turning back

Regarding 1 Cornthians 14 and the silence of women, in an article on gender blog Carl Laney writes,

Chrysostom notes that Paul is "not simply exhorting here or giving counsel, but even laying his commands on them vehemently, by the recitation of an ancient law on that subject." Paul, taking the law along with him, thus "sews up their mouths."[11] Raising the obvious question, Chrysostom queries, "

And where does the law say this?" Chrysostom is the first of the church leaders whose comments on this subject are preserved for us. The text he directs us to is Genesis 3:16, "Yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you" (NASB). According to Chrysostom this text "not only enjoins on them silence, but silence too with fear."

He argues that if they should so respect their husbands, how much more should this apply in the context of teachers, and fathers, and the general assembly of the church."

So, my question is how on earth did Chrysostom have access to the NASB? That is so amazing! The only Bible Chrysostom had at that time said that "her turning back would be to her husband and he would rule over her." και προς τον ανδρα σου η αποστροφη σου και αυτος σου κυριευσει. The curse of desire did not make its appearance until the 16th century. Until then desire on the part of a woman was considered a blessing. ;-)

In any case, Chrysostom wasn't one of those "subordination in the garden" types. Whew. It all happened with the fall according to him, which is why we know that he did not compare the subordination of women to the trinity.

Authority 5: Chrysostom

Homily 10 on Colossians by Chrysostom

See how again he has exhorted to reciprocity. As in the other case he enjoins fear and love, so also does he here. For it is possible for one who loves even, to be bitter. What he says then is this. Fight not; for nothing is more bitter than this fighting, when it takes place on the part of the husband toward the wife. For the fightings which happen between beloved persons, these are bitter; and he shows that it arises from great bitterness, when, says he, any one is at variance with his own member. To love therefore is the husband's part, to yield pertains to the other side. If then each one contributes his own part, all stands firm. From being loved, the wife too becomes loving; and from her being submissive, the husband becomes yielding. And see how in nature also it has been so ordered, that the one should love, the other obey. For when the party governing loves the governed, then everything stands fast. Love from the governed is not so requisite, as from the governing towards the governed; for from the other obedience is due. For that the woman has beauty, and the man desire, shows nothing else than that for the sake of love it has been made so. Do not therefore, because your wife is subject to you, act the despot;(αυθεντεω) nor because your husband loves you, be thou puffed up. Let neither the husband's love elate the wife, nor the wife's subjection puff up the husband. For this cause has He subjected her to you, that she may be loved the more. For this cause He has made you to be loved, O wife, that you may easily bear your subjection. Fear not in being a subject; for subjection to one that loves you has no hardship. Fear not in loving, for you have her yielding. In no other way then could a bond have been. You have then thine authority of necessity, proceeding from nature; maintain also the bond that proceeds from love, for this allows the weaker to be endurable.

I like the way Chrysostom created reciprocity. I would comment on this passage further but I haven't found the Greek text for this yet. Chrysostom carefully balances the power between husband and wife throughout. Its too bad reality isn't like this, but IMO he tried.

This passage also indicates one example of how authentew can be used to mean "misuse of power." From what I have read the meaning of "use power over" is emerging for authentew. Not always in a negative sense, but still the use of power. I don't think men should use power over women, nor women over men.

Wolters on Junia

(Updated) I know it is still the last few moments of Septuagint Day and I am going to post on that soon. But more immediate things appear.

Al Wolters article on Junia which I blogged about earlier on the Better Bibles Blog, has appeared and was linked to by Mike. He writes,

It’s a model of careful scholarship, and argues quite forcefully that Iounian is a retroversion of a Hebrew or Aramaic MALE name.

But, in fact, Wolters conclusions are here,

Finally, although the Hebrew name yëhunnï is attested only for men, both it and the assumed longer form yëhunnïyàh(û) could in principle be women's names as well, since Hebrew sentence names are used indiscriminately for both genders.68 However, the case is different for Greek names like Νικίας. To the best of my knowledge, they are used exclusively of men, in both secular and biblical Greek.69 If the ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ of Rom 16:7 belongs to this declensional type, then it is almost certainly a mans name.

This conclusion still leaves open the question whether it is more likely that the IOTNIAN of Rom 16:7 reflects a Hebrew masculine name or a Latin feminine one. The answer to that question depends largely on how one assesses the likelihood that Paul would have considered a woman to be "prominent among the apostles" (see Metzger, Textual Commentary, 475). To some, probability will still favor the quasi consensus of recent scholarship that IOTNIAN in Rom 16:7 refers to a woman. To others, the epigraphic and philological evidence for the existence of a Hebrew name Yëhunnï/Ίουνιας will tip the scales in favor of a male apostle. In my own opinion, a plausible (but not a decisive) case can be made for either position.

What this does is simply demonstrate that anyone can interpret this passage according to what they already believe. Its a nice piece of writing otherwise.

There are a few things that Wolters does not explain. In fact, he writes,

It is likely that this widespread interpretation of the name at least partially accounts for the fact that all accented manuscripts of Rom 16:7 have the reading Ίουνίαν (with acute accent)It would be a mistake to conclude from this that the scribes of these manuscripts all interpreted IOTNIAN as a feminine name

However, since the accents were added much later and by that time all the Greek commentators had already decided that she was a woman, this is hardly relevant. Chrysostom had written of her as a woman and there is no mention of Junias as a man until the 13th century. David Jones on the CBMW site writes,

Many patristic exegetes understood the second person mentioned in Rom 16:7 to be the wife of Andronicus, such as: Ambrosiaster (c. 339-97); Jerome (c. 342-420); John Chrysostom (c. 347- 407); Jerome; Theodoret of Cyrrhus (c.393-458); Ps.-Primasius (c. 6th cent.); John Damascene (c. 675-749); Haymo (d. 1244); Hatto (?); Oecumenius (c. 6th cent.); Lanfranc of Bec (c.1005-89); Bruno the Carthusian (c.1032-1101); Theophylact (c. 11th cent.); Peter Abelard (1079-1142); and Peter Lombard (c. 1100-1160).39.

In this case, one must assume that manuscript copiers all believed that Junia was a woman.

Another thing to note is that the variant Julia also existed in P46, so this manuscript copier also thought she was a woman. Once again there is no secondary evidence preceding the 13th century that Junia would be male. Therefore, I fail to see the relevancy of discussing the accents.

It is, on the other hand, interesting that there is a remote possibility that this could be the transliteration of a male Hebrew name. That appears to me to be technically possible although there is no contemporary evidence for a masculine Junias. It is an interesting article and I always enjoy Al Wolters' writing, but I do not feel that his argument is forceful.

I would comment on Mike's blog but I can't remember my wordpress password, so I will have to let it pass.

Subordination of Christ and woman

It seems to me that the church fathers and all the theologians which I have read (not all that many) up until well after the reformation, thought that woman was subordinated by her transgression and the fall.

This is because Bibles up until after the Reformation said in Gen. 3:16 - in Latin, "she will be under the power of her husband" and in French “she will submit to her husband”, the LXX simply has “turn back” - she will turn back to her husband.

Here is Chrysostom on woman in creation,

In the beginning I created you equal in esteem to your husband, and my intention was that in everything you would share with him as an equal, and as I entrusted control of everything to your husband, so did I to you; but you abused your equality of status. Hence I subject you to your husband: Homily on Genesis

and on why woman does not have the image of God,

The image has rather to do with authority, and this only the man has, the woman has it no longer, Discourse 2 on Genesis

Why would he say “no longer” if woman was created with less authority? I am sure he believed that woman was created with equal authority. I believe that this was the widely held belief even by the Reformers. They believed that because of the transgression of Eve, woman is subordinate.

No one has ever shown me that the subordination of women and the subordination of Christ were related until the last 30 years.

Saint Afra, who knew no theology

Actually Afra, 4th century, may have known quite a bit of theology. A prostitute, who ran a brothel, would have mixed with many men. Eventually a bishop stayed with her, for protection, the same as happened to Rahab, (reminiscent, that is) - since an inn and a brothel may not be clearly differentiated in those days - or our days.

She was burned for the protection she gave the bishop, and before she died, she prayed,

O Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ, who didst come to call not the just but sinners to repentance, thus confirming the promise thou didst vouchsafe to make saying, "In the hour when the sinner shall repent of his sins, in that same hour I will no more remember them," accept at this hour my martyrdom as a penance, and by the material fire prepared for my body deliver me from the everlasting fire which burns both body and soul.

I give thee thanks, Lord Jesus Christ, that thou hast vouchsafed to accept me as a victim for the glory of thy name, thou who wast offered as Victim on the cross for the salvation of the whole world, the Just for the unjust, the Good for the wicked, the Blesses One for the cursed, the Innocent for the guilty. I offer my sacrifice to thee, who with the Father and the Holy Ghost livest and reignest God for ever and ever. Amen.

But her prayers do not reflect the theology of an ignoramus(a), converted as she was led from brothel to pyre. Here is the prayer of Bishop Basil, the Great, 4th century,

Lord Jesus our God, King of the ages and Creator of all, I thank You for the blessings You have granted me and for the communion of Your pure and life-giving Mysteries. I pray You, therefore, gracious Lord and Lover of Mankind, guard me under Your protection and within the shadow of Your wings; and grant me with a clear conscience till my last breath worthily to partake of Your sacred Gifts for forgivenes of sins and for life eternal. For You are the Bread of Life, the Source of Holiness, the Giver of all that is good, and to You we send up the glory, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and to the ages of ages. Amen.

And here is Chrysostom, 4-5th century, who gives his defence for praying to Christ,

I believe, O Lord, and I confess that You are truly the Christ, the son of the Living God, Who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief. And I believe that this is Your pure Body and Your own precious Blood. Therefore, I pray to You, have mercy on me and forgive my transgressions, voluntary and involuntary, in word and deed, known and unknown. And grant that I may partake of Your Holy Mysteries without condemnation, for the remission of sins and for life eternal. Amen.

These prayers are taken from Praying to our Lord Jesus Christ: Prayers and Meditations through the Centuries by Benedict Groeschel. This post is written for Cheryl, who was so distressed in the past to read, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, page 153,

Prayer, then, follows a paradigm that reflects the taxis of the Trinity. The Father has absolute and uncontested supremacy, including authority over the Son and the Spirit, so we pray to the Father.

Ware goes on to explain that the taxis in the eternal Trinity, the relationships of authority over and submission to, form the basis of all biblical worship and life in the church. Funny, though, I was brought up in the Brethren, its a while back now, but the existance of a clergy, the presence of an earthly hierarchy, was labelled as the 'sin against the holy spirit.' Its hard not to think, sometimes, that theologians are having a bit of a game at our expense, always peddling their own particular version as the one true religion.

(I am not sure yet where Ware gets the notion of taxis from. While it is a word which means "order" I don't know the original text from which Ware is deriving his meaning.)

Index: CBMW, Grudem, kephale

Everything I have written on kephale has been in spontaneous posts in response to posts elsewhere in the blogosphere. I have never had any intention of examining this issue in depth and I deeply regret that I have not so far organized my material on this topic.

I have also written on several other aspects of the CBMW platform and Grudem's books. Let me summarize.

Anthropos

I first became aware that there was a belief among some in the Christian community that the Greek word anthropos meant "man" as in male, and this was one reason for why the TNIV was a "gender neutral" version. I found that the ESV had translated 2 Tim. 2:2 anthropos (pl) as "men" and in that way gave the impression that the scriptures did not give women the command to teach.

Dr. Packer and 2 Timothy

I was truly disturbed when I read this. It was one of the times Ifelt that the campaign against women was deliberate and involved waffling on the actual meanings of Greek words.

Adelphos

Around the same time, I read the TNIV and the Gender Neutral Bible Controversy. There, on page 426 I read that Grudem had drafted the guidelines for the TNIV without checking meanings in the Liddell-Scott Lexicon. He admitted that in May of 1997 he did not know that adelphos (pl) meant "brothers and sisters." I was stunned. How could a Bible translator not know the most basic meanings of very simple words?

Brothers and Sisters: Colorado Springs

Since then I have come to believe that each of the guidelines in the Colorado Springs guidelines is based on a faulty premise.

Colorado Springs Guidelines

I have summarized a few notes on the CSG here.

Summary of the Colorado Springs Guidelines

Creation

Another teaching of Grudem's has been the subordination of woman in creation. I have responded with some notes here.

What subordination in Creation
Subordination of Christ and Woman

Aner

The CBMW had criticized the TNIV translators for translating aner (man. citizen, person) as "person." In this case, I wrote a full article on the subject. It became evident to me as I wrote this article that Grudem has not followed up on all the examples of aner in the LSJ lexicon but had jumped to the conclusion that aner always referred to a male. That does seem obvious. It is, however, not factual.

The CBMW, Grudem and the TNIV: the lexicography of Aner

Junia

In the ESV and the NET Bible the reference to Junia in Romans 16:7 says that she is "well-known to the apostles."

I wrote 17 posts here and added more content in comments on other blogs. The best printed material on Junia to date is by Linda Belleville. See the bibliography in my post below.

Junia, the apostle: Index

After several exchanges with Grudem and Burer, I wrote,

Junia: A Reponse to Michael Burer

This is a highly technical argument, but the upshot is that neither Dan Wallace nor Michael Burer have responded to Linda Belleville's excellent critique of their work in attempting to prove that Junia was not an apostle. I reference the work done by Belleville, Epp and Bauckham. However, my writing benefited from what they wrote, and has additional content. The conclusion is that Chrysostom, a native speaker of Greek,recognized Junia as a female apostle and he was a native speaker of Greek.

Submission

Grudem claims on the CBMW website that submission is always submission to an authority, and therefore, wherever there is the word "submission" in Greek, we must assume that the other person has "authority over." In that case, there is no such thing as mutual submission. However, we do find that submission in Greek can be mutual. Here are some useful posts.

Grudem puts Foh before Calvin
Authority 7: One another
Authority 6: Trampling or loving one another
Mutual Submission in Clement

Ezer and Boethos

"Champion" and "Defender" in Clement


Kephale

Once again we are back to rough notes. To a certain extent, I am expressing some tentative opinions here. I have since come to the conclusion that while the head, in Greek, was sometimes but not always considered the ruling part of the person, the expression kephale (head) was not used to indicate the authority of one person over the other. The examples offered by Grudem to prove this case have not been accurate representations of the Greek.

Exchange with John Mark Reynolds
Grudem and kephale
Grudem and Ptolemy
Grudem and Glare
The Omitted Citations
Kephale in the Literature

I am unwilling to get into kephale any deeper than this. The foremost example which Grudem uses to prove that kephale means "authority over" is,

“the king of Egypt is called “head” of the nation”

Grudem used this quote on Jan. 19, 2008, on the Gender Blog. However, in Appendix 1A of Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, he wrote,

19) Philo, Moses 2.30: As the head is the ruling place in the living body, so Ptolemy [Ptolemy Philadelphos] became among kings.

Cervin does not think that head means ruler here because Philo says that Philadelphos is the head of kings, not in the sense of ruling them, but as the preeminent king among the rest. Philadelphos is the top of the kings just as the head is the top of an animal’s body. . . . This example is therefore to be rejected (p. 100).”

Grudem continues in RBMW Appendix 1B to discuss this example. However, he fails to show that it means "authority over." This is Grudem's best piece of evidence and proves the opposite of his thesis, which is that kephale means authority. It obviously doesn't. The rest of Grudem's examples are similar. However, what is the point of quoting them if Grudem just recycles rejected evidence?

Authentew

Here are a few posts on the Greek word authentew - to usurp authority or dominate. This is the word commonly translated "to exercize authority" in 1 Tim. 2:12. However, the Latin Vulgate translated that word as dominare. The notion that this verse had "exercize authority" in it is relatively recent. What follows is a rather academic look at the lexical evidence for the meaning of authentew.

Authority:1
Authority:2
Authority:3
Authority:4
Authority:5
Authority:6


I will be adding material here from time to time as well as editing the post.

Complegalitarian

Some people have been blogging about the Complegalitarian blog. I was one of the first posters on the blog but soon resigned. I was immediately convinced that it was counter intuitive. I did continue on and off to comment on the blog. However, after being subjected to a series of attacks involving false statements made about me, I left completely for some time. I also appealed to the moderator to have it closed since I was not comfortable with the premise.

Then I received an email from another commenter there expressing concern regarding the exegesis of Eph. 5:21. This is one of the statements made on complegalitarian with regards to this verse,

I construe Ephesians 5:21 as it was always construed, so far as I am aware, until quite recently. That is, “one another” is understood not strictly but loosely to refer to some among the aggregate submitting to others in the aggregate rather than all in the aggregate submitting to all in the aggregate.

My particular difficulty with this is that the verse was not to my knowledge construed this way. I am not aware of anyone who construed it this way before Wayne Grudem.

Here is Clement,

“So in our case let the whole body be saved in Christ Jesus, and let each man be subject (ὑποτασσέσθω) to his neighbor, to the degree determined by his spiritual gift,”1 Clement 38.1

Here is Chrysostom,

Let there be an interchange of service and submission. For then will there be no such thing as slavish service. Let not one sit down in the rank of a freeman, and the other in the rank of a slave; rather it were better that both masters and slaves be servants to one another;—

He clearly indicates that this verse explicates mutual relations and not simply the reinforcement of the hierarchical value of the submission of some to others.

Here is Calvin,

God has bound us so strongly to each other, that no man ought to endeavor to avoid subjection; and where love reigns, mutual services will be rendered. I do not except even kings and governors, whose very authority is held for the service of the community. It is highly proper that all should be exhorted to be subject to each other in their turn.

Here is Adam Clarke,

Submitting-one to another] Let no man be so tenacious of his own will or his opinion in matters indifferent, as to disturb the peace of the Church; in all such matters give way to each other, and let love rule.

And here is BDAG,

“Of submission in the sense of voluntary yieding in love. 1 Cor. 16:16, Eph. 5:21 … 1 Clement 38:1″

One of the main tenets of Christianity is usually to have an attitude that God is not a "respecter of persons." (Acts 10:34) At least that is how I was raised. If Eph. 5:21 means that some people are to submit to other people, then it sounds like a different religion than the one in which I was raised. Not that that was perfect by any means.

In any case, this is why I went back to comment on Complegalitarian. I would be interested in knowing if there were commenataries which suggested that Eph. 5:21 means that in the church some submit to others. Otherwise I will continue in the belief in which I was raised on this matter.

History Lite: and postmodernism

The theological worldview survey has been quite popular. I did note that there is a range from 0 to 99% fundmentalist among my interlocutors. I found that quite inspiring because I do like to interact in some way with fundamentalism, although, by this, I mean the fundamentalism of 19th century Britain, not the fundamentalism of present day America.

But I felt a bit concerned at the frequent high scores in post modernism. Somehow I suspect a bias in the survey, or a least a loose definition of postmodernism. Here is the description,

You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this.

That doesn't sound too bad. Learning takes place through dialogue and in relationships. No one knows the whole truth.

However, Marty Foord posts on The Killing of History by Keith Windshuttle, HT Michael Bird. Windshuttle opposes some of the premises of postmodernism in the discipline of history. Simon Schama, the author of Rough Crossings, which I am now absorbed in, writes from a postmodern perspective on history,

“The claims for historical knowledge, must always be fatally circumscribed by the character and prejudices of its narrator."

Windhsuttle counters this with the following,

The essence of history has continued to be that it should try to tell the truth, to describe as best as possible what really happened. Over this time, of course, many historians have been exposed as mistaken, opinionated and often completely wrong, but their critics have usually felt obliged to show they were wrong about real things, that their claims about the past were different from the things that actually happened. In other words, the critics still operated on the assumption that the truth was in the historian’s grasp.

Today, these assumptions are widely rejected, even among some people employed as historians themselves. In the 1990s, the newly dominant theorists within the humanities and social sciences assert that it is impossible to tell the truth about the past or to use history to produce knowledge in any objective sense at all. They claim that we can only see the past through the perspective of our own culture and, hence, what we see in history are our own interests and concerns reflected back at us. The central point upon which history was founded no longer holds: there is no fundamental distinction any more between history and myth.

I enjoyed reading this article by Kimball on The Killing of History. (I should add that I have a somewhat muted response to this article. Certainly one wants to be behind the search for objective truth, but I am not sure that I would agree with him on what that was.)

This entire discussion strikes at the heart of my questions about the scriptures when I first studied Greek and Hebrew in the Near Eastern Studies Dept. at the University of Toronto. If so many words are of unknown origin, and so many passages have multiple interpretations then how can we know objective truth about the scriptures.

I talked this over with Al Gleason, in the linguistics dept. and he recommended that I pursue canonical criticism. I think now in looking back he meant something closer to the history of Biblical interpretation, or what is sometimes called "reception theory" - the history of the reception of the Bible.

As I take another look at some of these issues, and ask myself the question, what do I know for sure, and how do I deal with facts, I note that I am still interested in objective knowledge as a focus of study but the questions are different. I no longer ask of a passage, what exactly does this mean, but rather, how did Chrysostom or Calvin or Bucer translate this passage. This is something that I can often discover as a fact. Certainly there is some doubt if I don't have a photograph of the first edition of that particular Bible. But, there are ways of finding these.

I was delighted to be able to hold the Pagnini/Beza 1579 Latin Bible in Toronto last fall and photograph parts of it. Now I can say with certainty that in 1579 this edition of the Bible had a certain phrase in it. I might even have a photograph. How cool is that!

One of the really interesting things that I have realized - and I know now this must seem as obvious as the nose in your face, is that the reformers used the Vulgate as the authoritative translation of the Bible. They quoted from it. The Bibles of the Reformation are the product of the Reformation, not the guiding texts of the Reformation. This makes knowledge of the Vulgate or the Douay-Rheims Bible in English an essential text of Reformation studies. Maybe everyone else but me knew this.

Back to postmodernism. I know I have a prejudice, and I am learning in dialogue, but I do want to ground my learning in tangible facts. This has been my strategy. I wonder approach others take.

Junia and Michael Burer

The Better Bibles Blog has posted today on the NET Bible, and Michael Burer's three principles of Bible translation,

1. Just because something has always been translated a certain way does not mean that it is correct.
2. We should always value the light ancient documents shed on our understanding of the Scriptures, even for an issue as mundane as the meaning of a single, obscure word.
3. We should always use the most up to date, accurate tools available. (In this instance, HALOT has the more accurate information as opposed to the other well-known Hebrew lexicon BDB.)

Michael authored the article Was Junia Really an Apostle with Dan Wallace. Subsequent to this article the NET Bible, ESV and HSCB have all translated Romans 16:7 as "Junia ... well-known to the apostles." My detailed response is here, please read from the bottom up.

Two years ago, I wrote a post on the BBB, at length recounting the many grammatical difficulties in the article by Wallace and Burer.

Michael Burer emailed me two years ago saying that he had been asked to respond to the work of Linda Belleville and J. Epp with respect to Junia. His response is now posted on CBMW,

My schedule has not permitted me time to develop an in-depth response to any of these reviews. What I can say at this point is that I have not read anything in any of them that has dissuaded me from the viewpoint Wallace and I advanced in the original article. (In the next few years I hope to develop a suitable response to these critiques.)

Yes, you read it right. At least three reformed Bibles have removed evidence from the English Bible that a woman was "among the apostles" - whatever that means, and there is no reaction, just - "my schedule does not permit." This is the level of interest in defending women - yawn.

In the meantime, the Vamva version of the NT, a revision of the Greek NT done by an orthodox Greek bishop, says clearly μεταξὺ - "among." However, it appears that Americans think they know better than the 19th century clergy of Greece, they know better than the translators of the KJV, better than Luther, better than Calvin, better than Jerome, better than Chrysostom, better than ... Burer and Wallace have based their surmise, that Junia was not an apostle, on these three principles,

1. Just because something has always been translated a certain way does not mean that it is correct.
2. We should always value the light ancient documents shed on our understanding of the Scriptures, even for an issue as mundane as the meaning of a single, obscure word.
3. We should always use the most up to date, accurate tools available. (In this instance, HALOT has the more accurate information as opposed to the other well-known Hebrew lexicon BDB.)

Let me address them.

1) There is little regarding doctrine that has been hidden for 20 centuries and revealed in the last few years. The two big ones are that teshuqa means that it is the rebellion of women to want to control their husbands, and this is the main cause of divorce in our day. The second is that all the early church fathers, and native speakers of Greek were mistaken regarding Junia being an apostle. She was not. How convenient!

2) Wallace and Burer's argument from the Pss. of Solomon contains several serious errors.

a) They stated that Pss. 2:6 is a "close parallel" with Romans 16:7. They now admit that it is not.

b) They argued that en plus the dative is not usually inclusive, but that a genitive would be expected. In the NT these two structures are used synonymously and there are exact examples of this.

c) They say that when used "in collocation with words of perception" it means "to." However, there is NO word of perception in Romans 16:7.

Here is how they state their main argument,

When, however, an elative notion is found, evn plus a personal plural dative is not uncommon. In Pss. Sol. 2:6, where the Jewish captives are in view, the writer indicates that “they were a spectacle among the gentiles (ἐπισήμῳ ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν)

Semantically, what is significant is that (a) the first group is not a part of the second—that is, the Jewish captives were not gentiles; and (b) what was ‘among’ the gentiles was the Jews’ notoriety.

Clearly, it says that the Jews were captives in a "place" that was among the Gentiles. It is inclusive. Episemos does not relate back to the Jews but to the place. Episemos with en plus the dative does have the meaning "among." Junia is episemos, that is, "among" the apostles.

3) When Burer and Wallace state that we should use the most up to date tools available, they may be referring to the use of a computer database search, in which snippets of lines of Greek are excerpted from the text and lined up in a list for analysis, without reference to the original context. Does this seem useful?

I posted a Response to Michael Burer on the BBB two years ago. In the comment section I posted this,

Suzanne McCarthy

Posted May 30, 2007 at 7:40 pm | Permalink

Mike Burer has written to say that he will eventually be preparing a response to Epp, Belleville, Bauckham, and myself.

I have no timeline. As he intends to publish this as a paper, I appreciate that this could take some time.

And then in the spring of 2008 he posts that his schedule "has not permitted" him to look at this. But, even more shocking is that this passes without comment. Nobody cares. Nobody holds his toes to the fire. Nobody will face up to Wallace and Burer and ask "What about Junia?"

Basically, as it only affects women - let's plaster over the disagreement and carry on.

Alternatives to authority and submission

While Grudem and Ware support the notion that the relationship between Father and Son is one of authority and submission, this is not the traditional belief of the church. There are many other ways that the relationship between Father and Son have been described.

Saint Augustine believed that the will of the Father and Son was indivisible. If the Son subjected himself to the Father, he was subjecting himself to himself. J. N. Darby, who formulated doctrine for the Plymouth Brethren, and greatly influenced Dallas Seminary, taught that the will of the Father and Son was unanimous. Chrysostom talked about the Son submitting to the Father and providing counsel to the Father, in a relationship of reciprocity.

It is wrong to believe that even in the historic church, the Father and the Son were in a relationship best described as one of authority and submission. If that were the ideal relationship, the idea way of interacting, then we should all still be part of the Catholic church, a catholic church, and any divergence would be sinful.

The danger of the teaching of authority and submission in the godhead, is that this is used as the model for all human relationships. It is hard not to read the idealization of dominance and submission in this paradigm.

Mike Bird on Junia

I think some people are still interested in Junia, especially now that Mike Burer has put her on the shelf for years, and the ESV and NET Bibles have just decided to leave her there. Here is a comment from Mike Bird made on July 30, 2008, on the Sola panel,

Thanks for a great post on Romans 16 and it certinly gives much pause for thought on women in church based service. Keep in mind that I’m not an egalitarian, but I have a few quibbles with your handling of Rom. 16.7:

1.There are over 200 inscriptions of Junia and in every single one it is feminine and in every single manuscript of Romans (except two) it is feminine as well. This is hardly ambiguous, it is overwhelming.

2. “Outstanding ... apostles” is certainly ambiguous in the Greek, but in most translations Andronicus and Junia are regarded as apostles. Chrysostom has an excellent comment about how great she must have been to have been counted worthy of the designation apostle. See also Linda Belleville’s article on this against Dan Wallace.

3. Apostle here could mean apostle in the sense of a delegate of a church, much like Epaphroditus from Philippi, but usually the name of the sending church is also given or some kind of qualifier (e.g. your apostle). I surmize that A & J were either the founders of the first Jewish Christian ekklesia in Rome, or else they were among the extended witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection.

An excellent read on this verse is the book by Eldon J. Epp.

My comments are motivated by the fact that I cannot believe the violence done to the text by the ESV translators. Junia is no longer a women and no longer an apostle. This is the clearest case of agenda-driven textual tinkering that I’ve ever seen.

What is really nice to know is that when it comes to caring about good scholarship many complementarians and egalitarians are on the same page.

Phoebe and Junia

Ron Smith has a series of posts about Poebe and Junia and the church fathers. He offers quotations about Phoebe in Origen, Chrysostom and Ambrosiaster and about Junia in Chrystostom. These are relevant to how we decide to translate Romans 16.