Kristen

Craig, I’m not quite sure in what context I would view what I have called “shouldering in on the class,” because I don’t know enough about what church gatherings looked like in Ephesus, and whether they were similar to what they looked like in Corinth (which as far as I can see is the only church we are given a picture of what the meetings looked like, in Chapter 14). But I do think it’s possible for women thinking it’s more proper to do things the way they are used to seeing them done in Artemis’ temple, “shouldering in” to impose themselves in some way.
Cheryl, I like your view; I really do. I just wish there were some way for me to get around what seems to me to be a real fact about this passage: that the context of this section is Paul talking about how groups of people conduct themselves in the church. For him to suddenly switch over to talking about one particular woman, with absolutely no transitionary words to make this clear, is just hard for me to swallow. I still admit it as a possibility– but when I have tried to present this view to others who are not already inclined to be egal, they have seen it as evidence that I want to read this sudden introduction of one woman into the text, just to bring about an egal interpretation. And I’m talking about scholarly people here, not just ones who have a knee-jerk reaction against egal interpretations in general.
In other words, introducing a single, unnamed woman here is causing more skepticism directed at egalitarianism, not less. Particularly when one interprets “she” as being “Eve representing all womankind,” in which case the use of the present tense is no longer so problematic.

So I guess I’d have to say, in order to make your reading more convincing, you’ll need to do some explanation of why Paul would switch the subject matter in the middle of the passage with no transitions and no warning. Perhaps this will help you strengthen your reading. I hope so. I would like to believe it.