1 Corinthians 14:34-35 ("let wives be silent")

1. I usually process these verses by reading them against 1 Corinthians 11, where wives pray and prophesy in public worship. These verses must be about disruptive speech because Paul has already assumed that wives will speak spiritually in the public assembly. That's what the veil is for, to negotiate an awkward situation where wives are speaking around men who aren't their husbands.

But if you have read my commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians, you know that in the end I actually lean toward another position as a scholar. That is that these verses weren't even in 1 Corinthians originally. When I put on my big boy shoes, I lean toward the position that these verses are an "interpolation" into 1 Corinthians. I join other scholars like Richard Hays and Gordon Fee in this leaning.

To clarify, we do not have the original copies of any book of the Bible. We only have copies of copies. Evangelicals and Wesleyans affirm that some work needs to be done to determine how the biblical texts read originally, since we do not have any of the original manuscripts. We affirm that all the texts have been transmitted without any loss or corruption of doctrine. But the task of reconstructing the original text is necessary and should be conducted with great gravitas.

2. Here are the reasons why I think the balance of evidence points toward 14:34-35 not being original.

• Although 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 appear in all known manuscripts, they do not appear in the same place in all known manuscripts. In several manuscripts considered part of the “Western” tradition, these two verses appear after verse 40, at the end of the chapter. This displacement might indicate that these verses were not part of the original text but something first written in the margin of some very early manuscript.
• The passage reads more smoothly without the verses. "God is not a God of disorder but of peace—as in all the churches of God—or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached?" The instruction to wives comes out of nowhere and returns to nowhere just as quickly.
• Similarly, the point of view changes from "you" in 14:33 to "they" in 14:34 and 35 and then back to "you" again in 14:36.
• Paul shifts from addressing the church, singular, of Corinth (1:1) to addressing churches, plural (14:34). But Paul is not writing churches. Instruction to churches does not fit the context of 1 Corinthians because only one church is listening. 
• It is uncharacteristic in the extreme for Paul to consider Gentiles to be under the law, yet this text says that wives must be in submission, "as the law says."
• Finally, even though the disruptive speech approach softens the tension between 1 Corinthians 11 and these verses, it still is hard to fit women prophesying in church with, "it is disgraceful for a women to speak in church." It just doesn't sound like the same person talking, and there are no textual issues of this sort in 1 Corinthians 11.

These are the reasons I and others lean away from these verses even being original to Paul.

Women in 1 Timothy, Closing Remarks (W)

If you ever go to modern Israel, you will find some interesting practices in relation to the Old Testament Law.  One fascinating one is the fact that you cannot get both meat and dairy products with the same meal or in the same store in Israel.  I once saw a young man ushered right out of a restaurant that primarily served lamb meat because he had brought in pizza from across the alley.  Pizza has cheese and was not allowed in the same shop.  Why, you ask?  It is because of a verse in Exodus that forbids boiling a goat’s kid in its mother’s milk (23:19; 34:26).

Now whatever this verse was originally about—probably against some Canaanite practice—it was not about eating pizza and lamb meat in the same meal.  It highlights the fact again that the books of the Bible just were not written to us originally.  When passages seem to make the least sense to us, we are often looking at words that spoke directly to the time they were written but not so clearly to our time and context.

I am convinced that the teaching of 1 Timothy on women falls into this category of things locked up in the past, despite the fact that many segments of the church are comfortable with its instructions.  For example, most Christians today would be hard pressed to think of why it would be preferable for a widow not to remarry or why she would need to get remarried because of an inability to refrain from her sexual desires.  We assume these instructions made perfect sense in their first century context, but it is not at all clear they do now.

And most Protestant churches have not seen any virtue in a man needing to be married only once to be an effective leader, especially if his first wife died.  True, the Orthodox Church still holds to this requirement, and many Protestants still have problems with a minister who is divorced.  But it is not clear what intrinsic reason we could come up with today that would make much sense.  Why would a widowed minister who remarries be less wise or less effective than one who remained single?

The position of many segments of the church today on women, both women ministers and women in the home, also strikes of the Jewish rule against eating pizza and meat in the same meal.  I like to think of it this way.  Let us say we are on a plane whose pilot is incapacitated, and we have a choice between having a woman take over who actually knows how to fly a plane or having a man take over who has no knowledge of flying whatsoever.  Of course we would have the woman fly the plane, because she is the most competent to do so.

In our current context, insisting that a man be the senior pastor or the head of the home simply because of his genitals makes about as much sense.  Let us speak plainly.  This is plain irrationality.  It makes a mockery of the idea that God is all-wise and omniscient.  It makes a mockery of God and Christ before the world.

And what is worse, this headship for its own sake, this genital-based leadership—not a theory you will find in any book on leadership, mind you—is headed in the opposite direction of the kingdom.  It is, in the words of Colossians, to submit to the “elemental spirits of the world” (Col. 2:20) rather than see the trajectory of the kingdom, where wives are not given to men in marriage (Mark 12:25) and there is not “male and female” any longer (Gal. 3:28).  It is to approach blasphemy, as if Christ only died for some sins but not all, not the sins of Eve.  Indeed, we can tell we are in the age of the Spirit precisely because our sons and daughters prophesy (Acts 2:17).

We have shown in these two volumes that no Scripture, rightly interpreted, prohibits women from any level of leadership and ministry in the church, indeed, that we find such women in the New Testament.  Let us be clear on this score.  Paul did not see husband-headship in conflict with the prophetic ministry of a woman, which 1 Corinthians 11 proves. And, therefore, the silence of women in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, if these verses are even original, cannot be about spiritual speech but only about disruptive speech. 

Now we see that 1 Timothy 2:12 is also about the husband-wife relationship and thus does not have any bearing on a woman’s prophetic ministry.  And in any case, surely Paul’s central writings and Acts have a better claim to stand at the center of our understanding, rather than some interpretation of a writing that is in so many ways the exception in the Pauline corpus rather than the rule.  All we have left to debate is whether husband-headship is timeless or, like eating pizza with meat, is a feature of Paul’s ancient context.  Since it is irrational to base leadership on genitals—physical organs not particularly known for their wisdom—I have little doubt personally where God is leading his church today.

1 Corinthians Disorder 3: Women and Worship

Previous posts in this series, Life Reflections on Paul and His Writings, include:

1a. Born at a Time and Place 1; 1b. Born at a Time and Place 2
2a. A Change in Life Direction; 2b A Change in Life Direction 2; 2c A Change in Life Direction 3
3a. The Unknown Years 1; 3b. The Unknown Years 2; 3c. The Unknown Years 3
4a. Life Beyond Death; 4b. Life Beyond Death; 4c. Life Beyond Death; 4d Life Beyond Death
5a. Disunity at Corinth; 5b. Disunity at Corinth 2; 5c. Disunity at Corinth 3
6 How Not to Have Sex
7a. Disagreement and Disorder 1; 7b. The Lord's Supper.

Now part 3 of "Disagreement and Disorder": "Women and Worship"...
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Women and Worship
For whatever reason, some of the women in the Corinthian church seemed to be a source of controversy. We already observed in the previous chapter that 1 Corinthians 7 seems to focus unusually on women in a way that makes us wonder if some Corinthian women were wanting to use the gospel as an opportunity for them to free themselves of their husbands and perhaps of sex. Perhaps these same women come up again in the first part of 1 Corinthians 11 and, if the verses are original, in 14:34-35. Perhaps it is no coincidence that it is only here in 1 Corinthians that Paul mentions Aquila first and Priscilla second (16:19). [1]

In 1 Corinthians 11, the problem apparently has to do with conflict in the church from women not veiling their heads when the community is worshipping together. Although scholars have debated quite a bit about the passage, we think the heart of the problem is the fact that married women are not veiling their hair in the presence of men who are not their husbands. [2] We have evidence from other Jewish literature at the time that pious, married Jewish women wore a veil over their hair down to their shoulders (not a face veil). For example, in the Jewish novel Joseph and Aseneth, the widow Aseneth is told to put the veil of a virgin back on her head when she converts to Judaism. Even though she had been married before, her conversion "revirginates" her! [3]

It is not hard to imagine how this conflict might arise. First, the fact that worship took place in houses immediately creates a tension for women because they would not normally wear the veil inside but outside. As we mentioned back in chapter 5, the Corinthian church likely met in the house of a wealthy man named Gaius when they all met together (Rom. 16:23). It is not hard to imagine especially that his wife and daughters if he had them might resist having to wear a veil in their own home! And it is not clear that the Gentile women of the city followed the practice of veiling either. We cannot know for sure, but it is at least possible that some of these tensions were between Jewish and Gentile elements in the congregation, with Jews finding temptation or offense in the absence of a veil. [4] So while men and women were often kept separate, the house church would put men and women who were not their wives in close quarters.

This hypothesis seems plausible enough, and it would seem to account generally for what Paul actually says in the first part of 1 Corinthians 11. Paul begins by affirming the Corinthians for following the traditions he left them. Whatever he has in mind, this chapter apparently qualifies them in some way. Since he goes on to give proper relationships between husband and wife, it would appear that the traditions to which he refers must have been something like Galatians 3:28, that in Christ "there is not male and female." [5] In other words, it would appear again that something the Corinthian women are doing requires Paul to qualify the empowerment of women that was apparently part of the gospel.

He invokes the cultural roles of husband and wife as they commonly played out in the Mediterranean world. The idea that the husband was the head of the wife was not an idea that Christians came up with or that comes from the Old Testament. The earliest use of this language is actually found in the Greek philosopher Aristotle in the 300s BC. In his Politics, he suggests that the husband is the head of the wife and that he rules over her in the same way the ruler of a city rules over the citizens of the city. [6] He goes on to say that nature generally makes the male fitter to command than the female, although he acknowledges there are some departures from nature.

So Paul invokes the cultural categories of his day to address apparent conflict that is taking place in worship because of men and women being in such close quarters in a home. He urges the wives of the assembly to wear their hair veils when they are praying and prophesying so that they do not dishonor their "heads," their husbands. An unveiled woman is like a woman with short hair, which everyone would have agreed was shameful. It made her look like a dishonorable woman, like a prostitute. It was like taking off your wedding ring and flirting with other men, shaming her husband and possibly angering other wives who were wearing their veils.

The mention of appearing unveiled before God and angels upped the stakes. God of course has no genitalia--references to Him as male is not literal language but metaphorical to help human understanding. Nevertheless, God and angels were conceptualized as male. In fact, both many Jews and Christians at the time understood Genesis 6:1 to be about angels having sex with human women, which is almost certainly what 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6 are referring to. [7] Like the men in their midst, Paul tells them they should wear the veil on their head as an indication of their honor in the presence of God and angels while praying or prophesying.

One point of great interest here is that Paul does not contest that women can pray and prophesy--which is the only "preaching" like activity we hear of in the Corinthian church. Paul is trying to resolve conflict and remove disgrace in husband-wife relationships, but he assumes without question that women will be praying and prophesying in public worship in front of men. When we think of debates today over women in ministry, it is very important to notice that Paul never connects the two issues. The language he occasionally invokes of husband headship has nothing to do in any of his writings with women ministering or "preaching" in worship.

This observation leads us to one of the two most controversial passages on women in the Bible: 1 Corinthians 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."

These are puzzling verses. Has not Paul already assumed they can do pray and prophesy in worship? For Paul to be consistent, we must assume that Paul is not talking about spiritual speech but about disruptive chatter. This verse thus again has nothing to do with the question of women in ministry. Only one verse in the entire Bible thus seems, when read in context, to take a negative position on wives teaching their husbands, and we will look at that verse in greater depth in our second volume. [8] In general, one should not base a practice on a single verse in the Bible, especially one as suprising and strange as those in 1 Timothy 2:12-15!

In the end, however, we would join the minority of scholars (but nevertheless, a list with a number of evangelical, faith-filled names on it) and conclude that these two verses are not likely to have been in the copy of 1 Corinthians that Paul sent the Corinthians. Anyone who has used different versions like the New International Version and the King James Version will know that these translations occasionally differ in text from one another. The reason is the fact that there are some variations among the thousands of copies of the New Testament that have survived from the ancient world.

In the case of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, although these verses do appear in all the manuscripts we have, they do not always appear in the same place. Curiously, some manuscripts have them after verse 40 at the end of the chapter. A good explanation for this phenomenon is the suggestion that they were not originally in the text of 1 Corinthians but that they were written in the margin of a very early copy of the letter. Then later copiers put them in the text at more than one place.

This is a slight manuscript basis for suggesting they were not original, but there are much stronger reasons for drawing this conclusion from internal evidence. The main one is that these verses do not really fit here in 1 Corinthians 14. Paul is talking about the use of tongues and prophecy in worship. If these verses are not read, the train of thought is perfectly smooth:

"For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged. And the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets, for God is a God not of disorder but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints, or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only ones it has reached? Anyone who claims to be a prophet, or to have spiritual powers, must acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord." (1 Cor. 14:31-37).

The two verses on women are unexpected and do not really fit the train of thought.

But the nail in the coffin is the switch from the context of 1 Corinthians to a different context. 1 Corinthians addresses the church, singular, at Corinth (1 Cor. 1:2). It does not address churches, plural. But the two added verses tell the churches of God, plural, to make women keep silent. Because we as Christians read 1 Corinthians as Scripture, as God's word to us, plural, it is easy to miss this significant shift. But Paul is telling the singular church at Corinth to be orderly like the other churches of God. If he then went on to tell women to be silent in other churches, it would have left the Corinthians asking themselves, "Who is he talking to? Isn't this letter to us?" It is thus very unlikely that 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 were even in 1 Corinthians in the first place.

The issue of women in ministry is a strangely live one in the church today, ironically even in churches of my own tradition, the Wesleyan tradition. We were ordaining women in the late 1800s, long before so called liberal churches did or before feminism was popular. We did so, along with many charismatic churches, because of our strong sense that the Day of Pentecost implied that women had the Spirit just as men, and that Acts 2:17 was serious when it said that the sons and daughters of those with the Spirit would now prophesy in the new age.

But it is deeply ironic that in an age when we recognize that there is nothing about a woman's brain--let alone the rest of her body--that would imply she cannot lead or minister, Christians themselves are the ones holding out. In the New Testament, the empowerment of women is a major consequence of the new age but it was tempered by the social conflict it caused at places like Corinth and perhaps Ephesus, the implied context of 1 Timothy. So then, full empowerment was limited by culture. Now, ironically, it is a certain segment of the church that is holding back full empowerment when Western culture would allow it!

In the end we have to wonder if there are other things going on in the minds and hearts of those who will not let women answer any call God makes on their lives. And it is not always men who oppose women in ministry. It is just as often other women. If a person has sincere doubts, a great place to start is with the recognition that, even in the Old Testament, the tendency for men to take leadership was never absolute. There was always a place for exceptions like Deborah the general or Huldah the prophetess. If you are willing to make exceptions for those women who are truly called and not shut the door completely, then God will do the rest. You will see that God wants to call lots of women to all different levels of ministry and leadership in the church.

[1] Unlike Romans 16:3 and, assuming Paul was the literal author, 2 Timothy 4:19. Acts also mentions Priscilla first twice (18:18, 26) and Aquila first only when it first introduces the couple in 18:2.

[2] The other two most common interpretations are that 1) Paul is addressing a particularly showy hair style or that 2) he is not addressing a particular conflict at all but suggesting in general that a woman should have long hair.

[3] Another relevant passage is in Philo, ***

[4] We in the West might find it hard to imagine that men might be unduly tempted by a woman’s uncovered hair, but a Christian from the Middle East probably would immediately appreciate this notion. Westerners might have to picture a woman coming to church in a swimsuit to get the same sense of the dynamics here.

[5] Some have suggested the words of Galatians 3:28 might have been spoken over those undergoing baptism in the early church in some circles.

[6] ***

[7] Jude explicitly quotes the book of 1 Enoch, which tells the stories of (fallen) angels having sex with human women. The proximity of the 1 Enoch quote to this mention of angels from the days of Noah held in chains till the judgment makes it almost certain Jude, 2 Peter, not to mention 1 Peter 3:19-20.

[8] 1 Timothy seems to suggest that because Eve was deceived rather than Adam, wives should not teach their husbands. Nevertheless, women can be saved from the state of transgression left by Eve through childbearing (1 Tim. 2:15), a strange statement since we believe Christ atoned for all sin, including the sin of Eve. In general, it is the only verse in the Bible that forbids wives to teach their husbands (we would argue it is not even about women in general but the husband-wife relationship) and a strange one at that--not the kind of basis one would want to base an entire theology of women or women in ministry on.

1 Corinthians 14 and Women in Ministry

It's time for my bi-yearly visit to Constance Cherry's women in ministry class to talk about 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. Whether by providence, chance, or a division chair's design, the women in ministry class always is scheduled at the same time that I teach 1 Corinthians and David Smith teaches 1 Timothy. So Constance has each of us come for a day and share on the only two verses in the entire Bible of any potential significance at all against women in ministry: 1 Cor. 14:34-35 and 1 Tim. 2:11-15.

I have the really easy one. I always start out with the same line: "What does 1 Corinthians 14 have to say against women in ministry? Absolutely nothing!" But to fill up the rest of the hour, I go on anyway.

Headship Passages
There are a few places where we find "household codes" in the NT where the wife is said to be subject to her husband: Colossians 3, Ephesians 5, 1 Peter 3. But these, in the end, are irrelevant to the women in ministry question. Why?

1. Because husband-headship does not preclude a wife, let alone a single woman, being a minister.

[I might say that I personally view husband headship as more of a cultural than creational matter, but I don't want to muddy the waters of this particular discussion with a more controversial issue. Even assuming that husband-headship is "transcultural," it is, in the end, irrelevant to the question of women in ministry.]

For one thing, a husband could not legitimately use headship authority in a way that went against God's authority. So if God calls a woman to ministry, the husband-head would not have the authority to countermand it. "You tell whether it is right in God's eyes to obey you rather than God" (Acts 4:19).

And what if (just imagine, ye feeble of mind) a husband as head obeyed God and endorsed and supported God's call on his wife. Certainly then a wife in ministry would not contradict male headship now would it?

So if a husband supports his wife in ministry, husband-headship does not contradict women in ministry. And if a husband does not support his wife in ministry and we can show that God does, he does not have the authority to oppose his wife in ministry. In either case, the husband-headship issue is irrelevant to the question of women in ministry.

2. A second reason why these passages are irrelevant to women in ministry is that the Bible treats these sorts of patriarchal structures as "most of the time" structures. That is to say, the Bible does not treat these roles as absolute structures without exception.

How do we explain the occasional Deborah or Huldah? And why does Paul's mode of operation as found in Acts and his early letters seem to involve women working with him with no specification that they only worked with women or children?

Even Aristotle, whose household codes precede and say similar things to those in Colossians, Ephesians, and so forth, allows that there are women who are a "departure from nature." This, I submit, was the patriarchal view of biblical times. Men are usually the leaders, but there are women who occasionally depart from the norm. And to get off track again, Acts 2 seems to imply that we should expect a whole lot of these "departures" in the age of the Spirit, for "sons and daughters will prophesy" (Acts 2:17) and "in Christ there is not 'male and female'" (Gal. 3:28).

Side issues, but here to make it clear that it really all comes down to 1 Cor. 14:34-35 and 1 Tim. 2:11-15 as the only possible objections to women in ministry. Wow! How completely whacked out of focus Grudem and friends are and all the well intentioned people they've misguided!!

1 Corinthians 14:34-35
1. First thing I note about these verses is that they primarily seem to picture a husband wife relationship. The words for woman and man here also mean wife and husband, and that is the relationship that seems primarily in view.

So when 14:34 mentions "the Law" saying that women are to be subjected, what is it referring to? I think by far the best candidate is Genesis 3:16, where Eve is subjected to Adam in consequence of her sin. I'll overlook the blasphemy of applying this verse to the time after Christ, it only says, "as even the Law says"--a light comparison without teeth.

Why would it be blasphemy to apply this verse to the husband wife relationship? Because Christ atoned for all sins, not just some or just the sins of Adam! A redeemed women is no longer under the condemnation of Eve. She is in Christ. We can argue over a creational order of male and female, but not over a post-Fall order. That's blasphemy, as if someone were saying, "Nice job, Christ, in atoning for most sins. Too bad you couldn't take care of all of them." Blasphemy!

But the Genesis allusion points to a husband wife relationship, as does the comment, "let them ask their own husbands at home."

2. The second thing I note, and this is the most important, is that Paul cannot be talking about spiritual speech like prophecy or he has contradicted himself within the space of three chapters. In 1 Corinthians 11, he is discussing women praying and prophesying in church. Any woman praying or prophesying with uncovered head dishonors her "head," that is, her husband.

This chapter is the first of four that deal with interrelationships within the church at Corinth. Later in chapter 11 Paul will discuss communion. Chapters 12-14 deal with spiritual gifts and tongues in particular. In the early part of 1 Corinthians 11, Paul is dealing with women in the congregation who are apparently causing conflict and tension by praying and prophesying without their hair veiled--the sign of a single woman. They were dishonoring their husbands before other men, angels, and God the Father. The context and the nature of the problem--prophecy isn't something you do alone--lead us to see this as a worship issue.

But if women are praying and prophesying before other men here, then the silence 14:34 enjoins cannot be silence of a spiritual sort. It has to be noise that causes disruption to the worship. Indeed, the noise at issue would seem to be questions addressed to men who aren't their own husbands (let them ask their own husbands--not someone else's). Philo the Jew talks about a worship service where women and men were segregated--a plausible scenario for other synagogues as well. The disruption of asking questions with such segregation would also contribute to our understanding of this passage.

And so this passage cannot address spiritual speech by women. And thus this verse has nothing to say against women in ministry. That simply isn't something these verses address.

Textual Issues
I want to end this snippet as a scholar. Perhaps most scholars take 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 as original to 1 Corinthians. But a significant minority, including myself, do not think they come from Paul's hand. This is not a conservative-liberal issue, for faith filled scholars like Gordon Fee and Richard Hays agree with me. And of course conservative-liberal labels have nothing to do with truth. The truth is the truth period and doesn't care what label you attach to it.

And anyone who uses a modern translation de facto accepts that there are any number of places where the medieval Greek text (the one behind the KJV) has readings that were not the same as the first editions of these texts.

I have not based my appropriation of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 off of the textual question because then someone might dismiss my argument on this issue. As you can see above, the conclusion stands or falls regardless of whether these verses were original.

But I think it is not very likely that they were original. Why?

1. These verses are displaced in a few manuscripts. They appear somewhere in all manuscripts, so they externally have very strong evidence in favor of their authenticity. Indeed, I think they must have been added before the end of the first century (someone might argue that Paul himself put them in the margin about the same time he wrote 1 Timothy, being sorely ticked at certain women in Ephesus).

In some manuscripts they appear after verse 40. One explanation for this phenomenon is to suggest that they were placed in the margin and then later copyists put them in at more than one location in the main text.

2. In keeping with the displacement, the train of thought works much smoother without them present. 1 Corinthians 14 is about prophesy and tongues. The wife comment is a digression if original.

Here's how it would read:

"The spirits of prophets are subject to prophets. For God is not a God of disorder but of peace, as in all the assemblies of the saints. Or did the word of God go out from you alone or meet you alone? If someone thinks to be a prophet or spiritual, let that person acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the command of the Lord."

The comment on women being silent is a digression from the train of thought.

3. The church at Corinth is a church at Corinth. It is not a group of churches, plural. It therefore makes little sense for Paul to tell the Corinthian church for them to let women be silent in the churches. They are not churches and Paul is not addressing churches. This minor anomaly bespeaks transplanted material.

4. Verse 36 similarly returns to a masculine audience--the word for alone is masculine plural. That works okay, but it was women that Paul said earlier to let be silent and to ask at home: "let women ask."

5. Finally, there is the tension between these two verses and 1 Corinthians 11. I have suggested that these verses cannot be talking about spiritual speech or Paul has contradicted himself in the space of three chapters.

But these verses sure sound like a total prohibition of speech--"it is shameful for a women to speak in church." In other words, if these words are original, it seems almost impossible to fit them together with what Paul has said earlier. Given the other evidence, the near impossibility of fitting these words together with what Paul has said earlier leads me to conclude that he probably didn't say them at all.

[I might add tangentially that it would be nearly impossible for anyone to play out such a scenario in a church today and keep the more central principles of the gospel, although it was probably more possible in Paul's day]

And so I end where I began. The only verse in the entire Bible that potentially offers any substance against the idea of women in ministry is in 1 Timothy. Certainly 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 provide no argument against it.

Hallelujah for the dawn of the new covenant and the age of the Spirit, an age when our sons and daughters prophesy!