Paul and Women - An Ambiguous Legacy
Such competing judgments on what Paul thought about women and their social role is due to the ambiguous legacy of the apostle. On the one hand, he mentions several women and refers to them as his coworkers with equal roles, tasks, and titles.
On the other hand, he seems to take different gender roles as the natural order and value men more highly than women. Paul’s letters testify to women’s significant role in the church of his day. Phoebe is a Siokovos of the church at Cenchreae (Rom 16:1-2) - Paul uses the same title of himself, Timothy, and many others (Phil 1:1). Prisca together with her husband Aquila are called Paul’s coworkers (ouvepyoi) in Rome (Rom 16:3-4), and Euodia and Syntyche are the called the same in Philippi (Phil 4:2-3). An otherwise unknown Mary together with Tryphaena, Tryphosa, and Persis are called “hard-working” for the Lord (Rom 16:6,12). Junia receives the title “apostle,” the title Paul perhaps valued higher than any other (Rom 16:7).[1032] In Corinth, women prophesied and prayed openly in Christian gatherings (1 Cor 11:5-6). Moreover, Paul declares all earthly distinctions abolished “in Christ”: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).[1033]Despite all this, however, Paul does not dispense with the patriarchal gender roles and ideological structures behind them. Even though some of the passages that most explicitly subordinate women belong to the pseudoPauline letters,[1034] there is ample evidence of a similar attitude in Paul’s genuine letters. According to Paul, “Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of the woman”[1035] (1 Cor 11:3); man “is the image and reflection of God; but woman is the reflection of man” (1 Cor 11:7); and man was not “created for the sake of woman, but woman for the sake of man” (1 Cor 11:9) - to say nothing of the aforementioned passage quoted by Tertullian where Paul claims that women are not permitted to speak in the Christian gatherings but should be subordinate and ask their husbands at home if they desire to know something (1 Cor 14:33-36). Most scholars take this last passage to be an interpolation to Paul’s text[1036] but, interestingly, many scholars who read Paul from a feminist perspective consider it authentic.[1037]
These kinds of tensions in Paul’s gender-related teachings have been solved in various ways in scholarship.
For example, it is assumed that the order for women to keep silent only pertains to married women - after all, they are the only women who have husbands whom they can ask at home - while celibate women could speak publicly.[1038] Others have pointed out that Paul did not necessarily have any special “view of women” at all.[1039] In accordance with the androcentric ancient gender model that did not regard women as equal partners to men, he remained mainly indifferent towards women. Whatever Paul had in mind when writing about women in these passages, his teachings were read in various competing ways. The available sources attest a variety of readings, some of which have only been preserved in polemical contexts in the writings of those who opposed these readings.At first glance, there seem to be two opposing positions: first, there were those who forbade women to hold any leadership roles and who favored marriage and the submission of wives to their husbands as the natural order. Second, there were those who allowed women more freedom, entrusted them with similar tasks as men and favored asceticism.[1040] This kind of categorization, however, is too generalized. A closer look at the sources shows that the lines were not always clear cut. Moreover, the freedom of women in their social roles was limited and could only be enacted within the bounds of patriarchal structures.
B.