Everyone loves the Apostle Paul... except ya know... about his thoughts on what women should do and shouldn't do in Church. ?

Let's face it, Paul is not easy to understand. He talks like Jordan Peterson, saying something in the most complex wordy way possible. ?

"...also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things,

in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures. "
(2Pe 3:15-16 NKJV)

Perhaps it is because of Paul's high level intellectual reading that he has become a favorite apostle of many lukewarm/bad pastors.

If you take Paul's writings as an island to themselves without interpreting with the rest of Scripture, he becomes ripe for "twisting".

He'll say a few sentences seeming to imply one thing and then say in the next sentence that he is by no means implying what you just thought he was. ?

I say this not to mock him. The man was a GENIUS. Knew more about Scripture than probably 10 Bible scholars put together. ?

But combine his wordy nature with the fact that his letters are essentially someone else's mail that we are reading, and you get a situation where we GUESS what specific issues he is addressing.

So what's the answer to decoding Paul? Easy, assume that he doesn't contradict other Scripture and you will be just fine. Specifically interpret him through the Old Testament.

Why the Old? Because that is ALL that the Bereans had to fact check him with.

Acts 17:10-11

"Then the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. "
(Act 17:10-11 NKJV)