What about women?, so asks Nympha in Walsh and Keesmaat’s imaginary dialogue in the church at Colosse (in Colossians Remixed).
If Paul is concerned with liberating slaves, she says, so also is he concerned with liberating women.
Apphia speaks up: it’s about slaves, not women. Nympha: Paul speaks about submission as is fitting “in the Lord”. “Hierarchy is gone” (210). Nothing about women at Jubilee (Apphia). Nympha: Jubilee is Sabbath and women rest on Sabbath, too. Jesus had women followers.
She asks Tychicus to explain Paul’s practice. There are, he says, women in authority in Paul’s churches — Phoebe, Junia, Priscilla, …
Tycichus said he had heard the “no slave nor free” also with a “no longer male and female” but it wasn’t in this letter to Colosse (it’s in Galatians 3).
Paul, Nympha says, is undermining paterfamilias.
W-K then suggest a radical model of educating children — homeschooling.