Comment on She strongly disagrees
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 11 hours agoWhere is the admonishment that men should do the same? Ephesus is not a patriarchal society. You are still assuming a culture and context that is equivalent to your own modern experience. Women are a privileged class in 200 CE, and had been for hundreds of years. Like all privileged classes in all of human history, they are the group that are most likely to try to seize authority for themselves. Parading ostentatious wealth in the form of fancy hair, jewelry, and expensive clothes was not a trait of Ephesian men, but Ephesian women.
Also “a woman” and “a man” does not mean “every woman” or “every man”, or even “any woman” or “any man.” It is a targeted reference to the specific issue that Timothy was dealing with in Ephesus… Artemis adherents trying to take control of the fledgling christian cult, even though they don’t know the first thing about them or their doctrine. The Koine offers a lot of clear meaning and intent that is very difficult to convey in either English or terms that are understandable to a modern person with no historical frame of reference.
What Paul is saying is “If women want to teach, they first need to learn. If they want to learn, they need to stop flaunting their wealth, stop behaving like entitled jerks, and start treating teachers with respect — who are men — instead of trying to usurp their positions. We aren’t doing this for clout, but to improve everyone’s lives. Those who haven’t learned the rules are going to make terrible mistakes.”
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Outside of priestesses, it was a patriarchal society. Greece had priestesses too. The existence of a priestess doesn’t make a patriarchal society.
Prohibitions against dressing fancy for women and only women has nothing to do with combatting paganism. Men participated in the cult of Artemis yet Paul said nothing about restricting men. Paul does not mention paganism nor heresy.
Paul did not make those proscription just for Timothy. He said “I”. Your version did not show any mistranslation.
Corinthians also says woman should not speak in church in so it cannot be a special case only for Timothy.
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
You are doing the libertarian thing and completely and repeatedly ignoring context.
What on earth makes you think I am defending sexism? I am pointing out that sexists deliberately misinterpret this letter — exactly as you are doing — to subjugate women in the here and now, while that is in no way what this letter is about. If you read some of my other comments you will know that I am a militant atheist but I get really pissed when people intentionally misuse these documents as a weapon against others, including myself.
Again “women” is NOT universal in this context. It is “ambitious, entitled, and wealthy Artimisian women of Ephesus”. It is very specific, not universal. I am not sure how to make this more clear since you continue to dismiss that objective fact in favor of a sexist, wildly fallacious modern xtian re-interpretation.
Maybe we have our wires crossed. I am not trying to perform apologetics, but correcting the record for a historical document that academics understand very well, but is nevertheless a holy weapon for ambitious, immoral, political tyrants because people are stupid, ignorant, and uneducated all the things this letter is specifically admonishing against.