For Patti. And all the others who have languished with a fire in their bones.
~But if I say, "I will not remember Him or speak anymore in His name," then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire shut up in my bones; and I am weary of holding it in, and I cannot endure it. (Jer 20:9)
One thing I need to point out before I explain this, is that
I will not argue with people who want to make Scripture out to mean something
that it doesn’t when it comes to certain issues. One of them is about who I am in Christ as a
woman. How women are perceived in
certain denominational doctrines is a heart issue that only Christ can resolve,
and He will resolve all things upon His return.
I will not teach on these issues unless specifically asked, and even
then, I say what I have to say and leave it alone because some of the most
disgusting and vitriolic encounters I’ve ever had in the church involved
people’s spiritual arrogance and pride over the issue of what women “can” and
“cannot” do in the church and I want no part of it. It is not a hill that I am
willing to die on. It makes me tired and
the arguments lead to nowhere, they are pointless and an utter waste of time,
detracting from our focus which should be on Jesus Christ, not ourselves. I refuse to engage in them. Christ HIMSELF showed us what He expects
women to do in His church (John 20:17,18 and John 4:25-30,39-42). The lens of Christ’s own words and actions must
be the lens we look through when we try to interpret and understand anything
else written in the Bible. Christ
changed everything, and that is the direction He was trying to lead first
century Judaism.
Having said that, I will explain how 1 Cor 14:33-40
should be understood using proper exegetical and hermeneutical principles, rather than the typical proof-texting that this particular passage is commonly used for.
First you have to play by the correct rules of genre. The rules of genre determine how what is
being written should be understood. For
example, are we dealing with prophecy which should be understood
symbolically/historically? Or are we
dealing with apocalypse which should be understood highly symbolically and
eschatologically? Or are we dealing with
historical narrative which should be understood as descriptive and not
prescriptive? The letter of 1
Corinthians is none of those genres, it is a “letter,” and the “letter” genre
is a didactic text, which means that it is instructional and we are to
understand it literally, but our understanding must be based on the situational
and circumstantial context. Meaning,
what is being taught is pursuant to the particular situation or circumstance
being addressed. Exegesis tells us what
that situation or circumstance was about, and hermeneutics interprets how what
is being said should be understood and properly applied to us today. Exegesis helps us to find the spiritual
principle of the passage and hermeneutics helps us determine how to best apply
that theological principle today. It’s
called the “Principalizing Bridge.” This
is what is used to properly interpret passages such as the one about women’s
head coverings, which are wholly based on first century culture and
traditions. However, there are spiritual
principles that can be gleaned from what Paul instructed, and those spiritual
principles still apply to us today. It
would be like reading a text written during the Victorian era that had someone
instructing the church that women showing their ankles was a disgrace, and then
trying to legalistically apply it to the church today. We don’t live in the Victorian era, and we
don’t wear floor length gowns. However,
the spiritual principle being taught is one of modesty. So we take that theological principle and
apply that to the church today.
In Paul’s letters, sometimes we are told the situation or
circumstance that he is addressing, sometimes we are not. So, the “letter” genre is sometimes referred
to as “one-way telephone conversations” because we are reading Paul’s response
to a previous letter that we do not have.
Several of Paul’s letters are his responses to letters or verbal news that
he has received from the churches he is writing to. So, in the case of Paul’s letters, we are
only seeing his response to news that we haven’t heard ourselves or a letter
we’ve never read.
In the chapters prior to 1 Corinthians Chapter 14, Paul
speaks of unity in the church among the Body, operating as one. In Chapter 12 he makes a thorough case for
unity and the need for the church to act as one, “all the members of the body,
though they are many, are one body” (v. 12).
In Chapter 14, he describes how to have an orderly worship service in
the early church of first century culture. In that context, he makes
painstaking effort to teach the Corinthians that EVERYONE is to participate in
the gathering, but in an orderly manner (“every one of you” 14:5; “the whole
church” “everyone” 14:23; “everybody” 14:24; “everyone” 14:26; “anyone” 14:27;
“you can all prophesy in turn so that
everyone may be instructed and encouraged” 14:31). And it is Paul’s thesis at 14:31 that sets up
the context for his rhetorical argument at 14:34-40. Paul builds his case for both unity and for
the participation of all church members and then sums it up with “for God is
not a God of disorder but of peace, as in all the congregations of the
saints.”(14:33) That is where Paul’s perspective concludes, and the few verses
that come after that are either a gloss, or a part of a Greek rhetorical device called “procatalepsis,”
where the speaker directly addresses a potential objection to their argument
(also called antithesis). We know that Paul
was formally educated in Greek rhetoric (this area of study was called “progymnasmata”
and I teach it at the high school level at the school), which is why his
letters are full of Greek rhetorical devices to make his arguments. In this case, Paul would be quoting his objectors’
arguments at 1 Cor Ch. 14, verses 34 and 35 using the rhetorical device of
procatalepsis.
One thing that is needful to note here, is that first
century Greek does not use punctuation.
That means, no periods, commas, or quotation marks. So when someone is using a quote, it is
typically inferred by grammatical nuance and is up to us to determine what that
may or may not be. For example, the
period in the sentence at 1 Cor 14:33 is placed differently in certain
translations. Go look at different
translations of 1 Cor 14:33-- the English Standard Version, NIV, the NASB, the
Christian Standard Bible, the Holman Christian Standard Bible. You will see that where the period is placed,
makes a big difference in what is being communicated here. Grammatically, the period belongs at the end
of verse 33, as such: “For God is not a
God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.” Then we have verses 34 and 35 which seem to
completely contradict everything Paul just taught the Corinthian church about
everyone participating, which implies that it is actually a quotation (as in,
what the Judaizers of the church were arguing, rather than this being what Paul
actually says himself…more on that in a minute). In some original manuscripts, verses 34 and
35 are actually at the end of the chapter, inserted after verse 40, so their
contradictory nature and their inconsistent location in manuscript copies are
two nuances that help determine how to best understand this passage.
So, there are two things that could be happening here with this
quotation. It is either a parenthetical
notation that was made to give clarity as to what argument was being made against
Paul’s teaching of everyone participating in the church (remember, this is a
one-way telephone conversation here) to cause Paul to respond to the Judaizer’s
argument for silence with the case he lays out in the entirety of chapters 12
and 14 to argue for the unity of the Body and orderly participation for all
members of the church. (In this case
verses 34 and 35 would be what is called a “gloss” –look up “Biblical
gloss”). Or, it is a quote that Paul is
using in a rhetorical debate strategy called procatalepsis (quotation/refutation).
Paul was a master rhetorician, which in the first century had become the
preferred form of debate for Greeks, and had developed into an artform. One of the strategies was to state the
opponent’s argument in the body of your own argument and then denigrate it,
mock it, refute it. Paul was very good
at rhetoric and he does this in other places in his letters to the Corinthians
(2 Cor 10:1-11, he quotes the argument made about him being meek when face to
face with them but bold when absent—that is what the Corinthians were saying
behind his back at verse 1, then again at verse 10, and refutes their argument
at verse 11; at 1 Cor 4:7-10, he mocks
their arrogance and then quotes their insults about he and the other Apostles
being fools, weak, and without honor at verse 10, and uses irony to mock
them)
[ *side note here: Parenthetical
notations are insertions into Scripture by others who copied the texts to give
the reader a better understanding of the context. For example, parenthetical notations in the
Gospels are at Luke 17:36, John 7:53-8:11, Matthew 17:21. Early manuscripts do not include Luke 17:36,
and later manuscripts do, therefore it is seen as a parenthetical insertion
taken from Matthew 24:40 to give clarity.
Likewise, Matthew 17:21 is not in the early manuscripts, therefore it is
seen as a parenthetical insertion taken from Mark 9:29. John 7:53-8:11 is absent from almost all
early manuscripts and those that do have it, insert it after Luke 21:38. Therefore it is seen as an extended
parenthetical notation, much in the same vein as the end of the Gospel of Mark
is viewed. The Gospel of Mark actually
ends at 16:8, and everything from verse 9 through 20 is only found in later
manuscripts. This is not to say that
what is in our Bibles today is uninspired or additions that God didn’t
want. I believe all contributors to the
Bible, up to the point of when the canon was formally closed, were inspired by
the Holy Spirit. God is either sovereign
over His own word or He is not. So when we
learn that there were things added to the original texts, we shouldn’t freak
out and think that the Bible is untrustworthy, because it is, because God is
indeed sovereign. ]
So, back to 1 Cor 14:34,35, either way we look at these two
verses--whether they are a gloss or whether they are being used as a
quotation/refutation strategy by Paul-- the fact still remains: these two verses are a quote, and not Paul’s
own words because Paul wouldn’t contradict himself. So let’s look at the quote and see if we can
pick up some clues as to who may have said something like this. Verses 34 & 35 say, “The women are to
keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but are to
subject themselves, just as the Law also says.
If they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at
home, for it is shameful for a woman to speak in the congregation.” What “Law” would this verse be referring to here?
We know that there is nothing in the Mosaic Law that instructs women to be
silent, and there is nothing in the Mosaic Law that instructs women to submit
to men, and there is nothing in the Old Testament instruction that implies that
it is improper for a woman to speak in public. So that is not and cannot be the “Law”
which is referred to here, nor any custom instructed to us by God. So this verse is either referring to a law that
would be a traditional Gentile law or custom, or in the Jewish oral law
(Talmud), and this is exactly what we find.
This sort of statement is found in both Gentile writings and Jewish oral
law.
Plutarch states that a woman’s speech should not be for the
public and “a woman ought to do her talking either to her husband or through
her husband [because] they must subordinate themselves to their husbands”
(Advice to the Bride and Groom, precept 31).
Sophocles wrote, “Silence adorns a woman” (Ajax 293). Democritus states, “Let a woman not practice
speech; for that is terrible” (Saying 110).
Likewise, the Jewish oral law that Christ regularly condemned the
Pharisees for following, forbade women from participating in public religious
activities. The Babylonian Talmud (BT)
states that “women are a separate people” (Shabbat 62a); women earn merit by
sending their husbands to study with the rabbis and waiting until they return
from the schools of the rabbis (Berakhot 17a); “the voice of a woman is
indecent” (Berekhot 24a). “The words of the Torah should be burned rather than
entrusted to women” (JT Sotah 3:4)
“Gather the men, women and children- since the men come to learn Torah
and the women come to hear” (JT Sotah 3:4, 19a). Jewish tradition in the synagogues was for
there to be a physical barrier called a mehitzah between men and women in the
synagogue, and women were not even considered as a legal individual person,
they were considered property and on the same societal level as a child or a
slave, which is why they didn’t even qualify to be counted when numbering the
synagogue congregation: “Women or slaves
or minors may not be included [to make up the number needed] for the Common
Grace” (the required congregation number to form a synagogue, which was 10 or
more people)(Berakot 7:2).
Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians Chapter 12 about the unity
of the Body of Christ, and in Chapter 14 for everyone in the Body to
participate without restriction in the Christian assembly would have both
offended and infuriated the religious Jews, especially those who taught the
oral Talmudic law. Especially those who were
trying to bring Jewish synagogal traditions into Christ’s church, which was to
operate according to the laws of unity, rather than the Talmudic laws of
separation. It would have also been an offense and a stumbling block to Romans
and Greeks who held to a view of women as lesser persons. That is one of the
reasons Paul makes such a damning and mocking condemnation at verse 36: “Was it from you that the word of God went
forth? Or has it come to you only? If
anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual, let him recognize that the things
which I write to you about are the Lord’s commandment.” And the things Paul wrote to them about in
the previous chapters was for everyone to participate in the church. That is
the Lord’s commandment. Paul is shaming those who think that their traditions
and oral laws are greater than Christ’s instructions about everyone having a
place to participate in His church, without segregation, and on equal
footing. That is why Paul’s next
statement is, “If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized” and he
goes on to encourage the congregation to “therefore…desire earnestly to
prophesy, and do not forbid to speak in tongues.” He is reiterating that no one is to be
forbidden from speaking, everyone may speak and participate, “but all things
must be done properly and in an orderly manner.”
We know that the Bible cannot contradict itself, and to
understand 1 Cor 14:34,35 as Paul’s own words, is to bring contradiction. Paul would not contradict his own teaching in
the previous chapters, he would not falsely attribute something to Mosaic law
that wasn’t taught, and he would not contradict what we are told of Priscilla
teaching with authority, nor of Jesus’ instructions to Mary Magdalene to go to
her brethren (who were essentially the first church congregation) and tell them
Christ’s instructions. The Spirit of the
Lord, the heart of the Father, is for all His children to make disciples and
teach the ways of Christ. Where the
Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (2 Cor 3:17). And there would have been many in the early
church who would have tried to rob the fledgling Christian congregations of
their freedom, whether it be by telling them they must be circumcised, or
adhere to Mosaic dietary law, or in this case, continue a segregated gathering
that gave women believers no voice, no unity, and no freedom. Sadly, there are many today who continue try
to do this very same thing.
