If what god 'ordains' for male and female roles happens to dovetail with societal rules and traditions of the time in which it was written then you can be assured there's nothing ordained about them. Except by men.
Bart Ehrman's book "Misquoting Jesus" and other religious scholars make it abundantly clear that the Bible is the work of humans and is not the infallible word of God.
How can the Bible be the infallible word of God when there are multiple versions of the Bible? This is not just stylistic differences of phrasing, but differences in meaning.
Yes, there are differences in the different English translations of the Bible. How does that disprove the Bible?
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but your comment seems to suggest you believe the problem of different translations is largely related to the King James Bible. Different translations of the Bible long predate English translations and they are far more significant than you seem to acknowledge.
In answer to your question, I'd have to ask what you mean by 'disprove.' I never said it disproved the Bible, I said it disproved it was the infallible word of God.
Due to the significant multiple translations of the Bible, Bart Ehrman personally concluded that it does disprove the Bible and that it disproves the existence of God. His argument is that given the importance of the 'Word' through the Bible, the only way to eternal life is through the Word, that it made no sense to him that God, being all powerful, wouldn't have ensured that the Word of the Bible was certain and undisputable.
I disagree with Ehrman and I'm surprised he took this position given that he agues convincingly the Bible is a book written by humans for humans. I agree with that, but, to me, that doesn't mean the basic moral precepts aren't inspired by God.
1.Given that Ehrman argues that, the more consistent position for him is to also believe that the Word being so important to Christianity is also a human creation, and that what is really important is the moral teachings.
2.It also doesn't make sense given that billions of humans either lived before Jesus or weren't familiar with Jesus until informed of Him over 1,000 years later. According to Christianity, this means that all of those uninformed souls were damned to disappear. That makes no sense to me.
However, in the 1990s, there were studies of all the of world's great religions and spiritual movements, and they found enormous similarities in the moral teachings. This is consistent with the view that God wanted His moral teachings to be made clear and followed, but wasn't so concerned with other details.
Bart Ehrman and many other Biblical scholars, for instance, those in the PBS Frontline documentary "From Jesus to Christ" argue that when Christianity was a small Jewish sect, women were at least equals in this religion. They mention that most Christian religious worship took place in homes and that women were the masters of homes in Ancient Rome, so it's reasonable to conclude that women were, in fact, many of the early Christian ministers.
As Christianity became more predominant, it began to reflect society more and more, and concurrent with that, new transcriptions of the Bible were written over time that diminished the role of women.
For instance, as Bart Ehrman writes in Misquoting Jesus (page 185):
"One occurs in a passage I have already mentioned, Romans 16, in which Paul speaks of a woman, Junia, and a man who was presumably her husband, Andronicus, both of whom he calls 'foremost among the apostles" (V.7) This is a significant verse, because it is the only place in the New Testament in which a woman is referred to as an apostle. Interpreters have been so impressed by the passage that a large number of them have insisted that it can not mean what it says, and so have translated the verse as referring not to a woman named Junia but to a man named Junias, who along with his companion, Andronicas is praised as an apostle. The problem with this translation is that whereas Junia was a common name for a woman, there is no evidence in the ancient world for Junias as a man's name. Paul is referencing a woman named Junia, even though in some modern English Bibles (you may want to check your own!) translators continue to refer to this female apostle as if she were a man named Junias.
Some scribes also had difficulty with ascribing apostleship to this otherwise unknown woman, and so made a very slight change in the text to circumvent the problem. In some of our manuscripts, rather than saying "Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives and fellow prisoners, who are foremost among the apostles" the text is now changed so as to be more readily translated as "Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives; and also greet my fellow prisoners who are foremost among the apostles." With this textual change, no longer does one need to worry about a woman being cited among the apostolic band of men!"
My overall take away from this is that God gave us a brain to use, and I doubt that He wanted us to then shut off this brain and mindlessly follow what organized religions tell us to think.
