Must Women Keep Silent? What Were Jesus' and Paul's Actual Views of Women in the Church?

Episode Outline:
0:00 Women in the New Testament and the early church
0:28 Bart is back, and Megan talks Assyriology
5:13 Why the role of women in Christianity still matters today
7:30 What rules does the New Testament actually give about women?
9:52 What women were doing in the life and ministry of Jesus
13:45 How women’s roles in Christianity compared with the wider Greco-Roman world
17:03 Why celibacy could open space for female autonomy
19:10 Did some early Christian groups give women more authority than others?
22:06 Paul’s letters and the surprising prominence of women leaders
26:31 Did Paul really silence women, or were later texts speaking for him?
30:23 As the church grew, why did women’s leadership shrink?
34:26 Is opposition to women in ministry based on the Bible, tradition, or something else?
40:00 Promo: Other Virgin Births in Antiquity
42:20 Bart’s Weekly Update: Finding Moses and Christmas lectures
43:52 Outsmart Bart begins

Episode Description

In this episode, Bart Ehrman and Megan Lewis look at women in the New Testament and the early church and answer questions like:
- What restrictions were place on women in the early church based on their sex?
- Does the New Testament give an accurate depiction of how women actually lived and functioned during the early church?
- And should the New Testament be used as a guide for women's participation in modern churches?

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