Craig

Hi Kristen. Thanks for the interesting history. I am just thinking aloud and trying to grasp what you are saying.
You said,
“To me, it makes sense to read it, “I do not allow a woman to teach in a way that takes over a man’s class.”
You also said
“men were the only ones doing the teaching in the main meetings (it was in those meetings that I pictured the women as “shouldering in on the class”)”
I am probably misunderstanding you because it seems like you are saying that they understood church as a class belonging to a man. We often see church that way today, with one man being the official teacher, being in authority, and others being in a position of learners. With this view of church, if someone wanted to “shoulder in and take over” that position, they could be described as “authenteining” a man. But I don’t think that church belongs to one man and so how could it be seen to be a man’s class that the woman is taking over? How could it therefore be “authenteining a man”? Sorry, still confused.