Tuesday, September 25, 2018

Gender Equality in early Jesus Gatherings

Not a great deal of specific information is known about gender relationships in the earliest Jesus gatherings,1 during the period following the death of Jesus (around 30CE+/-) until about 50 CE. The little that is known comes at the end of that period primarily from the letters of one man (Paul) and what he inadvertently reveals in his letters about these social gatherings. One would assume that in part the earliest gatherings would generally reflect the culture of the cities in which the gatherings took place. In part that appears generally to be true,2 but the New Testament reflects a mixed record when it comes to gender relationships. Among the writers of New Testament texts one finds attitudes reflective of a hostile misogyny, while in others one encounters attitudes suggesting a liberal, gender equality.

            Let's begin with the lower road. The lowest point in the New Testament with respect to gender equality is reached by a later disciple of Paul. The passage in which this is found is First Timothy 2:8-15 (RSV). Some of the more recent translations may deliberately soften the harshness of the text.3 1 Tim 2:11-12 (RSV): "Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent." This disciple of Paul (many scholars call him the "pastor" because of his interest in church governance issues) justifies his statement by referring to Scripture: 1 Tim 2:13-15 (RSV): "For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor [see Genesis 2:15-23; 3:1-7]. Yet woman will be saved through bearing children, if she continues in faith and love and holiness with modesty." In other words, women are subordinate to males in all respects. Even their personal salvation requires that they bear children, yet they will be saved but only if they continue in faith and holiness with modesty (compare 1 Tim 2:8-10). First Timothy 2:8-15 deserves the charge of being misogynistic (hatred of women)!

            The highest point in gender relationships in the Bible is achieved in the letters of Paul; nevertheless Paul is not without his blind spots. Galatians 3:28 (RSV) signals the high water mark in gender relationships: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." In other words all ethnic, social, and gender distinctions are obliterated in the gatherings of Jesus followers—for "you are all one in Christ Jesus." Hence neither gender has a claim to priority in the ekklesia, for Paul believed God selected leaders through the Spirit (1 Cor12:4-11, 28). Paul uses one part of this slogan in his argument in Romans 10:12 and two parts of the slogan in 1 Cor 12:13. A sense of gender equality corresponding to Gal 3:28 emerges in First Corinthians chapter seven. To cite two: both partners in the marriage relationship have equal conjugal rights (1 Cor 7:1-5); and the wife has the right to separate from her husband (1 Cor 10-11), but apparently not the right to divorce him. Paul's view is that in view of the immediate ending of the world (1 Cor 7:29) everyone should stay in the state they were currently in when they became followers of Christ (1 Cor 7:20), but Paul was realistic and quite willing to break his own rules (1 Cor 7:20-24).

            Perhaps it was this willingness to adjust his values in view of the situation that led him to argue for the subordination of women to men in 1 Cor 11:2-16, thus violating the idea of gender equality he stated in Gal 3:28. And he violates it again in 1 Cor 14:33b-35.

            Paul's equivocation was not necessarily shared by other Jesus gatherings, however. In a letter written to the gathering at Rome Paul takes note of and commends a number of women who had achieved outstanding success in leadership roles in the Jesus gatherings. He commends to the gathering at Rome "our sister Phoebe" who was a deacon in the gathering at Cenchrea,4 and asks that she be received by the gathering as "befits the saints." Paul commends her for her work in helping himself as well as others.5

He asks that they greet Prisca and Aquila, a husband and wife team leading with the wife's name first. They were "fellow workers" of Paul and had risked their necks for Paul's life. He notes that all the gentile gatherings gave thanks for the ministry of this husband and wife team. He calls upon the Roman community to send his greetings to the gathering in their house—Prisca apparently had a major leadership role in the gathering (1 Cor 16:3-5).6

He asks the Jesus gathering at Rome to greet Mary for him for she had worked hard among the followers of Jesus at Rome—personally, I doubt that she just baked cookies.

He mentions a certain Junia (a feminine name); she was a kinswoman of Paul as well as having served prison time along with him. But the most notable thing about her and Andronicus was that they both were "outstanding among the apostles"—apparently they were both "apostles" (Rom 16:7).7 A woman apostle! Think of that.

            He asks to be remembered to two particular women, whom he refers to as those "workers in the Lord," Tryphanea and Tryphosa (Rom 16:12).

            That is essentially the gender situation among the earliest followers of Jesus. The sad truth is that the Bible as a whole does not encourage gender equality, but that does not appear to have been completely true of all the early Jesus gatherings. Unfortunately, however, women today should not expect to be treated with equality in the church if they are members of conservative religious institutions, which have chosen the lower way in gender equality.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

1Translating ekklesia as "church" is anachronistic. The word church is derived from late Greek kyriakon (of the Lord) and is short for kyriakon dōma (house of the Lord); it describes a modern organization. The Scottish kirk is still in use. These assemblies should be thought of as loose social gatherings of like minded people.
2See Hedrick, Wisdom of Jesus, 42-43 (household codes).
3See the note to 1 Tim 2:15 in the New Living Translation, for example.
4The name Phoebe is feminine while the word deacon is masculine, suggesting that Phoebe was not a deaconess, but worked among the male deacons.
5Note that one of the spirit-endowed positions that "God appointed" in the gatherings was that of "helper," 1 Cor 14:28.
6This husband-wife team is mentioned several other times in the New Testament: Acts 18:2, 18, 26; 1 Cor 16:19; 2 Tim 4:19.
7See Eldon Epp, Junia the First Woman Apostle (Augsburg/Fortress, 2005).

Monday, September 10, 2018

Can All Bible Translations be Trusted?

Perhaps; it depends on what goes on in the translation process before the translation is published. Let's take one example.

One Sunday morning in Baptist Bible study our study group encountered a problem with the translation of 2nd Samuel 22:27. When the instructor read the passage in the NIV translation, it was:

To the pure you [i.e., the LORD] show yourself pure, but to the crooked you show yourself shrewd.

I objected that my translation, in the RSV, read differently:

With the pure thou dost show thyself pure and with the crooked thou dost show thyself perverse.

Surely there is some mistake here! Shrewd and perverse are about as far apart in content as words can be. There are several dictionary meanings of shrewd, but the one we generally think of is the following: shrewd is "marked by clever discerning awareness and hard-headed acumen." Perverse carries the idea of the following: "obstinate in opposing what is right, reasonable, or accepted." So why are the two translations so different and opposed to one another?

In the Hebrew text of the passage the first italicized word in the translations of 1 Sam 22:27 above is 'qsh and the root of the second italicized word is thought to be a corrupted verbal form of ptl. What actually appears in the Hebrew text for this second word, however, is described by the Hebrew Lexicon1 as an impossible Hebrew verbal form, and the lexicon adopts the parallel reading in Psalm 18:27 to replace the corrupted verbal form in 1 Sam 22:27, whose root is ptl.2

For the first word crooked (an adjective) the Hebrew lexicon provides a translation of "twisted or perverted." Oddly the Kittel edition of the Hebrew Bible leaves the corrupted form of the second word (a verb) in the text rather than emending it, and in a footnote gives the supposed correct reading (a form of ptl) taken from Psalm 18:27.3 The Hebrew Lexicon translates ptl as "to twist" and offers this translation for 2nd Sam 22:27: "with the twisted thou dost deal tortuously." Proverbs 8:8 uses both words: "All the words of my mouth [says the LORD] are righteous; there is nothing twisted (ptl ) or crooked ('qsh) in them."

The earliest translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, translates the verse this way: "and with the crooked you are perverse" (strebloũ/ streblōthēsē).

Here are a few of some other modern translations to demonstrate how differently the two words have been translated into English:

Translation                          1st word 'qsh            2nd word ptl
New American Bible:          1. crooked         2. you are astute
An American Translation:  1. crooked         2. you act craftily
Moffatt:                                  1. treacherous  2. you prove treacherous
New World Translation:     1. crooked        2. you act silly
New English Bible:              1. perverse       2. you show self tortuous
KJV:                                        1. froward       2. you show self unsavory
Douay:                                   1. perverse      2. you will be perverted
Masoretic Text:                     1. crooked       2. you show self subtle
Living Bible:4                        1. evil               2. you destroy the evil
New Living Translation:5   1. wicked        2. you show self hostile
American Standard:            1. perverse      2. you show self froward
Today's English Version:   1. wicked         2. you are hostile

            The problem of corrupted verbal forms in biblical texts is one of those niggling difficulties in the Bible of which most people are unaware. It is an annoying little thread that if pulled at persistently enough, along with the Bible's many other loose threads, tends to unravel any personal authority that the Bible may have once held. The particular little thread of 2nd Sam 22:27 is one of those things that may reasonably be described as one of the aspects of the Bible's "infrastructure."6 Infrastructure issues deal with such things as the ancient languages in which the biblical texts were originally written, the theory and practice of translation, early fragmentary papyrus and vellum manuscripts on which biblical texts were first written, scribal practices and proclivities of a particular scribal hand, the linguistic instability of ancient texts in transmission, textual criticism issues surrounding the identification of the earliest reliable form of a text and how that text might relate to the original author's copy. It is little wonder that most readers are not familiar with such issues, since they require specialized knowledge. The resolution of infrastructure problems is one of the things that must be resolved before Bible translations are published. The personal cost of being able to work competently with infrastructure issues is high indeed, in terms of numbers of years of study required and experience.

Translators of the Bible are only human. The quality of their product is defined and/or limited by their years of training, technical knowledge, and practiced skill. Throughout the process, however, the translation is subtly influenced by the intensity of a translator's personal religious allegiances and the objectivity with which they work. Can we trust Bible translators? Perhaps; but if you do you should always verify—that is, if you cannot read Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, always read the biblical text in several different translations. That practice may cast light on the reliability of your preferred translation.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

1Brown, Driver, and Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon (reprint with corrections, 1968), 786, 836.
2Second Samuel 22:2-51 is also preserved in Psalm 18.
3R. Kittel, Biblia Hebraica, 495.
4The Living Bible is not a translation but a paraphrase that was made from the American Standard Version of 1901 by Kenneth N. Taylor, an American publisher and author.
5This translation began as a revision of the Living Bible but became instead another translation from the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.
6That is to say "the underlying foundation or basic framework" of the Bible.