178 FEMINIST VIEWS BASED ON UNTRUTHFUL CLAIMS
I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man;
rather, she is to remain quiet.But if people believe this egalitarian claim about uneducated women
they will think it means,
I do not permit an uneducated woman like those in ancient Ephesus
to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain
quiet.This is an entirely different meaning! But if this “uneducated women”
claim is false (as the evidence indicates) then this different meaning is not
what the Bible really says. And that means that egalitarians who pro-
mote this view have wrongly removed the authority of this verse of
Scripture from everyone who believes their claim.
Holding the “uneducated women” view of 1 Timothy 2:12 is there-
fore another way of undermining the authority of Scripture. Believing a
view that is unsubstantiated by hard facts and that completely changes
the meaning of a passage of Scripture is another step on the path to
liberalism.