Women In 1 Corinthians

Hi Taz and other posters.I have not read ALL of the submissions to this discussion yet. I will go back and continue to read. But I would like to submit to the discussion.When we read that women are to be silent in the church we have to consider some important things. Paul writes that they are permitted to speak at home.Now, in the early days of the Christian church many very important meetings occured at the homes of the believers. In Jerusalem eventually there ended up being ( conservatively ) be about 10,000 Christians. This is based alone on Peters two messages which produced 5,000 and 4,000 believers.Now Acts says that they "met from house to house." So we could say that there may have been at least 100 home meetings of the church in Jerusalem. That would be about 100 people per home meeting. Probably there were not that many participants in a Christian meeting in each person's home.But if you had 100 or more homes where women were free to speak, you apparently had a lot of Christian sisters speaking in Christian meetings, I think. Ten thousand believers met from house to house and in the tempple, until they were chased out of the temple to meet only in thier homes in Jerusalem.Now if a typical church in a city was divided into multiple house meetings in the homes of the believers, and the apostle Paul permitted the sisters under his apostolic care, to speak in their homes, for sure you had a lot of speaking from women in home meetings.Today, many hear the word "church" and assume a physical edifice or building of some kind where according to Paul, women should keep silence. The church is the people and not the building. My problem with so non-speaking women in the church is that
too many meetings of the saints occured in their homes. So they must have been ample opportunity to her the sisters prophesy.Paul said "You can all prophesy one by one." Prophesy is not just to predict. It is to speak forth the Christian God and speak for Christ in words of encouragement and edification. So in the homes, in the houses, many women MUST have been speaking in home meetings. And if they were speaking rightly as they and the brothers should, they were speaking spiritual edification and building up of the church in the homes gatherings.Today, these home gatherings are called by some "cell groups." But many denominations which practice home meeting or cell groups grow to include huge numbers of Christians.So we can forget the mental picture of women being altogether silent in early Christian gatherings.All things considered I think Paul did not want women to be authoritatively defining doctrines. And perhaps the major definitions of doctrines WERE taking place in large full church gatherings. But alternatively, as today, many many gatherings had to be in the homes of couples or famililies where Paul did expect the sisters to speak.I contribute this not as a conclusive answer to the original question, but to hopefully enhance the consideration of the larger perspective.Many thousands of meetings of mutual encouragement, edification, spiritual excercise, building up, teaching, testimony and prayer, were conducted in homes of the believers, where Paul expected the sisters to SPEAK.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.