ἤ in 1Corinthians 14:36

Greek Koine and Biblical and Medieval Greek
1

Hello everyone!

I am 27, German and currently studying theology and working as a bible teacher. I was wondering whether you could help me with a translation. The question is: How would you translate the ἤ in verse 36?

34 αἱ γυναῖκες ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις σιγάτωσαν, οὐ γὰρ ἐπιτρέπεται αὐταῖς λαλεῖν· ἀλλὰ ὑποτασσέσθωσαν, καθὼς καὶ ὁ νόμος λέγει.
35 εἰ δέ τι μαθεῖν θέλουσιν, ἐν οἴκῳ τοὺς ἰδίους ἄνδρας ἐπερωτάτωσαν, αἰσχρὸν γάρ ἐστιν γυναικὶ λαλεῖν ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ.
36 ἢ ἀφ᾽ ὑμῶν ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ ἐξῆλθεν, ἢ εἰς ὑμᾶς μόνους κατήντησεν;

I guess everyone knows the standart translations than/or. However, I found this interesting entry in LSJ:
ἤ (B), an exclamation expressing disapproval, ἢ ἢ σιώπα Ar.Nu. 105; ἢ ἤ· τί δρᾶς; E.HF906 (lyr.), cf. Suid.

Some people have suggested translating the ἤ as “nonsense” or “what??”, thus letting verses 34 and 35 appear as a quotation and verse 36 as a negation of this quotation. Do you think there is any basis for this translation?

Thanks for your help!

2

In English, KJV-tradition bibles translate it as “What:” or “What!” The NIV translates it as “Or.” In German, Luther translated it as “Oder” and the Vulgate similarly in Latin.

In regards to the quotation theory that you mention: As far as I know, everyone took this to mean what it looks like it says up until about 1970. After 1970 people wanted it to mean something else and seem to have found out that it did.

I’m sympathetic to the idea that those three verses could be an insertion, given their disconnect from Paul’s argument. However, it’s practically impossible to tell, given how scattered Paul is elsewhere. And it would have to be a very early insertion, as it seems that these verses influence the author of 1 Timothy, who seems to have been writing pseudoepigraphically, probably within a just few decades.

This is all another way of saying: Don’t try to read the Bible that way. Learning Greek is no help if you fall into the mistake of making it into some life guidebook or Church constitution that you might wish God had written for you. It’s a rather different (and better!) book than that.

3

Willkommen!
Nice try, but no, there is no basis for that interpretation. I agree with jeidsath on the Greek. I’m afraid Paul meant what he said. He’s out to quash any practice he doesn’t approve of, including (if only as a side-swipe) women who don’t know their proper place. He stamps hard, and the question is fairly belligerent, preempting opposition. It’s rhetorical bludgeoning (as so often in Paul), and the question is tantamount to “Or do you think that you know better than me?” He’s the one who speaks for God, as he pronounces in the very next sentence: “What I write to you is the command of the Lord.” Try as you will, you’ll find no feminist sentiment in Paul. He single-handedly set back the cause of women in the church by two millennia. Futile to try to redeem him.

EDIT. A thought. If you want to make your mark as a feminist theologian your best bet may be to set the record straight about Paul. That would mean exposing the desperately contrived moves made by his apologists. It’s time.

I write as a mildly interested but not terribly well informed outsider who doesn’t like to see Greek tortured and manipulated in the interests of producing a desired result. There’s far too much of it in Bible studies.

4

No, it doesn’t pass the smell test. Is that argument enough? ἢ has an ordinary meaning that fits the context here. You can always find that x means y in a certain context, but to transfer that meaning to another context where that meaning is far-fetched and seems to turn the text on its head is likely the result of an agenda. Feminist readings do indeed seem drawn to this method. A similar attempt to make Paul seem to say the opposite of what the Greek seems to say was discussed here:

http://discourse.textkit.com/t/does-paynes-take-on-1-tim-2-12-pass-the-smell-test/12208/1

How would you translate the ἤ in verse 36?

I wouldn’t translate it. I learned Ancient Greek so I would not have to translate stuff like this.

5

Thank you for replying, mwh, Markos and jeidsath!

In my response I will try to cover all the points that have been addressed. I will also add another thought (point D), which I would like to hear your opinion on.

A) Theology
I view the bible as God´s word and its authors as inspired by the Holy Spirit. That is also a reason, why - despite internal arguments such as vocabulary/style - I reject the idea of the Pastoral Epistles being pseudepigraphy. There are of course arguments for such a conservative view of Pauline authorship (style/wording could come from an amanuensis), but they have been explained well by others, e. g. Daniel B. Wallace. Jeidsath, what do you think the bible is?
Due to my evangelical beliefs, I try to understand it as well as I can and simply do what it says. That is my only “agenda”. I am not personally interested in feminism, anti-feminism, pentacostalism, anti-pentecostalism or any other theological programme. And this is also the reason, why I have asked my question here. I stumbled across the feminist approaches toward 1Cor 14:34-36 and, even though they appeared to be very dubious, I wanted to hear some Greek scholars on the matter.

B) 1Cor 14:34-36 - Insertion?
Due to the controversial content of these verses, this view has attracted many theologians. jeidsath has mentioned, that it would have to be a very early insertion, which I agree with. After all, it appears in all manuscripts without a single exception.
C) 1Cor 14:34-36 - Quotation from the Corinthians?
As mwh and jeidsath have said, there is no basis for the theory - I have not found the slightest indication of these verses being a quotation, rather than Paul´s word. Some have tried to understand the ἢ as indicating it, but as Markos has put it, the ordinary meaning fits the context and trying to make the ἢ look as an exclamation of astonishment seems far-fetched and desperate.

D) Internal Argument Against the Interpolation Theory
I want to come back to the insertion idea. Actually, I think taking out the verses disturbs the flow of the text:

ὡς ἐν πάσαις ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις τῶν ἁγίων,
34 αἱ γυναῖκες ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις σιγάτωσαν, οὐ γὰρ ἐπιτρέπεται αὐταῖς λαλεῖν· ἀλλὰ ὑποτασσέσθωσαν, καθὼς καὶ ὁ νόμος λέγει.
35 εἰ δέ τι μαθεῖν θέλουσιν, ἐν οἴκῳ τοὺς ἰδίους ἄνδρας ἐπερωτάτωσαν, αἰσχρὸν γάρ ἐστιν γυναικὶ λαλεῖν ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ.
36 ἢ ἀφ᾽ ὑμῶν ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ ἐξῆλθεν, ἢ εἰς ὑμᾶς μόνους κατήντησεν

To me it appears that verse 36 leads us back to v. 33b. ἐν πάσαις ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις they are doing it, so you should do it, too, ἢ εἰς ὑμᾶς μόνους ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ κατήντησεν? V. 34-35 really seem to be embedded here. Why would he say has it come to you alone, if he was not contrasting them with all the others (all churches of the saints)?


If we delete the verses we end up with:
31 δύνασθε γὰρ καθ᾽ ἕνα πάντες προφητεύειν, ἵνα πάντες μανθάνωσιν καὶ πάντες παρακαλῶνται,
32 καὶ πνεύματα προφητῶν προφήταις ὑποτάσσεται·
33 οὐ γάρ ἐστιν ἀκαταστασίας ὁ θεὸς ἀλλὰ εἰρήνης.
36 ἢ ἀφ᾽ ὑμῶν ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ ἐξῆλθεν, ἢ εἰς ὑμᾶς μόνους κατήντησεν;
I do not see a logical connection between verse 33 and verse 36.


All that being said, I have to agree with mwh. Paul´s words are rather plain and painful for the modern ear. Some have tried to connect it to the preceeding context of prophesying. Paul then would have wanted to say they should not prophecy or evaluate prophesy. But he simply forbids to speak. I do not think that Paul hated women, because he had some very appreciating words for women, e. g. in Romans 16. I do think, however, that he believed that there were some clear restrictions, such as not speaking in church. 1Timothy 2:12 is not as strict, since εἶναι ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ could mean a quiet demeanor, but οὐ γὰρ ἐπιτρέπεται αὐταῖς λαλεῖν is really quite “hardcore”. σκληρός ἐστιν ὁ λόγος οὖτος· τίς δύναται αὐτοῦ ἀκούειν;

6

Like our friend Nietzsche would have said:

“Gehen Sie zu den Frauen? Vergessen sie, nicht Ihre Peitsche!”

“Are you going to see women? Forget them, but don’t forget your whip!”

Just joking. Welcome to Textkit!

7

A transmissional query. I see that in a few MSS (the earliest D, 5th cent.) verses 34-35 appear not here but after our v.40 at the end of the chapter. That seems very odd. Did the lines fall out by accident (but I see no mechanical reason for their omission) and get put back in the wrong place, or what? They’re hardly likely to have been deliberately excised. There must be a ton of literature on this, none of which I’m familiar with. But variable placement can be an indication of interpolation, and if we restore what I assume from the verse numbers to be the older punctuation of 33, then 36 follows on very comfortably, and makes particularly good sense of εἰς ὑμᾶς μονους there, after the ἐν πάσαις of 33.

There are obvious internal grounds for suspicion too. As jeidsath pointed out, they’re far from definitive by themselves, but the manuscript evidence may give them some support. The earliest evidence for the verses’ presence in their accepted position is seems to be P46 (reportedly c.200; I haven’t checked the dating, nor whether there’s now more papyrus evidence). The I Tim. passage doesn’t look to me as if necessarily implies their existence. (Maybe it was the I Tim. author who added them to I Cor.?!)

On balance, I reckon it’s probably just a freak accident in D etc. (Are those MSS transmissionally related? I don’t remember and I don’t have my Metzger with me. I guess they must be.) But if it’s not, I may have been doing Paul an injustice. Still, I don’t like people claiming to have a direct line to God.

8

What is this Metzger book you’re referring to? It seems to be something important…

9

ἀσπάζομαί σε.

Paul had many female co-workers, and there is

Gal. 3:28:οὐκ ἔνι Ἰουδαῖος οὐδὲ Ελλην, οὐκ ἔνι δοῦλος οὐδὲ ἐλεύθερος, οὐκ ἔνι ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ: πάντες γὰρ ὑμεῖς εἷς ἐστε ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ.

which contrasts dramatically with the daily Rabbinic prayer where one thanks God for not having made him a slave, a gentile, or a woman. And would Paul write: καθὼς καὶ ὁ νόμος λέγει? Paul uses the OT to point to Christ, not as a basis for Christian behavior. (He even has to come up with another reason why Christians should not use prostitutes.) But the καί may be ascensive here. (Sorry for the meta-language, Michael.)

I happen to think that Paul wrote both the Pastorals and these lines. But no one disputes that he wrote

1 Cor 11:5:πᾶσα δὲ γυνὴ προσευχομένη ἢ προφητεύουσα ἀκατακαλύπτῳ τῇ κεφαλῇ καταισχύνει τὴν κεφαλὴν αὐτῆς: ἓν γάρ ἐστιν καὶ τὸ αὐτὸ τῇ ἐξυρημένῃ.

which, to the extent that it is remotely cognate to the I.S.I.L tradition of entering a village and forcing men at gun-point to veil their wives and daughters, is even more noxious. All of which is to say that Paul’s social and pastoral advice did not always live up to his theological ideals. Nothing we do with the Greek can change that.

Still, I don’t like people claiming to have a direct line to God.

Sometimes, I can’t even get His service. :slight_smile:

10

Bruce Metzger, Wiki:
“Central to his scholarly contribution to New Testament studies is his trilogy: The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (1964; 2nd ed., 1968; 3d enlarged ed., 1992); The Early Versions of the New Testament: Their Origin, Transmission, and Limitations (1977); The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (1987).”
(There’s a 4th ed. of the first of these in which Bart Ehrman played a significant part—a bete noire to many Christians, especially the Word of God folks. It came as a shock to him to discover that—quelle surprise!, quelle horreur!—the text has manuscript variation. You wouldn’t believe the furore. Tune in, but not for more than 5 minutes or you’ll go mad. Give us back our [[eleven days]] Textus Receptus!)

But the one I had in mind is (I think) his Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. Explains textual decisions made in his (+ others’) edition. Committee work, interesting.

11

Thanks, mwh!

Sorry, I’m veering seriously off topic. I did some googling… Bart Ehrman apparently explains (some) miracles in the NT by claiming that Jesus’ followers had hallucinations. I don’t know anything about the subject, but my first impression is that that’s not much better than textual criticism resorting to divine inspiration. How about Achilles in the first book of the Iliad, when Athena appears to him and prevents him from killing Agamemnon? Was he having a psychotic episode? No, actually he had a brain tumor, as visual hallucinations, as opposed to auditory ones, point to an organic rather than a psychiatric etiology…

12

Sorry, I’ve been meaning to contribute to this thread, but I’ve been traveling and yesterday κακῶς πυρέττω.

I reckon it’s probably just a freak accident in D etc.

Could be. Note first, that since this is Paul, it isn’t Codex Bezae (D), but Claromontanus (D), and F and G, etc. If something only appears in Bezae (cough Mark 1:41), that can be chocked up to general weirdness, but Claromontanus is much more respectable. In fact here’s the page in question. Notice the ΓΥΝΑΙΚΑΙΣΥΜΩΝ – how’s that for making the audience clear?

It’s the same arrangement in the Latin on the other side. I wonder if the ΤΑΙΣΕΚΚΛΗΣΙΑΙΣ might have confused the manuscript tradition at some point? In our standard text, notice how close it is to the same in verse 34.

Now these versus do not much sound like Paul of the early epistles. Male religious leadership was not a Western tradition, it was an Eastern/Jewish tradition. And if Paul said anything, he said “Don’t enforce Jewish norms on the Western church.” And contra-mwh – who has already backed away from his original statement – if you removed this verse, you’d have a hard time making the case for misogyny based on just the non-Pastoral Pauline epistles. The opposite, if anything. Female apostles and deaconesses, oh my.

It sounds much more like Paul of the Pastorals, and I do find it strange to see it here, especially in the context. But talking about the manuscript evidence in this case is just reading tealeaves. It’s earlier than our manuscripts. What else can we say?

Maybe it was the I Tim. author who added them to I Cor.?!

In fact you could make a case for it. The pastorals had to be late enough that Paul was famous, but not so late that they would be rejected as non-Pauline (the earliest cannoneers had no problem with the pastorals). So why not blame the editor of the first edition of Paul’s collected epistles for both?

EDIT: Corrected above to “no problem with the pastorals.” Added “of Paul’s collected epistles” for clarity.

Now, it’s not 100% the case that the pastorals are intended to mislead people. They could well have been compiled by a man who was sincere in thinking that this was the sort of thing that the Paul that he knew would have said. And the pastorals were perhaps similar to things Paul did say in no longer extant epistles (by that time). There is plenty of room for inspiration if you want it. There is no need to choose between textual fundamentalism or the highway, like both the fundamentalists and the Ehrmans* of the world would have it.

  • By the way, couldn’t the college crowd have chosen a better atheist NT scholar to latch on to than Ehrman? There are some great ones that I could recommend.
13

You’re forgetting 33b, which closes 33 (repunctuated).

Your post only showed up after the responses above this one. There’s sometimes a delay for new posters.

— Paul D. Not the miracles (Lazarus, water>wine, etc.) but the post-crucifixn sightings? What would your explanation be, discounting brain tumors all round?

— Jeidsath, many thanks. Hope you’re now recovered. You know much more about these things than I do, and it’s nice to see the manuscript page. I’m surprised (alla Ehrman?) just how much textual discrepancy there is there. The displacement is still a puzzle. Your εκκλησιαις suggestion would be compelling if των αγιων were absent. Is it in D? (I don’t have N-A, only USB.) If by any chance it’s not, then all is explained.

14

I am mostly recovered, thank you.

This link is the preceeding page in the viewer. But here is the relevant section:

There is τῶν αγίων on its own line (the accent markings are from a friendly 10th century corrector). Too bad for my theory.

It’s interesting to note how much more sense 36 makes directly following 33. Of course, that leads to the most orthodox (and probably best) explanation for the re-ordering seen in D. The D-tradition scribe thought that Paul’s parenthetical statement (34, 35) might be confusing and moved it. And the fact that Paul would write a confusing parenthetical needs no explanation.

You know much more about these things than I do

Not at all. Almost all of what I know from this article from The Encyclopedia of New Testament Textual Criticism. (And from a Metzger book that I read a while back).

15

For the saut du meme au meme idea to work, all we need is a text (a) without των αγιων at the end of 33 and (b) with λαλειν preceding not following εκκλησιαις (or εκκλησιαι) at end of 36. (b) is apparently the standard word order, and (a) if not attested is probably not necessary anyway. The omission was caught and added in the lower margin, and at next copying ended up after 40. Nothing out of the ordinary. So now we have a mechanical explanation to put alongside the deliberate reordering one.

— So this is not just “a few MSS” but the so-called Western text-type we’re talking about. Does it show signs of textual reorganization? I must say that that idea doesn’t seem too plausible to me, but I’m very ignorant.

16



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3kQlzOi27M

Not that Markos uses that weapon as often as he should. :slight_smile:

17

So this is not just “a few MSS” but the so-called Western text-type we’re talking about. Does it show signs of textual reorganization?

Well, either the Alexandrian/Byzantine text-type or Western text-type is reordered right here. Take your pick of which sounds more plausible:

  1. The Western text-type is original, and Alexandrian/Byzantine text-type suffered from a mechanical failure in copying, reordering these verses.

  2. The Alexandrian/Byzantine text-type is original, and someone in the Western text-type tradition made an editorial decision to rearrange the verses to make more sense.

I couldn’t tell you which of those is better.

Of course, if we want to postulate a third – original – tradition that doesn’t include verses 34, 35, we could tell another story.

  1. Verses 34, 35 were inserted into the the Alexandrian/Byzantine text-type in their current form. At some point they migrated to the Western text-type for the usual reasons, and were re-ordered in the process.

But without any evidence, it doesn’t sound plausible to me.

18

You’re ignoring the possibility that the verses were inadvertently omitted from some manuscript or other and restored in the wrong place (at some point before D), to become the “Western” tradition. Given the εκκλησιαι(ς) repeat to which you drew attention, isn’t that the most likely, at least in transmissional terms? Of course, it doesn’t exclude your 3).
EDIT When I say it doesn’t exclude your 3), I mean it doesn’t exclude its being a very early interpolation—throughout the tradition. No need to restrict it to Alex-Byz. I agree that doesn’t sound too plausible.

19

I think I get what you’re saying, but – knowing very little about textual transmission, as I do – I would have assumed that restoring skipped verses is an unlikely time to get text reordering?

…

But now that I think about it, corrections like that would not show up (primarily) when new copies were being prepared. Instead, corrections would go in as marginalia. (I’m thinking of the many corrected manuscripts that I’ve seen.) And it is up to the next copyist down the line to place the correction into the text “where it makes sense.” Which would easily explain this instance, with the Western Text being the later “makes sense” version.

And, of course, that would be evidence for the existence of manuscripts, somewhere at some time, that didn’t have these verses.

20

Yes the way I envision the possible course of events is that the verses were mistakenly skipped, as the scribe’s eye slipped from 33 εκκλησιαις to 35 εκκλησιαις, but the omission was caught, whether by the scribe himself or by a corrector, and the skipped verses thereupon added in the lower margin. There are lots of examples of this sort of thing in papyri as well as later MSS. At the next copying of the manuscript the verses were reincorporated into the text but understandably in the wrong place.

This implies that their position as 34-35 is the original one (whether interpolated or not—now a quite different question). And it’s far and away the earliest attested, and widely diffused.

As I see it, there may never have a manuscript from which the verses were actually absent. There was just the interval—perhaps no more than a minute or two, perhaps much longer—between their falling out and their being restored to the margin in some individual MS.

That makes the copy of that particular MS the archetype of the Western text.

How about it?