Monday, March 21, 2011

Should women preach?

A former classmate of mine wrote an article on the subject women ministers a few years back. I would like to take a moment to add a bit of interesting materials to what she had to say.

[quote style="1"]For centuries, 1 Timothy 2:11-15 and 1 Corinthians 14:33-35 have been utilized to uphold the practice of forbidding women to have leadership roles within the church. What few realize, however, is that scripture passages like these seem to fly in the face of other scriptural passages that uphold and edify women’s roles as leaders.[/quote]

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image via Wikipedia"]Français : Bible Chouraqui.[/caption]

Read more at Suite101: Does the Bible Forbid Women to be Preachers?: How Scripture Portrays Women’s Roles in the Church.

I decided to look up the passage found in 1 Corinthians 14 in one of the Bibles I have and the first one I grabbed was a Catholic Study Bible. Here is the commentary attached to the passage:

[quote style="1"]Verses 34-35 change the subject. These two verses have the theme of submission in common with chapter 11, despite differences in vocabulary, and a concern with what is or is not becoming; but it is difficult to harmonize the injunctions to silence here with chapter 11, which appears to take it for granted that women do pray and prophesy aloud in the assembly. Hence the verses are often considered an interpolation, reflecting the discipline of later churches; such an interpolation would have to have antedated our manuscripts, all of which contain them, though some transpose them to the very end of the chapter.[/quote]

What they are saying here is that the translators of this particular Bible seem to think that these two verses were added to the original text at some point in the history its existence. Which begs the question, did Paul actually say that women should not be ministers?

Makes one really stop and think about what has been added to the Bible and what has been removed. And remember, this is from a Bible that is called “The Catholic Study Bible“. Kind of odd that they would say this. I mean, look at what the Pope has said on the subject. Not to mention that the Papacy has recently made it possible for those Anglican Priests that disagree with the Church of England’s policy regarding the ordination of woman within it’s auspices to become ordained in the Catholic priesthood. It all seems rather odd, when their own scholars believe that these verses were added.

Many churches have issues with women preaching, but is it really an issue? In the context of Christianity, it should not matter the gender of the preacher, rather the content of the message.
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