1 Corinthians 14:33b-37 (Wrapping Up)

“Silent”

The word used for silence in 1 Tim 2:11-15 is hesuchios, meaning “in quietness” and is much more about demeanor than the actual absence of speech. But in 1 Cor 14:33b-37, Paul uses sigao — a very different word, but a word he used previously regarding prophets and tongue-speakers. And most English translations conceal this (although the ESV does not).

(1Co 14:27-35 ESV) 27 If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn, and let someone interpret.  28 But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent [sigao] in church and speak to himself and to God.  

29 Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said.  30 If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent [sigao].  31 For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged,  32 and the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets.  33 For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.

As in all the churches of the saints,  34 the women should keep silent [sigao] in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. 35 If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

Notice the parallelism. Surely Paul means sigao regarding women in much the same sense as he uses sigao with regard to tongue speakers and prophecies. And in those passages, sigao doesn’t mean “don’t speak in church at all” but “stop speaking, to let someone else have a turn.” I have elsewhere gone through every occurrence of sigao in the NT, and it’s typically used in just this sense. And so when women are to stop speaking is when they feel the urge to ask questions of a man — someone else’s husband — who is speaking.

In the modern church, in the “public” assembly, we don’t allow women ask questions either. Nor do we let men. In the Western world, it would be rude to interrupt and ask questions of the person in the pulpit. It’s who we are. But this is not how the First Century synagogue operated. The person in the Moses Seat reading and commenting on the scriptures was often subjected to questioning from the audience. The Greek style of Socratic instruction was popular in the Jewish diaspora, and the Jews culturally believed in teaching and learning through questions — as we see in countless recorded teaching sessions by Jesus. Jesus’ students did not hesitate to pose questions, because that was how rabbis traditionally taught.

So a number of commentators take Paul to be banning women from questioning the speaker — not from speaking at all. And this interpretation has the advantage of being consistent in the first half of chapter 11, where women pray and prophesy in the assembly.

Is Paul quoting the Corinthians?

Several posts ago, I referred to the writing of Lucy Peppiatt, who suggests in Women and Worship at Corinth: Paul’s Rhetorical Arguments in 1 Corinthians that, just as is true in several other passages in 1 Cor, Paul is quoting the Corinthian church late in chapter 14, with the italicized text being from the church, not Paul —

As in all the churches of the saints,  34 women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says.  35 If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.  36 Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only ones it has reached?

In a follow up article in his Jesus Creed blog, Scot McKnight summarizes the similarities between this passage and other passages in 1 Cor where most translators consider the text to be from the church and not from Paul (the indented material is from Peppiatt; the numbered sections and text flush with left margin is McKnight’s) —
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1. The confusion of the texts.

Making sense of these passages for any reader, scholar or otherwise, is hugely challenging, and they absorb the commentators with their exegetical possibilities and puzzles. They are riddled with inconsistencies, contradictions, and confust ing messages and are marked by serious textual and exegetical problems. Yet, despite a plethora of problems with the text, theologians, biblical scholars, and churchmen and women alike continue to hold doggedly to the notion that these verses in their entirety reflect Pauls views. The bewildering corollary to this is that those who hold these views begin by admitting their own and everyone else’s inability to make sense of the passage under consideration, then go on to outline the astonishing array of interpretations of the terms used within the passage, before finally offering their own interpretation of how it might possibly be read as a coherent whole (5).

Others give up trying to make sense of Paul and simply state that he must have been confused himself, and still others—in relation to the women passages—just accept (either cheerfully or disgustedly) that Paul was blatantly patriarchal or possibly just a misogynist (5).

2. Paul’s overall message to the Corinthians. [The principle here is theological vision and consistency and coherency.]

… the call to Christlikeness should be lived out by taking the lower part and preferring others (6).

In the light of these observations, we need to be clear, therefore, about what precisely Paul might be saying in chapter 11, for example, if we think that he is now suddenly concerned with establishing or maintaining boundaries based on the glory of men to guard both men and women from “shame” in worship. S Similarly, we need to give coherent reasons for why he encourages women to pray and prophesy in public worship while simultaneously telling them to be silent. These are some of the themes that emerge in this book (6).

3. Paul’s wider thought. [Eschatological inauguration in the here and now.]

My premise, therefore, is that Paul’s eschatology not developed as a longed-for future hope to be realized with the return of Christ, but that the coming of Christ into the world, and the gift of the Spirit, has already radically changed human relations in the here and now (7).

4. A discernible pattern.

The first is the obvious “breaks” in the text where we know that there is a shift in thinking, or where Paul appears to be contradicting himself. The second is the use of the rhetorical question (8).

5. Where the logic leads… If we follow the logic of these passages, where do we end up? Do we end up where Paul says we should? or at something like Colossians 3:11 or Galatians 3:28?

6. Historical reconstructions. Peppiatt’s honesty is admirable: her work, like everyone else’s, requires some historical reconstruction, and is not full of certainty.

So although we may not shy away from the study of historical data and the process of historical reconstruction, we need to handle historical reconstructions judiciously on the grounds that there is a substantial amount of speculation, prejudice, wish fulfillment, and subjectivity involved in reconstructing the situation in Corinth.

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It’s a very interesting theory I’m still studying on.

At the very least, the following points have to be conceded by even the most traditional readers —

Public/private

We refer to our assemblies as “public” and classes as “private” in the context of this passage, so that we may allow our women to ask questions in classes — as essential to learning. But when we’re talking about 1 Tim 2:11-15, when it comes to leadership, we treat our classes as “public” so that women are not allowed to teach in classes but may teach in “private” to justify Priscilla teaching Apollos.

The public/private distinction is nonsense. In the First Century church, they all met in houses and teaching was often (in all likelihood, nearly always) in private houses because the church often was banned from any public place.

Moreover, if “the Law” bans women from speaking in the Christian assembly, why not in other circumstances? How on earth do we limit the supposed authority of men over women to the assembly, and then have one set of rules for classes and another for the assembly? Aren’t both just as advertised to the public and just as public?

Just the assembly?

From maybe the Third Century until the early 20th Century, the Christian church routinely treated the prohibition on female leadership to apply in the workplace. It was only after World War II that we began seeing women routinely accepted as bosses over men in the secular workplace — and the Christian bulletins and periodicals were adamantly opposed to the change. And yet society shifted, and the church shifted, retreating to apply the rule of “male spiritual leadership” only in church and Christian nonprofits.

Women increasingly took on leadership roles in the secular world, so much so that the old rule was entirely forgotten — even by the most traditional of traditionalists. No one wanted their wives to give up their clearly deserved promotions — or higher pay.

But if the justification for these rules in 1 Cor 14 and 1 Tim 2 is “the Law,” well the Law says NOTHING about the Christian assembly and Christian nonprofits. The relationship of men with women created in Gen 2 is universal and eternal — and the goal of the church should be to expand the range of obedience to God’s will, not to contract it.

But we are unwilling to live the traditional interpretation, because once we get away from passing communion trays and speaking behind a pulpit, deep in our bones, with groanings too deep for words, we feel the desire to flee the corruption of Gen 3:16 and to treat our mothers, wives, and daughters as equally entitled to speak and to lead — depending on their giftedness. In fact, every one of us would take deep offense if someone tried to treat the women in our lives in a secular setting the way we treat them in church.

And that should tell us something.