Ben: I liked the mention of Priscilla likely being present in Ephesus when Paul writes the Pastorals. This helps with the context. I was surprised you didn’t deal with the fact that Paul is clearly dealing with women of some monetary means, surely socially high status women, and you did not deal with Gary Hogue’s evidence that these women likely had prominent roles previously in the cult of Artemis. In other words Paul is correcting a particular problem, not laying down rules for all women, much less for all women for all time. You are right about ‘I am not (now) permitting’. It is not an imperative. Women are to be in submission to the teaching, nothing said here about to men. I was also surprised that you didn’t entertain the possibility that Paul is contrasting Eve with Mary, since the latter is the woman involved in ‘the childbearing’. and Mary unlike Eve was not only not deceived, she obeyed the heavenly voice and submitted to God’s will. I think more detail in this chapter would have been good, because you can’t presuppose your readers will have read your previous larger book dealing with this subject.
Phil: I agree that 1 Tim 2:9 clearly does refer to what only wealthy women could afford, and in light of the following restriction on women seizing authority to teach a man and of 2 Timothy’s reference justifies the conjecture that wealthy women could well have been spreading the false teaching. However, is there anything in the references in 1 Timothy to women involved in false teaching that clearly identifies any of them, let alone all of them being wealthy? Or is there enough evidence to assert “the fact that Paul is clearly dealing with women of some monetary means, surely socially high status women” or that “these women likely had prominent roles previously in the cult of Artemis”?
Ben: You should check Gary Hogue’s helpful book on Women in Ephesus and 1 Tim. 2.
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