Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1060: Artemis, Ephesus, and the Background to 1 Timothy 2: Dr. Sandra Glahn

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

Dr. Glahn is a professor of Media Arts and Worship at Dallas Theological Seminary and holds a Th.M. from DTS and a Ph.D. from University of Texas at Dallas. She's the author of many books, both fiction and non, including the forthcomiong book Nobody's Mother: Artemis of the Ephesians in Antiquity and the New Testament (IVP, Fall 2023), which forms of topic of our rather scintilating and in-depth conversation. 

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Gold Level supporters get all of this and access to monthly Zoom chats where we basically blow the doors open on any topic they want to discuss. My patrons play a vital role in nurturing the mission of Theology in the Raw. And for me, just personally, interacting with my Patreon supporters has become one of the hidden blessings in this podcast ministry. So you can check out all of the info at patreon.com forward slash Theology in the Raw. That's patreon.com forward slash Theology in the Raw. That's patreon.com forward slash Theology in the Raw. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is Dr. Sandra Glahn, who has a THM from Dallas Theological Seminary and a PhD from University of Texas at Dallas and is a professor of media arts and worship at the one and only Dallas Theological Seminary.

And Sandra is the author of a forthcoming book called Nobody's Mother, Artemis of the Ephesians in Antiquity and the New Testament, which is the subject of our conversation. Sandra has done just a ton of work on the background of the letters to, the two letters to Timothy, in particular, as it relates to the Artemis cult and how that interacts with Paul's two letters to Timothy. So please welcome to the show show for the first time, the one and only Dr. Sandra Gorman. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. I've been wanting to have you on for months. We have, I feel like I have a growing number of mutual friends. Every time I talk to somebody, they're like, oh, you got to have Sandra on your podcast. I'm like, I'm trying. So I love the work you're doing. So it's mutual admiration society here.

Awesome. Awesome. Thank you. The main reason why I want to have you on this might spawn various rabbit trails. I don't know, but you're, you've been doing a lot of work on the background of Ephesus in particular, how it applies to, you know, the, I guess, the pastoral, well, first and second Timothy, with the question of women in the church leadership there. Can you give us, yeah, just give us a brief overview of your work, and I'm sure I'll have tons of questions. It comes out of my story, because my husband and I had 10 years of infertility and pregnancy loss, and failed adoptions. I lost sevenility and pregnancy loss and failed adoptions. I lost seven early pregnancies, three failed adoptions, an ectopic. And I'm looking at that

little line, a woman will be safe for childbearing. And it raises some questions and the answers that are given in pretty conservative spaces are, well, it means she's supposed to be domestic with her children but that is her outlet for teaching i'm like and where does that leave me and not just that i mean that that began the question and not just that how does that square with paul telling people to think about staying single right um i mean it it raised more questions for me than it answered. That's what started it. I remember asking my OB-GYN, who was a DTS, a Dallas Seminary grad, what does that mean? I don't even remember his answer.

He's a great scholar, but I just remember going, yeah, no, that's not working. I need to explore this for myself. That's part of why I got a THM. Like I had to be able to translate for myself because everything was being mitigated through the eyes of people who cared, but were not asking the same questions I was asking. And they weren't questions that had 100% to do with the ramifications for their life like it did for me, particularly because I was being affirmed in gifts of teaching. And that was the very gift that people are saying, you know, that's supposed to be channeled domestically. What am I supposed to do? My view of spiritual gifts doesn't fit with the nuclear family that you're describing.

doesn't fit with the nuclear family that you're describing. Wow. Wow. So, so we're talking about first Timothy two 15 at the end of that complicated, well debated, debated passage. Some people say it's straightforward. Um, you know, women shall be saved, but women will be saved through childbearing if they persevere in, I don't have it on my head, but yeah. Um, can you list the character qualities yeah so that's where your research that's kind of initiated your research into this topic um what what are some of the justice let's just start with that verse what are some of the main interpretations of that passage maybe if you can think about them um and then um why weren't you satisfied with that and i'd love to hear your take on it because i've been wrestling with that passage for a while now too

yeah i mean good for you and good for you for doing the hard work. So I was sitting in, I think it was an ecclesiology course, and it was mentioned that one of the theories of the backdrop for this verse that is part of a letter from Paul to his protege Timothy, whom he's left in Ephesus, you know, to teach people, certain people not to teach false doctrine. Somebody had explored, maybe it had to do with Artemis being a fertility goddess and a mother goddess, but it was in the early 90s, and that theory was blown apart, and rightfully so, because as it was put forward, number one, it was really looking at fourth century sources. And all we really care about is who was Artemis at the time of Paul,

right? We don't need to know she was in Ephesus in the 10th century BC as a different goddess. And we don't need to know who she was in the 7th century AD. We need to know, yeah, but who would Paul have thought she was? So part of the pushback against that idea was that it was the sources were too late. And so I completely wrote it off. So anyway, that's one of the big theory. I mean, one is it's straightforward. God made women to be silent in the churches and that men are supposed to be teachers. Or if you want to modify that, women don't teach doctrine or women don't stand in the churches and that men are supposed to be teachers or you want to modify

that women don't teach doctrine or women don't stand in the pulpit so they can like you know something she can lead a small group um some go farther and in application and it's like a man can't learn from a woman right yeah um so so there are big questions about the hermeneutics here. How do we understand what's written and who it was written to? What what really shocked me was on my 25th anniversary, my husband took me to Ephesus and I was standing there looking at the story of the city told in stone in an approximately first, second century piece of work. And there are the Amazon women as part of this city's story. And part of the discounting the Artemis idea was that Amazonians, if they even exist, were completely mythological and had nothing to do with Ephesus. And I'm standing in Ephesus going, okay, wait, I just

believe what I read. Who was Artemis at the time of Paul? And is it possible that she was on Paul's mind? And the main reason I wondered that was because of the book of Acts, right? Because it has a very long narrative about Ephesus. And it begins with magic happening in Ephesus. And we have the original bonfire of the vanities. Magic is illegal everywhere else in the empire. How was Ephesus getting away with it? And right after that magic session,

which we often don't connect with Artemis, but we need to, you have this big brouhaha with basically the souvenir makers who are saying, hey, Paul's cutting into our financial success here because he's teaching that gods made with hands aren't real gods. And hello, our goddess is made with hands. And long story short, Paul was already planning to leave for Macedonia. He'd been in Ephesus for a couple of years and it was time to go. So he was prepping it to leave, but it kind of runs out of town a little faster. And this is probably the occasion for saying to Timothy, Timothy had gone ahead to Macedonia. My guess is, totally a guess, that Paul dropped him off in Miletus on his way back.

And the reason I left you in Ephesus was to teach certain people not to teach false doctrine. Now, my translation had said to teach certain men. And once I got into Greek, I'm like, that's a word for person, certain people. So that then I reread the letter. Okay, is there evidence that men and women are teaching falsehood in the city and then i'm looking at verses like you know some women are teaching old wives tales i'm like well that sounds like a little bit of a um stereotype and sure enough you did some word study on that and some of the latest research and go that word may connect to magic. Oh, wow. Wait, what passage is that? It's in one of the Timothys.

Sorry, I don't have it in front of me. But they're going house to house, teaching nonsense, where, you know, old wives tales is one of them. And going house to house is the same language that Luke is using to describe the church,

meeting house to house. So I pictured girlfriends Luke is using to describe the church, meeting house to house. So I pictured girlfriends going back door to back door gossiping. Gossip is also another translation in there. And it's like, oh, maybe this is women going from house church to house church, teaching magic-y sorts of nonsense. So, I mean, there are other hints that men also are leading women astray here. So, first question I'm asking right out of the chute is, is it possible that women are teaching in Ephesus, not just men? And that Paul is saying certain people need to not teach false doctrine. And Timothy, it's part of your job to set that straight.

And the rest of the book is we're going to organize we're going to have deacons and elders widows in my view deaconesses female deacons um so we're going to organize the church with mothers fathers sisters and brothers um and you know one of the ways to fight this is going to be let them learn but in quietness so it as i said and it's um first timothy 513 for the for the listeners where the women are going house to house and in that i think that passage is often neglected the whole i mean the really lengthy treatment on widows in first timothy 5 we leave that out of the there's a lot on women in all the pastorals really and if we just read the last part of chapter 2 in isolation i think we do don't get the full context that's that's

super helpful um house to house that's funny i as much as i've reoriented my mind when i see house in the new testament not to think of a modern day house i've never thought of that passage in that way that that's yeah i'm gonna go i I got us off on a little bit on a bunny trail. Who is Artemis and why does she matter? So if Artemis is why Paul gets run out of town, I want to know, she obviously has a huge pull on this very important city. I want to know who she is. And I don't just want to know who the synoptic Artemis is from the 7th century BC to the 4th century or whatever AD. I want to know who she is. And I don't just want to know who the synoptic Artemis is from the 7th century BC to the 4th century or whatever AD. I want to know who she is at the time of Paul. You know, a lot of us have been to Ephesus and you see the library there. You got to

erase it because the library wasn't there when Paul was there. Like, so as I'm walking through, I'm going, I want to know who was here and what was happening in Paul and Timothy's world. And it's a wonderful time to be asking that because we have the internet now and we have access to the inscriptions that have been entered from Ephesus. And I can do, I can sit in my jammies in my living room and type in Artemis or Temidus, you know, the forms of Artemis and find what is said about her in the inscriptions in Ephesus. First century. And first century. Yes. So, and in fact, you know, the Romans loved inscriptions.

And it's such a gift to Bible scholars, because it's like leaving us with a context lexicon all over the empire for the very languages that we need to be giving a context for scripture. And it's so underutilized. And when you and I pick up a Koine Greek lexicon, it isn't including all the inscriptions. So there's all this work, maybe a couple major ones, but not the thousands. You know, one scholar estimates there are half a million of them that we haven't drawn on to give us a context for a lot of words. So I wanted to know, what are they saying about Artemis in the first century? But I also had to go back and say,

well, what's the backstory on her? And so I'm looking at Homer and I'm seeing, okay, she's committed to virginity. That's the number one thing. She is committed to virginity. And are there hints in first Timothy that there are a lot of virgins in Ephesus? And then to learn that the word widow doesn't necessarily mean you've ever lost a husband. It's without a man, woman. So, oh, it doesn't necessarily wait the the word yeah the means so we we have a reference in one of the church fathers to the the widows who are virgins you're

like huh oh okay so in the same way that english doesn't have a word for an older woman who's never been married we have ugly words uh you know, spinster, gross, right? But we don't really have, we need good vocabulary. And they didn't either. And so it was so rare in first century Ephesus, I shouldn't say in Ephesus, it was so rare in the world that's using Koine Greek for a woman to have never been married and to be older. So we don't have an actual word for that in the same way that we have gune, which can mean wife or woman, because once you're past maidenhood, once you start menstruating, you know, you get paired up with somebody and it's just very rare to be a woman who's not married. So you don't need separate words for woman and wife like we do

in English. So that's part of what we have to consider when we're talking about all the different verses in the New Testament of limiting women. Because in 1 Timothy 2, the woman in mind is going to be saved through childbearing. Now, is that a woman or is that a wife? You would assume that the contextual clue might suggest, well, what if we read this, I'm not allowing a wife to teach or often attain a husband? Is there something going on in the husband-wife dynamic that's awkward in public? It's just a question to add to the discussion. Often we assume that he can't be talking about wives because earlier he's talking about women's modesty.

But again, that's looking from an American context where there are lots of single women. If you have a 15-year-old, she's going to be paired up with somebody. And modesty is not really a problem among the 13, 14-year-olds because mom and dad are really dictating what kind of messaging she is sending. But also there's a huge, huge class element that we tend to tend to, I mean, we use the word modest that way too. He has a modest house, we might say, but it's not our primary understanding for the word. But right after he wants women or wives to be modest, he's talking about gold and pearls and easy apparel.

Am I all over the map enough for you? I want to read your book right now. I want you to email it to me and I want to read it. This is so interesting to me. So three quarters of my book is just asking, who is Artemis? And my goal really is not setting out to solve, quote, solve 1 Timothy 2. It certainly has ramifications for it, but probably the biggest takeaway is Artemis in Ephesus in the first century has a unique flavor for Artemis in that

she's the same Artemis everywhere else. Here's the best analogy I can think of. Lady Liberty enlightening the world in New York Harbor has an immigration flavor that the same statue in Paris doesn't have. Artemis in Ephesus has some qualities. It's the same Artemis, maybe like Mary of Guadalupe, right? It's still Jesus's mother, but there's some local stuff happening. And Artemis in Ephesus, both in antiquity, because Ephesus is her birthplace, and in New Testament times, it is a goddess of midwifery. She is committed to virginity. She has arrows that can euthanize. I suspect that a woman who is a new Christian,

who is terrified that the biggest thing she's walked away from as a benefit in Artemis worship is protection in childbirth, which is the number one cause of death for women. And so they're probably praying either kill me quickly and painlessly or deliver me safely. And part of why Artemis became a goddess of midwifery is because her father is Zeus, who's the big daddy god, and Zeus is married to Hera, who's very powerful. But Zeus has a little dalliance with Leto, and Leto gets pregnant with twins. And the world is very unfriendly to Leto when she's ready to deliver because they don't want to hack off the wife, right right but she finds a grove of trees near ortigia which has been placed near ephesus and artemis is born first first born

so so in their creation story the woman is first that's the backdrop of the 213 when paul goes out his way to say it was Paul it was Adam that was born first is that is that what you're yeah so if we just look at the line Adam was born first we're not going to say that's a principle like if you're just reading at face value if you're in a hermeneutics class and you say Adam born first you're going to say that's a narrative and we principalize it and make it about firstness being preeminence right but we could also read it that there's a big creation story that has affected women's attitudes and paul is create is answering a creation story with the creation story not only was adam first but he was

even deceived so get off your high horse basically so that okay so i've read other works that try to situate some kind of proto-gnostic creation myth there because you do have kind of a different spin on the creation story i see creation creation story um through gnostic literature but that again that's late kind of like the you know um so could have been some kind of proto-gnostic readings around the first century it have been some kind of proto-gnostic readings around the first century? I don't know about proto-gnostic. Well, let me address that in a second. I think Paul has the specific birth narrative in mind. Artemis is to Ephesus like Jesus is to Bethlehem. That is the place where the birth happened. It's celebrated annually with a big parade. It's the natal city. It's a pilgrimage city. And we know both from the Book of Acts, that's my primary document, but also from antiquity that the temple is one of the seven wonders of the world. It's a massive temple. Renown is known empire-wide.

It's renowned as known empire wide. And so we don't really even have to get too much into Gnosticism or proto Gnosticism. And I mean, that's a whole nother question. I do think that you have what we might consider the perfect seedbed where Gnosticism could flourish later in a cult that is really into virginity. I mean, don't marry, don't taste, don't touch. Like, we have misread it. I think when we looked at it as her being a sex and fertility goddess, it is the exact opposite. It was asceticism. It was virginity. And so maybe while the Corinthians need to be told, hey, think about staying single, thephesians uh let's talk about getting married and having kids interesting you also you do have a first century work i'm blanking on it i have my notes here um is it dinner dinner didorimus or i i read an article that's a first century work written it's it's a it's a it's a fictional piece, so it's a story.

Oh, yeah, okay. It's written in the first century. Xenophon has... Yeah, him. Okay, here's a story for you. So Xenophon is a fiction writer in the period I'm looking at. Yes, in Ephesus, right? Yes, and very possibly was an inspiration for Romeo and Juliet. Very possibly. And it's set

in Ephesus and they make offerings to Artemis and they pray to Artemis. One of the things that we see in this is how geographical gods and goddesses are. But Artemis, you know, they pray to her when they're outside of Ephesus, but really, but really, she's the queen of Ephesus. And when I initially did my dissertation on this, but when I did my dissertation, I didn't include that because they were dating it as a third century work. And so what has been fun since it's been redated to the period I'm looking at, I had a guy walk into my office at Dallas Seminary one day and sit down and said, we have been doing parallel work without knowing about each other and have reached some of the same conclusions. It was Gary Hogue, and he did. I read his article, yeah. On the influence of Artemis on the wealth stuff in the pastorals, you know, the gold and

the pearls and teach, you know, yeah, there's all kinds of mentions of wealth and money and materialism in 1 and 2 Timothy. And so he was looking at that through the grid of what was said in Artemis' work. And both of us have concluded that both in the wealth stuff and on the women's slash wives stuff that Paul is using all kinds of words that they would have recognized in the same and connected with Artemis in the same way that we would connect kryptonite with Superman. So your work that you've done resonates with Hogue's stuff in that parallel study he did. we were looking at different parts of the pastoral we both basically concluded all kinds of word overlap in the artemis inscriptions and mentality even fiery

darts of the devil you got a goddess who's shooting arrows oh wow ephesians 6 he's writing to the ephesians talking about spiritual warfare and you got some of these words that they might have thought i'm trying to let me play the critic um and i don't know if i have not done a study even be a good devil's advocate but like so he never mentions artemis and the pastorals um i'm gonna never mention any god luke will luke will mention hermes paul seems to go out of his way to never utter the name of a god he's a good jew oh interesting so because i thought you're gonna say well he doesn't need to because it's just kind of there but you're saying he's probably deliberately avoiding i think he's totally deliberate but his wording is gonna the original audience is gonna clearly make the connection is that what you're saying okay so paul typically

begins his epistles with grace and peace to you i are one of the names of artemis is artemis savior so terria okay paul begins first timothy with a reference to god as savior like right out of the chute yeah it's like and savior is not a word i mean if you do a word study on the savior you're like yeah it's really not a big pauline word it's it's not a word that gets used a lot for Christ as Savior in Pauline work. But when he's talking to the Ephesians or Timothy in Ephesus, he's pulling out. Also, you find it in Titus, which has a big, probably a big influence from Artemis as well. I've got a question. This is a little, I mean, it's on the topic, actually.

But a lot of the complementarian scholars i read and i love i love that you're just trying to do good historical work without a major action grind because i didn't know where it would lead yeah for my when i read just like historical reconstructive kind of works that don't have kind of like a modern day agenda to land on this view i personally tend to trust it a little more and one of my favorites is i mentioned a lot on the podcast but bruce winter who i think has done a lot of just rich rich historical work but he doesn't like explicitly kind of like trying to push kind of a modern interpretive conclusion he's just trying to open up the background a little bit more so i

i i love that's kind of your angle have you interacted with uh steve baugh's work and i asked because he a lot of complementarians will draw on his historical work on ephesus and i forget exactly what they draw on but they often reference him to say a lot of these kind of background ways of reading first timothy aren't legitimate steve baugh has kind of painted a better background here where we can't kind of pinpoint what's going on in paul's letter to pin it on kind of some historical situation is this i love his work okay does it conflict with what you're doing can you summarize his work and and maybe put it in dialogue what you're doing yeah so first of all steve baugh makes a really strong case case that Artemis is not a mother goddess.

Okay. And he's like, it's really hard to argue from silence. But if you're reading inscriptions all day and you're there all day and you never see any references to mother and you only see references of virginity and you never see anything about prostitution. Yeah, it's hard to prove the absence of something, but it's not there. And that was completely what I found. My findings completely matched his work on that. He also has done excellent work on what were the different titles that would have been given to women who are part of the priestess cult. He's done great work on that, like six different job descriptions that we'll find in the inscriptions

of she was a priestess or she was one of the apparel. There was a, there was a, like a clergy role in the cult for somebody just to dress the goddess, it looks like, which fits with fancy apparel. Anyway, so I think that where, where he and I differ is on the ramifications. Okay. But a lot of people who've come up with ramifications have been people like the Cragers who I was quoting earlier, who've said she's a fertility goddess or she's a mother goddess. And I think where we missed the boat in criticizing them was we wrote off Artemis altogether, even though the book of Acts gives us a really good flag that that's what's happening in Ephesus, But because their dates were off.

And he's right in saying, yeah, that's just off. And so we needed another look at what does it mean? We agree that Artemis is not a mother goddess. And we also agree that if you see a statue of Artemis of Ephesus, it's going to look like she's covered with breasts. And Jerome refers to her in the fourth century as polymaston, multi-breasted. And we both completely agree that that is not what those are. And also, in the West, we tend to think if something is breasty, then it's sexy, which is not necessarily how something coming out of a Hittite world or Anatolian world is going to make that connection, right? They don't have formula. Yeah. Nursing

rooms. It's, it's just, you know, part of being a mother. Yeah. But also, yeah, he didn't see her as a mother goddess. And that might the title of my forthcoming book is Nobody's Mother. And not everybody agrees with me on that. But again, I'm like, she's a virgin, a confirmed virgin. And 100% of the sources that I found in Ephesus, relating to Ephesus, stick to that narrative. You might find a different narrative far away in the empire for Artemis, but I'm just interested in sort of roughly 200 BC to 280. I really prefer 100 to 100. What did those people say? And my tools of analysis are what are the literary sources in that time? What are the epigraphic or the inscription sources in that time? What do the coins from that time tell us?

What does the architecture from that time tell us? So whereas in the past, we were looking at a synoptic Artemis, both Bob and I would probably agree that we're just looking, our main interest is on for the New Testament interpretation, which is going to really limit the years that we're looking at. I want to ask you an honest question. Are you and Bob kind of the two let's just say evangelical authorities on the background of ephesus and i i mean you did your i would not put myself in that category but i would put clinton arnold up there uh i would put richard oster up there oster is is brilliant with inscriptions i owe a lot to his work. And both Bob and Oster were the ones that initially pointed me through their works

toward Artemis is not a fertility mothering goddess, which is what I suspected might be happening with Saved Through Childbearing. And so agreeing that the earlier work was looking at the wrong centuries, I'm relooking, recognizing that that was a legit poo-pooing, but we went too far in just writing off Artemis as any kind of influence in Ephesus.

And fortunately, all the, I mean, there was a lot of conflict over this in the late 90s. Unfortunately, it's died down enough that we can revisit this without everybody having a real knee-jerk reaction to we already had we already handled this we already dealt with this well we did so as i understand it trying to get my arms my mind around the scholarly kind of trajectory here is it uh you pronounced it crager and crager i'm familiar i've not read their book but they're the ones who made a lot about artemis as a background for Ephesians 2. They're drawn on later sources. Because I see loads of egalitarians critique. I haven't seen

anybody speak positively of their work in the sources, at least. They're kind of like, yeah, that thesis has been denounced. Probably Bob played a role in denouncing that. So you're saying, yes, they had the wrong conclusion about who Artemis was or drawn on later sources, but there's a lot of rich first century material we can revisit to kind of reconstruct a proper background rather than dismissing the background. Perfect summary. Here's part of why they're so influential. So, you know, Crager and Crager, a married couple, founded, I think she was the founder of Christians for Biblical Equality, which is the egalitarian group. And so, you know, she's their founder. And I remember going to the Evangelical Theological Society and seeing a bookmark that was being handed out at their booth of this,

you know, picture of this Artemis of Ephesus that looks like she's got a lot of breasts. We should probably talk about what those really are. But anyway, I have that question. Yeah. But again, and it's talking about her being a fertility goddess. I'm like, yeah, no, I'm not hearing anybody else. I'm not hearing the historians say this. To their credit, CBE invited me to their national meeting to present my research.

And I got permission from the school where I teach to go teach there and to present my work. And actually, it was there that the book contract came into motion. It was somebody that was sitting there from IVP. And, you know, it was well received. Those who had come were like, we just want to know what the Bible says. We just want to know what the Bible says. We just want to know the truth. And so let's explore this together.

Some were like, I'm glad that we can have a high view of Paul and still factor in backgrounds. I'm glad we can have a high view of scripture and factor in backgrounds. And we need help on knowing when do you do that. Yeah, yeah. That's so helpful. Yeah, so what are those breast-like looking things? So I was an ethicist, gosh, this was 24 years ago. And I still remember going to the museum, seeing the statue, and everybody was saying these are breasts or whatever, infertility goddess.

So yeah, I'm familiar with that. Here are some hints for why we eliminate breasts before I'm going to talk about what we think they are. So one thing is they're completely lacking nipples. It's pretty hard to be nursing if you don't have nipples. So same shape, except not. The other thing is you've got like a statue of Zeus with the same thing. You've got some men showing up with that and probably pectoral armor. Okay. So that's another big thing. Another is that on some of them, they are really down at her stomach, not high enough to be breasts. So then you start on the journey. One of my colleagues at DTS was the first to introduce me to the work of a guy who was had been with the Australia.

The Australians have really dominated the archaeological work there for more than 100 years. And a guy who had been there since like his 20s, and it ended up leading the whole thing. And he had discovered a bunch of amber pendants with holes at the top, so you could string them together that were the exact same shape. And so he sort of brought forth this idea that that shape really matched a super early depiction of the goddess that very well may be the reference in Acts when it talks about the image that fell from heaven. The actual word is diopet or Zeus fallen. As it turned out, the Liverpool Museum had something that was actual word is diopet or Zeus fallen. As it turned out, the Liverpool Museum had something that was described as a diopet that had been taken from Ephesus that

they sent me pictures of. My editor made me, you know, didn't make me, but I had to cut that whole section out because it was a big major bunny trail. But I think we might have solved what the image was that they think fell from heaven. But anyway, this archaeologist is seeing the same shape picked up from the original god in the city. But then more recently, maybe in the last 10 years, he was a co-sponsor of a conference in Ephesus that brought in a historian to look at that. And I think she has the best explanation. And that is we've been looking at these as breasty sort of European interpretations. And we should have been looking at more Hittite in this part of the world. The Hittite influence was much greater. Like there are some bees on the side of Artemis's leg on the statue.

And we've read that as like mother bee. And they're like, yeah, no, they didn't know bees were women until like the 18th century. And they discovered, you know, King Bee had ovaries. Probably not so much a queen bee as a Hittite story about a bee. And probably that probably those breasty looking things are magic sacks. Magic sacks. Okay. Okay. And so it's connected to kind of the it's connected to zeus

you're saying um i'm saying it's connected to magic and connected with more hittite mythology than see we look at diana you know as the influence of conflation of artemis and kind of go that direction they're like yes maybe more of a hittite conflation than a diagnosis is in ancient where the ancient hittite kingdom was right it was an anatolia yes okay tight world yes right and you know smithsonian has come out smithsonian and national geographic have both said hey you know what we've found the amazons are probably real. Can you explain Amazon? We're all just thinking of like the online store. What is an Amazon?

Amazon women, one breast, they're carrying bows and arrows, all kinds of works from antiquity connect Artemis and Ephesus with the Amazon myth. They say Amazon women camped around her temple that they worshiped as part of the natal story on a regular basis. We see an Amazon women connection in that novel you were talking about. And so, again, you think Amazon women. Yeah, these are without man.

men, women. Oh. Didn't hate men. One breast. Yes. They didn't hate men, but they were not men and women like in partnership.

There was no parity there. P-A-R-I-T, not P-A-R-O-D-Y. No parity. This episode is sponsored by Biola University. Biola is consistently ranked as one of the nation's leading Christian universities. It has over 300 academic programs of both the undergraduate and graduate levels,

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of all, they'll be prepared to serve as God's instrument in their communities and around the world. Now, through May 1st, 2023, if you use the promo code Preston, okay, my name, Preston, that will waive the application fee for any Biola program. Okay, so promo code Preston, waive the fee. Some restrictions might apply. Just visit biola.edu for more information. Hello, friends. Registration is now open for Exiles in Babylon conference, and I cannot wait for this conference. Here's a few topics that we're going to wrestle with. The future of the church, disability in the church, multi-ethnic perspectives on American Christianity, and a conversational debate on the problem of evil and suffering. We have Eugene Cho, Elise Fitzpatrick, Matt Chandler, Michelle Sanchez, Justin Gibney, Devin Stalemar, Hardwick. The list goes on and on. Joey Dodson's going to be there.

Greg Boyd and Clay Jones, they're going to be engaging in this conversational debate on the problem of evil and suffering. And of course, we have to have Ellie Bonilla and Street Hams back by popular demand. And Tanika Wye and Evan Wickham will be leading our multi-ethnic worship again. We're also adding a pre-conference this year. So we're going to do an in-depth scholarly conversation on the question of women in ministry featuring two scholars on each side of the issue. So Drs. Gary Brashears and Sydney Park are on the complementarian side and Drs. Cynthia Long-Westfall and Philip Payne on the egalitarian side. So March 23rd to 25th, 2023 here in Boise, Idaho.

We sold out last year and we'll probably sell it this year again. So if you want to come, if you want to come live, then I would register sooner than later. And you can always attend virtually if you can't make it out to Boise in person. So all the info is at theologyintherod.com. That's theologyintherod.com. Would you say that the view of women in Ephesus was somewhat unique given all of these cultural influences? And if so, what would take us back to first century Ephesus? What would be the kind of women of the view of women that would be in the air? What would women be wrestling with there?

These kind of pre-converted, they're not Christians yet. What kind of view of women are they growing up with? Well, the first, the number one thing on their minds is terror of childbirth. And you have just taken away their comfort. And I think that you see Paul in some places, not just, you know, in this section, but you see him taking on almost the imagery of himself as mother, caring for them and nurturing them, and the church as a family. And so, I think what we don't see, and this is why I appreciate Baugh's work as well, is what we don't see is feminism, and that's totally reading back in a United States sort of phenomenon. is what we don't see is feminism. And that's totally reading back in a United States sort of phenomenon. And what you don't have in Artemis is she's not a man-hater. There are lots

of men who follow her. In fact, we have one mentioned in the New Testament whose parents named him Artemis, and Paul refers to him, right? There were over a hundred names that were derivatives of Artemis in the inscriptions. And so that's part of the challenge too, is sorting out people named after Artemis with the actual references to the goddess, because there's so much reference. So men and women, so men and women are worshiping her and bringing offerings to her. There's one inscription that talks about a man who brings his inheritance to the goddess. I think Paul picks up on that kind of thing and said, no, no, no, no, no. You in Christ inherit. In fact, your inheritance is God. They bring their

inheritance to her. You get an inheritance and it's God himself. So, but back to what the average woman would have been thinking. She's terrified of childbirth. And she's also in a city where virginity is a core value. I think that is how we account for so many single women in the church. The Paul has to divide widows into three categories. So, so a lot more single women under the influence of Artemis, there would have been a lot more single women in Ephesus than maybe the average city. Single women being like of marital age. It would appear. I mean, that's a lot of widows. There are so many widows. He's got some, some are young enough. I want you to get married and have kids. You know, if you're over 60, let's, you know, make you part of the clergy clergy. So here are the qualifications that are roughly parallel to that of the elders.

You have to have been the wife of one husband. You have to have washed the feet of the saints. Like that is not qualifications for getting food. That is not a Christian view of who we feed. We feed the hungry, right? So you're saying, okay, so man, let's chase this a little bit. So talk to us about what is going on at first timothy five and the widows you're saying you reference clergy you're saying

this isn't just caring for women whose husbands have died you're well you you take it take it from there what's going on well i'll tell you how that one started i was reading kittle which is my you know the dictionary theological dictionary that if you today, all my students have it, of course, an MP3 or on Logos or whatever, but I had it and it took an entire bookshelf. something. And the last entry mentions it as the church office. I'm like, what? And it's talking about all this evidence that widow was an office. So I traced the office of widow. And, and I, and in fact, I presented on it at Evangelical Theological Society on my hypothesis is that the church is not a single parent family with only fathers, that the church is the family and it has fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers. And a lot of this is based on the historical evidence.

So, for example, one of the things that we're finding and the reason we're finding some of this is because we have more women doing PhDs in history than we had 100 years ago, right? And so even though men have cared about these issues, they haven't been as driven because it wasn't necessarily about them. So, and I don't mean that in any sort of mean way. I just mean, I studied what I was passionate about because it had ramifications for my life. And so one thing we're finding, for example, is tombstones that reference a widow of the church of. And we've thought that just, you know, she's the wife of Silvanus. And then we find out, no, if she's the wife of Silvanus, Silvanus is on the tombstone.

She's the widow of Silvanus. But over here, when you've got a whole group of widows buried around a church and they're widows of the church of, oh, that's a different thing from a widow of Silvanus. So it looks like and there's still so much so many dissertations to be done. If some of your listeners want to do historical work, this is where I would love to see more work done. And that is, the evidence suggests that in the early, early church, that the reason we're not finding much evidence for deaconesses until about the third century is because they're called widows early on. And we've missed evidence of widows because we've just thought of them as women who lost husbands and haven't connected them with an office. So what's the relationship on an authority level, if that's even the right word to use?

Maybe it's not. What's the relationship between the widows and the elders? Are the elders of chapter three, are they presumed to be all men and the women are kind of co-leader and the widows are co-eldering with the male elders? What's the relationship here? Yeah, that's a good question. I think the word elder probably functions similarly to how the word amigos works. That elder in its plural could include the fathers and mothers of the church, but the woman's title, a woman is not an elder.

She is a widow. but the woman's title is a woman is not an elder. She is a widow. And some of this is hard for us to process in our Western minds because then the first question becomes, does that mean a married woman can't serve? Well, a married woman, I mean, again, I'm a married woman and my child is grown, but I would be dead in Ephesus because I'm over 60. Like there would be very few of me, right? I mean, the average life expectancy is less than 45. And, you know, half your kids are dying and you're not, half of you are dying in childbirth. I don't know what the numbers are, but they're high. Lots of you are dying in childbirth. You asked what the authority structure is. I think it's very similar to fathers and mothers and i think they might even look at elders today and go

uh you're counseling women like you're baptizing women now some of this changed when we started doing infant baptism because you had women baptizing women and a lot there you know a lot of them are being baptized nude you're just not going to have the a senior pastor is not going to have the, a senior pastor is not going to be a thing and he's not going to be baptizing women. So you probably had, particularly in the East, you had more segregation. I am not calling for segregation. I'm just describing what probably was, but I suspect that some of them would look at what we're doing now and go, well, you're worried about women overstepping their bounds,

but I think men have overstepped their bounds here. We need fathers and mothers. We need to be partnering. And one of the pieces of the visual record is you see a lot more men and women partnering than you see just one gender. It's brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers. So you opened up another door there. Let's wander. I know. I did. sisters mothers and fathers so you opened up another door there let's wander i know i did i love it i love i love uh kind of circular uh wandering conversations i love it visual what do you mean by the visual representation so uh let's see like in venice there is a very there's a small i don't know it's as big as a kleenex box maybe smaller relic area a place where you would store relics.

And on one side, you have a man and woman at the altar of probably the old St. Peter's holding up the communion elements. If you go to Ravenna and you look at the mosaics, you will see on one side the emperor who has been sainted and his wife Theodora, who has been sainted because they were pro-christian and pro-orthodox um and on one side he is carrying the I think he's carrying the wine and she's carrying the bread I might have it backwards but there there's this parity in the space above the altar where man and woman are partnering together and then you start thinking about Genesis of us doing church together, us as a family. You look at Paul's metaphors of male and female partnering. And I think that authority is a big Western issue, but not so much, right?

And even when Paul talks about authority, he's going out of his way to use words. It frustrates us. He uses words like elder, which is old guy, deacon, which is servant. Like he is taking the bubble of authority and popping it and saying, yeah, if it exists, we don't do it like the Gentiles do. Like the greatest among you is the one who is washing poop off the disciples feet. So, I mean, you see that with the household codes, right? You're like, they exist. They take the structure, and then they just pop them of all their authority words and say,

lay down your life, give up, selfless. Yeah. It's pretty fascinating that one of the main Greek words for authority, exousia, exousia, Paul rarely, if ever, uses that to describe church leaders he uses it to describe demonic powers he uses it to describe the roman empire which is incredibly oppressive um in romans 13 um and other factors um but i don't know if he i don't there might be one passage i found where he connects that to the kind of maybe um but yeah it's it's church leaders are servants yeah i don't even

think he would like servant leadership he doesn't say paul a servant leader of the church of like he does talk about being apostle when he has to because they because they're not getting it but he doesn't like it like he's like you can tell, I hate to have to do this. You made me have to do this, but I'd really rather be a servant. He downplays his apostolic authority, I would think, more than he elevates it. Even one of the fascinating texts is Philemon, where he's trying to get Philemon to do something. I think it's one of the only letters where he never even mentioned his apostolic. He could have said, look, I'm an apostle. You're not.

Onesimus is coming back. Deal with it, or I'm going to come with a rod. But he actually never kind of appeals. He appeals to like, hey, I know you're going to do the right thing. He really wants him to be- Familial language. Family. That's what I find so fascinating in this debate is I think, I just wonder if we get off on the wrong foot right out of the gate when we assume certain hierarchical structures of leadership that are prevalent in many churches today. And then we kind of ask Paul, okay, well, who can serve and what part of this hierarchy? And I just, I don't know. I wonder if bringing that hierarchical structure is, is kind of wrong

headed right out of the gate. We talked offline about that a little bit. I mean, I don't know. I wonder if bringing that hierarchical structure is kind of wrongheaded right out of the gate. We talked offline about that a little bit. I mean, I think ecclesiology is very much, rethinking our ecclesiology is just as important as rethinking the question of women in those ecclesiological structures. Which takes us to Romans 16. You know, we so often, at least in the world of women in the Bible, are talking about the Proverbs 31 woman. I heard an excellent presentation by one of Lynn Kohik's students in Italy a couple weeks ago where she

talked about the Roman 16 woman and begins with Phoebe the deacon and the benefactor and then these co-workers and you know a tryposa and and Rufus's mother is a mother to me uh and so different kinds of co-workers another presentation i heard at ets the evangelical theological society was looking at uh is is it possible that phoebe as a benefactor uh had a legal element involved and legal representation it's there's so much work being done. And it's a great time to be doing historical work because we have the internet now. So I can not only read an Anatolian journal, which my colleague sent me to that I'd never heard of, and probably only had in circulation at the time of 300, but now I can find it and run it through Google Translate so I can read it.

None of that was available to me. And then we're living longer. And so I've raised my daughter, and now I, you know, I've spent the last 15, 20 years in the academy. And if I live as long as some of my colleagues, I'll have another 15 or 20. I mean, they die tomorrow, but or today. As long as some of my colleagues all have another 15 or 20, I mean, they die tomorrow or today. But, you know, some of us are living well into our 70s and 80s, continuing to mentor students. And it gives us the opportunity to build on a lot more research. Yeah. Speaking of just the Internet and this technology now. So I was in Cambridge doing research on First Timothy 2.

And I was looking at the Greek word authentio, you know, translated exercise authority in 1 Timothy 2.12, super debated word. What does it mean? It's not used very widely in Greek literature, but it's used a lot in second century papyri. I'm like, I don't know. You'll find, how do I, and then one of the scholars at Tyndale, Al Peterhead is like, oh, I got the PDF. Let me send it to you. And he's like, send me up.df let me send it to you it'll pop up you have the original language this that and so i'm sitting there like on a computer like looking at second century papyri you know like we could have done that i mean you know it's a great time oh man it's exciting okay let's go back to first simothy 2 and that debated passage 2.12. I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man.

She must be in different translations, be in quietness, I think would be the most literal, clunky way of saying, translating that. So given your background, how are you now reading, I guess, that verse, but also maybe that passage as a whole? What is Paul, if you take us back to the first century, what are Paul's audience hearing when he writes that letter? First of all, we have to ask the question of, let's ask it backwards. Paul believes that there is a priority in maleness that means women in every context of the gathered church should be silent for all time in every place. Then how do we deal with, I'm a dispensationalist, so how do we deal with the fact that in every dispensation there's a male prophet we find at least one female prophet that doesn't square if we're going to ground that in creation like if we're going to ground that in genesis then that would be for all time it wouldn't matter right and then you have some settings like a holda in second kings 22 where there are good prophets to be found, but they're still going to get,

this is the word of the say of the Lord from a female prophetess. And so you look at that as your backdrop and then you have Paul in 1 Corinthians 11, not asking, the question isn't, can a woman prophesy? It's what she's supposed to do with her hair or her head. But he assumes the women

in the gathered church are going to be praying and prophesying. And so what do you do with Paul? Because he's a smart man. He's a very good, he's very good at rhetoric. Why three chapters later in 14, you know, how do we square? So just with a global view of scripture and where we're going in Revelation to where we are all a kingdom of priests, we are not, it doesn't talk about male priesthood, you know, even the Reformation, you have the priesthood of all believers. Like I am a priest of God. What does a priest do? Hopefully I help bring you to God. I help you offer offerings. I help you offer praise. So I think we have to have a biblical view, like a more global view to begin with. But also, we don't just look at Genesis.

We also look at Revelation. Where are we headed? Right? And we don't root our view of women in Genesisesis 3 in the fall we root it in what was she made to do she's made to have co-dominion with her brothers and she's made to be fruitful and multiply which in the new testament times i take to be multiplying disciples actually i think that was some of that all the way through but clearly if you got a world with no people in it you know you got work to do um but to see both of those as a partnership, and I think this comes

up in 1 Timothy, that I think that Paul is beginning with an understanding of male-female partnership in ministry that he has lived, and we see it in Romans 11. Like, he doesn't address that to the deacons and elders and the bros, right? It's men and women alike that are partnering. I mean, Junia was in jail with him. So when you come to 1 Timothy 2, he is bringing up Genesis as I think he's bringing it up as a corrective to whatever is happening. And I don't think we have to solve or even cancel what is happening.

I think we can only read it back from one part of the telephone conversation. And something's happening where three times Paul needs to use the word quiet when he's talking about women. And we don't think that Paul thinks women are supposed to be quiet everywhere, because again, there are prophetesses, you know, Philip's daughters are prophetesses. He is not in any way suggesting women should be quiet in Romans 16. These are co-workers in what? The gospel. Like, you've got to use words in addition to actions for the gospel. So I think when he comes to 1 Timothy 2, we have to look at a couple things. First of all, he is writing a personal letter to Timothy.

That is not to say it has no ramifications for us, but it would seem very strange that if this is the one place where he, Paul, lays out the foundation for what a woman is and what she's supposed to be in the church, it's in a private letter in a certain city with a troubled context, and he's using first-person language. So it would be troubling to just say, Paul says, I'm not allowing, and look at that present tense to go, yeah, that's reading a lot into the present tense to just say, I'm not allowing. But the combination of I with the present tense, I'm not allowing this, doesn't sound like women shouldn't ever, or it's foundational. This is the way God made things for

all time. If he's putting it in first person present tense language. Why is this his practice? We see him using first-person present tense language over in Corinth when he's talking about whether they should get married or not. And I'm in the wisdom I have, but this isn't what the Lord said. Certainly it's scripture, but that's not the same thing as quoting Jesus. I mean, he's making a distinction. Am I making sense? You are. I literally just did a podcast yesterday with Bill Mounts on this exact question. And then I was interacting with Phil Payne. He's done a ton of work on this topic,

you guys, the machine. And I love about Phil Payne that he has a zillion footnotes, like better than any scholar I know. I can follow sources with Phil Payne so that even if I disagree with them, I can go back to the original sources and dig from there in a way that, I mean, it means he writes this much stuff and has this many footnotes. Oh, my gosh. And he literally will email scholars like 10-page emails saying here's where, where you know i i you're off and here's why and then you respond and the guy's like made it his life mission to dig into this topic but i know he makes a lot out of the present tense i am not permitting other egalitarians i mean i howard marshall phil towner say yeah i think we're pushing it too far if we make it bill mounts um yeah he said he he got into kind of aspect theory and the nature of the present tense

and thought there wasn't much there. So I'm, yeah, all that to say- I don't think we should make too much of the present tense. It's the combination of the first person with the present tense that makes me go, oh, if I say I'm not doing something that sounds very different from one should never. So the teach and exercise authority over, without even looking at what exercise and authority or

assuming authority means, would you say that there's at least a the possibility of a legitimate reading where Paul is addressing a local scenario and not making a universal prohibition? Is that kind of what you're exploring? I think that's exactly what's happening. I think the whole book is addressing a local scenario with ramifications for us. How do we handle false teachers? You know, what do we do when men and women are fighting? You know, there are all kinds of applications for us. got a low view of scripture you've written off like and we've we've made it so that you can't have a local situation right yeah you know and it's like yeah there are lots of scriptures with probably a local situation um or even people say well you know if you just read it at face value i'm like i wouldn't say that about baptizing the dead like if i just take those verses face value you know without looking at backgrounds i could have a very different doctrine um i think there's it's the whole book

and the whole argument and the fact that there are false teachers and the kinds of false teachers and the fact that his mitigating influence for i got bad news for some of the women. They need to be quiet and learn right now. Nevertheless, here's an encouragement. Our God is bigger than their God and he has better benefits. And I think, let me add one more thing. When he says a woman will be saved through childbearing, I think he's quoting a local saying. And that when he says this is a faithful saying, I think he's quoting a local saying and that when he says this is a faithful saying, it should go with what he's just said. That's a saying rather than what follows, which is if somebody aspires to be an elder, they aspire to. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. So in chapter three, verse one, which obviously there's no chapters in the original, here is a trustworthy saying.

You're saying that that's pointing back to what he just said. Yes, that's what I think. Has anybody else argue that you know if you look if you have a net bible diglot uh it it actually puts this is a faithful saying up up with chapter two and begins chapter three in the greek and then there's footnote that says this may be a local, maybe a local. Interesting. Didn't originate with me. You DTS people love your net Bible. We do.

So it's in the Diglot Greek notes, the way they've laid out the Greek. So then I did a study on what are all the this is the this is a faithful saying that paul did to see does he usually put that line after or before the saying and it was no help because it's about half and half but he does go both ways like sometimes he starts this is a faithful saying colon and then or he ends it he'll make a statement and then say that this is a faithful saying does paul have a habit of putting a Christian spin on a local saying? Yeah. He does.

And so I look to see, do all the faithful sayings have something in common? Most of them have the word save or salvation or the idea of salvation in them. Interesting. I think there's like only one that doesn't. Is this in your book, your forthcoming that doesn't is this in your book your forthcoming book or is this in your district okay so we can't get a hold of you yet i'm really excited to see that um so so what the women in ephesus why did they need this prohibition in 212 you're saying um because you're saying that what there wasn't like some first first century

feminist movement going on like people used to argue. But what was, I mean, it was yeah, what kind of, why Ephesus? If you could reconstruct a possible historical background, like what kind of women is he speaking this to? Well, there are a number of possibilities. One is that there is a husband-wife dynamic here, and the husbands are angry, and the wives need to be quiet and learn. You certainly could translate Gune as wife. And one argument for that, the Winstons do really good work on this, a husband-wife couple, George and Dora Winston, who look at 1 Peter and the section that we know for sure is about wives. You know, the submission, and there's been a reference of Sarah. And you have almost the same outline here as you have in a passage of Scripture that we know is talking about wives.

And they hypothesize that this is an apostolic addressing of wives. You have modesty, that you have a reference to an Old Testament husband and wife. So there are a lot of parallels in the two. So that raises the question, is the issue that Paul's addressing in 1 Timothy 2 about women in general? Or is there something happening with the wives? And the fact that the ending relates to childbirth would tip it toward wives. And then the fact that later on you have so many single women that are widows. But he's not using widows there. So, I mean, there's still a lot of questions about it. Here's the question that my research answered for me pretty definitively.

Is 1 Timothy full of hints about the Artemis cult? Does it draw constantly on the language and ideas all over the place? I no longer, I once did, but I no longer think that when he says Adam was first, that he is giving a principle of male firstness or preeminence. I think it's a better hermeneutic to see Paul is using a creation story to correct a false creation story. And what follows in the Adam and Eve story from the fall, it's the woman has a problem with childbirth, right? Her pain is connected. So it's almost like he's taken that Genesis story as his narrative. But he is, you know, in the Bethlehem of the Ephesians, taking their natal story and saying, God is bigger than Artemis. And you're, I think he's saying that they're not going to die if they have trusted in Christ. Now, that's the best use of sojo, like the, the word for save, save through childbearing is

literal. I think that if you take it as a woman will be saved through Jesus, if, if, if like that raises some issues. Yeah. So you're saying sojo is, is physical safety, not salvation in the kind of spiritual sense. Yeah. Which I think is probably the best. Bruce Winter made a really good case for that. I think every interpretation has pros and cons. The con to that is, wait a minute, but women still do die in childbirth. Is this a false promise?

But that might be a modern- But then when you go, okay, how big is the church in Ephesus? Maybe 40 people? How many of them are of childbearing age? I think it's very similar to James when it talks about bringing the elders and the person will be healed. And we're like, yeah, but people die. It's like,

yeah. I mean, we also work in very remote Africa and we see that when we take the gospel in certain miracles happen. And sometimes the miracles are very related to the local God. So I just don't think you're going to see Christian women who are trusting in Jesus dying in Artemis country in the first century. As kind of a unique, possibly quasi-miraculous response to people trusting in Artemis rather than trusting in God. I think that's the difficult verse for moderns. That of the options that I've wrestled with, that one has always made the best sense to me so far. So I'm glad to hear you take that view. It seems to fit a biblical theology in which a day is coming when men and women will serve together and we are a kingdom of priests.

And that's what we're supposed to be moving toward, right? I mean, we don't just wait for that to work toward that vision. It makes the most sense of why you would have women prophets and have them even in the church in 1 Corinthians 11. It makes the most sense for me of why in Romans 16, you have women who are full-on ministry partners and not being told to go home and take care of kids. Kids aren't even mentioned, not even mentioned in that passage. Children aren't mentioned in relation to Aquila and Priscilla. If this is Paul's value for women, that they should be in the nursery, there's just some places that that's missing, if that's his thinking.

Oh, my word. Sandra, thank you so much for your time. We do have to wrap things up. But what's the title of your book? When's it coming out? Nobody's Mother. Nobody's Mother. Okay. Nobody's Mother, Artemis of the Ephesians in the New Testament and Antiquity. My main goal is not arguing about 1 Timothy. It's arguing against those who think Artemis is a fertility goddess or that there's ritual prostitution happening.

I'm more interested in the background of Ephesus. And when's the release date? The release date is ETS, November of this year. Oh, this year. Okay. They want to launch it at the Theological Society meeting. I will be there. Thanks for the work you're doing, Dr. Sprinkle. They want to launch it at the Theological Society meeting. I will be there.

Thanks for the work you're doing, Dr. Sprinkle. You've done hard work in this passage, and I really have appreciated that. You're just trying to make the best of the text, of the backgrounds, be faithful to Scripture, honor Paul, who I think has gotten a bad rap for women. And I'm here to say I think Paul was a friend of women yeah no i i do agree i can see where people get the bad rap stuff but in his first century context he said some pretty radical things about humanizing women not as much as we would want him to maybe but um yeah no that's that's what that what he does with the household codes i mean goodness read that against the backdrop of Aristotle it It's like, he would have been a second-rate feminist. He just sucked the wind out of the authority, the Gentile authority picture in that.

Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I cannot wait to get my hands on your book. In fact, I'm going to reach out to your publisher, maybe get a pre-release copy, as I often do. So, yeah, thank you so much for your time and I appreciate the work you're doing. Right, thanks a lot. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.