One of the most helpful scholars I’ve seen writing on subject of women in the bible is Ben Witherington. (By “helpful” I don’t mean those folks who say something like, “The bible says mean stuff about women. I don’t like that it says mean stuff about women. Let’s toss out those texts – or the whole thing.”) In the past Witherington wrote Women in the Ministry of Jesus, Women and the Genesis of Christianity, and Women in the Earliest Churches. Now in the process of writing a commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, he advances his way of dealing with I Timothy 2:8-15, one of the classic difficult texts.