That gives you two options then.

1. Paul was indeed not divinely inspired at all and was simply a woman hater. That would relieve god from some of this responsibility but also implies that these men were simply men with no direct connections to anything divine.

2. Paul was actually interpreting directly from what god was in fact imparting to him and god is a misogynist ass.

Let's be straight here. Paul is the least of it. He was just brought up on this thread. One only need glance through the OT to get the full range of this.

Women are the true creators of life. All female animals are. Why do you think birth would henceforth be associated with "sin?" That is a magnificent power. All religious sacraments revolved around women and high priestesses prior to the advent of Christianity. Why do you suppose that so much emphasis is placed on belittling women in the bible>?

The Hebrews even!


Recently, however, archaeologists and biblical critics have revealed a far more complicated picture of how biblical Israelites lived their religious lives. As exhaustively summarized in William Dever’s “Did God Have a Wife? Archeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel,” most scholars now believe that the ancient Israelite world was far less monolithic, and monotheistic, than the Bible suggests. Household shrines, statuettes of male and female figures, and inscriptions and carvings describing “YHVH and His Asherah” all point to a decentralized biblical religion that was practiced largely within family structures, and well beyond the strictures of Jerusalem’s orthodox elite. Some scholars believe that this evidence points to an indigenous “goddess worship” that regarded the biblical God as one half of a divine couple. Others say it suggests the influence of non-Israelite religions. And still others, such as Raphael Patai, whose enormously influential 1978 book, “The Hebrew Goddess,” arguably inaugurated the popular appropriation of this scholarship, believe that the tradition of the Divine Feminine — a female half of God, or bride of God, or earth-centered, body-centered counterpart to the sky god Yah — endured long after the biblical period ended.

I think I fit into a "third" option.

I think that the Bible was divinely inspired, not divinely dictated, and there is a rather large difference between the two. In one, the reader can witness the ways in which the writer(s) viewed God moving in their lives. In the other, you have the "Bible dropped from the sky" version, which just simply isn't the case.

I think that God works through us and within us in our brokenness, because we all have faults. That doesn't make God's work any less valid because we aren't perfect. It just means that we're human. That shows in the Bible, and I personally find that appealing. The message is that God is with us even as we fall short of the goal, that God stands beside us and dwells among us and loves us just as we are. To see evidence of faulty humans bumbling around in the biblical texts only reassures me as I too bumble through life, celebrating joys and facing challenges.

I also think that we're being a bit anachronistic here. Gender equality was not something debatable in the Hebrew culture (and in many others of that time period). While it is sad that texts have been used and misused to "put women in their place" and that women faced such trials then, we have to remember that this was normal for them. They (men and women) knew nothing different in that particular culture. It's not making excuses and it's not dismissing the gravity of women's rights (or lack thereof). It's just understanding from where these people wrote. They could not envision the changes that would take place two thousand plus years down the road.

I'm not trying to argue anything here, and if that is what is happening, then I'll stop posting. I simply want to make clear another position that Christian women have when they relate to their faith. There are always more than two ways to look at something. Here is part of mine.

I realize you arent trying to argue yet the abuses of women in the bible are intolerable and you should not have to make excuses. Period. There are other spiritualistic pursuits that do not entail servitude and oppression of either gender. From an archeological standpoint it is indicated that even the ancient Hebrews who we always think of as being staunch Monotheists were probably not. They were more than likley earth centered and had a dualistic deity which was a god and his bride. Monotheism and Christianity was the "new kid on the block" compared to these much more ancient religions.You seem like a very intelligent woman and it would only be fair of you to research this evidence a bit before jumping to conclusions that you have been taught in bible study groups.