For
you can all prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all may be
encouraged. And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.
For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all the
churches of the saints. [Let your women keep silent in the churches,
for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as
the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask
their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for women to speak in
church.] Or did the word of God come originally from you? Or was it
you only that it reached? If anyone thinks himself to be a prophet or
spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things which I write to you are
the commandments of the Lord. But if anyone is ignorant, let him be
ignorant.
//I apologize for the length of today's passage, but it really needs to
be quoted in full. See the section enclosed in brackets? Verses 34 and
35? Textual scholars are all but certain that this passage was not
written by Paul's own hand but was added later. Read the passage again,
omitting the bracketed section. Now it reads seamlessly.
These
two verses, inserted in to an authentic Pauline letter, radically
contradict Paul's stance about women in the church. Isn't it Paul who
wrote "there are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and
free, male and female?" In fact, Paul established many female leaders in
his churches: Junia, Phoebe, Prisca, Tryphaena and Tryphosa.
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