It turns out that the oldest
codes in the Near
Eastern legal tradition, Sumerian
laws from the 21st century BCE, also have payment in place
of retaliation.
What is less clear to me is why complementarians like Keller insist that that 1 Timothy 2:12 is a part
of biblical womanhood, but Acts 2 is not; why the presence
of twelve male disciples implies restrictions on female leadership, but the presence
of the apostle Junia is inconsequential; why the Greco - Roman household
codes represent God's ideal familial structure for husbands and wives, but not for slaves and masters; why the apostle Paul's instructions to Timothy about Ephesian women teaching in the church are universally applicable, but his instructions to Corinthian women regarding head coverings are culturally conditioned (even though Paul uses the same line
of argumentation — appealing the creation narrative — to support both); why the poetry
of Proverbs 31 is often applied prescriptively and other poetry is not; why Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob represent the supremecy
of male leadership while Deborah and Huldah and Miriam are mere exceptions to the rule; why «wives submit to your husbands» carries more weight than «submit one to another»; why the
laws of the Old Testament are treated as irrelevant in one moment, but important enough to display in public courthouses and schools the next; why a feminist reading
of the text represents a capitulation to culture but a reading that turns an ancient Near
Eastern text into an apologetic for the post-Industrial Revolution nuclear family is not; why the curse
of Genesis 3 has the final word on gender relationships rather than the new creation that began at the resurrection.