Mark

Don’t be too narrow on the definitions of greek words. Paul may have called Pheobe a deacon OR he may have called her a ‘servant’. Both are legitimate translations seen throughout the NT. Likewise, 1 Tim 3:11 could legitimately be ‘wives’ or ‘women deaconesses’. There are pro’s and con’s in both arguments.

What is clear, is that women were never overseers nor were permitted to teach publically to the Churches.

Priscilla along with her husband taught Apollos, but it was privately. The text is explicit that ‘they took him away’.

As for any other examples Egals want to throw out there, they are pure conjecture and historical revisioning. We have no evidence that the ‘deacons’ were responsible for the sheparding of the Church or the teaching of the scriptures, so even if Pheobe was a deacon, her position/work does not contradict the traditional view of 1 Tim 2:9-15, since NT deacons were not responsible in that area.

Kostenberger has written a good article on all the texts where famale names are mentioned in ‘The Gospel to the Nations’. Anyone serious in studying the scriptures should read this…from both sides. The arguments for women leaders in the NT beyond perhaps Pheobe as a deacon is stepping beyond what the scriptures teach.