Paul the Apostle and women

Jewish women disciples, including Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna, had accompanied Jesus during his ministry and supported him out of their private means.

[2] Although the details of these gospel stories may be questioned, in general they reflect the prominent historical roles women played as disciples in Jesus' ministry.

Pauline Christianity did not honour its rich patron; instead, it worked within a "motif of reciprocity"[6] by offering leadership roles, dignity and status in return for patronage.

Through building up their own house church, women could experience relative authority, social status and political power and renewed dignity within Paul's movement.

Letters generally accepted as Paul’s are Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon.

[7] His casual greetings to acquaintances offer solid information about many Jewish and Gentile women who were prominent in the movement.

[8] In the Letter to the Romans, Paul sends greetings to a number of people and specifically mentions: According to Karen King, these biblical reports seem to provide credible evidence of women apostles active in the earliest work of spreading the Christian gospel.

According to Thurston, there can be no doubt that in their first institution the deaconesses were intended to discharge those same charitable offices, connected with the temporal well being of their poorer fellow Christians, which were performed for the men by the deacons.

The universal prevalence of baptism by immersion and the anointing of the whole body which preceded it rendered it a matter of propriety that in this ceremony the functions of the deacons should be discharged by women.

[22] The letters of Paul, dated to the middle of the first century AD, were written to specific communities in response to particular questions or problems.

There seemed to be a preference for ecstatic prayer at the expense of works of charity, with a number of members all "speaking in tongues" at the same time.

"[24]Barbara Leonhard and others[25] find this contradicts a statement in 1 Corinthians 11:5 that seems to presuppose that women are, in fact, praying and prophesying in the assembly of believers (but prefers they do it with the appropriate head covering).

Leonhard notes that it is inconsistent with Paul's dealings with his co-workers in that women such as Prisca, Phoebe and Junia could not have functioned as Church leaders and apostles if they were not allowed to speak in public.

Translations may thus serve to diminish the contradictory tone of the interrogative verse 36, and preserve the sense of harmony with 1 Timothy.

He also says that younger women must love their families and be "self-controlled, chaste, good homemakers, under the control of their husbands."

"[45] Christian Egalitarian theologians also find it significant that the "two becoming one" concept, first cited in Gen. 2:24, was quoted by Jesus in his teachings on marriage.

In the New Testament, a thorough concordance search shows that the second most frequent use of "head" (kephalē), after "the structure that connects to our neck and sits atop our bodies", is the metaphorical sense of "source".

[53]Scholar David deSilva notes that in Ephesians 5, Paul modifies the Aristotelian household code by adding a preface that each person should submit to one another (Verse 21).

That letter, according to Pagels, stresses and exaggerates the antifeminist element in Paul's views: "Let a woman learn in silence in all submissiveness.

[58] Beth Allison Barr believes that Paul's beliefs on women were progressive for the time period.

Barr notes that medieval theologians rarely quoted him to support their patriarchal views and that Pope John Paul II believed that using these passages to support the inferiority of women would be akin to justifying slavery, due to the historical context of the household codes.

Barr believes that Paul's intended message was to counter these ideals: he addresses women first and places Jesus as the ultimate authority that everyone was meant to submit to.

She also notes that Paul did not believe that women were "deformed men" like his Roman contemporaries and used maternal language most frequently, often using such metaphors to describe himself as a woman.

Barr believes that Roman authorities thought that early Christians were "gender deviants" precisely because they did not enforce the household codes as intended.

She also believes that Paul was quoting Cicero when saying that women should be silent, before going on to counter this reasoning, and that this is more obvious when the verses are read aloud.