posted
I would comment but I a) have to be silent and b) cannot give instruction over men. Now Jebus has posted, there's nothing I can do.
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Interesting question. I happen to think that Paul was speaking as an individual in his letters and not as a prophet. I think he began early the task of importing the ideas of humans into the gospels in order to get the church to work well within the culture (and power structures) of the times. Jesus if anything honored women especially during his ministry. He did not silence them. That's why I think Paul's teachings about women at best don't apply to us, and at worst are outright mistakes.
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I'd say Paul was particularly interested in asserting his own personal power over his churches, and one of the means he used was assigning men control over women.
At the time, I'm sure it was seen as visionary, or at least perfectly acceptable. It's one of the reasons that I don't see how a 2000 year old religion is very practical today. Much of the BS they insisted were awesome ideas are actually just stupid.
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Wasn't he the one that got hit over the head on the road, woke up converted, and changed his name to Paul from Saul? It all seesm very suspicious to me . . .
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: I'd say Paul was particularly interested in asserting his own personal power over his churches, and one of the means he used was assigning men control over women.
If you believe that, perhaps you should actually read Paul's writings, because you are about as far away from Paul as you can get. Unless you have some unique special documents written by other apostles talking about how terrible Paul was.
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posted
I believe Barnabas had some fairly cutting things to say about their time together:
quote: And lo it came to pass that Paul did step upon the heels of my sandals when he walked behind me, so that my feet slipped uncomfortably out of them. And when I did ask Paul to desist he made a comical face at me and caused all the other followers of the Lord to laugh at me.
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BlackBlade: Have you read Paul? He treats his churches like they're little children. He tells them to follow him more often than he mentions following God or Jesus. Every letter is about asserting control over how they live. He is about as misogynistic as you can get.
Obviously if you go into it assuming that it's the inspired Word of God, and Paul's awesome, you can imagine that it's totally cool that Paul treats women like they shouldn't even be around, and generally acts like a huge jerk.
I didn't go into it with that preconception, so yeah, I did read it. I wrote a paper on it in college, in fact. You don't have to agree with me, but I'm not just making things up.
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Huh? Paul quite often mentions following God and Jesus.
Every letter is really about warding off false interpretations of the gospel, not asserting control. What would Paul want to control in prison? If power grabs were his intent, he should have been writing letters to the prison guards.
Of course, this is coming from someone who thinks that Paul's awesome. I didn't go into it with that preconception, (my parents disliked Paul's writing style, in fact, so I was even reluctant to go ahead with reading them) so yeah, I did read them.
Paul is as demeaning to men, children, churches, slaves, masters, Jews and Gentiles as he is to women. He expects something of all of them. He doesn't single out women as the OP suggests.
The main point of all of Paul's letters is mostly "Screw the rules, I have faith." He tacks on the wives-submit-to-husbands and slaves-obey-their-masters stuff as examples of glorifying their Savior through living in humility.
I could write a whole book on the letters of Paul (some of them are among my favorite books in the Bible), but I really don't have time right now.
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quote:Originally posted by Shan: Wasn't he the one that got hit over the head on the road, woke up converted, and changed his name to Paul from Saul? It all seesm very suspicious to me . . .
You forget the part about him being on the road to warn all the Jews about the dangers of believing in the false calims of Jesus and his followers. There is an old wives' tale that says the rabbis asked him to convert in order to infiltrate and change the fledgling movement of Christianity into a religion that was obviously not Judaism so no more Jews would be confused and convert.
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quote:BlackBlade: Have you read Paul? He treats his churches like they're little children.
Because the churches he dealt with were like little children. The converts were almost all former followers of other religions bringing their culture and traces of that religion into their new faith. Apparently Paul did not do enough to regulate the church as clearly it splintered off down the road and doctrinal differences have been endemic ever since.
quote:He tells them to follow him more often than he mentions following God or Jesus. Every letter is about asserting control over how they live.
I'm sorry but if you count the number of times he invokes Jesus and the number of times he invokes his own name I think you will find Jesus wins. Take the debate concerning circumcision, Peter received direct revelation on the matter and he still had trouble making the correct choice, Paul did not invoke his own authority when he "withstood him to his face" rather he invoked the authority of the scriptures and everyone agreed with him in the end.
quote:He is about as misogynistic as you can get.
Then he is an extremely conflicted misogynist. "Neither is man without the woman nor the woman without the man in the Lord." and "Husbands love your wives even as Christ loved the church and gave his life for it." Paul's statement about women speaking in the church is less harsh in light of modern day revelation as well. The statement being rendered, "It is not permitted for them to lead" rather than to speak.
quote:Obviously if you go into it assuming that it's the inspired Word of God, and Paul's awesome, you can imagine that it's totally cool that Paul treats women like they shouldn't even be around, and generally acts like a huge jerk.
And if you go into it thinking Paul is a egotistical jerk with nary a good thing to say, it's pretty easy to cherry pick your way to a negative view of him.
quote: I didn't go into it with that preconception, so yeah, I did read it. I wrote a paper on it in college, in fact. You don't have to agree with me, but I'm not just making things up.
Do you have a copy of that paper, I'd be interested in reading it. If your interested I'd even write you my thoughts about it.
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