“In first-century Jewish culture, women were not allowed to study.”
Actually, this is not entirely true. The Jewish commentaries quote Gamaliel’s daughter, and Gamaliel was St. Paul’s teacher. But when it came to formal Torah study, you’re right. Of course, the majority of Jewish men never formally studied Torah, either.
(Btw, Gamaliel is quoted as comparing his students to different kinds of fish. So the running fish metaphor used by the early Christians for Jesus and for members of the Church may have been connected to this idea that was in the air, because the disciples were Jesus’ students.)
At the time Paul was teaching, there were a lot of “New Women” studying philosophy. Unfortunately, a lot of them were not exactly the quiet type; instead they seemed to have emulated the glamorous hetaera students of Greek philosophy. Picture a bunch of supermodels and fashion queens wearing their skimpy fashion clothes to go talk about the meaning of life (mostly so that they can be attractive conversation partners to men they’re sleeping with, who aren’t their husbands), and you’ll have the popular Roman idea of a studious woman.
And the same kind of Roman woman was often showing up at Christian Masses and study gatherings, and they weren’t necessarily clear on the concept that this wasn’t philosophy or a sexy initiation and magic religion.
Teaching in the church, as opposed to outside church, was the office of the Apostles, passed by them to the bishops/overseers, and later passed by them to priests. It was intimately connected to being able to say Mass. You couldn’t just have anybody stand up and teach. (Or rather, to a Roman, Greek, or Hebrew, you couldn’t just have anybody sit down and teach, and make everybody else stand up and listen.).
Now, if you went to a philosophy gathering, anybody could stand up and argue. If you were going to a Torah study session, probably the same thing was true. But although the liturgy of the Word part of the Mass may have had elements drawn from Torah study or philosophical gatherings, that wasn’t what it was. I suspect a lot of newbies to the Church, or women of influence, were either teaching right before or after Mass and providing confusion, or standing up to give homilies before the local bishop could do it.
Another thing that may have been happening is outbursts of prophecy. This shows up in other verses. Some people think this is connected to the command that women keep their heads covered, and that women were ripping off their veils (as if at their own homes and not in public) while in ecstasy and then lecturing everybody. This interpretation is in keeping with Paul’s apparent anxiety that everybody at Mass quit being so chaotic in their behavior, and freaking out visitors.
Anyway, whatever Paul’s specific beef was, it wasn’t against all teaching of religion by women. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have commended Timothy’s mother and grandmother for teaching him Christianity! (Not to mention Phoebe, et al.) We have no evidence of women lectors in antiquity; but then, there don’t seem to have been lectors back then. The bishop chose the readings, because the bishop chose what to talk about during his sermon. If a guest was going to give a sermon, like Jesus did in the synagogue, the guest probably chose the text also, like Jesus did in the synagogue.
Now, there are various reasons to have or not have woman lectors, but Paul doesn’t seem to be talking about that. He’s certainly not talking about woman organists, for example, or that women should be thrown out if their high heels click.
The idea that women shouldn’t teach or discuss theology at any time is even more ludicrous, as it’s fairly clear that even curmudgeonly St. Jerome was all for it. He spent a lot of time discussing theology with his whole circle of women friends: St. Marcella, St. Paula, St. Eustochium, St. Fabiola, etc. Throughout early Christianity, again and again we meet learned women, both consecrated women and normal wives and mothers, learning and teaching. It’s fairly clear that deaconesses and their canoness assistants were responsible for teaching women where men couldn’t go, and for teaching orphans as well as raising them, St. Augustine acclaims his mother St. Monica’s level of knowledge of the Scriptures, even though she had learned it entirely by going to all possible Masses and keeping her ears open; so she must have been talking to him about Scripture, or he’d have no way of knowing she was so learned.
At any rate, since the Church has acclaimed women as Doctors of the Church, which is to say, universal teachers of theology to all times and places, it’s a bit silly to say the Church commands women not to teach theology.
kpeople: 