24

WOMEN TEACHING A GNOSTIC

HERESY IN EPHESUS?

Some evangelical feminists claim that Paul told the

women in Ephesus not to teach or exercise authority

over men specifically because they were teaching a

Gnostic heresy about Eve being created before Adam

One specific form of the “women teaching false doctrine” position that

we considered in the previous chapter is found in the extensive argument
of Richard and Catherine Kroeger regarding a Gnostic heresy in the
church at Ephesus. Because this viewpoint is so detailed and so widely
quoted, I have devoted a separate chapter to it in this book.
The Kroegers argue extensively for the presence of a Gnostic or
proto-Gnostic heresy in Ephesus, probably propagated by women in the
church, that taught that Eve was created before Adam and that she
taught Adam spiritual knowledge.^1 They suggest that it was the presence
of this specific Gnostic heresy at Ephesus that led Paul to write what he

(^1) Richard Clark Kroeger and Catherine Clark Kroeger, I Suffer Not a Woman: Rethinking 1
Timothy 2:11-15 in Light of Ancient Evidence (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1992), 59-66,
119-125.
Gnosticism was an ancient heretical religion that opposed true Christianity. The name
Gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnøsis, which means “knowledge.” Gnosticism
stressed salvation through acquiring hidden knowledge and taught that the material world was
evil and only the nonmaterial, spiritual world was good. For an excellent brief summary of
Gnosticism and current scholarly viewpoints about it, with an extensive bibliography, see E.
M. Yamauchi, “Gnosticism,” in Dictionary of New Testament Background, ed. Craig A. Evans
and Stanley E. Porter (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 414-418.