Charis

Why then would Paul resort to a more complex allegory in 1 Timothy 2 without ever stating that it is allegory and what the allegory means?- Cheryl

How about?
Paul was writing this letter to Timothy and they had a shared context. Timothy could have already been familiar with the allegory.

Paul compares the church to Eve in 1 Cor 11:3. Paul compares the relationship of Christ and the church to a marriage in Eph 5. Paul equates childbirth with the process of “Christ formed in you” in Gal 4:19. Paul uses Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar allegorically to describe salvation. Taking all these clues together, ancient church fathers understood Eve as a “type” of the church.

The NT’s depiction of the Church as the bride of Christ, together with Paul’s parallel between “the first man Adam” and Christ “the last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45), led to an explicit association in the writings of the Church Fathers between Eve, mother of the living, and “mother” church, mater ecclesia. Zeno of Verona declared that just as Eve was created from the side of Adam, so the Church was created from the side of Christ, from which flowed blood and water, figuring the martyrdom and baptism wherein the Church actually took its beginning. In this way, says Zeno, “Adam is restored through Christ, and Eve through the church”. The same idea is expressed by St. Augustine “Eve from the side of the sleeping one, the Church from the side of the suffering one.” This parallel became commonplace in the Middle Ages and was endorsed, e.g. by Thomas Aquinas and by St. Bonaventure. (source)

To the understanding of Augustine, et al, add that of Katharine Bushnell: “827. The ‘childbearing’ of Revelation 12 is that same ‘childbearing’ of 1 Timothy 2:15”