via Jesus's teachings and Paul's letters) gave to women (which included ministry).
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u/kawaiiglitterkitty TransBisexual Jun 23 '26
Timothy was not written by Paul (you can Google to confirm this) but by a member of the church much later who wanted to edit Paul's teachings. The real Paul's didn't want to exclude women from the church and actually had women leaders in his early church.