Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
General Christian
Women in Religion
Should Women Keep Silent at Church? Re:1 Corinthian 14:34–35

Should Women Keep Silent at Church? Re:1 Corinthian 14:34–35

Last updated on: July 1, 2024 at 4:11 pm by B. J. Oropeza

0 Comments

Should Women Keep Silent at Church? Re:1 Corinthian 14:34–35 2024-07-01T16:11:28-07:00 B. J. Oropeza

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Did Paul forbid women from speaking at the Corinthian church? With 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 as our model, yes, they were to keep quiet, but what does this mean? A number of biblical interpreters point out that Paul permits women to prophesy at church in 1 Cor 11:5. Hence, unless our apostle is contradicting himself, 1 Cor 14:34–35 cannot mean an absolute ban on women speaking. It also follows that if they were allowed to prophesy, Paul would hardly prevent them from using other speaking gifts such as teaching.

Saint Anne giving the symbol of silence

“Faras Saint Anne (detail)” via commons.wikimedia.org

Paul’s rhetorical wish that “all” would speak in tongues and prophesy becomes rather empty if he is precluding all the women from doing so (1 Cor 14:5). Moreover, “each” person in the congregation would seem to include women who can speak in tongues, interpret, give a revelation, teach, sing, or use another speaking gift (1 Cor 14:26). Such inspired speaking involves spiritual gifts that the Spirit distributes to each believer (12:7–11), and nothing suggests that these gifts are given only to men.

If Paul agreed with the early Christians who associate the Spirit’s outpouring with Joel 2:28–32 (cf. 1 Cor 1:2; Acts 2:1–22), this would seem to confirm that prophetic and spiritual speaking are not just given to “sons” but also “daughters.” The gifts of the Spirit do not discriminate according to gender.

What, then, does Paul mean when he says in 1 Cor 14:34, “Let the wives in your assemblies be silent, for they are not permitted to be talking but to be in submission, just as the law says also”? (my translation from B. J. Oropeza, 1 Corinthians).

Are the Women Speaking or Chatting?

I understand women in 1 Cor 14:34 to be mean “wives” (gynaikes/ γυναῖκες). The context clarifies this nuance when Paul affirms that these women have husbands (see 1 Cor 14:35).

When Paul writes that these wives are not permitted to speak, the Greek verb is laleô (λαλέω). It is better understood here as “talking” or even “chatting” instead of “speaking” (compare Eph 4:25; 2 John 12; and further examples in Oropeza, 1 Corinthians, 188). Again, context is determinative. We read in 14:35a that if the wives “wish to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home.” This implies that these women were asking questions at church, apparently disrupting the inspired speaker’s message with inquiries.

Sifting the Prophetic Speaker?

Certain scholars suggest this activity involved “sifting” the prophet’s words and cross-examining them with questions regarding their lifestyle or beliefs in public. This would be especially controversial if the wives were probing the prophesies of their own husbands this way.

But there are some problems with this viewpoint:

First, at least some questioning about the prophecies would doubtless include the gift of discernment (1 Cor 14:29; cf. 12:10). If so, then we are hard pressed to affirm either that only men could use this gift or that a wife’s evaluation could never pass for such discernment.

Second, another problem is that Paul’s recommendation for wives to learn from their husbands privately seems to have little to do with their evaluating and challenging the speaker.

Uninspired Questioning

A better explanation is that the wives’ questions must have been understood as uninspired. Perhaps some of them interrupted the speaker, not to challenge him or her but to ask for clarification of what was being uttered.

Moreover, these women may have been asking questions to their husbands about what another speaker was presently saying. They may have been asking husbands or other wives nearby such things as, “What do you think he means?” “Could he be saying that . . . ” “Is she referring specifically to me? What she’s saying actually happened to me this week when I . . . ” Such questions presumably sparked chatting in congregation instead of keeping quiet as the speaker or prophet spoke.

The confusion perhaps originated because many gatherings met in homes. The problem was taking place in the “assemblies” (ekklesiai). This does not refer to “churches” in the modern sense of the word, let alone the church worldwide. Rather the word refers to the various houses and facilities where Corinthian believers gathered for worship. At this time, there was no centralized “church” building; believers met in homes, tenements, workshops, and other places to worship together and hear the word of God.

Whereas chatting and asking questions might be acceptable in the privacy of one’s own home, it was not to be done in homes and other facilities used for sacred gathering open to the public. Bottom line: Paul is forbidding wives from uninspired talking when others are inspired to speak at the house gatherings. Their talking in this context has to do with questioning rather than teaching, proclaiming, and praying.

Kenneth Bailey on Women Chatting

Kenneth Bailey, who has extensive experience working with women in Mediterranean villages, says that chatting is still a problem in these church gatherings. He attributes this to factors such as lack of education and social contacts, along with short attention spans that such things might induce.

The problem in 1 Cor 14:34–35 may involve similar factors in which chatting becomes a way of learning. Hence, the chatting of these women, along with both genders inappropriately using tongues and prophecy, hinder orderly worship. Paul requests the culprits of all three to be silent in church (1 Cor 14:28, 30, 34). For the latter he essentially says, “Women, please stop chatting so you can listen to the women (and men) who are trying to bring you a prophetic word but cannot do so when no one can hear them.” (Paul through Mediterranean Eyes, 416; cf. 412–17).

Women are to be Silent and Submit according to the Law?

Paul writes that the wives must therefore be “silent” and “submit” themselves to the speaker under divine guidance in reverence to God, whoever he or she might be. This silence and submission is in accordance with the “Law,” that is, biblical Scripture (1 Cor 14:34; cf. 14:21).

What verse in the Law speaks about silence and submission? Some suggest this refers to the curse of Eve in Genesis 3:16. But this verse does not appear to be what is referenced since silence and submission are foremost to be given to the speaker rather than a woman’s husband. In any case, nothing is said about silence, whether in Gen 3:16 or in the context of the creation discourse in Gen 1–3.

Rather, in the Law, Aaron and Miriam’s rebuke related to questioning Moses’s prophetic authority comes closer to what Paul means (Numbers 12:1–15). Paul alluded to this story earlier (see 1 Cor 13:12), and if it is echoed here, then reverence to the prophet seems required of both genders.

Quiet Reverence for the Inspired Word

Silence and reverence are to be given to God and the prophetic word (Habakkuk 2:20; Zephaniah 1:7; Zechariah 2:13). Commenting on worship in Habakkuk’s context, O. P. Robertson writes, “One should wait upon him [God] in the awed silence that is often the most appropriate expression of true worship” (The Books of Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, NICOT: 212). Marvin Sweeney affirms that Zeph 1:7 “constitutes the prophet’s exclamatory demand for silence at the beginning of the presentation of YHWH’s oracular statements that announce the coming Day of YHWH” (Zephaniah, Hermenia: 78).

It seems to be standard protocol, then, that in the Scriptures which inform Paul*, silence is required whenever a prophet speaks divine words*. This idea is what Paul probably means by referring to the Law (= Scripture: notice that “the Law” refers even to prophetic discourse in 1 Cor 14:21).

Elsewhere in Scripture the notion of silence is encouraged when hearing wise counsel (Job 29:21), and is also to be given in respect for those in authority (Judges 3:19).

In Acts, Peter and Paul’s motioning of the hand to silence their audiences assumes both unruly commotion among their auditors and the necessity for them to be quiet as the apostles speak (Acts 12:17; 21:40). Likewise in the Qumran Community who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, talking during the discourse was forbidden (Community Rule, 1QS 6.10–13).

Such texts evince that ancient audiences could be quite noisy. Men as well as women might be guilty of disrupting the speaker, and so we surmise that the only reason Paul does not silence men or husbands from chatting in the Corinthian setting is because they were not the problem.

On Speakers, Silence, and Shame

The additional phrase in 14:35b, “for it is shameful for a wife to talk in an assembly” equates this activity with what is unacceptable and dishonoring. It would surely be shameful according to cultural norms of the time for a wife to talk in a way that embarrassed her husband publicly. Again, this was happening not necessarily because wives challenged their husbands as speakers, but because they were asking questions to their husbands about other speakers and interrupting or distracting those speakers and the ones who heard them.

The Greco-Roman world of that time would agree. The philosopher Plutarch considers it rude and disrespectful when audiences interrupt the lecturer or ask uneducated or irrelevant questions (Moralia 39C; 42F–43C; 48A–B). Anaximenes’s rhetorical handbook recognizes interruptions as a peril orators face. Among his solutions is that orators are to meet interruptions by showing them as contrary to justice, law, and what is honorable and publicly advantageous (Rhetorica ad Alexandrium 1433a.25–29; cf. 14–18).

Paul would seem to agree that in worship assemblies distractive talking is shameful and runs counter to Scripture. As such, the Corinthian wives were disrespecting the speakers and the Spirit who inspired them.

The inspired speakers, I should add, could be either men or women. Paul did not prevent inspired women from speaking in the Corinthian churches; he only prevented uninspired chatterers from speaking.

*** * ***

Next up: 1 Timothy 2:9–15…

Contemplative

Women in Religion

Family, Parenting and Religion

1 Corinthians 14:34-35

wives

women

women silent in church

women speaking in church

About B. J. Oropeza

B. J. Oropeza is Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Azusa Pacific University. Among his many works include commentaries on 1 Corinthians (Cascade) and 2 Corinthians (SBL Press), and works such as Perspectives on Paul: Five Views (Baker Academic) and Practicing Intertextuality (Cascade). You can read more about the author here.

Previous Post

July 16, 2023

Will Heaven Be Boring?

Next Post

August 2, 2023 Reading 1 Timothy 2:9–15: Are Women Forbidden to Teach at Church?

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category "in Christ" 1 Corinthians 1 Enoch 1 John 2:19 1 Peter 1 Thessalonians 1 Timothy 1Peter 2 Corinthians 2 Kings 2 Timothy 400 years of silence A. I. A. M. Hunter Abraham Achilles Tatius Acts 13 Acts 19 Acts 22 Acts 26 Acts 9 addiction adultery Aesop's Fables Affliction afterlife allegiance allusions amanuensis Amen Ananias Ancient Biography Andrew Wilson Andronicus Angels anger Anglicanism anointing aorist tense Apep apocalypse apocalyptic Apocrypha apologetics apostasy Apostle Apostle Paul Aquinas archaeology archangel Ardel Caneday Arminianism armor of God article from journal artificial intelligence Asbury ascension atlas atonement Augustine Augustus authorship Awakening awards baptism Battle of Armageddon beasts behemoth Belial Beliar belief Benediction between Testaments Beverly Roberts Gaventa Bible Bible discrepancies Bible Gateway Bible reading Bible reading plan Bible Study Bible translations Bible version Bible versions biblical inerrancy Biblical Theology blasphemy blindness Boethius boldness Book of Acts Book Review Born Again bravery burial Caesar calling Calvinism canon canon Cassius Dio Catholics Channing Crisler charistmatic Christ Christian behavior Christian origins Christian theology Christians Christology church church fathers Church of England Chuza Cleopas Commandments Commentaries congregation conversion Corinthian letters coronavirus courage Covenant covenant theology covenantal nomism coveting COVID-19 Craig Keener Crescens crocodile Cross crucifixion curse custom Cyprian Daily Bread Dale Allison Damascus Damascus Experience Damascus road David Moffitt Day of Atonement deacon dead Dead Sea Scrolls death Deity of Christ Demas demonology demons determinism Deuteronomy Devil devotion dinosaur Dio Chrysostom divided I Divine Christology divine punishment divorce Do not fear Doxology dragon E. P. Sanders Eastern Orthodox Ebeneazer Urga echoes ekklesia election Elijah the Prophet Elisha the Prophet Elisha's bones Elymas embodiment of the gospel embodying the gospel emperor empty tomb Encouragement end times enlightement Ephesians Ephesus Epistles of Paul eschatology eternal life Ethics (Christian) euchlaion Eusebius of Caesarea evangelical evangelism evidence exile extreme unction Ezekiel faith falling away false prophet fate father Father's Day favorite Fear film Final Judgment Flood foreknowledge foreordain forgiveness fornication freewill from Saul to Paul Galatians Gary Cooper Genesis Gentile studies Gentiles geography giants gift gift giving global perspective Glossa Ordinaria God God perception good news gospel gospel 2.0 Gospel of John Gospel of Luke Gospel of Mark Gospel of Matthew Gospels grace gratitude Great Awakening Greco-Roman Greco-Roman world Greek Greek classic literature Greek lexicon Greek Orthodox Greek prepositions greetings guilt Habakkuk hair Halloween head covering head coverings healing heaven Hebrew Hebrews hermeneutics Hesed high Christology Higher Christology highlights holiness holy Holy Bible Holy Scriptures Holy Spirit Homer hospitable hospitality how to read the Bible human effort I Am sayings imperialism in Adam In Christ inspiration intercession Interpretation intertestamental period Intertextuality Interview intimidation Isaiah Israel Israel (land of) James James D. G. Dunn Jason Staples Jerome Jesus Jesus sayings Jesus traditions Jesus: Studies Jewish literature Jewish names Jewish Scripture Jewish studies Jews Joanna Job John John 3:16 John Chrysostom John Hyrcanus John Mark John of Damascus John the Baptist John Wesley Josephus joy Judaism Judgment day Julia Junia Justice justification kerygma King Kingdom kingdom of God Krister Stendahl lament Law Law of Moses lecture hall letter writing Letters of Paul Leucippe et Clitophon Leviathan Leviticus light Logical fallacy looting Lord Lord's Prayer lose salvation Lot Lotan love lovingkindness Lucifer Luke lust Luther LXX maenads Malachi Marcion marginalization marital affair marriage martyrdom Mary Matt Damon Medieval theologians Medieval theology memorization mercy Michael the Archangel miracles Mishnah missiology mission missionary missions monergism monogenes monster monsters Mosaic Law Moses Mysterious Ways mythology N. T. Wright name change names narrative Nephilim New Birth new covenant new covenant pneumaism new creation New Perspective on Paul New Testament New Testament use of Old Testament Noah Noah's ark nomism non-Christian oath obedience Odysseus Odyssey oil Old Testament only begotten Origen Outpouring pagan pagans parable paraceratherium Parousia participation in Christ Pastoral Letters patristic theology Paul in prison Paul letter of Paul teaching Paul the Apostle: Studies Paul within Judaism Paul's calling Paul's conversion Paul's death Pauline Theology persecution perseverance perseverance of the saints Persis personal devotion pesher Peter Abelard Philo philosophy Phoebe Pink Floyd pistis Plague plutarch pneuma pneumagism popular culture sayings Porneia Post-New Perspective on Paul praise prayer preaching predestination Prisca Priscilla Prison Epistle Prophecy prophets Psalm Psalms Pseudepigrapha Q Q source quest for the historic Jesus quotations Rabbi Pinhas be Yair Rabbinic literature Rainer Riesner raised from the dead rapture reading missiologically reading plan recipients reciprocity reconciliation Red Herring red letter edition redemption Reformation Regeneration rejoicing reminder renewal repentance restoration resurrection revival righteousness riot Roman Antiquity Roman names romance Romans Romans 12-16 Romans 16 Romans 4:25 Romans 7 Rome Rufus's mother sacrificial system salvation Salvation/Soteriology sanctification Satan Satan's fall Saul the Pharisee SBL Scholars school Scripture Second coming of Christ Second Temple Judaism secretary Septuagint Sergeant York Sergius Paulus Servant in Isaiah sex and sexuality sex ethics sexual immorality sheep sick sin sinful nature single Christians and dating social justice Society of Biblical Literature sons of God soteriology spinosaurus spiritual gifts spiritual renewal spiritual warfare Stephen Wilson struggle Study Bible studying the Bible Suetonius suffering Suffering Servant suggestive commentary Survey synergism Synoptic Gospels Tacitus teacher teaching telos temptation Tertius The Chosen the flesh Theology Thomas Aquinas Thomas Robinson Thomas Schreiner Thorn Thucydides Timothy Titus tongues Top 10 top 12 Torah trust Tryphaena Tryphosa Tyrannus U2 Ugaritic Ukraine Ukrainian Uncategorized unconditional love unforgiving Union with Christ unity/solidarity unpardonable sin urgency Valentine's Day veils vice vices victory warnings Watchers witnessing Woman ministers women women ministers women speakers women teachers word of God works works of the law worship writing YouVersion Zen Hess zombie

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Why did Joseph's brothers sell him?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Love Poverty Jealousy Mercy