We need to talk about Paul, part 1

The Sunday after I graduated from high school, I absconded from my youth Sunday school class and went to gospel doctrine. My father was the teacher, and as someone who loved studying and didn’t love manuals, it was a refreshing change from the rote lessons of youth classes.

Except for that one guy.

You know the guy: the one who is almost salivating to blame Eve in the Genesis discussions. The one who cannot wait to point out that Paul says that women aren’t supposed to speak in church.

Unfortunately, the words of the New Testament attributed to Paul do sound an awful lot like that “that guy.” And I hated “that guy”—justifiably, I still believe, since a lot of animosity toward women lives in those words. It’s taken more than 20 years, reading from three or four different Bible translations and getting a degree in religious studies to actually learn about Paul and realize that he wasn’t “that guy,” but rather, he was a guy whose words have been commodified and weaponized by the patriarchy, the ruling class, slaveholders and governments to give their deadly actions a sheen of “approved by God” instead of “done so I can grab and keep as much wealth and power as possible.”

I thought about this post for a while last month while on vacation in Turkey. Much of Paul’s missionary teachings run through Turkey, and I was especially eager to spend a day in Ephesus, where he spent time teaching and was the society to which the letter to the Ephesians is addressed. As I walked the marble streets and imagined the people of Roman times selling wares, exchanging information, worshipping their various gods, I thought about Paul—what I’d like to ask him, what I’d like to tell him, if he knows how sucker punched so many feel when they read his letters.

So. Let’s talk about Paul: Jew, Roman, possible Pharisee, founder of Christianity and overall complicated fellow—who probably didn’t even write the letter with his name on it that we now know as Ephesians.

Note: All scriptures are from the New Revised Standard Version of the New Testament.

Paul: What I didn’t know I didn’t know—an incomplete list

1. Only about half of the letters attributed to him were likely written by him, according to most scholars: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Philemon and 1 Thessalonians. A couple of others (2 Thessalonians and Colossians) are up in the air. The rest almost certainly, or certainly, are not.

2. Paul never intended his letters to be compiled into book form. They were written to specific groups of people at specific times to address specific instances. Genuine letters shouldn’t be read as missionary tracts or general lessons: “A letter is one half of a dialogue or a substitute for an actual dialogue, in which the writer speaks to a person or persons as though they were present. … Letters are addressed to individuals or groups from whom the sender is separated by physical or social distance. One will misunderstand letters if one focuses only upon the ideas within them” (Pervo, 24, emphasis mine).

3. Paul is one of only two New Testament writers whose existence we know for sure. The mystic John of Patmos, who wrote Revelation, which is about the fall of the Roman Empire, is the other.

4. Paul had an ongoing feud with Peter and James. The latter two preached about law, while Paul taught grace. Paul believed that the law would become its own god and would supplant Jesus—that men would replace grace and faith with obedience to the law (Murphy-O’Connor, 153-4).

5. His name was almost certainly always Paul. Acts is the only place where “Saul” is found, and Acts is not a credible source on Paul. (It frequently contradicts his letters.) If both names were used, it was likely a difference of language: Saul is a Semitic name, where Paulus was Latin (Murphy-O’Connor, 42)

Paul: He-Man Woman Hater? It’s complicated.

I’m not going to include a list of things the Bible attributes to Paul that are intended to keep women silent, subservient and without agency. Those words don’t deserve to be aired in this space. We all know them. We’ve all been hurt by them.

The main street of Ephesus. Top photo: The library of Celsus in Ephesus, one of the best preserved Roman ruins in the world. Photos: Heidi Toth

In his book “Liberating Paul,” Neil Elliott tackles this question in depth. His first conclusion is that the worst of Paul’s words aren’t really Paul’s words; critical scholars by and large do not believe Colossians, Ephesians, 1 Timothy and Titus are authentic writings but instead are pseudonymous. Those letters include the “most offensively patriarchal texts in the Pauline collection” (52).

“Given the evidence in the remaining genuine letters that Paul held a number of women church leaders in high esteem as his peers in apostolic ministry, the way seems open to regarding Paul as far more sympathetic with the experience and leadership of women than the canonical picture of Paul has suggested” (Elliott, 52).

Remaining in actual Paul letters is 1 Cor. 14:34-35: “… women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.” And, yikes. That’s not good.

It also might not be Paul. The oldest manuscripts of what we call the New Testament are copies of copies of copies of copies, and revisers and editors and translators added and subtracted things to stick to the overall script. According to Elliott, many scholars suspect these verses were added in later by someone who was not Paul; there is “textual disturbance” in the manuscript tradition that point to those verses not being original (52-54).

But what about 1 Corinthians 7, which says some weird things about women and marriage—none exactly demeaning; right after he says a husband has authority over his wife’s body, he proclaims that a wife has authority over her husband’s body (v. 4). (He also says, “each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.” One. Not more. Just the one.)

And then there’s 1 Cor. 11:2-16, in which Paul writes that the husband is the head of his wife (v. 3) and that a woman should not pray or prophecy with her head uncovered (v. 5). On the plus side, that verse suggests it’s fine for women to both pray and prophecy, seemingly in public because how would anyone know if she’s prophesying with bare hair in private? On the negative side—well, many of us have veiled our hair while approaching God, and many of us likely have strong feelings about that. I do. I shouldn’t have to cover my authentic self to approach the sacred.

There’s more in 1 Corinthians 11, including that woman was created from and for man (v. 8-9). It’s not great, no matter how generous I try to be. Elliott also tried to be generous: “Both these passages are notoriously difficult to interpret, particularly given their character as one half of a conversation … But aspects of 1 Corinthians 7 can be described as a ‘frontal assault on the patriarchal ethos of the age (Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza); and whatever else the discussion of head coverings in 11:2-16 is meant to accomplish, at any rate it clearly recognizes the authority (exousia) of charismatic women to lead the congregation in prayer and prophecy. If not a ‘feminist,’ Paul was clearly not the misogynist the Pauline tradition quickly made him” (203).

What else is authentic Pauline scripture?

Phoebe is named as a deacon of the church at Cenchrae, and Paul tells the Romans to “welcome here in the Lord as is fitting for the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a benefactor of many and of myself as well” (Romans 16:1)

Prisca, or Priscilla: She and her husband, Aquila—her name comes first—work with Paul in his missionary efforts, and they “risked their necks for my life” (Romans 16:3)

Junia: She was in prison with Paul and was “prominent among the apostles” (Romans 16:7). I’ve heard attempts to read that as “apostles knew who she was.” Fine. I’m a writer and reader and I spend a lot of time with the English language, and the simplest, most logical way to read that statement is that Junia was not just an apostle, but she was in fact a well-known apostle among the apostles.

Apphia: She is greeted alongside two men in the opening verses of Philemon; the greeting includes “to the church in your house,” which presumes the house church is equally Apphia’s as the two men (Philemon 1:2).

Euodia and Syntyche: Two leaders in Philippian house-churches were having a disagreement; Paul urges the people to whom he is writing to “help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my coworkers” (Phil. 4:2-3).

Of course, far more men are named and addressed these letters. Paul wasn’t a feminist—certainly by our standards today, but not even in the way the scriptures portray Jesus to be. But there’s scriptural evidence that he worked with women, that he appointed women to be leaders, that he valued their opinions and efforts and contributions. Why would a man who relied on a woman missionary turn around and tell her to ask her husband? Why would a man founding a church that was upheld by wealthy women tell them not to speak in church—churches that were held in those women’s homes?

But there are things that being in Ephesus brought up. First, let’s talk about all of the other groups who have been harmed in the last 2,000 years because of words on a page that have been attributed to Paul.

Slavery, antisemitism and governmental abuse

In his 2021 book “Profaning Paul,” Cavan Concannon spends 200 pages examining in detail what wrongs Paul has been foundational to. Here’s a start: In 1740, evangelist George Whitefield used Christian teachings, including the writings of, or attributed to, Paul, to advance the cause of slavery. Other Christian missionaries helped forge the discourse of Protestant white supremacy that adapted with the slave system in the Americas (23).

Today, white Christian nationalists similarly wield the Bible against Black people, Christian and non-Christian alike. Concannon wrote: “As European colonizers invaded what for them were vast new territories, they brought missionaries and Bibles with them. These played the double role of justifying colonialism and explaining the peoples, practices, and cultures that the Europeans ‘discovered.’ … As Christian theologians confronted the new diversity of their colonial conquests, they reworked earlier epistemological and hermeneutical frameworks to invent ‘biblical’ histories for non-European peoples; undercut, demonize, and eradicate local textual and ritual traditions; and justify Europe’s national and religious superiority and its concomitant right to rule over new ‘barbarous’ Others” (35).

This isn’t just words being misused either; Paul is not innocent. I’ll talk more on this in the next section, but he set out to destroy the religions that were native to the areas where he preached. And he called it missionary work. Millennia later, his spiritual descendants used his words to destroy the native religions of what is now North and South America.

His words were also preached to enslaved people in the Americas, who were told that God “expected them to be obedient to the slavers and honest and hardworking in their labors. This god also expected them to stay slaves and not seek their own liberation “(Concannon, 82).

A short list of other instances of abuse, according to the author of “Liberating Paul,” include:

1 Thess. 2:14-15 was used to justify violence against Jews (4).

In 1637 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Anne Hutchinson was charged for violating 1 Tim. 2:12, which says that women shouldn’t preach in church (4).

Romans 13:1, which says to obey the government, was used in the Guatemalan civil war in the 1980s (verify) to convince the people to accept the military despite its myriad abuses, particularly of Indigenous Guatemalans (9). It was also used by the United States to justify its attacks on liberation theologists in Guatemalan churches, as Reagan-era leaders believed the appropriate use of the Christian church was to defend “private property and productive capitalism” (15-16).

That same verse in Romans stifled Christian opposition to Nazism and was used to promote enthusiasm for Hitler in ecclesiastical councils (13).

Oh wait, there’s more from Romans 13. Verses 1-7 were used in South Africa to defend apartheid; it was read as giving absolute, possibly even divine authority to the state (14).

Puritans relied on 1 Cor. 7:17 and 24, which says to be satisfied with one’s calling, and the commands of subordination in 1 Timothy and Ephesians to wives, slaves and children (11).

That’s … a lot. It’s one reason why context makes all the difference. Paul was preaching in Roman territory and trying to convert Romans and trying to not get into much trouble with the Roman government. He didn’t want to be seen as preaching the overthrow of the government. We shouldn’t read that two millennia later as a commandment to submit ourselves to an abusive, overreaching government. Nor should anyone has used the words of Paul—who not only was Jewish but was a Pharisee—to condemn Jews. His writings did not do that.

But someone’s writings could be read that way. That’s why we have to understand the origins the Bible better. This isn’t a book that God wrote, that’s perfect and untouched and holds the answers. It’s a series of dozens of writings, put down over the course of hundreds of years, copied and translated and revised and altered, then voted on at the Council of Nicaea, all by men in power. We need to understand the context and history. We need to understand the process of translation—that every translation is really the interpretation of the translator[s], who are fallible.

Paul—and Heidi—in Ephesus

Let’s return to Turkey. Ephesus, which is one of the best-preserved Roman heritage sites of its time, was home to one of the original Seven Wonders of the World: the temple of Artemis, the goddess who was protector of this once-great city. According to legend, the city was founded by the Amazons, the legendary race of woman warriors, and named for their queen, Ephasia. As other societies moved into the Artemis and the Amazon queen merged into Artemis Ephasia, a powerful, venerated goddess.

A statue of Artemis Ephasia in the Ephesus Archaeological Museum. She is not a mother–she famously swore off men, in fact–but she is often referred to as mother of the city because she is its protector. “Mother” was a title of respect in many cultures in the millennia before the New Testament.

 

Even before that—millennia before, in fact—the Mother Goddess was worshipped in the Ephesus area. Archaeologists have found statuettes of this goddess. Cybele of Anatolia was also worshipped in this area. This was a city and a region with a history of strong women and female leaders.

Ironically, Paul didn’t entirely or immediately destroy this legacy. Prisca and Aquila were the real founders of the church in Ephesus; Paul accompanied them initially but then left. The married couple spent years in Ephesus doing missionary work before he returned (Murphy-O’Connor, 171).

But Christianity, as a patriarchal religion, could not allow this goddess veneration to stand. It undercut the one true god narrative. There is a virtual reality experience at Ephesus; in the second room we are introduced to Paul, who is arguing with a disciple of Artemis. Paul chastises the other man, saying (according to my memory), “you worship a manmade God.” I stood there, stunned at the hubris. Maybe I would have felt differently had I lived in first-century CE Ephesus, but standing there in 2025, all I could think was, “And what is the Christian god if not a manmade god—a male god literally created by and for men to give them power over others, to fight their wars, to carry their prejudices and hatred?” I’ve come to believe that everyone on earth who believes worships a god of their own creation—one who looks like them, speaks like them, sees the world and others in it through their own eyes. It’s not always malicious; it’s just that God is too big for us to understand. So we make God small. We make God familiar. Comfortable.

But what do we do with Paul—writer of beautiful sermons on love and grace and writer of words that have been used to enslave, capture, demean, silence and kill? I’ll discuss that in Part 2 on Wednesday. In the meantime, this 2022 post on Heavenly Mother offers insight into Mormonism’s Mother Goddess, how she got lost and how we can find her again.

Bibliography

Concannon, Cavan W. “Profaning Paul.” The University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2021.

Elliot, Neil. “Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle.” Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY 1994.

Murphy-O’Connor, Jerome. “Paul: A Critical Life.” Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996.

Pervo, Richard I. “The Making of Paul: Constructions of the Apostle in Early Christianity.” Fortress Press, Minneapolis: 2010.