Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 30:3 (Summer 2016)
Article: 1 Timothy 2:8-15 And Gender Wars At Ephesus
Author: Timothy D. Foster

PP 30:3 (Summer 2016) p. 3

1 Timothy 2:8-15 And Gender Wars At Ephesus

Timothy D. Foster

Tim Foster is Director of Ridley Melbourne Mission and Ministry College, in Melbourne, Australia. He holds degrees from Moore Theological College, the University of Sydney, and the University of Technology, Sydney, as well as a DMin from Fuller Theological Seminary. Tim has filled several pastoral roles and is a member of the Priscilla Papers Peer Review Team.

While it is now generally agreed that 1 Tim 2:8-15 is directed against the heresy that had taken hold within the Ephesian church, the key question is whether the passage is directed against the content of the heresy or is concerned to establish a process that will eventually see the victims corrected and the heresy expunged.1 If concerned with the content of the heresy, the instructions may be directed at restoring a hierarchical framework. If the passage is concerned with process, however, Paul’s demands are shaped by the particular nature of the heresy and its form of transmission in Ephesus.

Both these approaches have considerable difficulties. Regarding the content view, for example, there is no evidence outside this passage that the false teaching in Ephesus undermines first-century assumptions about gender. Nor does this passage fit well into its own immediate context if its concern is ensuring proper behavior within a gender-based hierarchy. This view also fails to take into account the nuances provided by the particular vocabulary and grammar that Paul employs in this passage.

Those who take the process approach, as does this article, typically reconstruct a context in which women were “the group most influenced by the false teaching” and prominent among the heretics.2 However, this line had been criticized on the grounds that the only heretics named are men (1 Tim 1:20), and that to silence all women because some women were teaching heresy would be unnecessary and unjust. As William Mounce says, “It seems a strange twist of logic to say that women may not teach error while implicitly allowing men to teach error.”3 If Paul wanted to silence false teachers then he can be expected to identify them and silence them without silencing all women.

In his critique of such readings, Mounce raises an intriguing possibility when he says, “If all the women, and only the women, are deceived, then this [process] interpretation would be more feasible.”4...