Marg Mowczko, an Australian Bible teacher and grad student, recently posted a series on her blog looking at the cultural context surrounding Paul’s comments to Timothy about allowing “a woman to teach” (1 Timothy 2:12). As you can imagine, this is one of the most highly debated verses in the entire Bible – and one that, sadly, has been used to beat up and control God’s daughters for generations.

This series will by no means will change the hearts of those folks who are dead set against women leaders…but for those of you out there who are still struggling with how to make sense of a verse that seems oddly out of place, well this is a great series for you!!

Marg does a GREAT job at bring the context of the 1st century church in Ephesus alive in a simple to understand manner. Well worth the read – even for folks who have studied the issue in the past.

She also has a wonderful post highlighting the various influential women in the Bible –  everyone from the Queen of Sheba to Candace (queen of Ethiopia) to Deborah (a prophetess and judge) to the four daughters of Philip (prophetesses). It is quite the list and worth the read.

“The scriptures . . . offer an impressive number of examples of women exercising social or political authority without raising any questions as to the propriety of that authority.” – Gordon Hugenberger, “Women in Church Office: Hermeneutics or Exegesis?”