Re: GUNH EN HSUCIA -- 1Ti 2.11

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu Jan 11 1996 - 14:48:09 EST


At 5:38 AM 1/11/96, Shaughn Daniel wrote:
>I need interaction on this stuff please.

You may get more than you bargained for!

>1. Does it contradict Paul's teaching in 1Co where women apparently can
>prophecy and pray with their heads covered?

Yes, I think it does. It also, in my opinion, contradicts Paul's teaching
in Galatians 3:28. I am voicing ONLY my own OPINION (although there are
others who share it) here, but I seriously doubt Paul wrote 1 Timothy (or 2
Tim or Titus); I think it's deutero-Pauline and that these pastoral
epistles definitely reflect the period when the church is becoming more
institutionalized and losing its revolutionary moral edge--is assimilating
more to the norms of society around it, including late-1st-century
hierarchical attitudes.

>2. Is prophecying different from DIDASKEIN? (see 1Ti 2.12).

Yes, I believe that it is.

>3. What do you think of this rendering of v. 11? "But I do not allow women
>to teach IN A WAY THAT (OUDE) they exercise authority over men, but to be
>in submission (EN HSUCIA)"

I don't really think this is kosher, although it is perhaps a matter of
interpretation. I'd take it as, "But I do not allow women to teach nor (for
that matter) to exercise a position of authority over males at all, but (I
require them) to keep still.

>4. Can EN HSUCIA mean something like "to have a quiet manner", etc.,
>without implying that they are not allowed to teach at all?

That's possible, although personally I rather doubt it; fundamentally it
means "at peace," "calm." In older Greek, hHSUCIA is close to being a
virtue in its own right; there is an ode of Pindar that begins: "FILOFRON
hHSUCIA." It is Pythian 8, probably the last and, for my money, the
greatest of Pindar's poems expressing the Greek tragic sense of life. In
Thucydides it seems to characterize Spartan foreign policy as "quietism"--a
slowness to respond to provocation--as opposed to Athenian foreign policy
characterized as POLUPRAGMOSUNH, or "meddling in other people's business."
It's in that exchange of speeches in Book 1 where the Spartans hear
speeches by Corinthians and Athenians and then decide to make way against
Athens. So in this exchange hHSUCIA comes to be a moral equivalent of
SWFROSUNH, in the sense of "minding one's own business" (pretty much what
DIKAIOSUNH turns out to be in Plato's Republic, when finally defined as TO
TA hEAUTOU PRATTEIN TE KAI ECEIN). Perhaps I am reading too much from Attic
usage into it, but I'm inclined to think that the sense in of EN hHSUCIAi
in 1 Tim 11 turns out to be pretty much "but to mind their own business."

I would hope that we don't get carried away into discussion of the question
of contradiction of Paul's views elsewhere here: we're not going to agree
on that matter at all; the more significant question to resolve at this
point, I think, is what can the Greek of this verse legitimately be said to
mean?

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:37:35 EDT