RE: [asa] Gender Roles & Genesis Interpretation

Good questions, but I'm not sure whether a mythological/theological or a
literal/historical view of Genesis helps with understanding these passages
in the New Testament. And I'm not sure that the NT interpretations of them
help the reverse either, because a mythological view of Paul's statement
"Adam was formed first, then Eve" can simply be accepted as Paul's
application of a dominant paradigm, and might not have anything much to say
about how Genesis should be interpreted theologically.

I don't know how one can see 1Cor 11 as anything other than a cultural
practice of the day, in particular using the arguments to justify women's
head covering (and/or long hair) as it appears to be doing. Especially
since in most generations of Christianity, this verse is not applied as
being obvious from nature (or if the practice of head coverings is done, it
is done because the scripture says so, not because of any universal cultural
or natural requirement). As an aside, I wonder how is it that nature
teaches us that it's a shame for man to have long hair (1Cor 11:14).
Apparently there are a lot of men walking around today who didn't learn that
lesson from nature, but I'm not sure how this argument ever worked in
proving Paul's point.

And Paul's point from 1Tim about the woman being in subjection by appealing
to Eve's deception, apparently it wasn't part of the scriptural/cultural
view when Deborah was a judge of Israel. If it were universally true (as
opposed to being a cultural view), then how could Deborah ever rise to being
a respected woman judge over Israel? All this being said, I personally
believe that having men in priestly leadership in the church is right for a
number of other reasons besides these verses, although women have equally
important and influential roles; however, this goes beyond the scope of your
questions.

Jon Tandy

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Christine Smith
Sent: Friday, May 09, 2008 3:15 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: [asa] Gender Roles & Genesis Interpretation

Hi all,

I was pondering the role of women in church with
respect to the New Testament texts (a particularly
thorny question for me, as I don't like the idea of
writing off such texts as merely "the culture of the
time"), and as I reread them, the thought occurred to
me--if we understand Genesis 2 & 3 in
mythological/theological terms, rather than strictly
"literal" or "historical" terms, how then does this
affect our interpretation of (in particular) I
Corinthians 11:2-16 and I Timothy 2: 8-15. And
conversely, how should these NT texts affect our
interpretation of Genesis? Just curious on what your
insights might be into this...thanks!

In Christ,
Christine (ASA member)

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Received on Fri May 9 18:06:10 2008