In my previous post I began to address the question of whether we have the original text of 1 Cor. 14:34-35, where Paul tells women that they must be silent in the churches. I first had to show that the similar passage of 1 Tim. 10-15 is not by Paul, because 1 Timothy itself was not written by Paul.

This is a standard view among scholars, that Paul did not write 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus; I won’t get into the reasons here, but if you look up Timothy or Titus as a word search on the blog you’ll find posts that address the matter.  Apart from that, doesn’t Paul say something similar in his undisputed letters, in the harsh words of 1 Cor 14:34-35?

Indeed, this passage is *so* similar to that of 1 Tim 2:11-15, and so unlike what Paul says elsewhere, that many scholars are convinced that these too are words that Paul himself never wrote, words that were later inserted into the letter of 1 Corinthians by a scribe who wanted to conform Paul’s views to those of the Pastoral epistles.  The parallels are obvious when the two passages are placed side by side:

 

(1 Tim 2:12-15)	(1 Cor. 14:34-36)
1.  Let a woman learn in silence with full submission.	1. Women should be silent in the churches.
2.  I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent.	2. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate,
3. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.	3. as the law also says.
4.  Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.	4. If there is anything they desire to know let them ask their husbands at home.  For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

It is not absolutely impossible, of course, that Paul himself wrote the passage that is now found in 1 Corinthians.  But as scholars have long pointed out, Paul elsewhere talks about women leaders in his churches without giving any indication that they are to be silent.  He names a minister in Cenchreae, prophets in Corinth, and one of the chief apostles in Rome (Junia).  Even more significantly, he has already indicated in 1 Corinthians itself that women are allowed to speak in church — for example when they pray or prophesy, activities that were almost always performed aloud in antiquity.  How could he allow women to speak in chapter 11 but disallow it in chapter 14?

Moreover, it is interesting to observe that these harsh words against women in 1 Cor 14:34-35 interrupt the flow of what Paul has been saying in the context.  Up to v. 34 he has been speaking about “prophecy” and then does so immediately afterwards again in v. 37.  It may be, then, that the verses were not an original part of the text of 1 Corinthians at all but originated as a marginal note that later copyists inserted into the text after v. 33 (others inserted it after v. 40).  However the verses came to be placed into the text, it does not appear that they were written by Paul.  Who then wrote them?  Evidently someone living later, who was familiar with and sympathetic towards the views of women advanced by the author of the Pastoral epistles.

To sum up: In Paul’s own churches, there may not have been an absolute equality between men and women.  Women were still to cover their heads when praying and prophesying, showing that as females they were still subject to males.  But there was a clear *movement* towards equality that reflected the movement evidenced in the ministry of Jesus himself.  Moreover, Paul’s preference for the celibate life (a view not favored, significantly enough, by the author of the Pastorals), may have helped promote that movement toward equality, in that women who followed his example would not have had husbands to go home *to* in order to ask questions.  Indeed, we know of such women from the second and later centuries, ascetics who preferred the freedom that the single life brought to the restrictive confines of ancient marriage.