Archive for March, 2023

Preston Sprinkle invited one female and one male scholar to present a biblical defense of the complementarian (Sydney Park and Gerry Breshears) and egalitarian (Cynthia Long Westfall and me) views at the Theology in the Raw Symposium on Women in Leadership in Boise, Idaho March 23.

Click HERE to see my 20-minute talk that distills my last 50 years of research that changed my mind regarding four key objections to women in leadership and HERE to download my PowerPoint to your downloads folder.

I argue that Paul usually uses “head” to convey “source,” not male headship, that 1 Timothy 2:12 addresses a crisis of false teaching in Ephesus—where some women had followed after Satan—by prohibiting women from seizing authority to teach a man, that Paul encourages all believers to aspire to the office of overseer in 1 Timothy 3:1, and that external and internal evidence shows that 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 was not in Paul’s original letter.

Just today I received copies of my new Zondervan book: The Bible vs. Biblical Womanhood:

How God’s Word Consistently Affirms Gender Equality, 223 pages. Click HERE to see it.

It is written for non-specialists to make complex ideas as simple and clear as possible. It includes extensively updated material on 1 Corinthians 14:34–35, including photographs of all 16 two-dot plus bar (distigme-obelos) symbols in the oldest Bible in Greek, Codex Vaticanus B.

Beth Allison Barr writes: “Payne makes it clear that ‘biblical womanhood’ has never been biblical. His careful analysis provides unshakeable ground that we can believe both in the Bible and in the full freedom of women to serve however God has called them.”

Click HERE to see other endorsements. 

https://www.amazon.com/Bible-vs-Biblical-Womanhood-Consistently-ebook/dp/B0B5CVBJ4R states that it is the “#1 New Release in Gender & Sexuality in Religious Studies” and sells it for $17.99 paperback, $12.99 Kindle.