Am I the only one who finds "God" to be baffling?

Post Reply New Topic

I have read much on this one verse and much has been made of this one verse. It is highly contraversial and not just for the obvious reasons. This verse refers to women being quite, not teaching, and not having authority over men. I will now begin a typed rant from everything I can come up with off the top of my head without giving references. Supposedly, this was written by Saint Paul who was a great egalitarian and write that there is no slave or free or man or women for all are equals in the church. Yet has also demanded female subserviance. He has reconized the validity of female teachers and preachers and ordained a few himself, but has also maintained that women be silent and speak and not have authority. This is slightly better understood when it is recognized that all of these different ideas of Pauls were located in different letters with those letters calling for male domination and female subserviance being thought of as being written by someone other then Paul. They were also wriiten at a later date then the earlier egalitarian ones. Paul may have changed his views about gender equality as he aged, his letters to different churches may have contained different ideas suited to those specific churches, or they were written by different authors who wanted a return to the patriarchial dominance that was so characteristic of Rome. Christianity was already weired enough to the surrounding pagan culture, making males dominant would have been a way of making Christianity more acceptable to the surrounding culture of already male centerred religions. these people would have then put the letters under Paul's name as a way of making them more authoritative or because they thought they were writing in line with Paul's thinking. Back to Timothy 2:12, this letter is one of the cotraversial ones that may have been written at a later date or by another person. But what does it mean that women should not teach, should be quiet, and not have authority? There is a greek word here "authenteo" which means to have authority and here it refers to women who should nto have it. The word "authenteo" has very few outside sources during this time period in Rome and the surrounding area and while the denotation "having authority" is always the same, the cannotation is always different ranging from having begign authority, having honorable authority, having stolen authority, having totalitarian authority, having malign authority, and whatever else adjective can be placed near authority. There is not enough context in the verse to show what the cannotation should be and little is known of the recipiant of the letter to show why this order is being sent. The verse may also not say" women shouldn't teach or have authority", but may say "women shouldn't teach authoritatively, should teach other's authority, shouldn't teach with authority" and so on. I've been ranting too long on this without reference. Wikipedia has an entire wiki page on this ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_Timothy_2:12 )
Here you will find FAR more on this debate. It goes much deeper.

It's very unfortunate that religious texts are subject to debate on interpretations or that some things are claimed to have been taken out of context. You would think that the direct and holy words of a divine entity would have absolutely no ambiguity.

The fact is is that if some parts of the Bible are to be taken literally and at face value, then all of it should. Or none of it should. There's even debate as to what should be taken literally or not. Debate! As if God can't come down and settle the issue himself. 30,000 denominations (each with their own interpretation) can't all be right. This is what is baffling about religion.

Are graphic novels the new mythology?

Okay, a question:

Why don't Christian women seem to follow the advice of 1 Timothy 2:12?

Are graphic novels the new mythology?

I have thought about this. The reason that most mythologies develop is because there needs to be a way of effectively communicating ethics and morality into the new generation and stories are the most effective.

...
God in the Pantheistic concept I like, though, whether it's true or not.