Today is
one of those days in which saying after the scripture reading is done, “this is
the word of God,” leaves me and others a little bit queasy, for others it
leaves them feeling a little justified and they want to yell out “see I told
you so, it’s right there in scripture.” And
still others want to yell out even while I’m doing the reading to tell me to
stop. This is one of the passages we
find in the Bible with which many in the church don’t want to have to deal or
even admit is there. So, for example, this
passage is not included in the lectionary, which are the recommended readings
for each Sunday of the year. But we
don’t have to go very far in order to to find churches that still use this, and
other passages, especially from 1 Timothy, which we will get to in a bit, to
justify denying women not only ordination but even leadership positions in the
church, and so I think that in the mainline churches ignore these passages at
our own peril.
Today’s sermon is going to be a little different than what I
normally try to do which is to try and make the scripture applicable, so that
we might learn something from it and live that out in our lives. I know that I do not always accomplish that
goal, but that is what I at least try to do most of the time. I’m not going to do that today, because I am
going to try and unpack this passage, to provide some background and some
perspective on this passage.
Originally
today was to be the conclusion of our sermon series on women in the Bible as we
concluded with this passage. But when I
sat down to write the sermon I ended up with 15 pages, and that was without
even talking about all the things I could address. A normal sermon is usually around 8 pages, so
rather than trying to edit out a huge chunk I decided to spread this issue over
two weeks, although at the end of today’s message some of you may want to say
you know exactly which parts I could have taken out. I’ve never done this before so we’ll see how
it works. So if you want to hear some
good illustrations, be uplifted and look at how to apply the scripture to your
life, please come back next week.
Now maybe since today we are giving our third graders their
bibles and honoring our graduating seniors I should instead be giving some
uplifting message, but I think today is important because of those events since
it will give them, and us, the beginning to understand that there are some things
in scripture with which we are going to disagree and to also understand that
some things have changed over time, and to recognize the lens through which we
read scripture has as much to do with our understanding of scripture as the
words on the page do. So, for example, if
we were to read the passages found in scripture that relate to slavery and we
did so two hundred years ago, we would read them very differently than we do
today. Our understanding and interpretation of those passages, and the lens
through which we read them, has changed radically in the last few centuries.
Now I think Paul is one of the great misunderstood people in
the history of the church, and a lot of that has to do with how Paul’s words
have been used throughout the history of the church to hurt and suppress
people. In The Good Book, by the Rev.
Peter Gomes, which was hugely influential in my accepting the call to the
ministry, Gomes quotes another black theologian who said “Paul never met a
status quo he didn’t like.” (p. 89) Adam
Hamilton, who is the minister of the largest Methodist church in the country,
recounted a time when he was stopped by a teen girl one day while he was
walking down the hall and she asked him what he was going to be preaching on
that Sunday, and he said he was doing something on Paul, and she replied,
“uh.” When he asked her what that was
for, she said, “I don’t want to hear about Paul, he’s a misogynist.”
These are both statements with which I would have originally
agreed, but the more I read Paul and the more I come to understand Paul the
more I see that he was not someone who normally supported the status quo, not to
say that he was not a man of his own time, because he was, but that in many,
many ways he was a true radical. But his
texts have been used to support the status quo, or maybe better put, as Peter Gomes
says “scripture is invariably used to support the status quo, no matter what
the status quo, despite the revolutionary origins and implications of scripture
itself.” (p. 47) and that is certainly
true for Paul. We don’t have the time to
go into who Paul was, but in two weeks, after we celebrate Pentecost next week,
we will begin a series looking at who Paul is.
Some have claimed, and I think rightly so, that besides for Jesus that
Paul is the most important person for the formation of Christianity, just in
scripture this is true as 13 of the 27 books in the New Testament claim to be
written by Paul, and others are about him or reference him, so in two weeks
we’ll try and understand Paul and some of his writings.
Now there are some scholars who believe that this passage was
not actually written by Paul, but was instead added by a scribe later. This is called an interpolation, which simply
means that a later text was added to an earlier text. If you were looking at the bulletin insert
from this morning, you may have noticed that the passage we read was in parenthesis,
which indicates that the translators of the New Revised Standard Version do not
believe it is authentic, but they also don’t want to remove it and so they try
and give some indication that marks it as different. Now you may be asking how do translators
decide if something is authentic or not?
Well I’m glad you asked.
There are numerous things they take into consideration, but
the first and most important thing is whether the passage is always found in
the different manuscripts we have that are used for translations and always
found in the same place. Now it should
be noted that for most of scripture there is little debate about whether it is
authentic or not, although sometimes there are differences in words used, and
good translations will make note of this, but there are some passages that are
found in different locations within a text, and there are even some that are
found in different books and not in the book we know the passage from. If there is question of whether the passage
is an interpolation, the second thing scholars look for is whether the texts
before and after are impacted by the passage, that is would they be easier or
harder to understand if the passage was removed. And the final thing is to look at whether the
passage matches the rest of the document, or other writings by the same person,
or if it stands in stark contrast. By
those standards, today’s passage fails on all three accounts.
The first problem is that the passage is found in some
manuscripts where we find it now when reading 1 Corinthians, but in other
manuscripts it is found after verse 40.
When translators find this occurring they have to try and figure out not
only why this is occurring, with one of the immediate questions being whether
it is original to the text, but also to try and figure out where the passage might
originally have occurred. In this
particular instance, the majority of scholars believe that these sentences
probably came in as a margin notation made by a scribe at some point and it was
then added into the text by other scribes.
Now just because it was a margin notation does not mean that it is not
authentic, because often margin notations are made because when a scribe was
copying a document they made a mistake and skipped some lines and so they get
added back in on the margin. But, as I
said, the majority of scholars who don’t that is what happened here. Instead they believe that a scribe made a margin
notation based on a summary of 1 Timothy 2:8-15, the main portion of which says
“Let a woman learn in silence and full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have
authority over a man; she is to keep silent” (11-12).
Even though 1 Timothy claims to be written by Paul, and
therefore might give substantial support to today’s passage being authentic,
there is almost universal agreement among scholars, both conservative and
liberal, that 1 Timothy was not in fact written by Paul. When I say near universal agreement, best
guess is that more than 90% of scholars who study these texts for a living
believe this was not written by Paul, and again in a few weeks when we look at
Paul we will look specifically at how and why letters might be attributed to
Paul that were not in fact written by him.
So what some scholars speculate is that as a scribe was copying this
letter and saw that Paul was writing about order in the church, they thought
that clearly women speaking brings disorder to worship, and so made this margin
notation referencing the 1 Timothy passage and then it got added into the text
when later scribes copied it, but since it was just in the margin they weren’t
sure where the passage was supposed to go and so it’s been added in at two
different places.
The second point that translators look at is whether the
passages before it and after it would make more sense if the passage was not
there. I have included some verses
before the passage and after it in the insert so you can see this, or if you
have your Bible with you today I invite you to turn to the passage so you can
see it there. Paul is talking about
prophecy, and he says “you can all prophesy” with no distinction made about gender
as long as they follow the rules for order in worship. This understanding that it is both men and
women matches exactly to an earlier passage in chapter 11 in which Paul
specifically addresses women prophesying and praying in church, with which he
has no problem, as long as they have their heads covered. This is actually one of Paul’s radical
claims, since only married women of the right order had the right to cover
their heads, but Paul gives this right to all the women in the church, which is
an equalizing move among the women, as well as how they would be viewed by men
in the congregation.
Then this passage comes in, which tells women to be quiet,
then immediately Paul goes back to talking about those who claim to be a
prophet and that they need to follow his commands. If you are looking at the insert or in your
Bible you will see that if you remove this section, which is in parenthesis,
not only does it not make the passage more difficult to understand, but that it
in fact makes it easier. It makes more
sense without it there then it does with it there, which again makes some
scholars believe it is not original to the text, or perhaps it has been moved,
which might say that it should come after verse 40 as a new thought.
There is one other possibility that could be used to argue
that the passage is in fact authentic to Paul.
One of the biggest problems in looking at the ancient Greek manuscripts
in order to do a translation of the New Testament is the fact that no
punctuation is used, not even periods, as well as the fact that the words tend
to run together, and so translators have to decide what punctuation should be
used. For centuries, people have
believed that in 1 Corinthians Paul wrote that “all things are lawful” and
later in the letter that “it is good for a man not to touch a woman.”
But, most scholars now believe that Paul
didn’t actually say this, instead he is quoting something that was written to
him or relayed to him that members of the Corinthian church were saying. So these are not Paul’s words, but instead he
is quoting what they are saying in order to reply to them, usually to refute
them. Most translations now show these
two phrases, along with some others, in quotations. The Corinthian community would, of course,
have understood this because they were part of the conversation, which is what
we to remember is that these letters represent a dialogue, often an ongoing
dialogue, of which we have only one side.
So some have proposed that the same thing should be done for
today’s passage, that Paul is not saying that women should be quiet, but
instead is quoting this as something being said in the Corinthian community to
which he is responding, not in affirmation but instead in rebuke. So, what some scholars propose is that verses
34 and 35 should be in quotes, and then verse 36 is Paul’s response. If we want these words to be authentic to Paul this might be
a reasonable conclusion to make for several reasons.
The first is that we know that things like
this were certainly said in synagogues, and therefore can assume that they were
also said in some churches. The Talmud,
which is a collection of rabbinic teachings says it is “a shame for a woman to let
her voice be heard among men.” And Rabbi
Eliezer, who was a contemporary of Paul, is recorded as saying, “Let the words
of the law be burned, rather than that they should be delivered by women.”
If today’s passage is a statement that Paul
is quoting, rather than saying himself, it would also clear up one of the more
troubling aspects of the passage in which it is claimed that the “law” says
these things, but the problem is that nowhere from Genesis to Malachi is there
any law which forbids women from speaking in church. There are certainly rules and laws which put
women in a subordinate position, but nothing about their speaking in church. The other problem is that whenever Paul does
reference the law he always specifically stipulates what law he is talking
about, which is not done here.
If this is a quotation, then the rebuke which follows in
verse 36 also begins to make more sense.
Traditionally this has been seen as a rebuke against the women who are
now being told to be quiet, although that is difficult interpretation to see
based on what is actually said. What
makes more sense is that the rebuke is not to the women, but instead to the men
who are making such a claim. When the
passage is read in that light, it actually begins to make more sense. But it still doesn’t make much sense with
what comes before or after since it seems like an interruption of what Paul had
been talking about.
The final problem in seeing this as authentic to Paul is to
understand it in relation to many other statements that he has made about
women, not only in 1 Corinthians, but in his other letters as well. The one passage that people who want to
object to this passage want to hold up is his statement in Galatians chapter 3
verse 28, where Paul says that in Christ “there is no longer Jew or Greek,
there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female” for we
are all one in Christ Jesus. That’s a
great passage, but the problem is that there is not a sort of hierarchy of
passages so that one has preeminence and all others get judged against it. Doing that with the Galatians passage is no
different than those who do the same thing with passage from 1 Timothy.
This is one of the great dangers when we
don’t read scripture with integrity.
Instead, each passage must be taken into context with the entirety of
Paul’s writings, and in particular with what he has already said in 1
Corinthians, which includes instructions for women on how to pray and prophesy
in church, as well as how prophets, all prophets not just male or female, are
to deal with their revelations while in worship. These statements would all seem to indicate
that Paul does not in fact have any problem with women speaking in church, as
long as they follow the rules and are orderly, the same as the men in the
congregation, which would seem to indicate that this passage is either a quote,
which Paul then rebukes, or is not in fact original to the text but was added
in later, and therefore needs to be interpreted and understood in that light.
It is clear that there were women speaking and doing things
in church which at least some people were upset about, otherwise there would be
no need for anyone, including Paul, to issue any instructions or restrictions
on this behavior. We also know from
numerous sources, Paul being one of the most important, but certainly not the
only one, that women played important roles in the early church. In his letter to the Romans, Paul makes
reference to several women, including Phoebe, who is called a deacon, and to
Junia, who is said to be “prominent among the apostles.” Because some translators have had a problem
with a woman being called prominent with the apostles, her name has often been
changed to a male name, a male name it should be noted that didn’t actually
exist, in order to try and solve this problem.
I’m assuming you can already guess what my opinion is on
this passage, not only with what I have just said, but with what I’ve already
said as we looked at women in the Bible.
But I would still say that in order to deal with this passage with
integrity we must ask, even knowing all the stuff I just dumped on you, what if
this is authentic to Paul and he actually did say that women should be quiet
while in church. What does that mean for us today? Does it mean the same thing in a 21st century
context as it did in a 1st century context, or can we see it and interpret it
differently today? That is what we will
look at next week.
Clearly today’s passage has impacted the church for nearly
two thousand years, and still impacts us today, so how do we approach scripture
with integrity, even scriptures with which we disagree? We have looked at the lives of several women
who have changed the law, changed the faith and changed our reality, including
Mary Magdalene who is called the Apostle to the Apostles. How do we reconcile their witness, along with
the witness of other women in the faith, with some of the injunctions that we
read in scripture?
Reading scripture is
hard, it is difficult and it is also life changing and life giving. When we shy away from difficult texts then we
short our faith and we short the witness of scripture, but when we refuse to
see the text as a living document that still speaks to us today because God
still speaks to us today, because the Spirit still speaks to us today, because
Jesus is still with us today, then we also do scripture and our faith an
injustice, so I hope you will continue with us on this path as we seek God’s
wisdom and knowledge and guidance in our lives.
May it be so my sisters and brothers. Amen.
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