Heresy and False Teaching
Criag Keener on 2 Timothy 3:6
Because women were usually less educated, they were more susceptible than men to false teaching (see comment on 1 Tim 2:11-12). Women’s penchant for switching religions was ridiculed by satirists like *Juvenal and offended conservative Romans. Women reportedly converted to Christianity, Judaism, and the cults of Isis, Serapis and other deities far more readily than men; and in the second century a.d. women were attracted to many heretical movements. Because they were less educated in traditional religion and had less social standing to lose, they more quickly changed religiously, sometimes for good and sometimes for bad. (With regard to Judaism, they also lacked the male disincentive of the pain of male circumcision.) The false teachers had to get into the homes because they had less access to the women in public (due to married women’s partial segregation in Greek society). After they had gained access to a household, their male or female convert within the household could supply financial and other help to them. The women who owned their own homes were most often widows, so widows may have often been targeted (1 Tim 5:13) to gain access to homes where the false teachers could establish or influence congregations. Greek and Roman men often thought of women as easily swayed by passion and emotion; many may have been, because of their lack of education and cultural reinforcement. But Paul here addresses particular, not all, women.