<p>14:35 <i>And if they would learn anything, let them ask their men at home- </i>A woman was to keep silent and ask her husband Gk. &lsquo;man&rsquo; &lsquo;at a home&rsquo; if she had any questions (1 Cor. 14:35 Gk.). Generations of mystified yet Godly women have read that verse and thought &lsquo;But I don&rsquo;t have a man at home to ask. I&rsquo;m not even married&rsquo;- or &lsquo;But my hubby doesn&rsquo;t know a thing about the Bible&rsquo;. Read in the context of a house church scenario, it makes perfect sense. The women weren&rsquo;t to interrupt the combined gatherings with disruptively asked questions from the floor. They were to ask the elders back in their house churches. And that&rsquo;s why the Greek in 1 Cor. 14:35 strictly makes a distinction, between the woman not speaking / publicly asking questions in the church, but asking the brethren in a house church.</p><p><i>For it is shameful for a woman to speak in the church- </i>As noted above, we must balance this against Paul's encouragement of women to use the gift of prophecy in the church in chapter 11. And chapter 11 would appear to be in the context of the breaking of bread service. So we simply cannot read this as a blanket forbidding of women &quot;to speak in the church&quot;. I earlier outlined the case for thinking that the Corinthians were not spiritual (3:1), and their claims to speak in tongues and prophecy were mere imitations of what was going on in the surrounding idol cults. Those cults in Corinth, especially at Delphi and the temple of Apollo, featured female prophets. Paul gently goes along with the immaturity of the Corinthians on many points, but as in his attitude in other places, he will not tolerate false teaching, people claiming to speak forth God's word when they are doing nothing of the sort. He clamped down on a similar situation in Ephesus in 1 Tim. 2 see notes there. And so here he continues the allusion to early Genesis see on :34 <i>the law</i> by saying that these women were no better than Eve in her shame in Eden. They were bringing shame on themselves and others by what they were doing; those women in Corinth, at that place and time and context, were bringing 'shame' by speaking in the church. Although of course if they had legitimate Holy Spirit gifts of prophecy then Paul was happy for them to use them, as he has made clear in chapter 11. Hence he encourages the Corinthians to prophesy (:39)- but he refers to the true gift of Holy Spirit prophecy and not some imitation of the ecstatic 'prophecies' of the surrounding religions.</p>