I need to update this 2008 blog article. For a recent academic discussion: http://alesjalavrinovica.blogspot.com/2017/08/all-churches-of-saints-never-appears.html
The Silenced Women of Corinth
A passage found variously in 1 Corinthians 14
reads,
As in all the congregations of the saints, women should
remain silent in the churches. They are
not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they
should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to
speak in the church (NIV).
The passage reduces down to five important
points:
1. This
dictum is for all the congregations of the saints. This point makes the passage universally
binding for all time.
2. Women
are to be silent, and not speak. This is
the definite meaning of sigavw (sigao),
which is not ambiguous as its synonym hesuchia
is (see above concerning 1 Tim 2:11-12).
Paul is not merely telling them to have a quiet demeanor, but not to
speak at all at any time in the church.
3. In
case the previous point is missed, Paul reiterates that women are not allowed
to speak.
4. Specifically,
women may speak in their homes, but not in the congregation.
5. Women
speaking in church is disgraceful.
Any attempt to render an interpretation of this passage must
deal honestly with all five points.
The prima facie reading of this
text is that women must not participate in the Church's worship life vocally or
verbally. It envisions women sitting
quietly at all times when the congregation is gathered. They are not to pray aloud. They are not to prophesy aloud. They are not to speak praises or testify to
the goodness of the Lord aloud.
Accordingly, the flow of argument in this chapter is that there is a
time for speaking in tongues in the church under the right circumstances, and
likewise, there is an appropriate time for prophetic utterances. But never under any circumstances is it
appropriate for a woman to make any vocal contribution in the church. Such is the vision of women for all the
congregations of the saints, for, as the text explains, "it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the
church."
Because God's Holy Spirit teaches us—all of us—that we must not impose such
strictures on women, we hardly do have any churches today which obey this
passage. Our churches do not really know
how to understand this passage, and so they do their best to follow the leading
of the Spirit, even though their practice is contrary to the outright meaning
of the text. Consequently, we find
rather desperate and implausible attempts to explain away the plain meaning of
the text.
Most frequently, it is suggested that the silenced women were actually
silenced wives. However, it helps
not at all to translate wives for women, although such a translation is
altogether reasonable. We must remember
that married women enjoyed a higher status than single women. If wives were forbidden to speak in church,
how much more were unmarried women!
Forbidding wives to speak would a
fortiori prohibit all women from speaking.
Moreover, this interpretation
assumes an old speculative notion that wives sat on one side of the synagogue,
and their husbands on the other, and that some bonehead woman would holler to
the other side of the building asking her husband for an explanation in the
middle of the service. This imaginative
speculation has been rather thoroughly repudiated, for archaeological
excavations of synagogues have proven otherwise (the sexes were not separated
from one another). And besides,
Christians met in house churches, making the scenario altogether
implausible.
More problematic with this
suggestion is that the point of the passage boils down to be that women must
not embarrass their husbands. This is
just insufficient for the sweeping magnitude of the text. We do not otherwise have any indication that
the dignity of the husbands is anywhere at stake in the Corinthian
correspondence. If the passage is
authentic, then we must face the possibility that it cannot mean what it says.
The question then becomes whether
Paul really wrote this passage. In 1987,
Gordon Fee surprised the academic and evangelical community when he argued in
the prestigious and widely acclaimed New International Commentary on the New
Testament (F.F. Bruce, ed.) that the silencing of women in 1 Cor 14:33b-35 was
not original, nor Pauline, nor inspired.
The claim was significant as it came not from some far out radical feminist
who lacked a zeal for scripture. Rather,
it came from a person whose reputation in both textual criticism and Pauline
studies made him the foremost expert in the merged field of Pauline textual
criticism, as well as one of the most biblically committed scholar-preachers in
North America.[1]
Fee's
argument was primarily a textual one. He
noticed a textual problem, evaluated various ways to explain the phenomenon,
and then decided the best way to explain it was that it must have been a
non-Pauline interpolation; it first must have been written into the margin as
some scribe's own personal views, and then migrated into the text at two
different places in the manuscript tradition.
However, Fee did not stop there.
Rather, his own exegesis of the text and analysis of the flow of
argument led him to confirm his explanation.
Here is his discussion.
First, in his 1987 publication, Fee
concedes that all known manuscripts, including versional manuscripts, include
the disputed passage. However, in the
manuscript tradition, the passage is located in two different spots in the
chapter, begging an explanation:
Traditional Placement
in 1 Cor 14 (as found in both
Byzantine and Alexandrian mss)
What
then shall we say, brothers? When you
come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a
tongue or an interpretation. All of
these must be done for the strengthening of the church. If anyone speaks in a tongue, two--or at the
most three--should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. If there is no interpreter, the speaker should
keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God. Two or three prophets should speak, and the
others should weigh carefully what is said.
And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first
speaker should stop. For you can all
prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. The spirits of prophets are subject to the
control of prophets. 33For
God is not a God of disorder but of peace.
As in all the congregations of
the saints, women should remain silent
in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as
the Law says. If they want to inquire
about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is
disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. Did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has
reached? If anybody thinks he is a
prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you
is the Lord's command. If he ignores
this, he himself will be ignored. Therefore,
my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. But everything should be done in a fitting
and orderly way. Now, brothers, I want
to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which
you have taken your stand. By this
gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you.
Placement in 1 Cor in
Europe Prior to 400 A.D. (as found in the pre-Vulgate Western mss)
What
then shall we say, brothers? When you
come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a
tongue or an interpretation. All of
these must be done for the strengthening of the church. If anyone speaks in a tongue, two--or at the
most three--should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. If there is no interpreter, the speaker
should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God. Two or three prophets should speak, and the
others should weigh carefully what is said.
And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first
speaker should stop. For you can all
prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. The spirits of prophets are subject to the
control of prophets. For God is not a
God of disorder but of peace as in all the congregations of the saints. Did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has
reached? If anybody thinks he is a
prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to
you is the Lord's command. If he ignores
this, he himself will be ignored.
Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking
in tongues. 40But everything
should be done in a fitting and orderly way.
Women should remain silent in the
churches. They are not allowed to speak,
but must be in submission, as the Law says.
If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own
husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the
gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your
stand. By this gospel you are saved, if
you hold firmly to the word I preached to you.
Fee
explains that "the reading which best explains how all others came about
is to be preferred as the original."[2]
There are three possible explanations:
1. Paul
put the words precisely where they are presently found in all our translations,
attached to verse 33. This follows the
Alexandrian and Byzantine tradition.
Then someone moved the block passage down to the end of the chapter,
after verse 40, which is where the Western tradition has the text.
2. The
reverse of #1: Paul put the words at the
end of the chapter, after verse 40, as reflected in the Western manuscript
tradition. Then someone moved the block
passage up several verses, attaching them to the end of verse 33, which is
where the Alexandrian and Byzantine traditions have the text.[3]
3. The
block passage was not original, but was a "very early marginal gloss that
was subsequently placed into the text at two different places." According to this theory, the motivation for
the marginal gloss was to suppress the favorable status Christian women enjoyed
during the apostolic era—an altogether historically plausible motivation.
The external evidence for #1 and #2
are equal. To be sure, the pre-Vulgate
Western text is not attested as widely as the Byzantine and Alexandrian. However, the manuscripts attesting the
Western placement represent the entire Western tradition of the church up to
the end of the fourth century, and geographically extend to the Eastern
Church. Fee adds, "All the
surviving evidence indicates that this was the only way 1 Corinthians appeared
in the Latin Church for at least three hundred years." Thus, the placement of the block passage at
the end of chapter fourteen goes back to a source as equally ancient as the
placement of the passage at the end of verse 33. No doubt, had it not been for the influence
of Jerome's Latin Vulgate, or if Jerome had done his translation in Italy
Since the issue of which placement
is original cannot be solved by external evidence, we must turn to
transcriptional likelihoods. Again, the
first rule for transcriptional probabilities is Griesbach's first principle: "that form of the text is more likely
the original which best explains the emergence of all the others."
In this case, Fee details how one
might argue that the flow of argument is both equally good and equally bad for
either placement! (He also elaborates on
the flow of argument, as it is affected by either placement.) The fact that either placement was equally
good and equally bad contextually would be unlikely if one placement was
original and the other not. Moreover,
the net effect of this is that there are good reasons why a marginal gloss
could be interpolated into either position!
In a different, vein, it is claimed
that the block text is a transpositional variant, as if a scribe transposed the
seven lines of text from one place to another.
However, transposition is usually a matter of a letter or two, or
perhaps a word or two, but not a matter of seven lines. No other example in the NT can be cited for
such a large "transposition," except for the Adulterous Woman
pericope which might be said to have been "transposed" from John 8 to
various other places in the NT manuscripts.[4] The "transposition" of the
Adulterous Woman pericope to various places in the NT manuscripts is one of the
very reasons why biblical scholars almost unanimously reject its originality to
John's gospel. With the very same
"transpositional" phenomenon at work here in 1 Cor 14:33b-35, perhaps
similar doubts should also be projected onto our passage.
Further, to "transpose"
the block text would produce an entirely different line of argument, with an
altogether different interpretation. In
effect, as Fee argues, the scribe would have been playing the role of redactor,
and this sort of redaction is unprecedented in the manuscript tradition of the Pauline
epistles.
All these reasons make it difficult
to accept either the first or second option, leaving only the third
option. Here, Fee argues that a
migrating marginal interpolation makes perfect sense in light of the historic
bias against women in the post-Apostolic period. Here is
a graphic depiction of Fee's suggested reading which best explains how the
passage came to be located in two locations:
What
then shall we say, brothers? When you
come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a
tongue or an interpretation. All of
these must be done for the strengthening of the church. If anyone speaks in a tongue, two--or at the
most three--should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. If there is no interpreter, the speaker
should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God. Two or three prophets should speak, and the
others should weigh carefully what is said.
And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first
speaker should stop. For you can all
prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. The spirits of prophets are subject to the
control of prophets. For God is not a
God of disorder but of peace.* Did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has
reached? If anybody thinks he is a
prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to
you is the Lord's command. If he ignores
this, he himself will be ignored.
Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking
in tongues. But everything should be
done in a fitting and orderly way.* Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the
gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your
stand. By this gospel you are saved, if
you hold firmly to the word I preached to you.
*As in all the congregations of
the saints, women should remain silent
in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as
the Law says. If they want to inquire
about anything, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is
disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.
From here, Fee turns to the
internal evidence. I won't elaborate at
this point, except to say that the silencing of the women in such a wide,
sweeping, and universal way completely undermines his earlier discussion about
method and manner of how women should pray and prophesy in 1 Cor 11, not to
mention the previous discussion about how each one should participate in
various ways in worship in chapter 14.
We might try to explain the obvious and unmitigated contradictions
between those two passages and the silencing of the women in 14:33b-35, but
surely everyone will recognize that the easiest resolution to the contradiction
is that Paul did not write 14:33b-5.
This is substantially where Fee's
argument stood in 1994. Basically, Fee
had conjectured that the earliest manuscripts did not have the silencing of
women in either place. This was a bold
claim to make, since not a single manuscript was known to support his
view. This was a purely rationalized
conjecture, based on a hypothesis, without manuscript evidence.
Much has changed in the last
decade. Fee's hypothesized conjecture
now has been found to have manuscript support.
This attests to Fee's brilliance and handling of the text. He came to his conclusions without physical
evidence, but on various re-examinations and discoveries, we find that history
has vindicated Fee's claim that early manuscripts—at least some—did not include
the passage. (See P.B. Payne, "MS. 88 as Evidence
for a Text without 1 Cor. 14.34-5," NTS
44[1998] 152-58, and idem. Fuldensis, Sigla for Variants in Vaticanus,
and 1 Cor 14:34-35 in NTS 41
(1995) 250—251.)
This
manuscript evidence is found in perhaps the most important Latin codex
(Fuldensis, c. 547) and from Codex Vaticanus (B) which is deemed our most
reliable complete NT manuscript by the vast majority of text critics. In both of these manuscripts, there are
markings to indicate text critical issues, and these markings show that the
scribe was aware of other manuscripts which omitted the verses. Likewise, the non-Western Greek miniscule ms
88 has been shown to have been copied from a manuscript which did not have the
passage in question. Thus, we have
evidence of the text's omission both in an Alexandrian and a pre-Vulgate
Western
manuscript, and as well as in the distinctive text of ms 88.
In
the end, I find it remarkable that Fee did his work out of pure conjecture, and
that, sure enough, upon closer examination, we have found evidence to substantiate
his work.
Our
discussion then, concludes that this passage which God's Holy Spirit has led us
not to interpret according to its prima
facie meaning, is actually a passage that Paul was never inspired to
write. On the contrary, an overly zealous
scribe after Paul's death must have added it as commentary into the margin of
his Bible, and that a patriarchal and sometimes misogynistic church too eagerly
incorporated it into its text. As such,
we cannot appeal to this text either to silence women altogether (as it says),
nor to keep them out of the pastorate.
[1]
Fee was not the first to make this claim.
He cites a German scholar, G. Fitzer, 1963, as having done so, while
citing a number of others with him, including C.K. Barrett, Hans Conzelmann, and
even E. Earle Ellis (with some qualification).
[2] This is Fee's rendition of Griesbach's first
principle of textual criticism (God's
Empowering Presence, 272 n.2).
[4]
Instead of the usual placement as John 7:53-8:11, it is also found after John
7:36, 7:44, John 21:24, and Luke 21:38.
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