Let’s discuss women, and the raw deal they have had in Christianity!

Women in the beginning of Christianity fared well, in fact, very well.  But what happened to the female deacons, and what went wrong when men forsook the women in church.  In the beginning, even Paul had women in his company, that attained the position of deacons in the early church.  Women such as Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae, and there were Priscilla, Aquila, whom Paul calls my co-workers in Christ Jesus, and there were Mary, Junia.  See Romans 16.  The question is, did women of the early church reject Paul, probably due to his sexual advances?  Did Paul’s rejection by them bring back memories of him being rebuffed by the daughter of the priest, whom Epiphanius wrote about.

(“The Ebionites declare that he [Paul] was a Greek […] He went up to Jerusalem, they say, and when he had spent some time there, he was seized with a passion to marry the daughter of the priest. For this reason, he became a proselyte and was circumcised. Then, when he failed to get the girl, he flew into a rage and wrote against circumcision and against the sabbath and the Law.” —Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion 30.16.6–9.)

If the information in 3 Corinthians, also in the Acts of Paul, are to go by, Paul is short, and referred to as homo tricubitalis (man four foot six inches tall), bald, with one continues eyebrow, bow-legged, strongly built, hollow-eyed with a large crooked nose.  Not the type of man women are after, especially, if he smelt like a tannery from his profession as tentmaker.

Paul then rejected the women in positions within the church, probably owing to the loss of his prepuce.  As Paul writes, “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.” [1 Corinthians 14:34-35].  Also in 1 Timothy 2:11-12: Paul instructs, “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be silent.”

By the time of Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, better known as Tertullian, c. 155 – c. 220 AD, misogyny had taken a firm grip of the male bastion we know as the church.  Women were truly subservient from this time on.  In the early 7th-century, a new religion (Islam) rose-up to counter Judaism, and Christianity, it too made female sex submissive to men.

The Almighty says in the Quran:

Gwen Pugh (Mrs), pp. Jero Jones.

R&I – TP