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The twisting started with Paulus


He certainly has his critics, but in my view it’s absurd to place him next to the Crusades, Inquisition, et al…


Consider that Paul's misogynist (albeit commonplace for the time) views on women have probably been responsible for the abuse, rape and killing of more women than men were killed in the Crusades, and his views on slavery were used to justify the practice for centuries, including in its most brutal manifestation in the US.

The Crusades and Inquisition, bad as they were, were also limited in space and time. Paul's words have arguably done damage across the entirety of Christendom to this day.


This is a rather unbalanced perspective that lacks a shred of evidence. I can't imagine that you've actually read his letters, because if you had you'd know his stance on the role of a husband is not remotely what you've described.


I have read them. Let me quote from one of them:

    A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing — if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. (1 Timothy 2:11–15)
It doesn't really matter what Paul says on the role of the husband, when he makes explicit his belief that women should be subservient because of some ontological inferiority on their part through Eve, and that the only value a woman has is in childbearing.

Saying a slave should obey their master doesn't ameliorate the moral evil that is slavery, and saying a husband should "love their wives as Christ loved the church" doesn't ameliorate misogyny. Paul doesn't believe men and women are equal, nor that they deserve equal rights, and thus neither has Christendom for most of its existence.

And the evidence is everywhere, in the two thousand years of law and culture based on the religion. Christian opposition to womens' rights and suffrage, divorce and non-heterosexual relationships. Laws forbidding women to work or own property, judges deciding that rape cannot exist within marriage because a woman's duty is to please her husband, husbands abusing their wives when they don't "know their place." And of course banning women from any position of power in the church. All of these are the consequences of Pauline principles.


Yes, I am aware of this passage. He is not speaking to equality of genders. You can read his other writings to see how he treated actual women who were in leadership roles in the early church. If you believe in Christianity then you believe that God ordained specific and symbolic roles for husbands and wives and the appropriate authority to go along with each.

Paul also wrote the men shouldn’t have long hair and women should keep their heads covered, so there is also an amount of “being at peace means also being at peace with the culture” to be interpreted from his writings.


Paul changed the focus of Jesus‘ message of love to Jesus‘ death and resurrection.

https://ehrmanblog.org/the-messages-of-jesus-and-paul-basica...


Having read the Bible several times through, I don't see any disagreement between Jesus and Paul. This is further supported by the fact that the original disciples/apostles accepted Paul's teachings. And if there were a disagreement on the nature of salvation I assume things like circumcision would have taken a back seat to that debate, yet that is not what we find in either Acts or any of the letters of the apostles in the New Testament. So, I think the view that Paul somehow subverted Christianity is a self-deceiving one designed to reinforce previously-held beliefs.




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