He is still trying to prove that “oude” joins two infinitives to convey a single idea. What do you think?
I think it is rather strange, you cannot redefine a word simply because it could be translated differently in some instances. In some passages one could translate ἵππος with donkey and it would fit the context perfectly well. Certainly it would not follow to use this system to redefine ἵππος.
Also, I find his use of Origen and Chrysostom extremely peculiar if not utterly embarassing for Payne, since Origen - in the context of the Origen passage on 1Cor 14, which Payne quotes - uses the passage to silence women in church altogether, and of course to forbid any teaching of men by women. This is the view of Chrysostom, too, as it is clearly expressed in his Homilies on 1Cor, where he even says that women should not speak in church at all. What is more, in his Homilies on 1Tim 2 Chrysostom views “Didaskein de ouk epitrepo” as as single and clear command.
Anyhow, the big question is: Can oude, from a grammatical point of view, join two infinitives to form a single prohibition, or are both infinitives equally forbidden? Certainly that is not its normal function, but Payne does his best to establish such a use of the conjunction.
It sounds like he should focus more time and attention on 2 Timothy, especially 4:3: “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” (NIV)
It’s painfully obvious what the authors of the New Testament meant about women teaching, but what does one do when the culture cries out against it very loudly? Either you cave and “discover” through “deep study” that it really meant something different than everyone thought it did for two millenia, or you become very, very unpopular. I’d rather people just dismiss the authority of the Bible than try to twist the language to make it constantly keep track with the ever changing ideas and passions of contemporary culture.
My original study of every instance of οὐδέ in the Pauline corpus argued as its central thesis that the vast majority of Paul’s οὐδέ clauses combine two elements to express a single idea. None of the responses I have seen to my original οὐδέ study challenge this central thesis.
I find it a little surprising if Payne did not see the response of Thomas Edgar, then Professor of New Testament at Capital Bible Seminary - http://womeninthechurch.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Edgar%20analysis%20of%20restrictive%20interpretation.pdf (sorry it’s upside down - that defeated me), since, even though it wasn’t published, it was cited by Wayne House in his series on Women in Ministry in Bibliotecha Sacra - part 4: ‘The Speaking of Women and the Prohibition of the Law’, July-September 1988, p.316.
I think it is virtually impossible to say οὐκ ἐπιτρέπω σοι ποιῆσαι τοῦτο, οὐδὲ ποιῆσαι ἐκεῖνο and have it mean ἐπιτρέπω σοι ποιῆσαι τοῦτο, εἰ, ποιῶν τοῦτο, οὐ ποιεῖς ἐκεῖνο.
Yeah, the secular feminists have no problem understanding Paul. This kind of “deep study” appears to be the motive for a lot of people who dabble in Koine. The idea that biblical language study gives you privileged access to some sort of Kabbalah seems to be a very common misunderstanding.
Markos, I’m afraid your example is not analogous at all, since τουτο and εκεινο signal an opposition between the two that is not evident in the case of a woman/wife διδάσκειν and αὐθεντεῖν ἀνδρός.
This is not a question to be settled by examining the use of ουδε (or of και, its positive counterpart) but by considering how the idea of a woman/wife διδασκειν-ing and the idea of her αυθεντειν-ανδρος-ing related to each other in the writer’s mind. It can be argued that he thought of them as two separate activities, it can be argued that he thought of them as essentially one, viewed under slightly different aspects. I’d favor the latter.
In any case they can’t be expressing very different ideas, since the αλλα clause opposes ειναι εν ἡσυχίᾳ to them jointly. The message is Women should just keep quiet!
Either way, it’s not really a grammatical question at all, and no amount of other ουδε passages will decide the issue.
Stirling, I thought it was not secular feminists but christian ones who do most of the language twisting and special pleading. Any feminist ought to be appalled by Paul (a T-shirt motto, perhaps: Paul appalls), but not all the christian ones are. Or so I’ve gathered from my very limited reading. But the besetting sin of all NT exegetes is attempting to delimit the meaning of NT texts beyond what they admit of.
mwh, you have said that no decision about the passage can be made based on Paul´s use of oude. I do not know whether you have read/skimmed Payne´s paper, but that is what he is trying to do again there. He goes through most of the NT verses, where Paul uses oude, and attempts to demonstrate that in each case, where he uses oude, the words before and after are to be seen as an inseparable combination (with the latter limiting the former) - which is of course against the normal meaning of oude.
I think he fails, because in all instances oude can be translated in the established sense and hence there is no reason to introduce an entirely new meaning. To the contrary, that new meaning would, by using the “single idea” translation, reduce the actual message of several Pauline statements in other passages.
In the case of 1Ti 2:12 I agree with you. Didaskein is a type of being in authority, authentein is any type of authority - in other words: didaskein belongs to the bigger pool of authentein activities. And all of these are contrary to being in silence, that is - I think - how didaskein and authentein are linked with each other.
Concerning your suggestion of using the alla-clause for the interpretation of the oude-clause: Payne would try to translate hesuchia as something like a “quiet type of behavior”, much like in 1Ti 2:1-5, where Paul wants Christians to pray so that they can live a quiet (that is peaceful) life.
The whole Payne theory is:
didaskein + authentein andros = teach men in a domineering way
alla einai en hesuchia = she should instead live a quiet, peaceful Christian life and only teach men in a peaceful, non-domineering way
When people start treating sentences as if they are chemical equations in order to make a theological point I zone out, and this from someone who enjoys reading reference grammars. But really, I’m not sure if it’s even necessary to respond to arguments like this. In a way, I think getting into complex grammatical analysis benefits such arguments, because they rely on the vagueness and confusion that such complexity can produce.
I think it works if you can make it really simple and easy to follow for someone who hasn’t studied Greek. For instance, I had a couple JWs stop by one time and the discussion came to John 1 and their translation reads “and the Word was a god.” They explained that there is no word for “a” in Greek and so when a word doesn’t have the word “the” in front of it you must translate with “a”. I told them I read Greek and brought out my Greek NT. They looked at it like it was Chinese, but I showed them that their translation didn’t follow its own rules, which I was able to demonstrate to them even though they didn’t know Greek: εν αρχη “in a beginning” ανθρωπος απεσταλμενος παρα θεου “a man sent from a god” ονομα αυτω Ιωαννης “a name to him was John”, etc.
@mwh
“Paul appalls” That made me laugh out loud, and it’s true, I’ve read some articles about Paul the-hateful-misogynist before.
Stirling, I thought it was not secular feminists but christian ones who do most of the language twisting and special pleading.
Isn’t that what Stirling was saying: ‘the secular feminists have no problem understanding Paul’.
The whole Payne theory is: didaskein + authentein andros = teach men in a domineering way
That was his 1986 idea, but in the new paper you gave the link to (and similarly in his 2008 NTS article), it is: “I am not permitting a woman to seize authority to teach a man.” which seems to completely garble the clause, as if διδάσκειν were the complementary infinitive of αὐθεντεῖν - and ἀνδρός is now an object (in the genitive) of διδάσκειν, and not of αὐθεντεῖν.
I think getting into complex grammatical analysis benefits such arguments, because they rely on the vagueness and confusion that such complexity can produce.
No complicated arguments are needed - all one really needs to do is look up οὐδέ in a lexicon and find out that the translation equivalent is ‘and not, nor’; or look it up in a grammar, and find out that, in its coordinating role as here, it is a simple negative connective, additive in function.
Why Women Should Teach like Pharisees, Without Authority
The Christian Woman: Authoritative but not Teaching, Teaching but not with Authority
Unauthorized Teaching: A Guide to Proper Silence in Church
No analysis of what (pseudo-)Paul said in First Timothy – from either side of the argument – is correct without answering “why” he said it in addition to “what.” The only person even offering a serious answer to that is a modern feminist. His idea is that Paul felt threatened by female authority and acted to shut it down. This is problematic. If Paul really was threatened by female authority, how was he able to crush the opposition so thoroughly? If Paul’s authority was absolute, why would he feel threatened?
But to analyze the question thoroughly would be to tread into a space where to say anything could have economic consequences for anyone in highly theological fields of employment with rigid thought and speech codes about this sort of thing (that is to say, Academia), so I suppose we should leave the subject.
They looked at it like it was Chinese, but I showed them that their translation didn’t follow its own rules, which I was able to demonstrate to them even though they didn’t know Greek: εν αρχη “in > a > beginning” ανθρωπος απεσταλμενος παρα θεου “a man sent from > a > god” ονομα αυτω Ιωαννης “> a > name to him was John”, etc.
@mwh
“Paul appalls” That made me laugh out loud, and it’s true, I’ve read some articles about Paul the-hateful-misogynist before.
I’m not a JW but it seems to me that all you did there was trick these poor folk (and yourself really) by arguing against a strawman caricature of the actual , informed JW argument at John 1:1c. What is worse IMHO, is that you seem to relish what you did. Had you confronted men like Rolf Furuli and Greg Stafford instead, I’m sure you would have received a good lesson in the S-PN construction [ specifically the subset proposition ] at your door step.
The actual JW argument at John 1:1c has to do with a specific type of grammatical construction, in which we’re dealing with a b-verb where the predicate noun is in the same case as the subject noun, i.e. where Θεὸς is an anarthrous pre-verbal predicate nominative. In such a construction if you leave off the article from the PN (in this case Θεὸς) , your Greek reading audience will assume that you mean to take Θεὸς indefinitely. To cut a long story short, you spread darkness on that day by furnishing two false counter examples against the JW reading of the anarthrous Θεὸς at John 1:1c , thereby adding to the ignorance which already exists on this particular issue . Not anything to be proud of .
Verdict: Neither you nor the two JWs at your doorstep knew what they were talking about on that rather fateful day.
Kaikai, I do understand Payne’s argument. What I wrote was intended to advance the discussion by setting it on a firm and different footing. No hope of that now.
(I write as someone who knows Greek fairly well, certainly not as a theologian. I follow theological arguments from afar, with bemusement or horror.)
Apologies to Stirling for misreading him.
Hi Isaac, How good to have you back, shedding your customary light! I shall leave it to you from this point.
Thanks Andrew for the clarification. Needless to say that his new concept is even less convincing, as it is an even worse twisting of the sentence.
@All: The exact translation is what I am looking for. Is anyone else willing to comment on the grammatical/lexical issues in Payne´s paper? What good is it to discuss the implications before we are sure about the statement itself?
I was not doubting your ability to understand his argument, but rather your willingness to study Payne´s claims in detail, which requires some time and effort. This is why I wanted to provide a short summary to make sure that his major points are clear. I am glad that this is the case. And I am thankful for your contributions, especially since some discussions can be solved best from afar - with the necessary distance. By the way, would bemusement not be a poor little guy without his close friend horror (see Isaac Newton´s posting in this thread for a great example of their perfect cooperation)?
Since you suggest to solve the controversy (which of course really is no controversy) by looking at the immediate context (the alla-clause), I was wondering what you would answer to the interpretation that hesuchia does not mean silence but rather a peaceful mindset and behaviour? Also, I thought you had agreed on the point that authentein cannot limit didaskein in this “construction” (which would be the end of any discussion about the extend of the 1Tim 2:12 prohibition). Am I wrong?
Where Payne goes wrong is in separating the two components in such a way as to make the second limit (rather than simply elaborate or expand) the first. “I don’t allow a woman to teach” is not qualified by the follow-up (“and/or to be a man’s boss”); as Markos and others have objected, the copulative ουδε couldn’t convey that. Rather, the second phrase gives some precision, some amplification: women exercising authority over men is what women teaching would amount to. The quoted Polybius is a good parallel: binding themselves with oaths and treaties is what would be entailed by partnering with Rome. It’s essentially a single notion, whose permitted opposite, of course, is “staying quiet.”
So yes, I think Michael has agreed that the second phrase doesn’t the first. I think he is saying that in Paul’s mind, a woman teaching and a woman αυθεντειν-ανδρος-ing are part and parcel of one general idea - maybe something like her being assertive/playing the role of a man/generally not being quiet and submissive. See also Michael’s comment on May 31:
Agreed, neither one limits the other; but the second may spell out the implications of the first.
I made a case for their being two related conceptions, both negatived, on May 29, 2014. I fully agree with Michael that this question has to be determined semantically, not grammatically. My feeling is that the matter of teaching is important to Paul not only because it involves a woman exercising authority over a man, but also because of his deep concern for sound doctrine and perhaps a concern that a woman may be more easily deceived - see the second reason for the prohibition in verse 14.
I admit I skimmed the paper, way too much detail for such a simple sentence for me. It’s too bad Paul didn’t write in simple, understandable Greek instead of couching his ideas in confusing, complex language that can only be understood from the heights of some ivory tower built with complex grammatical analysis. Joking aside, is Payne’s idea that women can teach as long as they don’t have authority? If that is his conclusion then I would say that is where his argument can be demolished. As jeidsath cleverly put it above, such a concept is absurd. It’s possible today that we could think of a person being a teacher and not having any authority, but in the 1st century? from the pen of a self-declared trained pharisee? The idea is laughable.
Joking aside, is Payne’s idea that women can teach as long as they don’t have authority?
Not exactly - he finds αὐθεντεῖν to mean ‘to assume authority’, and claims that what Paul does not permit is the combination of teaching and assuming authority - and then to put this into a normal English sentence, has Paul saying that he does not permit a woman to assume authority (or even to seize authority, p. 247 of 2008 NTS paper) - that is, to assume authority for herself (p.249) to teach men. http://www.pbpayne.com/wp-admin/Payne2008NTS-oude1Tim2_12.pdf and see also final sentence, p.253.
