The Pastoral Epistles: Silencing Women with Male Authority
The dispute over the legacy of Paul began early and is already traceable within the New Testament writings. After the death of the apostle, some of his followers wrote letters in his name, thus borrowing his authority to secure the acceptance of their writings.[1041] When these letters were copied and circulated in Paul’s name, they were established as Paul’s letters and the subsequent Christian writers made no distinction between the genuine letters and those ascribed to Paul.
When the pseudo-Pauline letters are compared with the authentic ones, as far as women are concerned, there is a discernible shift towards emphasizing marriage and the woman’s proper role as an obedient wife. The household codes in Ephesians and Colossians (Eph 5:22-33; Col 3:18-19), for example, put the woman firmly in her place vis-à-vis the man in full subordination to him. The writer of Colos- sians imitates Paul’s ideas in declaring all Christians equal but, strikingly, the writer leaves out the gender dichotomy from his list of distinctions that are no longer valid: “There is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all” (Col 3:11).This understanding of women’s role is also shared by the writer(s) of the pastoral epistles (1-2 Timothy and Titus). Their ideal woman loves her husband and children, is self-controlled, chaste, a good manager of the household, kind, and submissive to her husband (Titus 2:4-5). The writer of 1 Timothy prohibits women from all public activities outside the house:
Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty (1 Tim 2:11-15).
The proper conduct of a woman is described as silence, repeated twice in the text. Verses 11 and 12 form a chiastic structure that puts emphasis on the prohibition against teaching:[1042]
a woman must learn in silence (εν ησυχία; A) in all subjection (εν πάση υποταγή; B);
she is not allowed to teach (C)
or to have authority (αυθεντεΐν; B')
but must be in silence (εν ησυχία; A').
A woman should not act as a teacher or a leader but remain silent and passively listen to the male teacher. The writer refers to the Genesis story of creation and fall as a basis for asserting the passivity of women. The woman is doubly under male authority for, first, she was created only after the man and, second, it was she, not he, who was deceived by the serpent. As we have seen, Paul used a similar kind of argument in his letter to the Corinthians to justify the command to have women cover their heads in Christian gatherings (and men have their heads uncovered): “Man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for the sake of woman, but woman for the sake of man” (1 Cor 11:8-9).
Silence not only characterizes the proper conduct of a woman in relation to public life but also in relation to man in the private sphere. She is fully subordinate to him and finds her proper place at home, bearing and bringing up children. Connecting a woman's salvation to childbearing totally ignores the experiences of those women who are not able to have children. It obliges all women capable of conceiving to produce children. Families are of utmost importance for the writer and family loyalty is a vital virtue for him. Those who are disobedient to their parents are godless and worse than unbelievers (1 Tim 5:8; 2 Tim 3:2). Young people must honor their elders, slaves must be obedient to their masters, and everyone must be subject to rulers and authorities (1 Tim 5:1,17; 6:1-2; Titus 2:11; 3:1).
The family forms a solid basis for both the society and the church.This emphasis on family marks a clear difference from the teachings of the authentic Paul. Whereas Paul favored celibacy and recommended marriage only for those too weak to exercise self-control (1 Cor 7:7-9), the pastoral epistles (and other pseudo-Pauline letters) take it for granted that all Christians are married. The only exception are widows - but real widows are those who are over sixty years old (1 Tim 5:9); younger widows are urged to remarry and bear children (1 Tim 5:13-14). Instead, the authentic Paul believed that a widow is “more blessed if she remains as she is” (1 Cor 7:40). Moreover, while Paul reasons that, in contrast to those who have a spouse, the unmarried can devote themselves wholeheartedly to “the affairs of the Lord” (1 Cor 7:33-34), pseudo-Paul argues the opposite: only those who have shown they can manage their own household can act as overseers of the εκκλησία (1 Tim 3:5). For him, family and the Christian church are not opposites but the same.
C.