Paula

I think J MacA should go into the automotive business. He gets an astounding amount of mileage out of vapors!

A footnote on the passage by classical Greek scholar Ann Nyland states that the grammar here indicates it means “to give orders to someone, or to proclaim by authority. It was also a technical word for teaching any form of wisdom for pay… Women were attested as synagogue leaders (and thus teachers).” She translates vs. 10 as “which is fitting for women while they are giving a convert to Judaism instructions…”

So it’s quite possible (with much more than J MacA’s vapors for support) that these women were leaders, and as such were to live on a higher standard in every respect, just as the men were.

Katherine Bushnell lamented the lack of educated women allowed on Bible translation committees as one of the reasons for male bias. We must strike at the root to make real progress. That means getting the Bible lexicons up to date, especially on the meanings of idioms and other forms of expression. Then accurate translations need to be made, and then teachers need to throw away the old quarterlies and start serving “meat” instead of Twinkies to Sunday School students.

There is no reason why the average Christian cannot be expected to study in such depth. The status quo has a vested interest in keeping to the shallow waters, because only the uneducated are controllable. This is just as true for believers as for the world. They have sold us the lie that most people are too stupid to grasp what Paul was saying or consider the time and culture in which the NT was written. We feed them baby food and then have the audacity to wonder why they never grow.