What are your thoughts on Canon Michael Green's translation ‘wives’ in 1 Corinthians 14:34?
This text is from an article written by David Gooding in 1986.
Let us start once more from the basic linguistic facts: the Greek word gynē can mean 'woman' or 'wife', and the Greek word anēr can mean 'man', i.e. male, or it can mean 'husband'. It is a moot point, therefore, whether 'their own andras' should be translated 'their own husbands' or 'their own menfolk'. Canon Green argues that the context makes it perfectly plain that the phrase should be translated 'their husbands'. (Editor's note: This argument is made in Freed to Serve, Hodder & Stoughton, 1988). And he may be right, for most translators agree with him.
But when on this basis he says 'Notice that in 1 Corinthians 14:34 he is speaking to wives, not women in general', he does not go on to tell us, as far as I can see, what inference he would have us draw from this. In his next paragraph, he first gives us what he feels is the background to Paul's exhortation in 1 Corinthians 14:34–38: 'Christian families from a Jewish background . . . would always have been separated in the synagogue: the women would have been put in the gallery'. He cannot mean, and of course he doesn't, that this applied only to married women and not to girls, unmarried women, and widows. It applied, as we know, to all women, married and unmarried and widows alike.
Next, he comments on what he thinks the different situation in the Christian churches would have been: 'Men and women mix in the assembly for worship. And the women, who had been kept down for so long, now begin to assert themselves, particularly in asking questions.' Then is this the point at which we are meant to apply Canon Green's earlier observation that Paul is writing about wives and not women in general? Was it only married women and not unmarried women who started asserting themselves and asking questions? Our own experience of life would hardly suggest that if the married women began asking questions, the unmarried women would have kept silent.
Finally, Canon Green tells us about the trouble which, as he sees it, this asking of questions caused, and how Paul put a stop to it: this brings disorder and delay in the worship, so Paul bids them keep silent with their chatter in church and ask 'their husbands at home'.
From the last four words, 'their husbands at home', it seems that this is the place where Canon Green wants us to apply his earlier observation. Paul is forbidding the married women to ask questions and to chatter. But, again, I ask what he means us to infer from this interpretation. He cannot mean, can he, that it was only the married women who were forbidden to ask questions and chatter, while the unmarried and the widows were allowed to continue to ask questions and to chatter? So, what then is the point of his earlier contention that Paul is 'speaking to wives, not women, in general'? I have to confess I cannot see it.
If we look at 1 Timothy 2, as Canon Green does in his next paragraph—and rightly so, since the subject matter is similar—we find Paul saying in verse 8, 'I will therefore that the andras pray in every place . . .' (1 Timothy 2:8). The same question arises: how shall we translate andras? Later verses in this context talk of Adam and Eve, and childbearing. Shall we argue, then, that this context demands that andras should not be allowed its wider meaning, 'males—whether married, unmarried or widowers', but only its narrower meaning, 'husbands'? Only husbands are to pray? No, surely that would be false.
Why then insist on this narrower meaning for 1 Corinthians 14:35? In Greek the sequence, 'Let the women keep silent in the churches . . . Let them ask their own men-folk at home' could apply equally well to the unmarried as to the married. What, I ask, is the point of restricting it in English to 'wives' and 'husbands'?
Canon Green's difficulty in 1 Corinthians 14 arises from his conviction that 1 Corinthians 11:5 necessarily implies that women were allowed to pray and prophesy in church; and so, if 1 Corinthians 14 is taken at its face value, to say that in church women should keep silent, there arises a contradiction. For my part, I would hold that, while women certainly prayed and prophesied, they did not do so in church; and so there is no contradiction between chapters 11 and 14. (I forbear giving my reasons here, for my answer is already unforgivably long.)
What troubles me about the way Canon Green tries to resolve this apparent contradiction is that, all unintentionally, he offers a gratuitous insult to women. He adopts the old suggestion that women were (and are) given to chattering in church just as they were (and are) given to chattering in Jewish synagogues; and that Paul was not concerned to stop women praying and prophesying in church. According to Canon Green, Paul's command, 'Let the women keep silent in the church' means simply, 'Let them stop chattering'.
But if it was chattering that Paul was concerned to stop, why did he pick on women and not on men as well? Was it only women and not men that were guilty of chattering? The last time I attended our local Jewish synagogue, all the men sitting around were busily discussing their business, holidays, etc., even during the reading of the Law. Why should we gratuitously assume that, in the ancient world, it was only the women and not the men who needed to be told that chattering was out of place in church?
One final point should be made. Canon Green suggests that the Greek word authentein in 1 Timothy 2:12, normally translated 'to have authority over', should be understood as carrying two meanings, one of which has to do with eroticism while the other signifies murder. He later points out very fairly that 'it is not possible to demonstrate that this is the correct interpretation of this difficult passage'.
Certainly, if we consult the lexicographers, Moulton and Milligan (The Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament, p. 91), we find a very different explanation. There were apparently two Greek verbs authentein. They were homonyms; that is, they had the same sound and spelling, but different origins and meaning (like, for example, in English 'to cleave = to split' and 'to cleave = to stick'). The one word, authentein, meant 'to murder', the other meant 'to master, be lord of'.
Now when we today use a homonymous word, like 'cleave', we do not normally intend simultaneously to convey the meanings of both homonyms (e.g. both 'to split' and 'to stick') rolled into one. On any one occasion, we normally intend to convey the meaning of only one of the homonyms. In 1 Timothy 2:12, Paul is hardly intending to say 'I permit not a woman to teach nor to murder a man'. He must be using the other homonym: '. . . nor to exercise authority over a man'.
What a fearfully long answer! And how I would have preferred to dwell on the all-important ministries that the New Testament does encourage women to engage in, rather than on those few that it withholds from them. But then, I had to answer the question which you asked.
