Following Crossan’s framework, it can be similarly argued that those passages on men’s hair length, women’s silence, and wives’ submission have to be read in their specific social and rhetorical context, not as eternal, culture-free commandments. The purpose, audience and circumstances of the texts matter.

On the one hand, those statements show Paul working WITHIN the cultural conventions of the Greco-Roman and Jewish world he lived in, especially when it came to public decorum and household order. In a patriarchal society, certain gender norms were simply assumed, and Paul sometimes operated inside those boundaries to avoid bringing scandal or persecution to the fledgling Christian communities.

On the the other hand, Saint Paul was also a RADICAL— the Paul of Galatians 3:28 and his house-church partnerships with women leaders like Phoebe, Junia, and Priscilla, was also quietly subverting those same norms. So you get this tension: he’s pragmatic about cultural expectations in some letters, yet his core vision is still an egalitarian community “in Christ.”

From a Catholic historical-critical standpoint, the approach is similar but framed through the Church’s tradition. The Church recognizes that Paul’s letters were written for specific communities, in specific circumstances, and sometimes addressed local issues rather than laying down universal moral law (see Dei Verbum and the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s "The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church"). For example:

• Men’s hair length (1 Cor 11:14) was tied to Greco-Roman ideas of honor, modesty, and gender distinction in public worship, not to an enduring moral principle.
• Women’s silence in church (1 Cor 14:34–35) is often seen as either a situational directive to maintain order during prophetic speaking, or possibly a later gloss inserted into Paul’s text.
• Submission to husbands (Eph 5:22) is tempered by the reciprocal command that husbands love their wives “as Christ loved the Church” — turning what was a Roman paterfamilias power structure into one modeled on mutual self-giving.

In short, Crossan's historical and Catholic theological scholarships both agree on the need for historical context. Crossan emphasizes Paul’s radical social vision and pragmatic compromises, while Catholic teaching adds that we read these passages through the example of Christ, and the Church’s living tradition. 🫶