TREATMENT OF WOMEN IN THE ANCIENT WORLD, THE EARLY CHURCH AND THE BIBLE
INTRODUCTION:
OVERVIEW OF I TIMOTHY 1:1-20 to 2:7
1:1-2 – Overview of Christian Faith based on names for
God and the blessings He bestows on His people.
1:3-4a False teaching in Ephesian Church and how humanistic philosophy effects us today.
1:4b-6 – The goal of the command is love. (Loving God, fellow Christians, the non-Christian world)
1:7-8 – The law is good if used properly. (The law’s deterrent, punitive and educative purposes)
1:8-11 – “Whatever else …” The Gospel Ethic. (Law-Philia University)
1:11 – “The Blessed God” and our Relationship with Him. (We can fill God’s heart with pain or joy and happiness)
1:12-16 Why Paul considered himself the worst of sinners.
1:12-16 Conversion of the apostle Paul.
1:12-16 Paul’s call to ministry.
1:17 Paul’s doxology of praise for his conversion.
1:18-20 How to avoid shipwrecking our faith.
2:1-3 The Christian is to pray for all men.
2:4,6 Comparison of Calvinism & Armenianism.
2:5-6 The man, Christ Jesus, the only mediator.
2:1-7 The vision, the message, the means.
2:8-15 Treatment of women in the ancient world, the early church and the Bible.
I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing. 9I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, 10but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God. 11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. 13For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15But women [she] will be saved [restored] through childbearing–if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. (I Tim. 2:15-18).
JESUS’S KEY TO HANDLING MATTER OF DIVORCE
1. Read the text of Mt. 19:3-9.
2. Note the question of the Pharisees. They wanted to corner Jesus to see if he would contradict the law?
QUESTION: How did Jesus answer the Pharisees when they tried to get him to justify divorce?
3. Jesus established that the initial intent of God for marriage can be discovered by looking at marriage in the Edenic State:
“But from the beginning it was not so” (Mt. 19:8 KJV, ESV, NKJV); “…but originally there was no such thing” (Beck); “…but it was not intended that way at the beginning” (Norwood); “…but it was not like that when all began” (NEB).
4. As to the abuse of women you can find stories of polygamy, divorce, rape, slavery, incest, infanticide, prostitution in the Bible and even laws to control/manage/ameliorate slavery and divorce but that does not justify those actions. In every case of abuse, manipulation or degrading of a woman that a person tries to justify with a Bible verse we can rightly respond, “But from the beginning it was not so.”
5. “Luther taught that the essential and binding teachings of Scripture Read ‘bear Christ,’ that is, are in accord with the one full revelation of the Living Word in the flesh of Jesus Christ.”
6. If Christ said that the Edenic State should be our plumb line when dealing with divorce, let’s make it our plumb line (prototype / standard) when considering the role of women in the home, church, world.
QUESTION: How were women regarded in the Edenic State? (See Genesis 1:26-28.)
They were both created in the image of God, they were both to rule over creation, they were both given the task to multiply, they were one flesh. The main differences between Adam and Eve are that he was created first and their roles (she was to be a helpmeet). Everything else lists them as equals in every respect.
QUESTION: So why have women been so mistreated throughout history in the world, in Judaism, in the church?
TREATMENT OF WOMEN IN GREEK CULTURE IN THE TIME OF PAUL.
1. “The place of women in Greek religion was low. The Temple of Aphrodite is Corinth had a thousand priestesses who were sacred prostitutes and every evening plied their trade on the city streets. The Temple of Diana in Ephesus had its hundreds of priestesses called the Melissae, which means the bees, whose function was the same. The respectable Greek woman led a very confined life. She lived in her own quarters into which no one but her husband came. She did not even appear at meals. She never at any time appeared on the street alone; she never went to any public assembly. The fact is that if in a Greek town Christian women had taken an active and a speaking part in its work, the Church would inevitably have gained the reputation of being the resort of loose women.” (Barclay, pg. 67).
2. “Under Athenian law a woman was classified as a child, regardless of age, and therefore was the legal property of some man at all stages in her life. Males could divorce by simply ordering a wife out of the household. Moreover, if a woman was seduced or raped, her husband was legally compelled to divorce her. If a woman wanted a divorce, she had to have her father or some other man bring her case before a judge. Finally, Athenian women could own property, but control of the property was always vested in the male to whom she “belonged.” (The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark, pg. 102).
TREATMENT OF WOMEN IN JEWISH CULTURE IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES.
1. No nation ever gave a bigger place to women in home and in family things than the Jews did; but officially the position of a woman was very low.
FROM THE BEGINNING IT WAS NOT SO!
2. In Jewish law she was not a person but a thing; she was entirely at the disposal of her father or of her husband.
3. She was forbidden to learn the law; to instruct a woman in the law was to cast pearls before swine.
4. Women had no part in the synagogue service; they were shut apart in a section of the synagogue, or in a gallery where they could not be seen.
5. A man came to the synagogue to learn; but, at the most, a woman came to hear.
6. In the synagogue the lesson from Scripture was read by members of the congregation but not by women, for that would have been to lessen “the honor of the congregation.”
7. It was absolutely forbidden for a woman to teach in a school; she might not even teach the youngest children.
8. A woman was exempt from the stated demands of the Law. It was not obligatory on her to attend the sacred feasts and festivals.
9. Women, slaves and children were classed together.
10. In the Jewish morning prayer a man thanked God that God had not made him “a Gentile, a slave or a woman.”
11. In the Sayings of the Fathers Rabbi Jose ben Johanan is quoted as saying: “’Let thy house be opened wide, and let the poor be thy household, and talk not much with a woman.’ Hence the wise have said: ‘Everyone that talketh much with a woman causes evil to himself, and desists from the works of the Law, and his end is that he inherits Gehenna.’”
12. A strict Rabbi would never greet a woman on the street, not even his own wife or daughter or mother or sister. It was said of woman: “Her work is to send her children to the synagogue; to attend to domestic concerns; to leave her husband free to study in the schools; to keep house for him until he returns.” (William Barclay, Commentary on I Tim., Page 66-67.)
HOW DID JESUS TREAT WOMEN?
QUESTION: Can you think of any time in the life of Jesus that he belittled, looked down upon, disparaged, degraded, abused a woman?
HOW DOES THE NEW TESTAMENT LOOK UPON WOMEN?
1. In the old story it was the woman who was created second and who fell to the seduction of the serpent tempter (I Tim. 2:14); but it was Mary of Nazareth who bore and trained the child Jesus.
2. It was Mary of Magdala who was first to see the risen Lord.
3. It was four women who of all the disciples stood by the cross.
4. Priscilla with her husband Aquila was a valued teacher in the early Church, who led Apollos to a knowledge of the truth (Acts 18:26) [The KJV listed Aquila first in this verse although many translations list Priscilla first. It appears the early translators couldn’t stand to have a woman playing a key teaching role to another man].
5. The first believer in Philippi was Lydia (why weren’t the men getting together for worship?).6.
6. Euodia and Syntyche, in spite of their quarrel, were women who labored in the Gospel (Phil. 4:2-3).
7. Philip, the evangelist, had four daughters who were prophetesses (Acts 21:9).
8. There were women deacons in the early church (Rom. 16:1) [the original translators used the word servant for deacon here but the Greek word is the same as the one used in I Tim. 3:10,12 for male deacons].
9. The aged women were to teach (Titus 2:3).
10. Paul held Lois and Eunice in the highest honor (II Tim. 1:5), and there is many a woman’s name held in honor in Romans 16.
11. “All important modern translations of the Bible now restore the original language used by Paul in I and II Timothy, but somehow the illusions fostered by the King James falsifications remain the common wisdom. Nevertheless, there is virtual consensus among historians of the early church as well as biblical scholars that women held position of honor and authority in early Christianity” (The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark, pg. 109).
WHAT ROLE DID WOMEN HAVE IN THE EARLY / POST-APOSTOLIC CHURCH?
“Amidst contemporary denunciations of Christianity as patriarchal and sexist, it is easily forgotten that the early church was so especially attractive to women that in 370 [34 years after the death of Constantine] the emperor Valentinian issued a written order to Pope Damasus I requiring that Christian missionaries cease calling at the homes of pagan women. …. Classical writers… recognized that Christianity was unusually appealing because within the Christian subculture women enjoyed far higher status than did women in the Greco-Roman world at large” (The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark, pg. 95.)
SO WHAT?
1) When trying to understand the role of women in the Christian home, church, community let’s make sure we look first at what Christ emphasized, the original intention of God at creation. We need to filter out of our mind all of the patriarchal nonsense that we have inherited via our culture through the ages.
2) Let’s make sure we hold no opinion on women’s worth or role that is unbiblical.
3) Let’s use Christ as our example is dealing with women in that he never once spoke a degrading or disparaging word.