So in Timothy Paul forbids female headship at the church of Ephesus, but are there historical records of women leading christian communities in the centuries prior to the Great Schism? I've been told that in the early church, while women sometimes were church leaders and organizers, they never consecrated bread and wine. Is it historically accurate? Were women within christian communities treated differently than they were in other societies from that time? B. Ehrman says that Mary Magdalene played an important role in the spreading of Christianity in the 1st century. Why, then, we never hear about "early church mothers"?
And regarding Paul's letter to Timothy: New Testament scholar N.T. Wright says that the prohibition of female leadership aimed to solve a specific problem regarding gnostic heresies and syncretism with pagan greek cults in the church of Ephesus. Wright seems to be respected within historians, so is that view consistent with historical evidence? I've done some research in this subreddit but couldn't find specific informations.
Thanks a lot for your time.
/u/appleciders is correct in saying that the weight of secular scholarship is against treating the Epistles to Timothy as genuine. However I cannot agree that they are dated so late, given that Polycarp, Justin Martyr, and Marcion all show evidence of knowledge of the books (Marcion rejects them, which lets you know that by 140 they were accepted at Rome).
While there was diversity in Early Christian(ities), I'm not sure saying there were 'wildly divergent sects' is accurate either. This is Ehrman's take on the Bauer hypothesis, that there was indeed wildly divergent 'brands' of Christianity, and only a later 'orthodoxy' would label those others retroactively 'heretical'. However there is little evidence to suggest that these groups thought of themselves as distinct, competing, or had very divergent practices; the emergent contests over legitimacy often contain appeals to what is publically taught in all places; this is how Irenaeus attempts to defend against Gnostics. An appeal to publically verifiable, widespread teaching is only going to work if there is some kind of mainstream to appeal to.
As for what's going on in 1 Timothy, N.T. Wright is broadly well-regarded, and considered both a brilliant thinker and voluminous writer. But the 'terrain' of 1 Timothy chapter 2 is a hotly contested one, even in confessional and conservative scholarship. What Wright is offering is one reading of the socio-historical context of the passage, but it would be a mistake to think there was anything approaching consensus on the issue.
To start with, neither epistle to Timothy was written by Paul; secular historical scholarship on that point is unanimous or nearly so. Those books were written sometime in the middle of the second century, on the order of one hundred years after Paul's death, and attributed to Paul. Why they became associated with Paul is unknown; it might be an honest error by some early copyist, or outright fraud by someone who wanted Paul's authority to lend credence to his own views, or anything in between.
Secondly, the fact that the author of Timothy felt it necessary to specifically prohibit women from leadership roles suggests that he knows of women who are in leadership roles. Otherwise, why would he find it necessary to argue against it?
Thirdly, there's one early church "mother" that you probably haven't ever heard of, despite the fact that Paul calls her out by name as being "of note among the apostles" and says that she was a convert to Christianity before he was. That's Junia, from Romans 16:7, and the reason you might never have heard of her is that in many Latin and English translations, her name is rendered as the masculine "Junias". There isn't a good scholarly reason to masculinize her name, and virtually all modern historians agree she was a woman. Still, she was specifically changed to a man in Catholic and Protestant translations for centuries.
And finally, Christianity in the first, second, and third centuries was a loose collection of wildly different sects, who disagreed with each other on nearly any point you could imagine. The first college class I ever took on the topic was called "Early Christianities" specifically to highlight this point. To say that in no early Christian sect did women ever consecrate bread and wine is probably incorrect just because of how many different sects there were.
I'm using Ehrman's "The New Testament: A historical introduction to the early Christian writings" as a source. It's definitely a college textbook, but it's the least dry textbook I've ever read, and I'd recommend it.