Bible Study

Every week on Tuesday morning we have a student led Bible study. Last week Nora (the vicar from Germany) and I led a Bible study on John 21:15-18 where Jesus asks Peter “do you love me?” three times and then says “feed my sheep.” It went well and I am glad that Nora and I were able to led that for the group.

This week Samuel (Quaker from Kenya) and Gerald (Evangelical from Burkina Faso) led the Bible study and chose to look at 1 Timothy 2:11-15 where Paul, or someone writing in the name of Paul, is is writing to the church in Ephesus about women being silent in the church. Well, I’m sure you can imagine how apprehensive we were when we read the text, all of us wondering, “okay where are they going to take this.” And so the Bible study began…

Gerald started by taking a deeper look at some of the key words in the text. He explained that the word teachhas four meanings. It could mean giving instruction, or evangelizing, or formulating the doctrine of the church, or speaking with authority. He followed that explanation with the question of whether or not Paul meant that statement in an absolute or relative way, meaning are we to take that statement literally or are we to take it in the context of the letter and within the entire New Testament context? He went on to say that if we believe it is a categorical order then we put Paul in contradiction with himself and gave Titus 2:3 and 1 Corinthians 14:37 as examples of using teach and to prophesi as interchangeable concepts. (I was a little unclear on this point, but it could have been the language barrier. His first language is french.) He continued by telling us that the word used in the Timothy text was not the Greek word exousia that is often the word that is translated into English as authority, but rather another word was used which means to dominate and to behave like a boss. From this it was my understanding that what Gerald was trying to say is that Paul meant that women should not dominate over men and behave like a boss, which given the context of when the letter was written and what we know of the cultural hierarchy of men over women, that is a better interpretation of this text.

His next point was the use of the word woman in this text; is it referring to married women with children or single women? He pointed out that the words women and men could also mean wife and husband, therefore saying that a wife should not order her husband. Again looking at the text this would fit the understandings of the time. Gerald said that it could be that Paul is against women leading as pastors in the church, but that God can make exceptions for some women. After he finished his presentation on the text the floor was opened up for discussion.

Samuel posed the question, “how do you understand Paul?” Kim who is a Presbyterian from Korea said that verses 11-15 in the context of chapter 2 is talking about the institution of worship, meaning how worship was to be conducted.

Simon who is from the Pentecostal church in Nigeria surprised my by his comment.  I was expecting a more fundamental approach to this scripture do to the fact that women in his church are not allowed to wear pants due to the scripture that states women are not to wear the clothes of men (this is a completely different issue and I could go on and on about that, but I’m currently just trying to finish this post.)  Simon mentioned 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 where “women should be silent in the churches…” and said that Paul was referring to the contexts of the churches, i.e. the church in Corinth and Ephesus.  He went on to say that he believed that whatever a man can do for God a woman can do for God, which I appreciated and was pleasantly surprised to hear.

Next Anna from the Church of England in the UK piped up reminding everyone that in Timothy, Paul says there are problems in teachings and we don’t know what Timothy wrote; we only have half of the story. (Good point, well done Anna.)

Johanes who is an Orthodox monk from Greece said that the man is the head and the woman is the body and the head must love the body and collaborate with the body.  Men and women are equal in the church and all function in the body of Christ.  Now I’m not at all on board with the way he presented this, but taking his context into consideration I can appreciate what I think he was trying to say, i.e. we are all the body of Christ and none should be excluded from that body.

Linda from the Chruch of England in the UK was the next to speak and she said that the context is Christains moving away from Judaism and referenced the verse that mentions that women should not go to worship with their hair braided or wear pearls, etc. but we now go to church in our “Sunday” best, meaning that we must look at this text in its context.  I don’t agree with the idea that the churches saw themselves as Christians and were moving away from Judaism; I believe they still considered themselves to be part of the Jewish tradition and through Christ all could be part of the covenant God formed with Israel.  I do agree with her point about looking at the text in its context and then trying to understand what issue Paul was addressing.

Although our Bible studies are student led, the Biblical Hermeneutics professor, Father Gervarsis, who is a Catholic from India, participates and will help students prepare if they ask.  He was the final person to speak and he said that when Samuel and Gerard came to him with their scripture selection he couldn’t sleep because he thought there would be fighting among the students.  He affirmed that we needed to look at the Bible as a whole and not take sections out of context.  Rather when we are exegeting a text, we must look at it in the context of the entire Biblical narrative.  He went on to say that Paul was a human and aware of the problems in the churches and was writing to deal with that context.  He was a product of his Roman society where women were meek and submissive and that was the morality of the time.  This text was enforcing that Christian worship must be conducted in the proper way.  He also pointed out that Paul’s reference to the creation story in Genesis where “Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor (v.14)” is incorrect; the statement that the woman deceived is not exactly true.  What it says is the man took from the woman and ate without protesting.  The man is blamed for the sin in Genesis 3:17.  Father Gervarsis’ point was that Paul was trying to defend a cultural conservatism with the Hebrew Text.  Paul wanted to conserve the cultural practice of women being silent and modest.  He closed the session by saying there is always a need for renewal and repentance; that is a very Biblical concept.

All in all it was a very interesting and engaging Bible study and I’m glad that Samuel and Gerald chose that text.