The Silence of Women

Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. [1 Corinthians 14:34-35 (NIV).]

The Apostle Paul’s passage contradicts many people’s ideas of women’s rights and freedoms. To others, it accords with their beliefs; but I suspect that those beliefs originate in this passage and did not arise organically and independently.

Question for thought: "Paul – huh?"

1. An injected passage?

Some scholars think that this passage does not come from Paul. They think that it was injected later by someone else with a smaller soul.

Strong evidence exists that some parts of the Bible were added after-the-fact. For example, Robert Alter is an excellent translator of books of the Old Testament, and he is a professor of comparative literature. He marvels of the excellence of the Hebrew poetry in the Book of Job. Mostly. He is far less impressed with the poetry of the speech that is attributed to Elihu. Also, after Elihu’s speech, the other speakers are referred to, but Elihu is not. Alter concludes that Elihu’s speech was added by a later, lesser poet, and that the final editor of the Book of Job blundered by keeping it in.

Maybe the 1st Corinthians passage was injected after-the-fact, not by Paul. But that conclusion is not frictionless. For one thing, that passage accords with what Paul said elsewhere. So:

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. [1 Timothy 2:11-15 (NIV).]

It’s easier to say that one passage was jammed in after-the-fact; two is harder. You would have to believe that two like-minded persons coincidentally wanted to add to Paul’s letters their ideas about the silence of women. Or you would have to believe that the passages were added by one person, but after the letters had been accumulated together. But the accumulation of the letters from disparate parts of the known world suggests a later stage in the canonization of the Bible. In that case, it seems likely that someone else would then have noticed these additions and would have raised a hue and cry against this gloss on the words of the esteemed apostle.

Also, some argue these passages must be authentic because the Old Testament supports this theology of women’s subjugation. In Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve succumbed to the serpent’s cunning, God speaks to Eve. Eve is presumably a proxy for all women. He says: "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." (NIV)

2. The happy disunity of scripture.

In another post, I have a very un-troubled discussion of the fact that the Bible un-self-consciously says one thing in one place and another thing in another place. This happens without a doubt. ("Wildness and the Word of God". http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2012/07/wildness-and-word-of-god.html )

There are several valid explanation for these variations. I won’t go over all of those explanations here. But I will highlight one: the Bible is pastoral, and a stated principle might not apply to all persons, at all times, in all places. The Bible says different things in different places to allow the earnest seeker of guidance to discern what principle applies to his or her specific circumstance. What is true for him might not be for someone else; the Bible speaks to them both.

This truth applies to these passages about the silence of women.

3. Women as prophets.

The 1st Corinthians passage quoted above comes in context of Paul’s discussion of the value to the church of prophecy – hearing from God and speaking for God. In context, this 1st Corinthians passage says that women should not prophesy.

But women in the Bible were prophets. For example, shortly after Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph took him into the temple in Jerusalem. There, they encountered the prophet Anna. She prophesied over Jesus (not keeping silent). The gospel of Luke says:

There was . . . a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to [Mary and Joseph and Jesus] at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. [Luke 2:36-38 (NIV).]

And Philip the evangelist had four daughters who prophesied. (Acts 21:8.)

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah called his wife "the prophetess". (Isaiah 8:3.)

Mirian, Aaron's sister, was a prophet. (Exodus 15.)

Huldah was a woman and a prophet. King Josiah sent a deputation to her to inquire of the Lord. That episode is described in 2 Kings 22.

4. Women as leaders.

The 1st Timothy passage says that women should have no authority over men. But in early times after the founding of Israel, Israel was ruled by "judges". One such judge was Deborah, who had more courage and brains than her male military commander. Her story is told in Judges 4-5. As Israel’s leader, she clearly had authority over men, Paul notwithstanding. She also was a prophet.

5. Women as teachers.

And even though Paul apparently did not want women to teach, a teacher he admired was a woman. Her name was Priscilla. She and her husband encountered a zealous but misinformed evangelist named Apollos. Priscilla and her husband took Apollos into their home and they both improved his understanding. (Acts 18.) Paul describes Priscilla and her husband as his "co-workers". (Romans 16:3.)

6. The first witness to the resurrection.

According to the tradition of the Gospels, the first witness to the empty tomb of Jesus was Mary Magdalene. She also was the first to see him, after he rose from the dead. Jesus instructed her to bear news of his resurrection to the others. (John 20:11-18.) This was a turning point in history, and Jesus gave the honor of being the herald of that turning point to a woman.

7. The apparent uniqueness of the silence of women.

So it is clear that the Bible is not single-minded in its counsel about the silence of women.

So the passages about the silence of women fit with the Biblical habit of saying one thing in one place and another thing in another place. But passages about the silence of women are also somehow different. This is true because Paul’s teaching about the silence of women seems, to the modern mind, singularly discriminatory. The discrimination is obvious. It is singular in the sense that, after the resurrection of Jesus, the grace of God exploded outward from the Jews to all peoples and nations in addition to the Jews. This is a great theme of the Book of Act and a preoccupation of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. The passages about the silence of women seem perversely contrary to this explosive spread of the grace of God.

8. The meaning of the silence of women.

Or are they?

I suggest that they are actually a token of freedom for women.

These passages must be considered in light of the other passages about women as prophets, women as leaders, women as teachers, women as heralds. These passages about the silence of women say what they say, but they can’t un-say the other passages that contradict them.

So a woman who is rudely shushed in church, literally or figuratively, can point to Deborah, can point to Miriam, can point to Isaiah's wife, can point to Huldah, can point to Anna, can point to Mary, can point to Priscilla, can point to the daughters of Phillip. And based on these she can shush back.

But here’s the thing: because of Paul’s passages, if she doesn’t want to, she doesn’t have to.

In my mid-teens, I absorbed from my career-driven mother a condescension toward stay-at-home moms. For a long time, I had a sense that women who did not work outside the home were old-fashioned. In my youthful mind, they were weaker and less valued than their liberated sisters. I think that many people today retain that condescension.

Paul corrects us. If a woman chooses to come under the protection and guidance and support of a man (who hopefully proves worthy of her trust), then Paul tells us that nobody may hold that against her. Nor is that woman compelled to hold that decision against herself.

Some women may prefer that psychologically restful role. I take this to be the implication of the unexpected popularity among women of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. I haven’t read those books, and I don’t endorse them. I only hold them up as credible token of resistance to the Helen Gurley Brown measure of feminine success. If it’s a poor example, forgive me.

9. Scripture is hard.

Sometimes scripture is plain and easy. Sometimes it is hard. I think the subject of this essay is middling hard. I also think that this essay does not begin to exhaust the importance of these controversial passages from Paul. Infinite is the variety of the human condition. Therefore infinite are the possible applications of various parts of the Bible to the human condition. That includes these controversial passages.

10. Freedom in restraint.

But for now I choose to interpret these passages in tandem with clearly contrary passages in the same Bible. I choose to see them as permission to women to choose the old ways. I choose to see them as freedom of choice for women who might not find to their liking a driven, world-beating lifestyle.

In the sixties, women became liberated from dependence on men. But if a woman’s only real choice were that form of liberation, it would be only half-liberation. These passages, in tandem with contrary passages, make it clear that women’s freedom to choose is not partial but complete.