Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1018: #1018 - An Egalitarian View of Women in Ministry in Light of the Greco-Roman Context: Dr. Lynn Cohick

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

Lynn is one of my favorite New Testament scholars! She serves as Provost and Dean of Academic Affairs of Northern Seminary in Lisle, Illinois. She also teaches New Testament and leads the development of DMin and MA programs in women's studies, and the Women's Center for Leadership at Northern Seminary. Lynn received her bachelor’s degree from Messiah College in Grantham, PA, and my Ph.D. in New Testament and Christian Origins from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA. She’s written several books including in depth commentaries on Philippians, Ephesians, and Romans  In this conversation, we talk about her book Women in the World of the Earliest Christians, which talks about the 1st century Roman context and its illumination on certain New Testament passages about women; specifically, 1 Timothy 2.  https://lynncohick.com If you would like to support Theology in the Raw, please visit patreon.com/theologyintheraw for more information! 

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is Dr. Lynn Kohik, one of my favorite New Testament scholars. She presently serves as Provost and Dean of Academic Affairs at Northern Seminary in Illinois. She also teaches New Testament there and also leads the development of a D-Min and M-A program in women's studies and the Women's Center for Leadership at Northern Seminary. She has her PhD from University of Pennsylvania in New Testament and Christian Origins, and has written a few books, including the one we discuss on this podcast, which is Women in the World of the Earliest Christians, Illuminating Ancient Ways of Life. I wanted Lynn to talk about how her understanding of the first century Greco-Roman context,

of which she's an expert in, and understanding women in that context, how that informs and illuminates some of these statements about women in the New Testament that have become quite controversial. 1 Timothy 2, 1 Corinthians 11. We spend most of our time on 1 Corinthians 2 and the latter half of this podcast. Lynn will be out in Boise, Idaho, speaking at the pre-conference of the Exiles in Babylon Conference, March 23rd, 2023, here in Boise, Idaho. The pre-conference is all about women in church leadership. I've got two scholars on the egalitarian side, Scott McKnight, Lynn Kohik, and then two scholars on the complementarian side, Gary Brashears and Sydney Park. It's going to be fantastic. So all the

information is on the website, theologyintherod.com. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only Dr. Lynn Kohig. Dr. Lynn Kohig, thank you for coming back on the show. It's great to chat with you as always, Preston. Thanks for inviting me. So the book that I just recently read of yours is Women in the World of the Earliest Christians, Illuminating Ancient Ways of Life, which is a 300 plus page book on women in the Greco-Roman, but mainly I think first century largely. And it is a very in-depth but clear scholarly work on, well, first century largely. And it is a very in-depth, but clear scholarly work on women in the first century. I guess, let me lead with a really specific question. I would love to know how your understanding of women in the first century has contributed to your view that every office in the church is open to women.

For lack of better terms, I know people don't always like to talk about an egalitarian position. First of all, is that true that your understanding of the history has shaped how you read 1 Timothy and other passages? And I would love for you to kind of connect those dots for us, if you would. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for that question. And I would say that my doing this research has helped me to place in context what Paul is talking about at a variety of levels, and certainly with women, right? So what does it mean when he says that Junia is an apostle? Let's take that concept apart. You've got the 12 apostles. We also know that

the word itself can mean messenger. So how is Paul using it? How does he use it about himself? And just as you peel away the layers, then it does help you kind of think, all right, well, how could that reflect on Junia and understanding her? I think the other big thing is that there are a lot of misconceptions about what women could do in the ancient world that was considered modest, but yet public. They always had to be in their home. And these are matrons. I mean, they're always female slaves that are around, right? I mean, there are women around, but the women in wealthy families who the wealthy men are writing about, we imagine that they only stayed in the house. And yet when we actually look at historical writings, when we look at frescoes, when we look at business receipts, we discovered that women were actually doing all kinds of things

and doing them in modestly appropriate ways. Like they were not seen as stepping outside of what was appropriate. So a wealthy woman could have clients and these men would come to the house and praise her publicly in the morning and find out, okay, what are her big projects that she's trying to, you know, influence in the town and publicly praise them. And so she's out and influencing because she has money. She has money. And so I think that when I discovered that there were women shopkeepers, that there were women who were doing business transactions, when there were women, if they had the financial resources and their father or their husband was so inclined, and many of them were, to give them education, then I began to see, well, yeah, so a junia

may actually have been a well-educated Jewish woman who would know the scriptures, would have maybe natural giftedness towards evangelism, and so found herself in prison like Paul. You go out, you're preaching, and you get into trouble with a town clerk or something like that. So once I realized just the range of options that women had, even in this, you know, admittedly patriarchal culture, I began to see that when Paul calls Yodia and Syntyche his co-workers, that they could actually like be doing co-worker stuff just like timothy you know his co-worker so anyway that's i think how it uh it helped me i i actually though in writing this book i i wrote it in part as uh my feeble attempt to try and transpose into a key that more religiously conservative readers might appreciate a work.

So I tried to transpose a work by Ross Kramer, Her Share of the Blessing, which I really like. Ross is just, oh, she's just brilliant. And she does a fabulous job in asking these terrific historical questions. But she approaches both the Christian and the rabbinic texts with a more critical eye, I would say, than what I would decide to do. And I mean, Ross is my second reader for, so, you know, anything that's good in my research is based on her work and anything bad, you know, it's all mine. But anyway, when I would teach, let's say, Jewish backgrounds to students, they had trouble grasping some of her historical gems because they just got off track with her more critical approach to the New Testament text and rabbinic text. So I thought, if nothing else, I'd love to open this world to sort of just the average person.

And I really wanted it to be a prolegomena to studying the New Testament. I wanted it to kind of set the stage. studying the New Testament. I wanted it to kind of set the stage. But a lot of times, people zero in on the biblical passages that I look at, like the Samaritan woman, for example, and they just want to talk about that. But I almost saw that as well, just doing an illustration to my larger point, which was really trying to give people all that I could provide so that they, when they went to the biblical text, could make more informed decisions about what possibilities were and what the audience that was receiving Paul's letter, what they might hear and what they might then do based on what he said. That's super helpful. So based on what you were saying at the beginning, what are some big misunderstandings that maybe modern Christians have about women in the first century? I mean, you kind of alluded to

one, that women were in a patriarchal culture. They were all just sequestered in their home. They weren't doing anything really public or they were just on the lowest rung of the social status. But the picture you painted in your book, it's a lot more complex and complicated. Yes, it's still a patriarchal culture, but it wasn't monolithic or how would you describe that? I was shocked that even like, I think, was it you or maybe it was another book that even there was some evidence of women being like synagogue leaders. I think Bernadette Bruton has done work there from inscriptions. And even like in the gladiators, there were some women that fought. Is that? That's true. Wow. I know. I know. Kind of crazy. They just fought other women or what our sources say are dwarf men. So small.

I mean, I don't know exactly what would qualify that way. Yeah, but they were not, you know, not the big guys like The Rock or something. You didn't have that. That would be a big woman right there. Yeah, that would not, that wouldn't be much of a show. So, yeah, and you had women athletes, but that would, these were younger women not married, and they did have clothing on, like bathing suit kind of things, you know, you know, there was modesty codes that distinguished women and men. But the, yeah, I would say the couple of the misconceptions, one, I think, is the educational level. I think, first of all, there wasn't a lot of education anyway, except in the more elite places and in the synagogue. And I think that is really

helpful for Christians to know in our synagogues. And then even in Judea, which wouldn't have had many synagogues, but people would have gone up to the temple. Scripture was read all the time. You know, every Sabbath, women and men who were sitting together, there wasn't a divide in the synagogue the way you have in some synagogues today. They didn't divide by men and women. So you had men and women sitting together, listening to scripture all the time. And that meant that Jewish women knew their Bible. I don't know how else to say it. You know, they knew their Bible, and then they were responsible for keeping a kosher home. And that was really important, especially in the first century. We have a lot of evidence of how important the, we have a lot of archaeological evidence. We also see it in the New Testament, in the Gospels,

where Jesus is often asked about clean and unclean food and washing of hands and all of that, which is very related. I mean, it's an accurate reflection of his time period. Later, there seems to be kind of a, I don't want to say that it fades away, but it is channeled in that rabbinic tradition. So you've got women who have to know, can I use this pot for cooking or not? women who have to know, can I use this pot for cooking or not? And is this wine acceptable or not? Because I'm responsible for my family's purity in this sense, and the husbands are relying on them. In fact, there's also, you don't hear it in the New Testament at all, but the menstrual purity codes were very important in certain other communities, including the Essenes. And we do have evidence from the Qumran material of married Essenes, and the woman, the wife, is given the responsibility of reporting on her husband if he violates the menstrual purity codes and shares the marital bed with her at a time when she is unclean.

It's her responsibility to tell the leader of that local group what has happened because her husband has put at risk the overall purity of the community. And when that was first translated and talked about, there were some male scholars who were like, well, that can't be right because then the woman would somehow, the wife would have some kind of authority over her husband. And so they were surprised at, but that's what it said. And I think it's important for us today to know that women were given opportunities to live into their religious conviction. And I know that, you know, women were not seen as reliable. there's all those tropes irrational you know all that stuff but and and that's true but it's not the whole truth

right so so I feel like it shouldn't be surprising then that you would have a Priscilla teaching Apollos right that she she probably was just a gifted thinker religiously like some women today good theology students and she would have had opportunities in the synagogue to learn a lot and so and and many feel that she had uh financial resources and so it's not as exceptional as it might seem to us today because of that opportunity that Jewish women had, much less so for religious training for Gentile women. That just wasn't part of the. So Jewish women had more religious by the very nature of the synagogue versus a woman, a Gentile woman raised in rome like the religious the religious structure was kind of different for them right or what about what do we call them not not that just a traditional pagan religions but the um the other religions the like the mystery cults or mystery cults or

other ones or other yeah you had like main ads for uh yeah And so women, if they were priestesses, and you had that. You did. They were trained, yes. So they would be trained on rituals. That's really what Greco-Roman religion was about, right? It was propitiating the gods. And so you had to do the ritual correctly. And so there were some cults that had priestesses, and they were trained on how to manage the festival rights.

You also had festivals that were mainly women who participated and sometimes they were ecstatic. That is, they would go out of the towns into the hillsides and they were respected and protected by those not part of that group so that they could do their rituals. But that's really what pagan religion, Greco-Roman, non-Jewish religion was like. So women did have leadership type roles in some of these other Greco-Roman religions? Oh, yes. Okay. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Not just the Vestal Virgins. We kind of think of them. Yeah. But, and they were very important for the safety of the city of Rome because they had to do their rituals correctly. Everybody had to do their rituals correctly so that the gods would be okay. Yeah. Not vengeful at all.

I used to say that women couldn't initiate a divorce, but either in your book or another I read said, well, that's not actually true. We have evidence of them initiating. Can you explain to us? Did that depend on whether it was Jewish or Greco-Roman? It's more contested within Judaism Judaism whether women could initiate a divorce. Part of that is trying to understand how rabbinic things were in the first and second centuries. So that's kind of where the conversation would go, I think, in that context. But in the wider Greco-Roman world, which Jews followed for the most part in terms of the way they understood marriage. So they would have dowry documents like the Gentiles. There wasn't a state-granted certificate. And I don't know that there's like a certificate that the local synagogue would give.

I mean, we don't have them. So it wasn't a state kind of run thing the way that marriage in the West is. What was a formal document that you could take to court was a dowry document. And those were very similar with the Gentile and the Jew. So, but with divorce, a woman could initiate the process but a woman could not execute like a document into a court without having a male guardian signature so that's where there you kind of have to have an asterisk so she could yes she could initiate, but she had to do it in line with a man also signing. And it could be a family member. It could be maybe less so a friend.

But that's yeah. And this would be also if she was doing business, she could have her husband sign documents as well. So what about being witnesses in court? That was another one where women's testimony was universally believed to be untrustworthy. But I think that's a little more complex, too, in the first century? Yeah, I think it is. I think money talks then and now. And so a wealthy woman would have, yeah, would be able to defend herself.

And we have a couple of examples of that where a man was trying to take advantage, a husband take advantage of his wealthy woman's, his wealthy wife's money. And the court saw through all that and sided with her. So we have that. We also have evidence of women not being paid attention to. There's a woman, Babatha, who is a widow. She was married to a fellow named Jesus, and they had a son named Jesus, and then he dies. And she's early second century. She lived around the Dead Sea. And she wants to get more money for her son. He's given a percentage of his inheritance month by month. And he has male guardians that are

overseeing it. She wants to contribute part of her wealth to her son's account, so to speak, and then draw like not 3%, but 6%. so that he would have more to live on. And she goes to court, oh, several times and each time is denied. We don't know why. So, you know, it's not like if you show up, they're going to say yes, but she at least showed up a lot. Wow. Can you talk just briefly, we talked offline about the new women. It's a phrase scholars use to describe what, at least in Rome, we have evidence that there's this kind of like these new women that were kind of like, seem like to be throwing off the shackles of the

really hardline patriarchal view of women. I'll stop because I want you to explain it. Sure. Well, yeah, yeah. And it's an interesting concept. I think what it tries to capture is this moment when Augustus, Octavian Caesar Augustus takes over as sole emperor and you move from some very significant time when you move from Republic, the Roman Republic, to now having a king, an emperor. And at that time, in order for him to present himself as very traditional, even though he was completely 180 changing things, right? I mean, you have, I love that line in Monty Python, the Holy Grail, you know, you don't vote for a king. I don't know. It's such a funny movie. Anyway, but it is kind of that he's got to make himself look like he's accountable to the Senate, the Roman Senate, when he's emperor, right? So he's trying to talk out of both sides

of his mouth, politically speaking. So in other areas, he wants to look really traditional. So he emphasizes how traditional his marriage is. He says, you know, Olivia makes my clothes for me, which is just a laugh out loud kind of thing. She wouldn't know a loom if it fell on her head. So, you know, she, but that is a way of saying she is a traditional, industrious, loyal Roman wife. Their daughter, though, really didn't go in that direction. She more followed Ovid, the poet, and his art of, what is it, the art of love, maybe, where he is sanctioning adultery. And he doesn't last long in Rome. And you have a couple of these writers, artists, radicals, who in this time of incredible upheaval, produce very radical ideas. And Augustus doesn't want any of that. And so he exiles them. And I think that's, so you have what I would say the new

woman is this blip on the screen in Rome for a couple of decades or less, where you have women who are enticed by the art of love and men. But for Augustus, he's got to clamp down on that. And I don't think that it spreads around the empire. I don't think that kind of quote unquote freedom. So you would see it more because for people who are familiar with this, which is probably most people to no fault of their own, this is a technical scholarly discussion. Pauline communities and how he identified the rise of these new women as a potential background for why Paul is saying the things he does in 1 Timothy 2, 1 Corinthians 11 and 14, and Titus 2. And so you're saying, yes, there was these new women, kind of like, I mean, I think he even

compared it to like, you know, women in the 60s, you know, kind of like breaking free from this patriarchal substructure and being equal with men in every way, you know, in terms of even sexual liberation. And he even says like that was, you know, new women were almost like pursuing adulterous affairs and like getting away with it. Their husbands kind of went along with it. I mean, very rare, very rare, but he was like, it's, you know, even their sexual independence mirrored kind of single men in first century Rome. You're saying like, yes, there was some of that, but it's more of a blip on the screen in Rome. It wasn't maybe as widespread. So it didn't, there wasn't a trajectory where it kept getting more and more prevalent. It was kind of like a period of time, but did it kind

of fizzle out to your knowledge? I think it fizzled out. I mean, you don't have Ovid II, you know, you don't have a whole movement that, that pursues that. And you, you have that I'm, you know, that I'm aware of. I, you know, I don't, I don't see that. There is some very snarky comments by Juvenal on, you know, what a married woman might try to do in the Roman baths. But, you know, I don't take juvenile as describing objective reality, right? He's being a satirist and he's grumpy. And so, you know, he really is. He's just very negative that way. I don't see a place where women were saying, I've got to break free of all these shackles. In the 1960s and up till today, there's this sense that true sexual freedom to be able to have sexual relations, women want to have sexual relations with as many men as often as they want. I'm not entirely sure that that even today is a desire for most women.

And there's some interesting scholarship that's just come out, Louise Perry, for example, and her work, right? So there's, that's still a conversation going on today. I don't see that for women. The pagan women at this time, I think were very interested in having ecstatic experiences of a religious sort. So I could, and that is one way, not just Winter, but other Antoinette Weyer, who would read the Corinthian women as kind of channeling their former Gentile religious experience or pagan religious experience of, you know, trying to get possessed by a spirit and just kind of lose consciousness and act out that way. So that is how one gets in contact with the God. And Paul, in that reading of Corinthians,

Paul would be saying, no, the spirit of the prophet is under the control of the prophet. You don't, you aren't consumed, you know, by the, and lose your mind when the Holy Spirit is upon you. So how, okay. So there's so much more we could talk about the background, but I want to kind of transition. I'm curious, like maybe some things you've already said, or maybe some things you haven't said, but like how has understanding the background helped you to understand some of the prohibition passages that women can't teach or exercise authority, like, or what's going on in Ephesus backdrop of first Timothy or Corinth and first Corinthians, like how has this, your study of the first century helped you

arrive at an egalitarian position of reading scripture? Yeah. Well, I would say that I can start with those problematic passages, but I also, I started with, as historians often do, with the things that are so regular for the people in the ancient world, they almost don't even need to emphasize them, you know, or we, when we take car travel for granted today, you know, like we just, I'll just hop in the car and go to the store. Like we don't need to say that we don't need to say, I went, I got in the car to go to the store. Cause we just assume, Oh, you're going to get in the car to go to the store. I don't even talk about it. It's those kind of things that I think are also really helpful. So I mentioned Yodia and Syntyche in Philippians, and they're Paul's

co-workers, and they're clearly very important people in the church. And they seem to be theologically okay, but just in practice, there seems to be a disunity. So if it had been, you know, George and Sam, well, Samuel, we would assume those are church leaders, and they're struggling with something. But because it's Yodi and Syntyche, we think, oh, wonder if they're, you know, one wants to serve coffee and the other wants to serve tea, you know, in the narthex after church. It's like we just minimize what the women could do. So I want to look at all the things that women in Paul's congregations are doing that are just normal, right? Like it's normal that they'reworkers. It's normal that Priscilla

teaches Apollos. It's normal that Junia is an apostle. It's normal that Phoebe is a deacon, a benefactor, and someone who takes the letter to the Romans to Rome and reads it to the congregation, thus being the first exegete of the book of Romans. Fortunately, Romans is such an easy letter to understand. I'm sure it was not a problem for her. So I look at all those things, right? Like that's what he does. And I take all of that and I say, okay, so what's happening in Timothy's world there in Ephesus that Paul is talking about? And I don't start in chapter two, I start in chapter one. And right out of the gate, Paul is saying, there are people in your congregation, including men,

who are teaching lies. They fancy themselves to be teachers of the law, but they're way off base. They speculate on endless genealogies. I mean, what he describes is really problematic. And he wants them to just stop it. They can't do it anymore. Timothy has to tell them to stop it. They can't have the mic anymore. And then he moves into in chapter two, what does holy living look like? And it's always going to be over against what does holy living look like? And it's always going to be over against what does holy living look like if you're a devotee of Artemis, because we know sort of what that looks like from inscriptions, from other writings. When I say holy, you know, we think of holiness towards God, which is good, but there was a piety, a way of comporting yourself so that the gods

would be pleased that existed then. Didn't map always right on top of Christian ethics, but it was there. And so Paul is saying, here's how a Christian would look, beginning of chapter two, because most of those people would have grown up thinking that religious practice looked like honoring Artemis. Finally, then I get to the section that most people just jump into, and that is when Paul says, let a woman learn. Right. So that's actually how it starts. Let a woman learn, which is in the command form. And we sometimes, I think, hear that as, here's a good suggestion, Timothy, if you have time in your busy schedule, let a woman learn. But I think, no, it's actually in a command form. Remember, I said earlier in our conversation how women in the Jewish culture learn scripture. If they're in synagogue, every Sabbath, they would have heard scripture.

And in fact, in Acts 15, James tells us that Moses is read in all of these diaspora cities, right? So these Gentiles are without excuse, right? They can know what God's word is, the Old Testament. But there is no pagan analog for that. And there's also not an easy way for adult women to go to school at this time. You had women who their husbands or their fathers would have educated them. And it very much happens in the household. So it would be hard for Timothy to say, oh, I'm just going to get a group of ladies together and we're just going to, you know, meet at four in the afternoon on a Tuesday for 10 weeks and I'll teach a scripture. That would have created a lot of problems. So Paul says, you've got to think about this, Timothy. You've got to figure out a way that you can purposefully train these women, most of whom

are Gentiles, who don't know scripture. Now, he also needs to educate the men, chapter one, but Paul doesn't need to command him to do that. There are vehicles in his culture that would allow that to happen pretty easily. But here, I think Paul uses command form because he's really serious about the fact they need to be educated. So they need to learn and they learn in quietness and full submission like everybody does. I mean, that's not a specific female qualification, right? That's just how a learner should be. The same word translated for quietly there is used just a few verses earlier when he commands everybody to live a gentle and quiet life. It's more like it's a posture of not being boisterous, which everybody shouldn't do, right? But it's not like absolute silence, don't talk, right?

Isn't that right with the word? Absolutely. And it doesn't suggest that women are somehow irritatingly interruptive or don't know how to sit still or have not been educated to do that. I know that's kind of a theory that's also circulated. And I'm just not convinced. It may be in certain cultures today that that is the case. But in the ancient world, I doubt that you would have that kind of disruptiveness due to lack of training that, you know, you just kind of have to sit and listen to someone. They would do that. You know, orators would travel in these cities. People would come to hear someone talk for a long time, kind of like how we go to movies. That's what they did. So people were used to sitting and listening. So I do not permit a woman, and that sounds in the English like it's a command, but it's actually just in the present tense. So I am not permitting would be another way to translate that. I'm not permitting a woman to teach or to have authority over a man. She must be silent.

So in that case, I think, well, I don't permit a woman to teach. And yet I know that Paul has just sent Phoebe with the letter to the Romans, and she's going to read it to them. And she's also a deacon, and he trusts her with stuff. So presumably he's okay with her teaching. And then I know, because Luke tells me straight up that Priscilla taught Apollos. I mean, Aquila was there too, but it's not like Priscilla was there in some hospitality sense and Aquila was doing the actual content teaching. They both were teaching.

And so, and Paul's totally okay with that. And I believe that Paul's consistent. So I think he must be saying here that there is a specific context that the women here are facing, and that down through the centuries, other churches might face, right? So I don't think it's just a first century problem. It can happen at any time when you have people trying to teach before they know what to say. And so Paul, I think, is saying here, they're not to teach. And I don't think, let me say it this way, I don't think the word man goes with teach. Grammatically, it does not. And I think conceptually also, it does not.

I think Paul is saying these women should not teach because they're not saying the right stuff in the same way that men. Just to get clarity. Oh, there's two questions I have then. So the teaching, are you assuming, and I'm not saying assuming in a bad way, but are you assuming that it's largely due to lack of education? So it's not the fact that they're females. It's that given that cultural context, there's good evidence that they wouldn't have had the proper education to be qualified to teach?

Yes, in Scripture. In the same way that the men are teaching false doctrine, devoting themselves to myths and endless genealogies that provoke controversial speculation. Like the same thing that the men are doing there in chapter one, I think they're also coming out of the mouths of women. And real quick, so you said it doesn't go with the men. Is it the exercise in authority, the authentane, that that's what goes with the men, but not the daskelon or whatever. Yes. Exactly. That's right. That I think should have accusative and it's in the genitive. I think that's how it is, but I don't have my Greek open. And you know what? I don't want to be a grammar police here. It may be that Paul, there's a way in which you can combine both of those infinitives and say they kind of are one

concept. And that's what some people will argue that teach and have authority over is kind of a single concept. Like authoritative teaching or a certain kind of teaching. Yeah, something like that. Yep. Yep. But I think there's actually a content problem. And I can't imagine Paul saying, you know what, you can go ahead and tell as many endless genealogists and mindless speculation stuff to the women in your congregation. I have no problem with that. And of course, they're teaching the children. Not a problem. I just want to protect the men with good teaching. I mean, there's no way Paul would say that. So the term assume authority over, it's an unfortunate translation because it's a word that we don't find anywhere else as a verb having over a child or an employer over employee or even a teacher over a student. It's not that. It's destructive. It's the kind of authority that dominates.

So it's not like Paul could write, I don't permit a woman to have althentane, is the word, over a man. However, a man can have althentane over a woman. Like, no one should have that kind of posture towards another person. So that, I think, is significant in this context, because I think overall, and this kind of gets to your question of how has history helped me with my exegesis, I think they are in part being syncretistic in their faith, and they are relying on some of the Artemis myths, reading those on top of Genesis and making assumptions about where evil came from that are just flat out wrong. Is that where we get the next phrase in 213, the four Adam was created first? I mean, and I think I've told you, this is a huge research project I'm working on.

I'm completely on, I'm going to keep saying I'm undecided until I've told you this is a huge research project I'm working on. I'm completely on. I'm going to keep saying I'm undecided until I have enough exegetical reasons to have a view that the four God created Adam first. I mean, I've read Cynthia Westfall on this. I've read lots of egalitarian. I'm just not quite satisfied yet. So can you push me over the edge on why? I can push people over the edge. It's one of my spiritual gifts. Yeah. Well, why Paul roots it in this creation account. And I've heard Keener says, well, he does the same thing in 1 Corinthians 11 with head coverings, but it's

like, well, yeah, I'm not sure if that's exactly the same kind of thing going on here. But anyway, the same kind of thing going on here. But anyway, so yeah, teacher exercise, dominating unhealthy authority over men for Adam is created first, not Eve. What's the logical connection there in your view? My thought is that the context of like having, I do two different things. I also jumped to 15. She will be saved through childbirth if they continue in faith, hope, and love. And we know that Artemis, which seems random to me, by the way, and most people, they do focus, you know, from 11 to 14, and then they just drop off. But I think, no, no, no, if you're gonna, you have to stay the course here. The therefore is, you know, 15 is where he pulls it all together. And I would laughingly say to my undergrad students, you know, I know that I am saved. Sozo, right? Like it is the verb to save that Paul uses salvation. I'm saved. I've had two children. I've had two children. I'm done. Not just one, two, just to be extra sure. So I'm done. Doesn't matter what happens, you know, and everybody laughs as you do, because it's stupid. You know, of course, Paul's not saying that. But then what is he saying? Why is he bringing that up? You know, and is he trying to explain both Genesis, but why is he trying to explain

Genesis? I think that's obviously where you know where he's going there i think it's for two reasons i think one is artemis she is the goddess of midwifery so i think there's there would be a natural sense that women and men their wives if their wives or their daughters were expecting children the natural response for them would be to lean into Artemis. And Artemis of the Ephesians is, in that time period, also, she would be celebrated as an authority. And I think there was probably some leaning on her for that. I also think, and here's where it's kind of an old fashioned argument, but I, or an older argument, but I continue to come back to it as I think it helps explain things. I do think that there was probably also some proto-gnostic rereading of Genesis 1 and 2 that was especially appealing because you had Artemis of the Ephesians

that was such a prominent female figure there. And we know that within just a couple of decades, you have a full flowering of Gnostic groups that later then church fathers will denounce. But these groups were powerful groups that had writings and, you know, kind of happens, I think, fairly quickly. The ideas have to have started somewhere. And we know that these, eventually these Gnostic texts tell us that they believed that Eve was actually not deceived, but that Eve revealed to Adam the unworthiness of the creator God because he was a creator God. And they believed in this pure spirit from which came about, I don't know, maybe a dozen pairs of animations that became more and more materialized, if you will, or corporal. And they all speculated on ascent up to heaven through these various divine gateways and past these various divine figures.

In other words, endless genealogies and these myths. You see what I'm saying? Like what's going on in chapter one? What's going on in chapter two? And we know from Colossians as well, there's speculation, esoteric speculation that at least some Jewish groups are interested in. So I think these are ideas that are circulating. It's not Gnosticism. And I don't even know if I should say it's proto-Gnosticism.

But I feel like if the women are to learn, I don't know, I just feel like the context is worship, because that's the beginning of chapter two, worship. So the context is worship. It's women being able to learn before they preach the gospel, that it seems arbitrary to me that he would somehow switch to the Genesis account, which has nothing to do with teaching. Yeah, right. account, which has nothing to do with teaching. Yeah, right. Unless you're dealing with the content of what is being taught currently in Ephesus. And if they are at all saying that Eve was not deceived, that's huge. And we know that later, quote unquote, Christians, Gnostic Christians, in fact, said that very thing. Eve was not deceived. Well i mean i mean chapter six talks about beware of the thing falsely called gnosis which is why which is why a lot of i'm just not telling you this but telling

my audience why a lot of people not a lot but some scholars would date first timothy to the second century right because it's like clearly he's referring to some as the argument goes some formal thing called gnosis gnosticism which wasn't around in the first century it It was more second century. Am I right there? Is that why some people say this letter belongs in the second century? It has this very structured view of the church. That's more second century. So even if we say, no, it is Pauline, it's in the first century, there's evidence within the letter that it does have. Whatever you want to use, proto, I know it's not in vogue anymore to really talk about proto-gnostic, but there's some link with what later becomes lot-gnosticism, right? That seems…

I'm trying to understand what they're saying and what is this myth. I mean, to me, gnosticism is all about recreating the myth. And there are endless genealogies in that. There's all kinds of speculation that's going on. So I, yeah, so that's where I think the problem is content. It's not who is speaking it, whether you're a man or a woman, you have to have the content correct. So real quick, I want to summarize this just so my audience and myself can understand. So the, the, you know, verses 13 to 15 for God created Adam first,

it wasn't the man that was deceived as Eve, and then she's saved through bearing kids and all this kind of, it gets weirder and weirder. We're thankfully doesn't keep going on and he transitions to something a little more clear in the next chapter. But you're saying that what Paul's doing there in 13 verses 13 to 15 is not establishing some order of creation that prioritizes male leadership over women. You're saying he's actually correcting some of the content of the kinds of

false teaching that was going on in Ephesus. Yes. Okay. That's really interesting. As a good scholar, I'm supposed to say I'm not quite convinced, but between you and me, I'm going to look into that for sure. Good. Good. I got you thinking. That's what a teacher should do. So I haven't read it yet, but I know – what would be the complementarian – if you're aware, I don't know. What's the complementarian pushback to what you're aware, I don't know, like what's the complimentary pushback to what you're saying?

I think I've had, is it Steve Baugh who's done some work in the background that he's really good at? I haven't read his article yet, but from a commentary position. So are you familiar with? I'm not actually familiar with that. I guess what I, what I struggle with is that there are actually women who teach, and they're not condemned. And so I think they just are doing that, you know? And so I think, how can Paul give Phoebe the letter to the Romans, the letter to the Romans and say, you know, thanks so much for taking this to them. She doesn't hand it off to some guy who then reads it there. She does what other letter carriers do, read it and explain it. So he has her as a conversation partner. I can't believe he's then saying, for all time, women, in an intrinsic sense, have power over men when they teach them. I think that is a unfortunate way of seeing the relationship between men and

women. So I feel like stuff is brought to the text that is presupposed about the nature of relationships that I don't think the text is assuming. So Phoebe, clearly a letter carrier, right? That's not, I've heard people say, how do we know she's a cat? But that's why he commends her. That's how you say it. Yes, exactly. And we have good evidence that letter carriers also read it, or is that also just like, that's just a historical fact? That's not, we don't need to dispute that, that letter carriers read the letter to the... But the third part though, like, is there clear evidence that the letter carrier who read the letter exegeted or explained or interpreted? Like, is there teaching? Because I had lots of commentary in churches about how a woman reads scripture. What evidence do we have

that she, as a letter carrier, would have gone beyond just reading, but actually interpreting? Well, if you look at the end of Ephesians with Tychicus, Paul says he'll tell you everything. You know, he's taking the letter. He'll tell you everything that you may know how I am and how I'm doing. I'm sending him to you for this very purpose. You may know how we are. He may encourage you. I think there is a sense in which Paul says, Tishicus is my mouthpiece. He's going to fill you in on everything. So I think most people look at that and they say, that would include the letter, you know, because otherwise, how are they going to understand the letter? There's nobody else. Who else is going to know it? And so it's only because

it's a woman that we're raising these questions. Honestly, I mean, I don't want to sound bad tempered, but oftentimes that really, that's what happens. Do we have extra biblical knowledge of what letter carriers did that are, that's more extensive than what these kinds of glimpses we have in the new Testament that you're referring to? I know there's been work done. Who's done the work on letter. Randy Richards has done a lot of stuff.

Yeah. They're at Palm beach Atlantic. He's done some work on that. Jeff Wyma in at Calvin seminary has done a lot of work on that. Yeah. So those would be two, I think, that would be great resources for people to delve into that. Often, and we know a lot from Cicero and his examples, but most letter writers in the ancient world had a much shorter letter. most letter writers in the ancient world had a much shorter letter. Part of Paul's being very innovative, like Romans is a very long letter, enormously long, like novel length compared to letters typically given. And so it was very expensive to produce. And, you know, it's just

a lot of time that went into that. So I think that's another thing to consider that this wasn't just something jotted down quickly and then handed to the first person who walked by your office door. Hey, could you deliver that, please? You know, this was a very carefully thought out. And Phoebe is Paul's benefactor. So she's his patron. is Paul's benefactor. So she's his patron. They have a close relationship. That is a form of friendship, I guess I would say, in the ancient world. So there was a, again, she would have known Paul well, Paul would have known her. I think that's important. And he trusted her. So, you know, those are the kind of things that I think when I then come to 1 Tim 2, I think Paul's going to be consistent here. He's got a team that includes women at every

level, so to speak, or every charismata, or every, for all the parts that need to be done for a church at that time. They're doing it. It's not, depending on how wealthy the person was or how much education they had, it wouldn't have seemed very, like, completely out of the blue. Like, most of the teachers in the first century church, first generation church, were Jewish, not because they were better than Gentiles, but because they did have more knowledge of the Old Testament by that time. You know, that just makes sense. So, and that's why you still have way more, even though if you have some examples of women teaching, you still have way more men, but that's largely due to the

cultural context where it would be very rare for a woman to have the kind of knowledge base to be a effective teacher. Whereas today, you know, obviously we still have ways to go, but it's quite different today. Would you say that like Paul's local, let's just say local, perhaps temporary ban on women teaching in Ephesus, that that cultural sensitivity could also be applied today? That if you're a missionary in a certain context where it'd be really overly disruptive to have a woman teaching or being an elder, maybe some Muslim context. today that if you're a missionary in a certain context where it'd be really overly disruptive

to have a woman teaching or being an elder, maybe some Muslim context. I don't know if I'm speaking beyond my knowledge, but would you say, yeah, there's certain contexts where we should also reflect Paul's cultural sensitivity or? So, but my thought is it's not really cultural sensitivity here in terms of it's inappropriate for a woman to teach, because obviously Apollos was totally fine to hear from Priscilla more about baptism. I think where I would see it culturally relevant is when someone comes into a context where they have a syncretistic, and by that I mean just not a full view of the narrative of Scripture, like maybe, you know, they know God created things, but they never heard of the fall, that it's going to be hard to understand what Jesus did on the cross.

At that point, nobody in that congregation should be teaching because they're not teaching the full gospel. So that's where I would say it's very relevant. The passage is still very relevant today. All of scripture is. It's both transcultural in that through the Holy Spirit, it meets our needs and it meets the church's needs each and every generation. But it's also a text written in Greek in the first century to Ephesus that had one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, namely the temple to Artemis. And maybe some of your listeners have been to Athens and they've seen the Parthenon, you know, the temple to Athena, the virgin Athena, Parthenon. I think I'm correct here with my numbers that the temple of Artemis was four times the size of the Parthenon. It's huge. Yeah. I mean, it's one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It just dominated the landscape. And that's the environment in which

Timothy is trying to guide these Gentile, formerly pagan believers into understanding what it looks like to live in faith, love, and holiness with propriety, right? That if Eve gives rise eventually to Messiah through Mary, and now we live in that faith, hope, and love with propriety, we birth the virtues, which is also a philosophical trope that people used at this time yeah i've been to ephesus i mean years ago and remember seeing how they vaguely recalling it but the plot of land there's no when i was there they reconstructed one pillar to kind of show you know whatever that's still there but the other plot of land where the temple stood is massive yes they took they took a lot of the stone and they built the temple to St. John.

Oh, really? Right next door, yeah. Oh, interesting. Just repurposing stone. It's so fascinating going to these old cities. I mean, you could go to the amphitheater. It's been somewhat reconstructed, somewhat, if I remember correctly, some of it's old and some of it's reconstructed somewhat if i remember correctly some of it's old and some of this we can sit there and just i remember sitting there and reading was it acts is it 18 or 19

the the riot that spills over into the amphitheater and like oh man uh it's wild it is incredible and they now have uh terrace homes that have been excavated and the frescoes in there are gorgeous. And it, it, I mean, it's just amazing. And one of the things you come away with is just how pervasive the myths and the stories of the, the gods and the goddesses were in everyday life. And the, the little kind of good luck charms, for example, that were little, I almost feel like we would say like goblins, you know, in today's terms, that were just ubiquitous. I mean, just everywhere. The interwovenness of the religion of the day, just saturated stuff. Now, you had the Jewish community that sat outside that with their traditions, but these Gentiles would have just, yeah, my hat is

off to Paul and Timothy and Priscilla and Aquila with the house church that met in their place. They're trying to just tell them, here's this new story. I mean, I guess a good analogy might be if you're going to write a letter today to a church that's in a city that's hyper, say, patriotic. Small town in Texas somewhere. No, you're going to get letters for that? Are you going to take that out? Who's going to argue against that? A small, super far right

town, a church. People are getting kind of converted out of that. But there's going to be layers and layers and layers and layers of patriotism that could lead to some kind of syncretistic whatever you know um and i think there is uh yeah maybe like with believing things about the start of our country yeah that even those who started our country didn't claim yeah right right and just like if

you're gonna write a letter you might be saying things that are trying to correct some syncretistic beliefs that if somebody just read the letter 2,000 years later, they might be like, without any kind of knowledge of the patriotism that underlies that, they might be like, whoa, why does he say this? child there like that you know whatever like um you know our allegiance isn't to a flag it's to a crucified king you know it's like what is that what is that man fly what what's wrong with the flag we have a what's a flag immoral it's like one that there's so much going on behind there that you know i'm making this up as i go then so maybe i should probably no it's good no you're absolutely right though that i think that's a very good analogy with the flag because I think that that's a symbol, right, that means a lot of different things in various places and time. Yep. And then, yeah, if you're unaware of that historical context, you can all of a sudden think flags are immoral or evil. You know, don't get up.

It's just categorically. It's like, well, no, there's something really specific going on here that you know. And I feel like at times people might might think, well, Lynn, you're just dodging the hard issues. Right. You just don't want to hear what God really is saying. And and my response to that is we could listen to you. Yeah. No, I have been told, why do you want the power? I just want to read scripture. But that is kind of, I think, there has to be an acknowledgement for anybody that goes to scripture. We all have a vested interest in something.

And it may be the status quo, right? And so those who say, like, perhaps to me, you just you just want it for your own benefit i think okay well i should be cautious of that because nobody should take that to scripture we do want scripture to correct us but do you realize that interpretation that you believe greatly benefits you it's not like it's some neutral thing. And it's only me that would benefit if something changed. You know what I mean? So I feel like that, that's important for everyone to recognize. We all have a horse in this race in one way or another when we're interpreting this, because we live in a world of men and women and we function in churches that have men and women.

So we all, as I say, have a horse in this race. It's not just women. In fact, I don't really like even to call it a women's issue. To me, it's much more about men. It's much more about men trying to think about what distinguishes men from women. And they're kind of asking Aristotelian questions at that point, right? They're kind of channeling Aristotle, who assumes that women are the opposite of men. And I think, well, man, I go back to Genesis. It feels like, no, we're actually, as Dorothy Sayers would answer, are women human? Yes. It's mostly like we're together. And so I feel that when men are asking a question about, well, can women do this? Or can women do that? It's usually about, or it's often

about, really, can men have this thing that only men do? And that's what defines men. So when someone says, you know, well, is Junia really an apostle? I think, yeah. I think naturally reading the Greek, she and Andronicus are apostles. But rather than fixate on that, take a look where she's sitting. She's in prison. She got arrested for preaching the gospel. Praise God. Like, that's what an apostolic leader does.

Did you see what I'm saying? Like, it's not about if we're going to think leadership, then let's think about scriptural leadership. And Paul's in prison and Junia's in prison. And that's where I kind of like to push things rather than assume, well, it's a power game. You wouldn't necessarily say this is nothing but oppressive patriarchy or whatever. Do you feel like the complementarian view is intrinsically like always going to be harmful or oppressing women? If that question makes sense. It does. Yeah, it does. And as I was thinking about our conversation, I thought, oh, I bet he's going to ask this. OK, so I've had people in the podcast say both.

And I've had people in the podcast say both. I've had Beth Allison Barr on who I think she such a way that women find it difficult to express their own voice, even in the privacy of their own home and in the intimacy of marriage on up through into the church. And it can just go so wrong so quickly. And that's, of course, what we often hear then, the stories of women who have been shut down in a variety of ways, right? However, I would say this. I have known colleagues, male colleagues, who at least at one point in their life and in my time of knowing them, they have identified as complementarians. And I believe they literally were complementarians. However, I didn't find the typical root of sexism. I know that sounds strong, but I didn't, they really were just trying to, as without any kind of value judgment, look at particular scriptures and decided that

particular, say, elder or preaching from a pulpit was something reserved for men. The problem that I have with complementarianism is it's really hard. The stuff that's reserved for men is the powerful stuff. It's not like men are to take out the trash and women are to empty the garbage disposal. Like both are garbage stuff. And it's just that tend to be stronger so they can lift the heavier bags and women have less upper body strength. And so they'll deal with the, um, garbage disposal. I mean, if it were that you're like, well, okay. You know, but it's not that. It's that men make decisions on behalf of other men and women, and women don't. And when you have negative, they're more irrational. But we tend to want to give God a reason for the distinction. And the distinction we perceive is one where the stakes are much different, much higher for men in making these decisions for others,

and women not having that say. So that's where I think complementarianism woven in just has some real structural weaknesses that can be – yeah, can lead to a lot of – Yeah. I've definitely – I mean I've seen – I've been in various complementarian churches. I have seen some that are better than others where, yeah, where the healthier ones would be where the men truly are humble. In my – and I could be totally blind to this. I'll totally admit that. I'm a guy. I don't see things.

I was just, my wife and I were just talking about this the other day. I'm like, do you experience, do you experience sexism in the church? And she said several things. I'm like, I never thought of that, you know, like that's wow. So I know my eyes are just barely being open to stuff that I will never fully understand or appreciate. my eyes are just barely being open to stuff that I will never fully understand or appreciate. But so in my, again, very jaded maybe experience, I have seen men that, you know,

seems to be driven by exegetical conviction. They are humble. They do listen to women truly, you know, they seem to value women. Again, I'm sure there's blind spots we all have. But then I've been in other contexts where, yeah, it does seem that the very structure of male-only leadership has led to a super unhealthy view of women. I guess one of my problems, too, in the very discussion is the language surrounding it from both sides does seem to assume – like when even when I hear hierarchy or you know only men have the power I'm like well wait a minute are we assuming a an ecclesiology where leaders have power over all the non-leaders where there is a hierarchy of leadership and non-leadership I think Jesus turned that upside down in so many places and if it is CEO power that the leaders have power whether they're men or women or men only whatever then I think well that a, I don't know if that's a good reflection of biblical leadership. You know, I know, I know servant leadership's kind of thrown around. It's like, oh no,

we're servant leaders. But I'm like, no, really? Like, are you? Yeah. I don't like that word servant leader. You think it's just thrown around as a... I think it's thrown around too much. Yeah. Servants are good. That's what Jesus said. Servants, yeah. Not servant leader, just servants. And I, and I think one of the good things that is coming out to your point, some of these churches are recognizing that men can bully other men. And I'm really glad that men are speaking out

because I think it probably takes courage to, to do that. You know, I think of what's the worst thing you could call a boy or a young man? It's a sissy, right? You're like a girl. And so there's this sense in which men are also forming their identity and are wanting to be servants of the church and serve Christ faithfully. Absolutely. You know, I think it's a good thing when a man can say, I think I've just been bullied. You know, I think that takes great courage. They're appropriately vulnerable because that's what's going to help us move to a healthy

church environment. Yeah, that's good. Well, Lynn, I've taken you over an hour. So thank you for your, thank you so much for your time. And I know you've been on the podcast now twice in this year. So I wouldn't mind having you back again.

Anytime, Preston. It's always fun. We just, you know, hey, did you record this, by the way? Because we were just talking, right? Well, I'm so excited about having you out in Boise next spring at the Exiles Conference with other great scholars. I can't wait for that conversation.

I think we have a great. Yeah, that's going to be awesome. And some of the students here at Northern Seminary, they've already contacted me. Hey, you're going out there. That's so cool. Oh, sweet. Yeah. So you have a whole fan base here.

We love Northern Seminary. You guys are doing great work out there. So many blessings. Awesome. Thanks Preston. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.