The following Bible verses (and in one case, their interpretation) indicates a tension in Scripture between the Judaic patriarchal view in first century Palestine (and earlier) and the Jesus revolution. It is likely that Jesus was crucified partly because his reform movement rejected parts of the old Levitical code (see Leviticus 18 and 19, which includes stoning of women caught in adultery, not men, see John 8). The verse “love your neighbour as yourself’ (Leviticus 19:18) remains central to Jesus’ teaching, however. he seems to build upon this foundation principle in the Torah (first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures and Christian Bible).

Understanding whether women are spiritually deficient to men partly hinges on whether women are equipped spiritually with discernment to teach. The following passages also relate to whether women are inherently spiritually discerning as men: which are revolutionary, and which oppressive of gender equality?

• Galatians 3:28. “There is neither…male nor female for all are one in Christ Jesus.”
• Deborah of the Old Testament was a prophetess and “judge of Israel”^[19]
• Genesis 2:20. The word translated “help” or “helper” is the same Hebrew word, “ēzer,” which the Old Testament uses more than 17 times to describe the kind of help that God brings to His people in times of need; e.g., “Thou art my help (ēzer) and my deliverer,” and “My help (ēzer)comes from the Lord.” Never once in all these references is the word used to indicate subordination or servitude to another human being.^[20]
• Genesis 3:16. “To the woman he (God) said, ‘I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.'”
• 1 Timothy 2:12. “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.”
• 1 Corinthians 11:7-9. “For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.”
• 1 Corinthians 14:34. “The women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says.”
• Colossians 3:18. “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.”
• 1 Peter 3:1. “Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives.”
• Ephesians 5:22-24[21]. “Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. 24 Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands.”