Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 35:2 (Spring 2021)
Article: "Kephalē" Is A Body Part: Unified Interdependence In Relationship In Ephesians 5
Author: Christy Hemphill

PP 35:1 (Winter 2021) p. 3

Kephalē Is A Body Part: Unified Interdependence In Relationship In Ephesians 5

Christy Hemphill

Christy Hemphill Is a linguistics and translation adviser working with a Native American minority language Scripture translation project in southern Mexico. She holds master’s degrees in applied linguistics from Old Dominion University and Dallas International University.

Reframing The Debate Over Figurative Meaning

In the spring of 2015, I listened to my NT Greek professor explain different interpretive approaches to “For the husband is the head [kephalē] of the wife as Christ is the head [kephalē] of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior” (Eph 5:23 NIV). He explained that some people think kephalē means “authority” and some people think it means “source.” His comments echoed what I had heard in almost every treatment of Eph 5:23 I had read. Such treatments turn on lexical studies of kephalē and the figurative senses available for the word in Koine Greek.1 I asked why no one argued for the clear primary sense of kephalē, the body part, since it is clear “head” is being used in a body metaphor.2 Body metaphors are prevalent in Paul’s letters, and metaphors generally rely on the primary senses of words. I did not get a satisfying answer then, and I continue to encounter arguments about “headship” that begin or end with positing one or another figurative sense of kephalē without offering any rationale why the primary sense, a body part, functioning quite normally in a metaphor is not considered as a possibility.

It is a mistake to focus on word-level or sentence-level arguments in discussing Eph 5:21–33 (and other kephalē passages), instead of appealing to relevant discourse-level features of the text and what we know about how people process the figurative meaning of metaphors. The primary exegetical task when considering the assertion “the husband is the head of the wife” should be discovering the meaning of this head-and-body metaphor, not arguing for an extended metaphorical sense of half of the metaphor—the single word, kephalē. Insights from discourse analysis and cognitive linguistics (described below) could reframe the discussion of debated passages like Eph 5:21–33, where the context and figurative meaning are central to the interpretation.

This article will describe certain differences between word-level or sent...