1 Timothy 2:8-15: in context

First Timothy is a letter of instruction to a younger colleague overseeing the church at Ephesus, a church the letter says is being disrupted by false teaching. This passage gives directions for how men and women are to conduct themselves in the assembly, and it is among the most argued-over in the New Testament.

The men are told to pray with hands lifted, without anger or quarreling, which suggests the men in that assembly were angry and quarreling. The women are told to dress modestly, not with braided hair, gold, pearls, or costly clothes, but with good works. That list is a standard description of ostentatious wealth in Greek and Roman moralists of the period, so the target is display, not adornment as such. Then the disputed lines: let a woman learn in quietness with full submission, and I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man.

The reasons given reach back to Adam and Eve, and the passage ends with the difficult clause that she will be saved through childbearing, if they continue in faith and love and holiness with modesty. Ephesus was the city of the temple of Artemis, where a female-led cult dominated civic religion, and the letter's stated occasion is false teaching. Christians have read this as a permanent order and as a response to a specific crisis for as long as it has been read at all. What do I do with a text I cannot make comfortable, when my honest options are to wrestle with it or pretend it says something else?