Quote:
Originally Posted by jammies
It's all the Bible, Old or New. Here's a New Testament quote sure to warm the hearts of women everywhere:
1 Timothy 2:11-15
Women should listen and learn quietly and submissively. I do not let women teach men or have authority over them. Let them listen quietly. For God made Adam first, and afterward he made Eve. And it was the woman, not Adam, who was deceived by Satan, and sin was the result. But women will be saved through childbearing and by continuing to live in faith, love, holiness, and modesty.
You can find examples of almost any immoral behaviour being condoned or outright commanded by God in the Bible. I know when I read it all the way through (skipping, to be sure, some of the "Jeremiah begat Woosifer, and Woosifer begat Tyler" chapters) it gave me a new perspective on "biblical morality".
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You are taking that quote way out of context though to make your point. Keep in mind that in the day, women were uneducated and held lower status in society. So the early Christians had to find ways to get their message out that were compatible with the societies they were operating in. Paul himself was a Pharisee, it would have been unheard of for a woman to preach anything to anybody in his experience. Notice that he outlines that women bound to traditional roles can still be saved.
It did no good for the early Christians to appear too radical or upend the existing social structures they existed in - it led to persecution, lions, and all kinds of other nasty stuff.
It's been extensively researched, and it is well understood, that women played an active role in the early church, much more so than what was recorded in the Pauline letters.
Regardless, your overall point about what you read in the bible is good enough without playing the context game on the choice quotes. There's lots of crazy stuff in there that doesn't make sense in a modern context, when we don't have all the facts or implicit assumptions people had about common knowledge when they were written.