Ephesus was hardly unique in the time and region for having prominent female religious figures. One of the distinctive features of Christianity, inherited from Judaism, was its exclusively male clergy. The teaching is far more than a single verse indeed. That verse is contextualized in the rest of the Scriptures, all of which testify to this feature of the clergy of both Old and New Israel. A feature that has been ever-present in all orthodox Christianity. A feature that is not only Scripturally unassailable, but which has the benefit of empirical evidence: namely that every time this principle has been violated, the community in question has also abandoned key elements of the Creed.