Did you ever wonder how “Pavlopetri” got its name?

But what about the patriarchal Paul who said women shouldn’t speak in church? There are two mentions of this, one in the 14th chapter of 1 Corinthians, one in 1 Timothy. The former is widely considered a later addition, an “interpolation” by editors. In this case, the assertion that women should be silent wildly interrupts the flow of the passage, which is whole without it. And the infamous remark is not present in several early manuscripts of this letter.

Furthermore, the injunction contradicts the main thrust of the epistle, where (in 1 Corinthians 11:5) Paul says that women should “prophesy and pray” in church. It just makes no logical sense for Paul to follow with a command for them to remain silent: This was an editorial hand at work, much later. And the matter of 1 Timothy is easily discarded as not something written by Paul himself.

“Paul sent his most important piece of writing in the possession of Phoebe, this spirited woman of the world who traveled widely and knew every leader in the early Christian movement.”

There is also the complicated matter of Paul’s sexuality. I tend to agree with Bishop John Shelby Spong, a brilliant theologian and church leader, who argues that Paul was “a rigidly controlled gay male,” as he writes in Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (1991). Be this as it may, Paul was clearly at war with his own body, tormented by the idea if not the reality of sexual desire, and eager to withdraw into the company of his male companions:  Luke, Timothy, Silas, and others.

His conflicted feelings about his own sexual nature may account for the “thorn in his flesh” that he wrote about in his second letter to the church at Corinth. (2 Corinthians 12:7-9)

https://www.thedailybeast.com/paul-the-apostle-was-a-possibly-gay-elite-radical-who-believed-in-equality-for-all