Paul Writing His Epistles

First century Christianity was a radically different religion from the one we understand today in the twenty-first century. However, it seems sometimes that many among the Christian community believe that the way they practice Christianity is exactly the same way Jesus practiced Christianity, with the greatest error in that thinking being that Jesus did not practice Christianity as he was a Jew. The small Jewish cult, with the help of a man named Paul, would eventually become a predominantly Greek and Roman community with early Christians practicing their tradition in the privacy and safety of their homes. In Greco-Roman society, the manager of the home was the wife, and the duties of managing Christian gatherings often fell upon women more than men in these private settings. By the end of the first century, it was not unheard of for women to be in very prominent positions within the Christian community. Yet this is clearly not the behavior we see in the Church today.

Readers will no doubt be familiar with the passage in 1 Timothy 2:11-15 which reads:

11. Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. 12. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. 13. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 15. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.

This letter is attributed to Paul, the same Paul who wrote in 1 Corinthians 7:38-40 the following:

38. So then, he who marries his fiancée does well; and he who refrains from marriage will do better. 39. A wife is bound as long as her husband lives. But if the husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, only in the Lord. 40. But in my judgement she is more blessed if she remains as she is. And I think that I too have the Spirit of God. [emphasis mine]

Fresco of Thecla in the Cathedral of Chernihiv

Scholars have agreed that many of the Pauline letters in the New Testament are merely attributed to Paul, and not written by him at all. Paul’s attitudes toward women at times seem surprisingly progressive, particularly in Romans 16 in which he praises many women active in the early Church such as Phoebe, Prisca, and Junia.

Early Christianity offered women a freedom from the strict gender roles demanded of them by Greco-Roman society. A proper woman was to be married and have children. It stood to reason then that when the Christians came along suggesting to forgo marriage and children and instead follow the Christian tradition, it was not taken well by the Greeks and Romans. The apochryphal work “The Acts of Paul and Thecla” recounts the story of a young woman named Thecla who rejected her betrothal to Thamyris and instead went with Paul to become a Christian. As a Christian, she would be free from the demands and expecations placed upon her by Greek society. As a consequence of her conversion, she was condemned to death (though miraculously saved thanks to her new faith).

Paul wrote that all Christians were equal, as stated in Galatians 3:28, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” If Paul was indeed progressive, and the early Church was a place of equality for women and men, then what brought about the radical shift away from equality? Most likely it was brought about in the third and fourth centuries after the Church had become the official state religion of Rome. With that power came abuse. The old communites ended as Christianity became monolithic. Sexism was institutionalized, and new Pauline letters were written to promote the old Greco-Roman gender roles once dismissed by early Greek Christians.

Today, the institutionalized sexism and rigorous gender roles of the Greeks and Romans persist in the Christian religion. It no longer offers freedom from societal expectations, and indeed actively promotes a narrower view of women’s roles than it once did. Christianity may have served an important role in social change, but now in the twenty-first century, it is holding society back and preventing progress in equal rights for women, gays and lesbians and other queer folk, and anyone else who does not subscribe to the rigid roles imposed by long-dead Roman leaders who sought to reinstate the old social order via the new faith. The best bet for social progress now is to completely cast away religion.

Next week, I’ll be looking further into the contradictions in the Pauline letters and discussing the authentic ones versus the later attributions. See you then!