Cheryl Schatz

Don #2 comment,

That was well-worded.  Yes, I too believe that Paul’s answer was brilliant.  The married woman was caught between a rock and a hard place because she had two “heads”.  If her husband was a Jewish unbelieving man, it would be a very bad thing to force her to remove her veil.  It would have to be her decision on when was the proper time to be free from her veil.  Paul never gave the authority to her husband for the decision on whether she would wear the veil or not.  The decision was squarely on her shoulders.  This ruling alone giving the woman the authority to make the decision should remove any doubt that Paul believed that a woman was under the husband’s authority.

Lin,

It was a shock to me too to see that the translators had imported words that brought their bias into the translation.  The more I studied from the original text and less with the translations, the more shocked I became.  These texts were the ones that had caused me to be prejudiced against women just like many others were.  They had made me feel that it was a inferior thing to be a woman.  It was a very freeing thing to understand that it wasn’t Paul or God who was biased against women.

Don,

Check out the quotes below:

“What may at first have been a modest etiquette grew into a scrupulous rule. Some aggadic sources began to interpret this custom as a sign of woman’s shame and feeling of guilt for Eve’s sin,[6] while the rabbis compared exposure of a married woman’s hair to the exposure of her privy parts (and forbid the recital of any blessing in the presence of a bareheaded woman).[7]

[6] Gen, R, 17:8; Er, 100b and Rashi;

[7] Ber 24a

See http://jhom.com/topics/hair/woman.html

Don,

My opinion is that if the accounts given of the creation can be looked at as different focuses of the one creative time period and they can be put together in one time line without contradiction, then the historical account given in Genesis and referred to by Jesus is indeed a real historical account and should be looked on as history first and then what we can learn from that history, second.  I believe there is no contradictions at all in the time lines set up by Genesis 1 & 2.  I also believe that there have been apparent contradictions only because we have changed the inspired grammar of Genesis 2 and this change that some felt was necessary to “resolve” a contradiction didn’t actually resolve the contradiction at all but took away from our understanding of Paul in 1 Timothy 2.  While I can appreciate those who do not see Genesis as history, my view is that the foundation is eroded and contradictions and misunderstanding created when we don’t take the account at face value.  Unless I am forced to see that Genesis isn’t what it says it is (it is written as history), I will continue to believe that God inspired it to say what me meant and not for us to take it as a parable and put into the account a meaning that would be different for all of us.  I believe that the foundation of our faith from the foundation of creation is solid.

Don,

I will get to your post #12 early next week. I will be away from email for a couple of days.

Regarding your question from #13:

“The question I would pose to you is how would the original reader understand this, specifically, what is meant by the twelve?”

While I believe that “the twelve” was a name of the group, I do believe that the people and the disciples considered Matthias to be part of that group so that would mean that at that time there would be twelve in “the twelve”. That is the reason that I believe Paul had such a difficult time with his claim to being a true apostle picked by Jesus as a witness to the resurrection. If the twelfth apostle was already picked then Paul’s claim appeared invalid. There is no doubt that everyone accepted Matthias to be among the twelve apostles. The question that I ask you that I have also asked myself is, “Did Jesus consider Matthias to be among the twelve to be picked by him as an apostle of the resurrection?” This is the question that I have had to answer “No” to because of Paul’s evidence.

I am sorry for being so slow. I really appreciate these discussions. I am and will be slow in answering just because I want to work on getting other articles up as I can and I place that first. By the way the editing work is going well. I have about a solid week left of post production work to do (God-willing) to finish the first DVD on the Trinity. The work on the last DVD should commence in July after we come back from a time away. It is very exciting for me to see everything come together. God-willing everything will be done in time for our September deadline. Next project I am going to try to make sure I don’t have a definite deadline so I can cut down on the 15 hour days I have been putting in. The long hours are getting harder on me as I get older 🙂

Hi Watcher,

You have a point to a certain extent, but God also told them both what they could eat in chapter one but Adam alone in chapter two.  It would be understandable for Adam to have been told that he was to rule the animals before Eve was created and God told them both what they could eat and that they were to rule over the animals.  Repetition does seem to be something that God is good at doing 🙂

So whether Adam’s naming the animals was “ruling” them or not, I think we still can agree that it wouldn’t have been something that would have been held back from Eve had she been there.  Their mandate was the same.

missional girl,

Good point and very kindly said!  Comps and egals come from different directions but we still face the same issue and must both struggle through.

Don,

I also like Walter Kaiser.  I purchased a set of his teaching classes going through the OT.  He has a wealth of wisdom that is amazing.  We don’t agree on everything, but I have learned how to appreciate the wisdom of those who differ from me.