AUQENTEIN
Pete Phillips (p.m.phillips@cliff.shef.ac.uk)
Mon, 18 May 1998 08:55:54 +0100
I was with Howard Marshall from Aberdeen last week and he led a small group of us in a discussion on this actual passage. He talked of how the context has to be determinative of meaning - he would as an arch-defender of the historical-critical method. Howard made some interesting points however - e.g. if we cannot accept the literal interpretation of "a woman must be silent" (cf. the host of references to women praying and prophesying, teaching other women, leading churches, hosting house churches, being an apostle [see the archives on JUNIA] and all of that) because to do so would demand that Paul is contradicting himself, then clearly any assumption that AUQENTEIN must be interpreted literally must also be dismissed.
Howard interprets the whole verse in the light of the error in Ephesus at the time. He suggests that certain were under the belief that they should abandon their families and that their salvation depended on teaching their gospel. This meant imposing their teaching on men (and other women) in Ephesus and so it was the fact that their teaching was wrong in method and content that was wrong rather than that they were teaching per se. Get it??? If not read Howard's commentaries.
Isn't it funny how no woman has offered her perspective on this verse. We are still a male-dominated academia - even in the global village of the internet!
Pete Phillips,
Lecturer in NT,
Cliff College, Calver, Derbyshire, UK
Tel: 01246 582321
Fax: 01246 583739
http://champness.shef.ac.uk/