Journal: Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Volume: JBMW 01:3 (Jun 1996)
Article: The Definitive Book On 1 Timothy 2
Author: Anonymous

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The Definitive Book On 1 Timothy 2

From time to time a book is published that breaks new ground in academic study and sets the course of the discussion for years to come. Women in the Church: A Fresh Analysis of 1 Timothy 2:9–15, edited by Andreas Köstenberger, Thomas Schreiner, and H. Scott Baldwin (Baker, 1995) is such a book.

Regarding background: Do you want to know about the roles of men and women in ancient Ephesus? Forget the unsupported speculations made by people with no technical training in the history of Ephesus. Here is a historical analysis by a world expert who is familiar with all the specialized studies and all the hard evidence from archaeology and ancient literature. Stephen Baugh of Westminster Seminary in California, whose Ph.D. thesis was on Greek inscriptions discovered in ancient Ephesus, sets the background for 1 Timothy with a 40-page analysis of “Ephesus in the First Century.”

Regarding lexicography: Do you want to know the meaning of the key term authentein, “to have authority over”? The word occurs only once in the New Testament, but H. Scott Baldwin of Singapore Bible College has searched out, recorded, translated, and analyzed 82 other examples of the verb authentein in ancient Greek literature, papyri, ostraca, and inscriptions—more examples than anyone has ever discovered. He has interacted with all previous studies of authentein, and quoted and translated all occurrences in a 37-page appendix.

He points out the mistakes of Wilshire, Kroeger, and others who have confused the meanings of the verb and the noun authente-s, “murderer,” which apparently comes from a different root and has a different meaning, as was already noted in a 5th century A.D. lexicon. He decisively excludes meanings such as “usurp authority,” “domineer,” “instigate violence,” or “proclaim oneself author of a man,” which some recent articles, especially by evangelical feminists, have claimed for the word. (The meaning “domineer” has even appeared in the BAGD lexicon and the Louw and Nida lexicon.) When Baldwin’s study is combined with the grammatical analysis of Köstenberger (see below), the compelling conclusion of the book is that the only suitable sense for authentein in this context is simply, “to have authority over.”

Regarding grammar: Andreas Köstenberger (now of Southeastern Baptist Seminary, Wake Forest) has analyzed the syntactical structure of Paul’s statement, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man” (1 Tim. 2:12). The grammatical structure in Greek takes the form, “not + [verb 1] + neither + [verb 2].” Köstenberger found 52 examples of this structure in the New...

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