I remember when I was about eight years old, wanting to see God. As I stood outside one warm summer day, looking up into the sky, the white, puffy clouds seemed to hover together until a long promenade appeared. At the farthest end was a throne-type chair, and sitting in it was a giant of a man with long, flowing hair, and a long, flowing beard. In moments, the clouds moved on into shapeless masses, but the image has stuck with me.
All my life, I have wanted to tell people about the Lord. I've felt a calling from deep inside since my youth. But, the denomination that I was raised in discounts women to be hardly anything more than warm bodies in the house of God. Any time the subject of a woman in any 'authoratative' role came up, Apostle Paul was quoted~women are to keep silent in the church, etc.,~ and nothing more would come of it.
Recently, the Lord has opened my eyes to Paul~he didn't discount women as many denominations would have us believe. In fact, he embraced women in the spreading of the Gospel, just as Jesus did. So, for any women out there who feel the Lord is calling you out, but denomination and religion are telling you 'no' based on Paul and his writings, let's take a closer look at their 'evidence' against us.
Who exactly was Paul talking to, when he addressed the people of Corinth? I grew up in a denomination that believes that Paul was speaking to every woman on the face of the earth, then and now. But, yet, he did not say anything like this to the women at Philippi. Nor is it any indication to how Jesus treated, or spoke to, women either. It warrants a closer look at the customs, traditions and social environment that Paul was up against in bringing the Gospel into a pagan society that had no built-in history of Jesus (as the Jews had) nor the concept of worshiping one God.
[Greeks considered madness an important aspect of worship. Women in particular responded to Bacchus (also known as Dionysus), the god of madness; ’him of the orgiastic cry, exciter of women, Dionysus, glorified with mad honors’. (Plutarch, Moralia 671c).
There was in Corinth, then, a significant monument memorializing the savagery of female Bacchus worshippers.
There was also a tradition that women during the course of the worship tore apart young animals and ate them raw, warm and bleeding, thereby receiving within themselves the life of the god.
Among Dionysiac worshippers, writes Livy in his History of Rome, ’the majority are women’ (XXXIX.xv): While women were famed for their wildness in the Bacchic cult and in certain other mystery cults, other aspects of their worship were more traditional. Of special importance to the study of the situation Paul addresses is the concept of clamor, noisy outbursts of religious pandemonium...
It is in this context of self-control that women are asked to subdue themselves within the bounds of propriety (1Cor 14:35). Although the translations are rarely the same, the same Greek verb is used in both verses 32 and 35. Hupotasso, meaning to arrange or place under, is in the middle voice, indicating that the person does this to him or herself. The concept of self-control is brought out in most translations of verse 32. It is for prophets to control prophetic inspiration, for the God who inspires them is not a God of disorder but of peace.
It cannot mean that women are not to speak at all, for they have been given permission to pray and prophesy in 11:5 - provided they observe due decorum. Nor can the directive be a prohibition against speaking in tongues (14:39). Some other type of disruption must thus be under discussion...We have already mentioned heathen rituals in which frenzied shouting was expected from women and considered a necessary ingredient of the worship...
New patterns of Christian worship appear to have been more difficult for women to adopt than men, as they had not known the dignified rite of Apollo or Zeus. For the most part, their religious expression had been accompanied by extravagances of every sort.
It was important that the service of worship become meaningful. Women were encouraged to question their husbands at home, since the women had usually been denied an opportunity for education while the men participated vigorously in all manner of theological and philosophical debates. The questions should be asked at home so that the conversation would not disrupt the service. Neither was a woman to gossip or chatter with the other women during the service - surely a great temptation, for Greek women were closely confined to their homes.]
Well, doesn't this make 1 Corinthians make sense, especially the 11th chapter. Now, let's compare some Philippian history of women to the Corinthian history of women. I have underlined points of interest.
[Turning first to the lives of women in ancient Philippi, recent studies of thearchaeological and textual evidence have demonstrated the relevance of feministanalysis of the ancient world. Abrahamsen have begun to place women at the center of their scholarly inquiry in an effort to achieve a fuller picture of Philippi. Their efforts reflect the development of feminist modes of inquiry not only within biblical studies, but also within the fields of classical literature and history.
Perhaps the most important figure for women’s worship practices in Philippi was the goddess Diana. While no sanctuary or temple of Diana can befound at Philippi, there is an altar at the acropolis, most likely an artifact of anopen-air sanctuary for the goddess. Abrahamsen has argued that the location of the acropolis carvings of female figures near depictions of Diana demonstrates the influence of priestesses in the Diana cult at Philippi. Diana was reflected in the activitiesof her devotees in midwifery, puberty rites, healing processes, and funerary preparations. Diana was reflected in the activities of her devotees in midwifery, puberty rites, healing processes, and funerary preparations. This link between Diana and crucial moments in women’s lives is in keeping with Diana’s affiliation with both childbirth and the netherworld. These typical activities and the prevalence of female figures at the acropolisstress how the Diana cult at Philippi was primarily made, paid for and organized by women. Since the adherents were mostly women, the leadership and administrative roles were most likely also filled by women.
From this rather cursory sketch of women’s participation in Philippi’s cults, following primarily the studies of Abrahamsen and Portefaix, it becomes clear that women were engaged in a range of activities. Significantly, for the examination of the letter to the Philippians, it seems that women held leadership positions in these cults before, during and after the time of Paul. Since it was expected that women would have participated and led within the cultic life of Philippi, it seems that these activities would also encourage Philippian women to play yet another role, that of model. Thus, in the education and upbringing of Philippian women (and often also young males), they would have encountered a range of female models: goddesses, priestesses, ancestors, fellow devotees, and family members. It seems, then, that women in Philippi would have been accustomed to the idea of imitating other women in everyday as well as cultic settings.
Turning to this study’s particular analysis of the letter to the Philippians, then, we will assume that women were present in the community to which Paul wrote at Philippi and that some women played prominent roles within the community. By beginning with such an assumption, instead of the traditional scholarly expectation of women’s absence or insignificance, much work that precedes this study has shown the relevance of feminist approaches to not only Pauline letters, in general, but also to the specific case of Philippians.]
(see full article: http://www.scribd.com/doc/71167964/11/A-WOMEN%E2%80%99S-PARTICIPATION-IN-CULTS-AT-PHILIPPI)
It would seem that even though both Philippian and Corinthian women practiced pagan rituals, the Philippians were organized in their worship and instruction, as opposed to the Corinthians that worshiped in a frenzied state and it seemed no teaching took place at all. So, as the women leaders accepted Christ and turned their back on their pagan gods, the Philippian women were the perfect candidates for leading, teaching, and preaching in the church. The Corinthian women, however, tried to bring their pagan rituals into the church, and that is what Paul was speaking about in his letters to the Corinthians.
Makes you look at Paul, and 1 and 2 Corinthians in a whole new way, doesn't it?
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