Rachelle and I have recently returned from a trip to Greece and Turkey with forty people from Emmanuel Enid. We visited Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Berea, Smyrna, Philadelphia, Sardis, Laodicea, Thyratira, Thessalonica and almost every other city or island where Paul traveled during his three missionary journeys. In the photo to the left, Rachelle and I are in front of the ruins of the city of Corinth. In the background of the photo is the very
bema where Paul stood before the Roman pro-consul Gallio after Paul was accused by the Jews in the city of Corinth of
"persuading people to worship God contrary to the law of God." The Roman pro-consul Gallio refused to make a judgment against Paul saying,
"I am unwilling to be a judge of these matters" (Acts 18:15). Gallio recognized the conflict in Corinth to be a Hebrew religious matter, not a Roman political problem. However, Gallio did nothing as Sosthenes, a convert to Christ and leader of the synagogue, was beaten by the Hebrew mob before the bema (see Acts 18:17). Paul was hurried out of the Corinthian market-place while Sosthenes was being beaten by the Jews. Paul was eventually secreted out of the city by fellow believers because of the Jewish threats against him (see Acts 18:18).
Most Bible-believing Christians have paid little attention to the problems Paul faced during his 18 month stay in Corinth (50 to 51 AD). The Jews sought to imprison him because of his influence among the people. When they failed to have him arrested, the Corinthian Jews beat Sosthenes, the leader of their synagogue for believing what Paul taught. The Roman pro-consul Gallio did not prosecute Paul under Roman law as the Jews wanted, but he was "unconcerned" with the Jews beating those who believed Paul's message (Acts 18:17). Notice, again, the reason the Corinthian Jews gave to the Roman pro-consul Gallio for their anger against Paul -
"he is persuading people to worship God contrary to the Law of God." The Law of God is what we now call the Old Testament and all the Old Covenant traditions of Hebrew worship. A simple principle regarding our worship of Christ can be derived from reading Acts 18 and Paul's time in Corinth:
The more our corporate worship looks like Old Testament Jewish worship (i.w. "a holy building in which to gather, authoritative male priests who rule over others, and a sacrificial system of actions designed to please God, etc...), the more our corporate worship is unlike Paul's and early believers' worship of Christ. (Wade Burleson)
Allow me to give just one example which illustrates the dichotomy between the Law of Old Covenant worship as practiced by the Jews in Corinth and the freedom of New Covenant worship as practiced by Paul. In one of Paul's earliest epistles, he clearly teaches that there should be no difference between males and females in the ekklesia (Galatians 3:28), and he later writes to the Corinthian Christians and says all believers should serve one another as they have been gifted (I Cor. 12:4-11). Paul teaches the Corinthians that members of the assembly, both male and female, should participate in congregational worship (see I Cor. 14:31 and 14:39), and that women should publicly pray and gifted women should teach others in the ekklesia just as men should publicly pray and gifted men should teach others in the ekklesia (see I Cor. 11:5). The entire discourse of Paul's writings to the early churches in Greece and Asia Minor is saturated with the new instruction that God's new priesthood is composed of males and females, slaves and free, Jews and Gentiles. In the ekklesia (assembly) of Christ there is to be no separation of people by race, nationality, gender or color. Each of us has been made a priest (Revelation 1:5) and we all form a royal priesthood (I Peter 2:9).
The Jews who were worshipping in the syngagogue of Corinth, however, were greatly offended by Paul's teachings. They heard it with their own ears! Paul was "persuading people to worship God contrary to the Law." This could not be allowed! After the Corinthian Jews dragged Paul before the
bema to charge him with a crime and then beat Sosthenes in the public square, Paul escaped to Cenchrea and later Ephesus (see Acts 18:18). He later wrote to the Corinthians and was quite blunt about those Corinthian Jews who caused him trouble and their zeolousness for the Law. He calls them "false
apostles" and "deceitful workers" (II Cor. 11:13), and he tells the Christians in
Corinth to resist their false practices and to stand firm to the new
"traditions" that Paul had taught them (see I Corinthians
11:2). Paul's practice of empowering followers of Christ to serve God as the Spirit gifts them--regardless of one's gender, economic status, or ethnicity--was precisely why the Jews in Corinth dragged Paul before Gallio and why Paul had to escape the city. This is the context one should always have in mind when reading the letters of I and II Corinthians.
So, the startling prohibition
of
I Corinthians 14:34-35 seems discordant and unconnected to Paul's stay in Corinth and the entire first letter of encouragement he writes to the Corinthians. Paul writes:
"The women are to keep silent in the assembly; for they are not permitted to speak, but are to subject themselves just as the Law also says. If they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to even speak in the assembly." (I Corinthians 14:34-35)
There's a reason these text above seems discordant and unconnected to Paul's stay in Corinth-- it is. I will show below how these two verses are a
quotation of what the Corinthian Jews taught about women in the assembly, not what Apostle Paul taught. In the very next verse (v. 36), Paul powerfully refutes what the Jews in Corinth were teaching about women. How do we know
I Corinthians 14:34-35 is a quotation of the Jews that Paul refutes and is not Paul's own views about women in the ekklesia? There are at least five solid, hermeneutical reasons:
(1). As already mentioned, these two verses are
antithetical to everything Paul writes about women throughout the New Testament, especially his teaching regarding women in I Corinthians. These two verses (vs. 34-35) are almost jarring because they represent a position that Paul has already torn apart in his previous writings.
(2). These verses are very consistent with the Law of God in the Jewish Scriptures and traditions. The Jews in Corinth accused Paul of persuading people
"to worship God contrary to the Law" (Acts 18:13). If the above two verses actually represented Paul's beliefs, the Corinthian Jews would have hugged and kissed Sosthenes and Paul, not dragged them before the
bema in Corinth in order to imprison them and/or beat them.
(3). Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians in Greek. The written Greek language does not use
"italics
" like we do in our English to identify a quote. To know that something is a quotation: (a). The author must identify that what he is writing is a quotation (something Paul does elsewhere), or (b). the quotation must be so familiar to the audience that no indentification of the quote is necessary, or (c). the author uses a Greek
eta after the quotation to then refute it. I believe the latter two ways are precisely how the Apostle Paul identifies he is quoting someone else in I Corinthians 14:34-35.
(4). The Jews in Corinth, like all orthodox Jews in Paul's day, believed women were not qualified to be learners in the synagogue, much less teachers,
because the Law and the talmudic literature forbad them from learning. A woman's presence in the
synagogue was tolerated, but women were to be unobtrusive and silent, never
interferring with the work of the men. The Jews believed when a woman desired to ask a question in order to learn, she
was to maintain her silence in the assembly and wait to ask her
husband after leaving the synagogue and returning home. The Jews believed the husbands were to be the source of their wives' learning. The Corinthian Jews were "zeolous for the Law" and constantly opposed Paul's promotion of women as equal to men, including Priscilla and Acquilla, the couple with whom Paul stayed in Corinth and who
both later teach Apollo "the way of God more accurately" in Ephesus (see Acts 18:26). The quotation in I Corinthians 14:34-35 is consistent to the law of the Jews in Corinth, but it is absolutely contrary to the teaching and the practice of the Apostle Paul.
(5). Paul REFUTES the Jewish quotation in I Corinthians 14:34-35 twice in the very next verse (v. 36) by using the Greek letter eta. Go look in your interlinear Greek/English Bible and find the stand alone Greek letter eta in v. 36. You will see the eta twice in that one verse. It looks like this: η The Greek eta has two possible markings that cause it to be translated with either the English word "or," or with the English equilavent of what we mean when we make a sound with our mouths like "PFFFFFFFFFFFFT!" This means "That's ridiculous!" or "Are you kidding me?" or "Nonsense!" This latter meaning, in my opinion, is precisely what Paul is saying (twice) in I Corinthians 14:36 in response to the Jewish quotation he has just given I Corinthians 14:35-36. The original Greek text has no markings, so the translation of η must be made by translators based on other facts than the markings of the Greek letter. I believe the context, the culture of Corinth, and the radical nature of New Covenant worship taught by Paul (and resisted by the Corinthian Jews zealous for the Law) demands the η be translated with a "PFFFFFFFFFFFT!" instead of "or" (as is done in the NAS). So, let me translate I Corinthians 14:33-36 using the proper translation of η:
For God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the ekklessia of the saints. (Would you like an example?) "The women are to keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but are to subject themselves, just as the Law also says. If women desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in the church." PFFFFFFT! Such nonsense! Do you Jews who practice this believe the Word of God comes from you only? PFFFFFFFT! Do you believe the Word of God comes to you only? If anyone wishes to think himself a prophet or spiritual, let that person recognize that the things I HAVE WRITTEN TO YOU (not what the Jews zealous for the Law are teaching) are the Lord's commandment.
The Apostle Paul quotes the pharisaical Jews in Corinth the same way he quotes the pagan poets when he was in Athens. In Paul's famous message on Mars Hill, he says:
God is not far from each one of us; for in him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, "For we His offspring." Being the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man. (Acts 17:27-29).
Are you familiar with the pagan poet Paul quotes from as he addressed the Athenians? Probably not. His name was Disoemeia, and he was a native of Paul's hometown of Tarsus. He was a Greek poet the Athenians loved to quote. He was also a worshipper of Zeus. I give you Robert Browning's English translation of Cicero's Latin version of Disoemeia's ancient Greek poem
Divine Signs from which Paul quotes.
"From Zeus we lead the strain; he whom mankind
Ne'er leave unhymned: of Zeus all public ways,
All haunts of men, are full; and full the sea,
And harbours; and of Zeus all stand in need.
For we are His offspring: and he, ever good and mild
Gives favouring signs, and rouses us to toil.
Calling to mind life's wants: when clods are best
For plough and mattock: when time is ripe
For planting vines and sowig seeds, he tells
Since he himself hath fixed in heaven these signs."
Paul quotes both pagan poets and proud Pharisees in Scripture. Just because you are quoting a passage from the Bible does not necessarily mean you are revealing the mind of God. Serious, Bible-believing Christians recognize that no individual verse or passage of Scripture can be correctly interpreted outside of the textual context and an understanding of the cultural climate of those to whom the letter was initially written.
As my father has written:
"Someone is going to say 'The Bible means what it says." But
that may be the problem. I don't think the Bible means what it
says as much as it means what it means
and some interpretation must go into understanding its meaning.
This would certainly indicate that we need to recognize the possible
fallibility of our understanding of Scripture to stay away from the heat that sometimes
happens in discussing it."
The issue of womens' function and roles in the church generates much heat in the evangelical church. Those of us who believe in the infallibility of the sacred text should be very careful before using one's views on this issue as the standard for Christian orthodoxy. Truth is, those who urge women to be silent in the church may have more in common with pagan poets and proud Pharisees than Paul and the principles of sacred writ.
