As promised, here are some thoughts on honor and shame as they relate to I Timothy ch 2.

In my continuing study of New Testament issues, by far the most intriguing and provocative book I've come across has been Bruce Malina's The New Testament World: Insights From Cultural Anthropology. If you wish to understand the NT and the characters in it better, I highly recommend it. But for those who are limited in time and money, I'll share a few things on the topic of honor and shame whih prof. Malina addressed therein.

There are a whole host of ways in which the man or woman of 1st century Judea is different from the man or woman of 21st century United States. One of the most fundamental of these is the function of the family. In our world the area on which people focus the most attention is the economic or financial area. As a reslut of this "the organizing principle of American life is instrumental mastery--the individual's ability to control his or her environment, personal and impersonal, in order to attain quality-oriented success: wealth, ownership, "good looks", proper grades, and all other measurable indications of success." (All quotes will be from the above mentioned book)

By contrast, the focal institution of the 1st cent. Mediterranean person is the family. The family is everything. As we have ways in our society of measuring how we are doing by societal standards, so the 1st century person. The rules by whih thy judged themselves were called honor and shame. Briefly, honor is "a claim to worth which is socially acknowledged", and shame, in the positive sense, is "sensitivity about one's own reputation, sensitivity to the opinion of others." Both of these, as you will notice, are qualities which can apply to both male and female, but they did apply differently.

The primary symbol of male honor is the testicles (which leads to interesting discussion of eunuchs in the bible), and they stand for the virtues of "manliness, courage, authority over family, willingness to defend one's reputation, and refusal to submit to humiliation." The symbol of female honor is the maidenhead, which stands for "sexual exclusiveness, discretion, shyness, restraint, and timidity." This is what Malina terms the sexual division of labor. '[H]onor delegates implicit goodness or virtue as expressed in sexual exclusiveness to females, and social precedence with the duty of defending female exclusiveness to the males. This sort of division of labor get replicated in arrangements of space." This refers to places which are exclusively female and in which females are allowed: kitchen, the (public) well the (public) oven, sewing, etc. All these things face inwards to the home. Things which face outwards are male such as the fields and other villages. In the areas of intersection, females could be there if they had a chaperone, or if no males wre present.

When it comes to the nitty gritty of life, if one was speaking of honor or shame, honor, then, is the male value and shame is the female one. Malina has a chart which shows shared, male, and female honor and shame. For males he lists increase-decrease (honor can wax and wane through challenges), sexually aggressive, authority, defense of family honor, concern for prestige, concern for precedence, aggressiveness, daring, boldness. For female he lists once lost, not regained (as opposed to male honor), sexually exclusive, submission to authority, unwillingness to risk, concern for shame-shyness, deference, passivity, timid, restraint. As a side note, he lists some families and institutions as being considered irretrievably shameless: husbands acting as pimps, tavern and inn owners, actors, and prostitutes. Also "men who must go out for protracted periods of time without thier women, such as traders, traveling merchants, certain types of shepherds, wandering preachers and the like, necessarily leave their honor in doubt, since thier wives are left alone for long periods."

If you've followed so far, in spite of my poor presentation, I'll point out that these things were not considered "ideals", taher they were just how societies understood the rlose of male and female. There was plenty of room for discussion of what men and women "should" be doing. This leads us to I Tim. 2. I'll quote some portions from the NASB:

1. First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men . . .8. Therefore I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and dissension. 9. Likewise, I want the women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments; 10 but rather by means of good works, as befits women making a claim to godliness. 11 Let a woman quietly receive instruction . . .15But women shall be preserved [or saved] through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self restraint.

You will notice the socially prevalent view of men and women demonstrated in this passage, but also instruction on what Paul thought men and women "should" be doing. As for men, their outward focus should be leading them to pray for all men, specifically mentioning kings in v 2. However they need to do so without falling into arguments and fights, which were also male typical.

The females need to be sensitive to the honor of thier families, thus adorning themselves with good works. They should do this in a properly female (in this context) submissiveness. But they need to avoid the vanity of exterior showiness. I would add that women "receiving instruction" was somthing of an abberation in this culture. Typically those who were disciples of a teacher were males. In the gospel story of Mary and Martha, you see Martha's disgust at Mary's behavior since she was taking the male-disciple role, rather than the female-homemaker role. As to the mysteries of vs15, let me provisionally suggest that Paul's emphasis is on the latter part of the sentence. The idea that women attain eternal salvation through having babies os certainly froeign to the rest of the bible. Perhaps Paul is saying that God will preserve the women, even through the immense difficulty of childbirth, if they remain faithful.

I hope that I've shed more light than I think I have. Feel free to email comments on any confusions, poor grammar, bad logic or anything else.