Women in the Church (Third Edition)

An Interpretation and Application of 1 Timothy 2:9-15

Andreas J. Köstenberger, Thomas R. Schreiner

• Publisher: Crossway
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781433549649
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Studi biblici

The role of women in the church is more hotly debated today than ever. Christians on all sides of the issue often turn to the apostle Paul's words in 1 Timothy to justify their position, arguing over the meaning and application of this challenging passage. Now in its third edition, this classic exposition of 1 Timothy 2: 9–15 includes contributionsby Thomas Schreiner, Andreas Köstenberger, Robert Yarbrough, Rosaria Butterfield, and others, walking readers through the biblical text with careful exegesis, sound reasoning, and a keen awareness of the implications for men and women in the church. Academically rigorous yet pastorally sensitive, this book offers Christians a helpful overview of Paul's teaching related to how men and women are to relate to one another when it comes to authoritative teaching in the local church. Includes a new preface, a new conclusion, four updated chapters, and two all-new chapters.

1

A Foreign World

Ephesus in the First Century

S. M. Baugh

In the twenty years since the first version of this essay appeared, a handful of general studies related to the Ephesian historical background of the New Testament have appeared.1 And some other studies of 1 Timothy 2:9–15 have also been published that make at least some reference to background material.2

The two earlier versions of this essay had focused on presenting an overview of the society of Ephesus, particularly in contrast with certain popular presentations of this city, as relevant background to 1 Timothy 2:9–15 (its Sitz im Leben). This exploration had arisen not long after I intensively studied the city of Ephesus in the Pauline period from every ancient source available—literary, epigraphic (inscriptions), archaeological, numismatic (coins), and so forth—as well as from relevant secondary works.3 I have subsequently kept an eye on Ephesus, even though my teaching duties and interests have led me into other areas of New Testament studies.

The inscriptions from Ephesus are particularly valuable historical sources, and we possess an amazing wealth of them in Greek and Latin (some six thousand) from this city alone. The Österreichisches Archäologisches Institut (Austrian Archeological Institute) in Vienna has spearheaded excavation of this area for over a century. On epigraphy, one of the more prominent ancient historians writes, “Though we must always be conscious of how much inscriptions will not tell us . . . it is still the case that inscriptions, read in bulk, provide the most direct access which we can have to the life, social structure, thought and values of the ancient world.”4

Hence, while the earlier forms of this essay provided much technical information, I have revised this version to make the subject matter clearer to the nonspecialist in ancient history and classical studies by trimming the bulk of the footnote references to secondary literature. At the same time, I cite ancient sources fully. The design of the essay is to begin with some methodological clarifications and then to move to general observations on Ephesian social institutions. After that, we will narrow in on points that illuminate the historical background of 1 Timothy 2 to help us exegete it accurately.5

When analyzing any past culture, historians distinguish between the role and influence of individuals and the fundamental role of political, social, cultural, and religious institutions in the place and time of study. Individuals are interesting and may have some historical effect, but institutions give distinctive shape to any people and place, much like bone structure shapes a person’s body. People come and go, but institutions are preserved and propagated through the generations with only slow incremental changes over time, absent a revolution of some sort where individual leaders (like Augustus) may make permanent, radical changes to institutions. Unfortunately, some scholars overlook this focus on institutions when discussing the historical background of 1 Timothy 2:9–15 or other biblical passages.

In light of the focus on institutions, it is important to stress that the same powerful individuals and groups normally controlled all the various institutions of the period we are discussing. For example, the Roman emperors obviously dominated politics in the Mediterranean world, but they also often engaged in legislative attempts to regulate Roman families and served as the pontifex maximus (“Supreme Priest”) of Rome. Hence they played sometimes central roles not only in the political institutions but also in the social and religious institutions of the early imperial period.

The time frame of our discussion is the early to mid-AD 60s, when 1 Timothy was most probably written.6 While any ancient historian knows that we must sift through evidence from other periods to illuminate a very narrow time frame like this, we can only safely use some such evidence while other such evidence requires serious qualifications. We will return to this caveat again when we look at second- and third-century Ephesus below, whose evidence must be scrutinized very carefully if it is to bear any relevance for mid-first-century Ephesus.7

Historical Sketch

Ephesus, along with other colonies, was founded on the west coast of modern Turkey by Greek adventurers roughly around the time of the Israelite judges. The physical setting for ancient Ephesus was highly favorable, especially for commerce. It had a natural harbor nearby for overseas trade, and a royal road up the nearby Maeander River valley connected the city inland with important routes for eastern passage and trade.

Some myths have it that mythical female warriors (“Amazons”) originally founded Ephesus (Strabo, Geogr. 11.5.4; Pausanias, Descr. 7.4–5), yet the Ephesians themselves officially ascribed the foundation of their city to a Greek hero named Androclus. An oracle directed him to establish the city at the site where he killed a boar while hunting (Strabo, Geogr. 14.1.3, 21; Pliny the Elder, Nat. 5.115). The Ephesians called Androclus “the creator of our city” (IvE 501) and celebrated the city’s foundation annually as “Androclus day” (IvE 644). They also featured him on their coins.

Ephesus’s cultural heritage was Greek. Yet from the time King Croesus of Lydia captured it in the sixth century BC, Ephesus never enjoyed independence from foreign domination. Croesus, Cyrus, Darius, Athens, Sparta, Alexander, Lysimachus, the Seleucids, the Attalids, Mithridates, and finally the Romans all captured or controlled Ephesus in their turns. The city’s political life was dominated by kings, tyrants, satraps, bureaucrats, and proconsuls. As a result, Ephesus’s mood was pragmatic and politically accommodating. “All is in flux” was the famous dictum of the Ephesian philosopher Heraclitus, well expressing the city’s adaptability to changing political climates. At the time of Paul, the political climate was Roman, and the Ephesians showed a persistent interest in retaining and reviving ancestral Ephesian laws and customs where they could within the broad constraints of Roman rule.8

Ephesus had suffered terrible economic and political turmoil in the first century BC. During the final civil war of the Roman republic, Mark Antony had selected Ephesus as one of his main headquarters, and while there, he pillaged Ephesus and the temple of Artemis Ephesia (the Artemisium) of money, materiel, and manpower: “[H]e stripped many noble families of their property and gave it away to rogues and flatterers” (Plutarch, Ant. 24).9 But then Octavian (Augustus) defeated Antony in the naval battle at Actium in 31 BC, which paved the way for the imperial revolution. Ephesus held its breath as Augustus consolidated his power. Would he punish the city with crushing penalties since it had supported Antony? In fact, Augustus treated Ephesus favorably, even confirming its position as the judicial and financial capital of the Roman province.

Ephesus, however, did not grow and prosper overnight. Although the wealth of Ephesus enjoyed a broad base (banking, fishing, agricultural products, commerce, slaves), the city had a fundamentally agrarian economy, like all in antiquity, which could not grow instantly.10 The city also suffered a setback in AD 23 when a major earthquake caused serious damage to some public buildings that had to be rebuilt or replaced through private donations. This took time.

Yet the Roman peace was starting to pay off in the middle of the first century. Paul stepped into a city well on its way to eclipsing its old rivals Miletus, Smyrna, and Pergamum as “the greatest and first metropolis of Asia” (IvE 22 et al.). With a population somewhere around one hundred thousand people and growing even more in the next century, Ephesus eventually was on a path to become one of the largest and most important cities in the empire, next to Rome.11

But we need to highlight one more political issue. In the early part of the AD 60s, when 1 Timothy was written, the Roman Empire was not as secure as may sometimes appear from our vantage point, knowing how things turned out.

In AD 54, Nero succeeded his adoptive father, the Emperor Claudius, largely through the influence of his mother, Julia Agrippina (“the Younger”; AD 15–59). He was seventeen years old, and Agrippina expected to control her young son and to significantly influence imperial affa...