Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1146: Biblical Languages, Linguistics, and Husbands being the "Head" of their Wives (Eph 5:23): Dr. Kevin Grasso

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

Dr. Kevin Grasso (Ph.D. Hebrew University) lives in the Atlanta area and is the founder of Biblingo: an innovative and effective way to actually learn biblical Greek and Hebrew. Dr. Grasso is a biblical scholar, author, linguist, and a husband and father of 4. In the academic space, he applies theoretical linguistics to exegetical problems, such as the pistis Christou phrase and the interpretation of the Shema, and he tries to figure out what Paul said, especially about the messiah, law, faith, and justification. For Biblingo, he primarily writes content (he is currently working on Greek and Hebrew textbooks to be paired with the app) in addition to doing all the things that entrepreneurs do to run a business. The first half of our podcast conversation focuses on learning biblical languages and the second half focuses on the meaning of kephale ("head") in Eph 5:23, where Paul says that husbands are "head" of their wives. Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Okay, friends, we are having our third ever Exiles in Babylon conference, April 18th through the 20th in Boise, Idaho. You can attend virtually or attend live. Space is filling up. So if you do want to attend live, I would highly recommend registering sooner than later at theologyintheraw.com. That's theologyintheraw.com. We are going to tackle a bunch of really important and tough topics. We're going to talk about deconstruction, reconstruction, and the gospel. Why are people deconstructing from their former evangelical faith? We have Abigail Favali, Amin Hudson, Tim Whitaker from the New Evangelicals, and Evan Wickham, who are going to be dialoguing about that topic. We also are going to cover the extremely important and very sensitive topic of women, power, and abuse in the church.

We have Julie Slattery, Sandy Richter, Tiffany Bloom, Laurie Krieg addressing that super important topic. We're also going to tackle LGBTQ people and the church with Greg Coles, Brenna Blaine, Art Perea, and Kat LaPreri. And we're also, of course, going to tackle politics, three Christian views of politics, where we're going to have a left-leaning Christian, a right-leaning Christian, and a non-leaning and a Baptist-ish Christian, uh, who are going to, we're going to put them in dialogue together and, and, and hash some things out. So we have Brian Zahn representing that middle or non-position or whatever, uh, Chris Butler, left-leaning Christian, Joy Mosley, right-leaning Christian. We're also going to have Max Licato there. We're going to have a joint podcast with Amin Hudson from the Southside Rabbi podcast, along with YouTube

sensation Ruslan. And of course, we're going to have street hymns there throughout the conference, making everybody uncomfortable. Oh yeah. And of course, I worship with Evan Wickham and Tanika Wyatt. I cannot wait. This is going to be a barn burner, folks. I am working extremely hard to get canceled this year. So this might be the last. It won't be. Well, who knows? We'll see. Yeah, it's going to be engaging. It's going to be, I think, helpful and profitable and uncomfortable and encouraging and challenging and convicting and all those fun things. So go to theologyintheraw.com. Register sooner than later. That's theologyintheraw.com. I will see you in April. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in Ra. My guest today is Dr. Kevin

Grasso, who has a PhD from Hebrew University and is really a profound expert in the biblical languages, as you will hear. He is a linguist and a biblical scholar. And I came across Kevin's work fairly recently as he was interacting with some blogs I was writing on the Greek word kephale. And he helped me understand from a linguist point of view, some of the categories that I was working with and getting wrong. He so graciously reached out and offered some help. We've had a lengthy kind of back and forth learning relationship where I'm learning from him as a linguist about a lot of things related to the New Testament. Anyway, Kevin is also the founder and creator of Biblingo.

It's a program that uses proven methods of learning languages that are often not applied to learning biblical languages, and he applies them to learning biblical languages. So I would highly recommend this resource. I've advertised it on the show before. I wanted to have him come on the show to talk primarily about linguistics, but also about Biblio and also the Greek word kephale. So the first half of this conversation is going to be a bit nerdy. We're going to get into some scholarly stuff about the biblical languages. And he does talk briefly about biblingo, but then we spend the last half of this podcast conversation talking about Ephesians 5, the Greek word kephale. What does it mean that a husband is the head of his wife?

What does it mean that a husband is the head of his wife? And what does mutual submission mean in Ephesians 5.22? How does that relate to the rest of the passage as a whole? So if some of you are not really into linguistics or the biblical languages at the beginning, hopefully you will be by the end of that first half of the conversation. But if you are listening to this podcast because you really want to get to the nitty-gritty of Ephesians 5 and women and the relationship between husband and wife and so on and so forth, then that does come in the latter half of this episode. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Dr. Kevin Grasser. Kevin, thanks so much for being on Theology Raw for the first time. Thanks a lot.

It's quite an honor and a pleasure. So we connected recently over questions about linguistics. Yeah, we have an interesting history that i some of it i i you have reminded me of uh but let's um yeah let's go back and and how did you get into academics and uh specifically becoming passionate about the field of linguistics and yeah just give us a little bit back on who you are what you do yeah actually it is funny i um so i went and toured eternity Bible college when you were there and sat in on one of your classes and at the time, and still really to this day, I was wrestling with this question of like, what does it really mean to follow Jesus? And, um, you know, a big part of that has always been

like justification by faith and like, what does, how does that interface with, you know, some of the things that Jesus says about just like, take up your cross and follow me? You know, it's like, and there are really, in a lot of ways, these kind of competing narratives, it feels like in the way some people are reading Paul and some people are reading Jesus. And so I've always wrestled with this sort of like very foundational question. And early on, I just realized that a lot of the debates that were taking place were really at the end of the day about like what these Greek and Hebrew words meant. And for me,

I felt like, how can I engage like thoughtfully with these people who are debating what this Greek word means in this particular context without knowing Greek and Hebrew. And so that kind of led me down this path of, you know, eventually linguistics. And, you know, I then took a step back and said, I really would want a theory of meaning to apply to Greek and Hebrew before, you know, getting into the languages. So that led me eventually to linguistics, to diving into Greek and Hebrew as, you know, as much as I could, let me eventually to linguistics to diving into Greek and Hebrew as, you know, as much as I could really to answer these kinds of like big picture questions of,

um, yeah, like how, how do we live out the Christian life? I mean, it's a, you know, it's a very like foundational thing.

Um, but I, but I think it's really an answering that question. Well, that yeah, the, the church would be edified. Um,

and I think it's when we get away from those basic questions, uh, we, yeah, the church would be edified. And I think it's when we get away from those basic questions, we, yeah, just tend to argue about things that don't matter quite as much. So that would be my. Did you always, were you always, did you feel like you had a good knack for learning the biblical languages? Was that a struggle for you or was it something that just you just enjoyed and so it came more natural to you yeah so i i did my phd in in israel when i got there i um i had read through about like half of the old testament in hebrew and i was like at the time i was um you know like doing i would usually bring my greek and hebrew bible to church with me and that's what i would read that so people would look at me and they say oh man like you're like pretty good at the languages and like in a seminary context i would like stand out as someone who is you know like a little bit better

but once i got to israel it was like oh i don't know anything about these languages so so yeah i i started there um actually taking a class with the Biblical Language Center with Randall Booth, like an immersive Biblical Hebrew class. He does like a living, he teaches Biblical Hebrew as like a living language, right? Right. You almost learn how to speak Biblical Hebrew, which is, is that correct? Yep. So I did that for a month. And then I went to the Polis Institute.

And they do the same thing, but they do it for basically two years for greek and hebrew for biblical greek and biblical hebrew so i was in this immersive context where we would spend the entire class you know in biblical hebrew talking in biblical hebrew reading the text in biblical hebrew right it's just all um and so you just realize very quickly yeah there's just a level a level of fluency in the language that I had not attained. I hadn't even seen, right? And so that really was the foundation of where I am today, of how to read the text like a real text, like a real language. Did you spend more time in Greek or Hebrew or both? I think Hebrew.

Yeah, I really,? I think Hebrew. Yeah, I really, so definitely modern Hebrew. Like, I mean, I've spent the most time in modern Hebrew because I had to take six levels at Hebrew University and basically pass the Pator, which is like exemption from any more study. And my classes were in Hebrew and all that stuff. And so, yeah, i spent the most time there um and then at the police institute i probably did more greek actually than than hebrew

um so i i like to say that i don't discriminate try to just do do both as much as possible like can you so just to give me perspective and people that have studied greek this might make more sense but like could you pick up any book of the New Testament and even harder books, like say Hebrews or even maybe parts of Acts, like, and just read it pretty quickly without stumbling on a word? I mean. Yeah, for sure. what I tell people is really like, there's a difference between, um, fluency and like, um, breadth of knowledge. So like, for example, if I, if I'm like in Israel and, and, uh, like I can certainly listen to a lecture on, you know, second temple Judaism or in linguistics, like that's easy. But if you ask me to go talk to a, you know, some random person about politics,

I didn't take any classes on politics. So I don't, I, you would be giving me so many new words that I probably wouldn't be able to understand you. And so what learning that way does for you is it helps your fluency a lot, right? So there are definitely like, like I can just read, you know, certainly easier to middle medium text as if I'm reading English, right? That's easy. Um, are there, but are there going to be words in Hebrews that I like don't remember for sure. Right. Um, but, but you know, but I, because I can, can you know because i just have a broader vocabulary now

i can read through it pretty quickly and say okay here's that one word i'm gonna plug in so like you know i read through i was reading through the subtuagent last year um and i kind of got off track but i ended up reading like a thousand pages right of of greek um and so that like the way you can do that is if you just get you you have to get fast enough, right, of reading to just get through the material. And that's where I think most people just never get to that point. I remember, I think it was my first semester in my PhD program where there was a reading group that was reading through Philo. I never read through Philo. I don't think in English, let alone Greek at that time.

And I remember coming in, you know, I said, you know, I had several years of biblical Greek, whatever, and read, you know, chunks of the New Testament, you know, I'd never crack it up in Philo. And like, I'm looking at it like it's a different language. I'm like, this is, and then I remember our professor, the professor was leading the group, Peter Williams, who's like fluent in every language I've ever heard of. You know, he's uh, just so you know, this is like real Greek, you know? So it was at that moment when I stopped saying, I know people say, do you know Greek? And I used to say, Oh yeah, I know Greek. And then I'm like, no, like, do you know Greek? I'd say, nope, nope. No, no caveats, no foot, you know, like, Oh wait, did you take several years of Greek? Oh yeah. Yeah.

I took several years of Koine Greek and I could read the New Testament sort of, you know, possibly partly because I kind of know Koine Greek and partly because I kind of know the New Testament a lot better. But do I know Greek? No, I don't. Yeah. It was so hard. It was so incredibly hard. Yeah. I took a class on Philo at Hebrew U.

And it is like it is, you know, it's hard for everyone. But I do think that like, you know, so it've just been in it for forever, like there's going to be words you don't know. But like once we could get those words, like then we could read through it and understand it. Right. Quickly. Right. And I think that's the sort of like at some point you're just plugging in new words. It's kind of like an English. Right.

Like I'm not trying to get fluent in English, but I can't because I already am, but I can't read like a medical textbook and understand everything, right? I need, what I need is the vocabulary, right? But then because I'm fluent in the syntax and how English works, the grammar, I can just read through it once i have

that vocabulary right so that's that's what you know doing it this way will get you i had a practice you know and we can we can move on from languages for most of my audience that might not know or care but um i would uh the best way i i found with vocab was i'd take a stack of like you know maybe 50 greek word cards or whatever. And that's, I'd ride the elliptical machine because it's, you're not, you know, it's, you can kind of stay parallel and I'd flip the cards. And anytime I really knew a word right away, I would take it out of the stack so that I ended up focusing on the words that I didn't know really well. So 50 cards, I'd read through it. I'd be down to like 35 cards, read through it, you know, 25, read through it. And there would be still like four

or five words that I would just flip over and over. Cause I'd forget within seconds, I'd forget what they were, you know? Um, but, uh, yeah, I do that. But I honestly, like rather than flipping cards, I think the best thing is just reading over and over and over, just spending time just in, in the text, reading it rather than focusing so much on the grammar and memorizing words and everything. But anyway, I was not naturally good at learning the languages, but I was motivated because, yeah, the benefit. And all of a sudden, once you start getting a feel for it, you're like, oh, there's nuances here that you just, it's hard to translate. And it's just like, yeah, you just, that you just it's hard to translate and um and it's just like yeah you just i will know a passage in english inside and out but the second i really

read through it in greek i'm gonna be reading through a lot slower you know and i just start picking stuff up just from the text itself because i'm forced to go slower and really think through it yeah for sure can you tell us while we're on this uh tell us how what is bib lingo how or let's start how did you start it why did you start it and what is it because this is something we've advertised in the podcast it's it really is a as far as i could see a very unique and innovative and really effective way of learning the biblical languages so'd love to hear your part behind it. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, honestly it was originally, I, I did my master's in linguistics at a Wycliffe school in Dallas and I was going to, you know, be involved in the Bible translation world. So this was before Israel. And while I was there, I kind of was kind of was expecting like

these people to be like the best at Greek and Hebrew in the world. And they weren't. So I was kind of like puzzled by this. I was like, why are we like, why don't we have some sort of resource to teach people Greek and Hebrew? Like the way that these people are saying languages should be taught. And that was like the fundamental disconnect where they were saying, hey, when you go,

you know, to Papua New Guinea or whatever, and you are trying to learn a language, this is how you should learn a language, right? And so they were teaching these principles based on second language acquisition, this field in linguistics, that they were then not applying at all in the Greek and Hebrew classes. And at the same time, I was involved for a little bit in a project in Mexico, helping with this translation into, uh, Aztec language called Nahuatl. And basically the way they do translation, I don't know if you know this already, but basically they translate from a translation.

So they're translating from Spanish and they translate from there into Nahuatl and no one on the team knows Hebrew. So they're doing Old Testament. No one knows Hebrew. So they do Spanish Nahuatl and then they do nahuatl to English. And then I came in and checked that translation against the Hebrew. Right? So you can see, right?

They're, you know, you're looking at, I'm looking at a translation of a translation of a translation, trying to figure out if that matches the Hebrew. Right? figure out if that matches the Hebrew, right? So I was thinking, well, why, like if we have Rosetta Stone or Duolingo where everyone can learn English if they want to, why not create a resource where these translators can learn Greek and Hebrew, right? So that I don't need to come fly from North America to Mexico to check your translation of a translation of a translation. So that was the original idea. Create a resource where Bible translators and really anyone can just learn the language for themselves. So when I went to Israel, I realized like that's really the best place to do it. So I was in this sort of immersive environment at the Polis Institute, you know, taking Koine Greek classes in Koine Greek. And so what you would do is you would um you know taking koinon greek classes in koinon greek and so what you

would do is is you would you know um the teacher would stand up and you know they would like pick up an object and say that tuto has seen hudor you know and they you would see the the object in the world and you would hear the the greek right and and so what you would do is you would match, you know, the, the physical world to, to the Greek, you know, sentence. And that's basically how kids would have learned it, right? I mean, that's, that's, that's what they would have done. And so we basically took that same sort of idea and said, okay, how can we recreate this with technology that we have so that anyone can do it?

So we basically filmed like 2,500 of these videos. We wrote all these Greek and Hebrew sentences, filmed 2,500 of these videos, paired them up. And so now what you can do is you can have this same sort of experience, right? Where we have people dressed up like first century characters holding a first century cup and they say, and you can learn Greek as close as you can to what, you know, kids would have learned in first century Nazareth or whatever. So that was the basic idea. And obviously, you know, we're much broader than just the Bible translation world, but we're trying to create a resource where anyone can learn the languages, um, and,

and benefit from it. So, you know, I do it with my three year old, five year old and 10 year old. And so I just do it the same way. Yeah. Because it's like teaching them,

you're teaching them Greek. Your kids are going to be like, yeah, yeah, biblical Greek. They better be. We're actually doing Hebrew. So,

but, but, but for them, right. I, I, it's very, very simple. And I don't,

I don't care at all about the grammar. Like I'm, they don't know what a participle is and they don't need to know. Right. So, but what they can know, right. Is they can look at a house and say bite, right. And they can start to, um, you know, connect the world with the language. And that's, and that's what we really want. And that's what I think most people want, honestly, like if you talk to most people in seminary, they want to be able to read the Bible in the original language. They don't really care so much about the grammar. They want to be able to read, right? And that's a different skill. And so that's kind of what we're trying to get at. So wait, are you saying that learning the, like if you're studying biblical Greek,

if someone wants to learn Koine Greek, that they shouldn't like go through a grammar book or why is grammar not important? Or can you expand on that a little bit? Well, obviously, you know that I'm knee-deep in grammar all the time, right? Yeah. So let me ask you an English question. Do you know what the passive participle of break is? Sorry, I just put you on the spot.

What passive participle was broken? No it be i don't know that so that that would be a verbal yeah broken right exactly broken so most people don't know the answer to that question so but was broken right is is like a verbal participle it was broken um then and so we put the passive participle into that verbal construction. But right, so the vase is broken, or the broken vase, right? Here's the point. Do you need to know that to use the word broken? No, right? Who cares?

I mean, if all you want to do is know how to use the word broken, who cares if you can call it a passive participle, right? Now, some people, so for us, right, who are arguing about like what a particular word might mean i want to know you know what and if i'm reading the the literature right if i'm reading commentaries like i have to know the the meta language but if i'm just wanting to read the bible devotionally in greek like who cares if i know how to parse this thing right it's it's

irrelevant i mean it's it's it, it's the kind of thing, I actually don't want you to think about the parsing. I want you to think about the meaning, right? Because the whole point of reading the Bible in the original languages is so that we can get at a meaning that's different. And that doesn't come through, you know, telling me that this is an heiress.

It comes through intuiting what an aorist is by exposure to a lot of texts, right? And by exposure to the aorist in a meaningful way. It's funny because I was kind of chumming you a little bit about asking about the grammar because in the American system, it's very grammar heavy, right? You read, I mean, I read through, gosh, for Hebrew, I read through from my advanced Hebrew grammar class, Bruce Walt Key's 700 page book on grammar. It's like reading through a dictionary. I mean, there's like slugging your way through it. And it's like, Oh, I just,

I look back and I don't remember, not say I didn't learn. I just, it just felt, I just didn't feel like i was absorbing it like i kind of going back i wish i just spent time in the hebrew text and other classes i took an exegesis class i took a class on an exegesis of psalm 9 through 18 where we just slowly read through you know in hebrew and really just like work through the text definitely felt like i learned hebrew a lot better that way actually spending time in the text. I remember there's a point to this. When I was in my PhD program at Aberdeen University, my doctoral supervisor, Simon Gathricle, who's brilliant. He's been reading Greek. He's like eight years old. He's like one of your kids, basically. Brilliant. Taught himself Coptic

and wrote a commentary on the gospel. I mean, the guy's just master of languages. And I remember asking him, hey, so what's your like Greek grammar? He's like, I don't know. I've never read one. I'm like, and he turns around and does what you did. He's like, well, tell me what's your favorite English grammar. I've never read her English. He's like, but you know, English, right? I'm like, well, yeah, you just kind of know it. He's like, exactly. Like, so, um, it's funny that the, I think that's pretty, pretty typical. The British system is not that they don't wade through grammar books to the same extent i think the american system i think i admit that might be too much

of a generalization but all that to say i i i mean i i very much want to affirm kind of your method of learning and teaching the language i think that is the way to actually learn learn the language even now bro it's embarrassing like as i'm reading through greek like i'll in my mind interpret something as like a passive and it but if someone asked me to conjugate i was like i don't know it's just i see a theta there doesn't look like it belongs and there's an eta too and maybe it's a you know like i don't i just i just feel i just kind of feel the word more and i remember confessing this sin to my another friend of mine who knew Greek. And he was like, well, you know, that's probably better than actually like, that's a good place to be where you just like, I don't know. It's just, this is how you should read it. Like, I can't

tell you why I can't, can't conjugate this. And I felt almost embarrassed. Like I lost all my, you know, morphology and he's like, ah, yeah, I think you're in a good spot. But, um, anyway, well, I, with Biblingo, how many people have gone through it? What kinds of people go through it? I've been promoting it as like, you don't need to be a pastor, teacher. I think anybody, if they have the time and money, I don't want to shame people for not knowing the languages, if they don't have the time or money or whatever. But I think anybody that wants a deeper understanding of the text, if they have the time, money, space in their life, whatever, should do this. And for Biblingo, it's only like 15 minutes a day or something like that. What kinds of people have gone through it?

Do you have any testimonies of wins, people that have learned a language really well? Yeah, for sure. We have a lot of testimonials. I mean, honestly, it's the gamut, right? I mean, we have scholars that use it. We have kids that use it. We have lay people. We have pastors,ators you know you

name it we have about a thousand active users now and we're in i don't know something like 100 countries or something like that um are you serious so yeah yeah so we're basically like you know any and this is what we're trying to say is like there are going to be some people that are going to struggle with the grammar okay Okay. And this is how people feel. They feel like, man, I'm not like, you know, you said, I'm not a language person, but like if you are put in the right environment, you will learn a language. You know, you just have to be put in that environment. And that's the issue is that the environment of talking about passive participles is not

the environment where you learn a language. Now, that being said, we do that. You know, we, there, there's space for that in the, in the, in Biblio itself. And I'm writing a grammar on Greek and Hebrew, right? I mean, I'm, you know, it's like, yeah, yeah. I'm writing, I'm writing introductory grammars on both of them to be paired with Biblio. Right. So I'm not, I'm not opposed to grammar. I'm just, my only point is that they're separate skills, right? And so you can be good at one and not the other and vice versa. And most people, so like, you know, I read linguistic stuff all the time. And, you know, like I have opinions about like what the Russian, these Russian prefixes do.

And like, I don't know Russian at all, right? But I can see the data and I can see like, okay, this is how they're distributed. And this is what, this seems to be what they're doing. Um, and this is, this is what linguists do. Right. But, but I can't speak Russian. Right. And I, I don't, I don't even know the letters. I mean, it's like, so, but for most people, what they want to be able to do is read. They want to be able to read the text. And so for that, like, you really don't want to be focusing so much on what to call this thing parsing whatever you just want to focus on the meaning and and so that that's that's what i would say is it really

it is actually for anyone and and what we always tell people you know the 15 minutes a day thing is like look like you don't um you just need to make consistent progress i mean that's that's the whole key in language learning just bite-sized chunks every single day. And you just, you know, you just keep going. And don't put like a, you know, in seminary, it's like, okay, I have this semester. I have to learn this many words in this semester. But the beauty of this and the beauty of really not having that is you can just take your time and learn a little bit each day and get better. And soon you will be reading the text. And that's what people tell us. You know, it's like,

I took, however many semesters of Greek in seminary, I wasn't reading, came to you guys, now I'm reading. And that, that's what we want, that we want people to be able to read. If someone has zero knowledge of Greek and they start and do 15 minutes a day for a year, where are they going to be at in a year? I mean, you could definitely read easier parts of the new Testament easily without a dictionary. Yeah, for sure. So like, and basically in our lessons, we, we kind of organize it around like, so there's 52 lessons in Greek and Hebrew. We only have 45 right now for Greek. Um, but basically once you get to around like lesson 20 ish, um, is when you start reading like simplified biblical texts.

So in the beginning, what you're reading is like created stories that are, you know, on your level. So it's very, very simple. But if you practice the skill of reading, you will get better at reading. Right. And this is what people just, I know it seems very obvious, but people in second language acquisition, this field in linguistics have said, basically, if you want to practice reading in the way that, you know, like focusing on the meaning, you should know 95% of the words in the text. And so the problem is, is that most people never get there with the New Testament. So they're trying to read a text and they're stopping every other word, right? To look it up and whatever.

And so they're not engaging with the text in a meaningful way because they don't know enough vocabulary. So what we do is we basically create these stories that are basically children's stories. And then we know you know all the words because we've taught you all the words that are in those stories. And then we know, you know, all the words because we've taught you all the words that are in those stories. And so we basically just teach you those simple stories. Um, and then we eventually get to simplify biblical texts and real biblical texts. So by the time you get to the Bible, you're reading through it, like, like it's, you know, a real text that you're just reading to consume. Um, and that's because that's's because that's where we want people to get.

So instead of just plopping you into the New Testament and saying, here, learn all these words, by the time you get there, you're reading quite well. I mean, this is pretty remarkable that if somebody, 15 minutes a day is not very much that somebody could be actually reading through the New Testament and understanding it within a year, this time next year.

That's because, I mean, I took several years of Greek in Bible college or seminary before I could really feel confident, like actually open up the text and not translate word, word, you know, but like actually just sit back in my chair and kind of read and like, oh, I'm getting, I'm understanding most of what's going on here. Like that's, that's, wow. That's crazy, man. All right. Let's, let's transition a bit. So I, I've been blogging, I've been researching the Greek word kephale, translated head. And on two occasions, it's, it's particularly important because Paul references on some level the husband being the kephale, the head of woman or his wife. And so this word is extremely important.

And I've been blogging through kind of my findings and kind of how I'm understanding the word. What I'm doing is I'm trying to look at every single time this Greek word is used in a non-literal sense. You know, it's obviously used everywhere to refer to a literal head, but there's all, it's used metaphorically or in a simile or in a more non-literal sense in a limited,

you know, I forget the number 50, 60, 70 times or something in ancient literature. So I'm trying to look at each passage to really get my kephale around. That was a dad joke. So I'm trying to look at each passage to really get my kephale around the meaning of this, how this word was used lengthy comment on linguistics and how to even think through the linguistic side of determining what does a word mean. And I almost want to go back and reblog everything now because I was not using linguistic categories very well.

Anyway, that's all background. very well. Anyway, that's all background. So educate us a bit on, from a linguistic standpoint, how would you approach this journey? Understanding what the Greek word kephale means in these crucial passages. And sorry, I didn't even frame it. I assume people know, but like, does the Greek word kephale refer to some kind of authority over? So husband is in authority over the head of the house, as we often say in English, you know, means he's in charge of everybody, right? Or is it referring to something else that doesn't convey some sense of authority? Like, you know, some people that translate it like the man is the source of the wife, you know, because like in Genesis 2, Eve was created from man. And just like a, you know, a river has a source that we might refer to the headwaters of the river, you know, the source of the river, which doesn't convey authority.

So this is a massive debate in the larger debate about male-female relationships in the church and women in ministry and so on and so forth. Anyway, that's all background for people that may not know. So I'm going to throw it back to you. How, yeah, as a linguist, what are the categories we should be thinking through? What's the very language we should be thinking through? What's the difference between gloss, meaning, sense, and so forth? Metaphor versus simile and literal and all these things. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Yeah, so I had to, yeah, just, you know, obviously that's a like, you know,

how long do you have kind of question. I know. And really there are, I think what people need to realize is that, you know, there are classes taught on, you know, like very, very specific parts of this whole debate, you know, like just what the genitive is. Like you could literally have an entire class on just the genitive and read the linguistic literature on it because there's a lot of literature on it.

So when you say the head of the wife, right, you know, it's like there's a genitive there. What is that doing, right? Those are the kinds of questions that you would first want to say, say like okay um what is the syntactic context that we're looking at and so when i say syntax what in in linguistics what we really mean is like how are um the meaningful units ordered okay um and so like syntax in you know greek and hebrew studies is often kind of like this vague term where it's kind of like everything. It's kind of like just grammar. And you have some semantics thrown in there and whatever else.

But syntax really in linguistics is how do we order the actual morpheme. So a morpheme is just a meaningful unit in language. So cat is one morpheme. Cats is two morphemes because it has the plural morpheme is just a meaningful unit in language. So, you know, cat is one morpheme. Cats is two morphemes because it has the plural morpheme. So basically, we would look at syntax and how that's paired with semantics. So the semantics side is the meaning. So what is actually being conveyed by this word? So what you would want to do and what I...

I'll give you an example. I'm working on finishing up this article on echad. It's the Hebrew word for one in the Shema. There's a debate about how do we understand Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.

What does that mean? It's usually translated the Lord is one. Okay? So I, there's about 900 something occurrences of Echad in Hebrew Bible. So I just make a spreadsheet and I go through every single one of them. And I list. I say, okay, what is the meaning here? And what is the syntactic context of that meaning?

Right? is the meaning here and what is the syntactic context of that meaning, right? So what I want to see is, is there a way to link the syntax with the semantics? Because if I can do that, then I can begin to predict in a novel context what the meaning would be based on syntax, right? Because at the end of the day, most of these debates wouldn't have happened, right? Because most likely this was read in Ephesus to native Greek speakers, and they would have just intuited the correct meaning, almost certainly, right? They wouldn't have been going through and asking each individual word, like, what did you mean by this, right? I mean, they might have, but most likely, you know, they probably just intuited the right meaning, but we don't have those intuitions anymore, right? This is the problem,

but their intuitions, the question then is how do we get, get at their intuitions? Like what, what is it about human language that makes us interpret, you know, this particular word in one way in this context and another way in this other context, you know, it's wrap my head around something, right. It's different than me tapping a head. Right. And why do we just intuit that? Right. So, so that's, that's what we're trying to get at in linguistics is to explain why do we have these two different interpretations and what leads to that? And then we can start to predict when we have one over the other. Does that make sense? Is it a matter? Yeah. Is it a matter of just looking at how this seems just like a traditional word study, but like, just looking at how this word is used in many different ancient contexts,

as much as you have to get a feel for how the ancient person might intuit the meaning of the word? Or is it more than more than that? Yeah, it's not it's not less than that, but it is more than that. So what we really, really want is we do want a description of the syntactic context. So, for example, I can tell you that, like, you know, on the blog that I wrote, Andrew Bartlett, I think, responded. And he gave this example of, you know, I was at a Spanish restaurant. I was eating at a Spanish restaurant and I danced a flamingo, right? And he said that we would interpret danced a flamingo as danced a flamenco, which I didn't know what that was, but I assumed that it was a Spanish dance after he said that. So the, and I'm probably saying it wrong now,

but the reason why you would do that is because dance is a particular verb which requires a certain kind of argument, right? And by argument, I mean the thing that goes with it, right? The thing that completes the thought of the verb. So usually like the direct object, but not um so so if i have a word dance dance a blank right what i expect is a kind of dance to be there right and so when or when i said wrap my head around or wrap my blank around right i? It's because of the word wrap

that you are interpreting head in that way, right? So we want to be very specific about like, what in the context is leading us to disambiguate the word in this way. Sometimes it could be a particular lexical item, right? Like wrap, wrap my, right? Or sometimes it's a particular feature, like definiteness, the gen item, right? Like wrap, wrap my, right? Or sometimes it's, you know, a particular feature like definiteness, the genitive, right? Again, the genitive in this passage is very,

very significant because if you're a head, you're always a head of something, right? You're head of a body, right? It's at least implicit. And so the fact that here we have the head of you know gunai kous woman right or wife is this tells us something about the meaning you're thinking if he's five right now if he's just five twenty three is yes okay but it's the same thing in first first screen is eleven oh yeah yeah they're both genitals that's right okay yeah yep yep and so so we would want a theory of the genitive and how that interacts with these kinds of nouns right right? So kephale is a kind of, like, you can put it into a noun class. It would, you know, it would be called a relational noun. It requires another thing that it's relating to.

You're always ahead of something. And so we would want to see, like, okay, how do these nouns behave with the genitive in general? What we would be trying to do is figuring out, like, when we ask those kinds of questions, right? I mean, I know it's kind of not fair, but we would really want a larger theory of meaning, right? Like I said, we want a theory of the genitive because if you don't have that, right? And if you don't have a theory of like disambiguation, which just means like, how do I determine the particular meaning

of a word with multiple meanings in this particular context, right? If you don't have a theory of that on that, you're kind of left with like, well, I think it's source. Well, I think it's leader. You know, it's like, okay, but why? You know, that's the issue. This episode is sponsored by Biblingo. Biblingo is an incredibly effective and efficient way to actually learn the biblical languages of Greek and Hebrew. Okay, so as many of you guys know, I'm a huge advocate for learning the biblical languages. And not just for pastors or like theology professors,

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know are so foreign to people. So I do want to try to unpack things for myself and my audience. If there's like a, so I'm hearing you say that simply looking up like the lexical meaning of this word, just as a word is just not again it's it's we need to do that that's that's a good thing to do but we can't just draw a straight line between here's the lexicon bam here's what this word means like there's a lot of other things going on are there other words that are setting up this word um how does this word uh interact with when it's followed by a genitive? A genitive is, I mean, the most basic translation is of, you know, right?

I mean, a genitive can do a lot more than that. But I mean, just for people to think in English terms, it's like, you know, head of a woman. The word woman is in the genitive. And the most basic kind of english way to render that is uh but even that of even in english is super broad and ambiguous and can mean many different things right so that doesn't help us a ton yeah so but it but it does if you if you know what what people say about the genitive in english right about this word of so in english we have two genitives we have the the apostrophe S, the wife's husband, right? That's also a genitive. So basically the idea is that

like in English, well, this is just, this would apply to all languages, right? All languages where you have a relational noun followed by the genitive, right? The analysis, you know, the like mainstream linguistic analysis is that the relational noun is determining the meaning of the genitive. I don't need to know the genitive, like the range of meaning of of, right? I don't, that's irrelevant, right?

Because all I need to know is if I say a sister, right? You're always a sister of someone. And so the of there is just giving you, it's just connecting the relational meaning already inherent in sister to another noun, right? And so really the question then becomes, what does the word sister mean? What kind of relationship is encoded there, right? But my point is that if you know that about genitives in general, what they do, then you can apply that in this case. Does that make sense?

Okay. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, not to race ahead to the conclusion, but already people are. Yeah, yeah. I know. Okay. So, is it source or authority? Is it?

Given everything you're saying, what's the answer? And I'm sure there's a lot more steps we need to think through before we arrive at the answer but yeah so if someone yeah it's similar to ask you that question okay so what is this source or authority what's going on here yeah so i i mean i i would just say um you know in the context of ephesians 5 so i i i you know just leaving aside first Corinthians 11 for a second um and assuming that they're kind of doing something similar, you know, really, like, it doesn't, I actually don't think kephale is all that important to the argument. But, and the reason is, is because in verse 21,

it says, you know, that people should be submitting to one another. And then in 24, right, it says that the wife should submit to the husband as the church submits to Christ. So however you take kephale, you still have to say that that holds, right? But because those are book-ending our discussion of what kephale means, right? What we're dealing with in this context is social hierarchies, right? And even the idea of Christos is a king, right? And so he is the preeminent, you know, social authority, right? And so the issue is that there's nothing in the context that suggests that we're

talking about the source of anything. Um, and there's all kinds of things in the context that, that suggests that we are talking about how people are related to one another, right? Like socially. And, and, and so like, I just can't, you know, do with it what you will kind of thing, but it's like, I can't get around the fact that this is what we're talking about in this particular context. Would you say that the language of submission points us away from seeing kephaleia simply meaning source without any sense of authority? Is that largely because of the language of submission that surrounds it? Okay. Right. Exactly. So, so basically I would say that 521 is the like

paradigm through which you should read both the, the role of the, the, um, husband and the role of the wife, right? So the husband should submit to the wife in the sense that he should die for her. Right. I mean, that's, that's the, that's 525 and on. Um, and, uh, the wife in the sense that he should die for her, right? I mean, that's 525 and on. And the wife should submit to the husband in the sense that she, as an authority, just as the church submits to their king, right? That would be how I would read that text. Would you, so yeah, speaking of 521, and now we're getting into more, I mean, can't separate linguistics from interpretation, but getting more into interpretation, exegesis, and theology even. 521, you know, big debate about this language of submit to one another, this idea of mutual submission of 521. Does this mean that the rest of the husband-wife relationship is an example of mutual submission?

Wife submitting to husband, which is explicitly stated, and also implied husband at times, whatever, submitting to his wife. Or, so that would be in, I mean, almost every egalitarian is going to draw attention to that. The wife submitting to the husband is just one example of mutual submission, but it's implied that the husband also submits to the wife. So there is no one directional submissive relationship. It is mutual. It is bidirectional. Some complementarians might even agree with that to some extent, but others would say no. Mutual submission is a general characteristic of the church as a whole. I mean, that's exactly what 521 says. But that doesn't necessarily exclude the fact that within a general paradigm of mutual submission, there are some relationships that are one directional. Clearly, the parent-child, which comes right after this, is a one directional. Clearly, the parent-child, which comes right after this, is a one directional.

Just because there's mutual submission in 521 and just because the parent-child relationship in 6, 1 to 4, 1 to 5, 1 to 4, is still under that mutual submission umbrella, it would go beyond Paul's point to say that parents should submit to their kids. And even I raised this to Andrew Bartlett in a, in a,

in a seminar. And he affirmed that he's like, you know, no, I mean, these are these each set of these three relationships, husband, wife,

parent, child, master slave, which comes on the heels of this household code. Not everyone is going to have the same degree of mutual submission. Husband and wife, yes. Parent-child, no. Master-slave, I forgot what he – I think that could go either way.

You do have definitely the master-slave relationship as being played with and tweaked. I mean a master honoring their slave and treating them like a brother or sister in Christ would be unheard of in the ancient world. So clearly Paul's not just mimicking that kind of one-directional relationship that exists in the ancient world. Anyway, I'm being long-winded here. Kevin, so my question, yeah, going back, I just want to know from a linguistic standpoint, what are your thoughts on the relationship between 521 and the rest of the passage? on the relationship between 521 and the rest of the passage. Yeah, I'm looking at it again. I don't know.

I don't know if I would, I wouldn't just say it applies to the rest of the passage, including the kids and the masters and slaves. I think the big question is, in what sense are you submitting, right? Like that's, to me, the question is like, submitting in this word in Greek, right, Like that's, to me, the question is like, submitting in this word in Greek, right, is very broad. So like, I think the problem is that we don't allow for, we just think of, at least in this debate, and you know way more about it than I do, but it seems like people are

drawing this dichotomy between, you know, submitting as authority, right. And every other kind of submission. And I would just say like, well, is, is the husband submitting to the wife when they are laying down their life, life for the wife? Yes. Is the father submitting to the children when he is not provoking them to anger? I mean, I mean, so what he's doing is in each of these cases, he's taking both roles actually, and saying, hey, this is how you should behave to the other person, which is a, and this is the Christ-like way that you should be doing it, right? And so I think I would tend to read 521 as the paradigm, right? How do you live out the humility of Christ in all these different social relationships, right?

It's gonna look different, but even the father, right, must act in this same kind of humility to his kids. And the master of the slave must act in the same kind of humility to his kids. And the master of the slave must act in the same kind of humility to the slaves, right? But that looks different, right? It looks different for each of these social relationships, but I'm still having to submit in some sense. I mean, that's where i would probably lean um okay at least i feel like at least i feel like in 521 through through the end of five it's proximate enough to where it's like okay this is what you're still talking about but i i you know i think you can make a case for for the for the

like uh parent as well i mean andrew bartley actually mentioned this in the company it's like well you know like or i think it was ph, maybe, you know, oh, well, submission, this word submission can mean voluntary submission. Well, yeah, of course. Right. That's my whole point. Right. I mean, I can then say that it's, it's, it's, um, it is voluntary submission, right?

It is voluntary submission for the husband to submit to the wife in this way, just like it would be voluntary submission for the, the, um, you know, father to treat their kids with this kind of humility, right. Um, to not provoke them to anger. So, but, but, but that doesn't mean that the kids are, are the authority, right. That that's a different kind of submission that we're now talking about. And that's where I think like the fact that you do have this Kephale language, this is the only explanation for the, you know, the relationship between the man and the wife. It's like, well, the church is supposed to submit to the king as the authority, right?

I mean, that's the, so if that's the paradigm we're dealing with, then I can't get around, you know, that for the wife as well. And I just want to point out that neither of us have a dog in this fight in the sense of you don't have strong opinions from what I've heard from you. You're probably going to get me in trouble just by asking these questions. But yeah, you're, I think, as we've talked offline many times, I mean, your primary love is as a linguist to understand the biblical text as it is, many times. I mean, your primary love is as a linguist to understand the biblical text as it is, and you're not coming at it with these kind of predisposed women must be pastors or must not be pastors, whatever. I will have a dog in the fight in a couple of years when I figure out what

I believe. But right now, I'm genuinely working my hardest to say, I want to understand what this ancient text meant to the ancient authors and receivers. And I want to honor the original context to the best of my ability and not read my own context into the text. Again, we all do that imperfectly, but we're both working hard not to do that. Anyway, that's just in case people want it. People always want to know, where's this person coming from? What's their angle? Here's where I'm currently at on this. There's two aspects of the egalitarian arguments that I haven't been impressed with. Number one, interpreting kephale as source in such a way that conveys no sense of authority. And I know people are screaming at me right now, and I know certain names who are really bad. And just so people, a growing number of egalitarian scholars

are kind of moving away from that just because I think the linguistic evidence is just a hard, as I've seen firsthand, I think it's a really difficult case to make for some of the reasons you've stated, just the context. What does that contribute to the argument for Paul to say that the husband was the source of the wife? And people sometimes use Paul's unique reference to Jesus as savior to justify that. The best argument for source here is I think if you go back to Ephesians 4, 15, and 16, there is a use of kephale. I think rendering it on some level source might be legit there. So that would be a broader contextual reason for saying source. But then you go back to chapter one, you have a clear reference of Kephala as conveying some sense of authority,

Christ's head over the church. Or sorry, head over the powers and authorities. I forget the exact. Anyway, so number one, the most natural, again, if you approach this text as an atheist or pretend like you're reading something out of the Quran, a religious text that you're not invested in. Rendering Keflai conveying some sense of authority in Ephesians 5.23, to me, it just makes the most linguistic sense. Now, I'm going to turn the corner really quickly here and leave something on the shelf. I, I actually think that

everything I just said contributes to a more egalitarian understanding of the passage interpretively. Okay, I want to say that publicly. I'm not going to justify that here,

but just so people know, I, I'm not, I actually don't think that interpreting kephale, conveying authority necessarily leads to a traditional complementarian reading of the passage. I might come back to that a later day.

Okay, so kephale conveying some sense of authority. I still, and I also, I just, I don't know. When some egalitarian scholars say 521, mutual submission, therefore, the rest of the passage is mutual submission. I just, I'm not quite convinced of that argument yet. Here's what I would say, though. Can we say that Paul redefines the authority of the husband in such a way that without actually saying, husband, submit to your wives, it is almost like it is a relationship of functional.

I don't want to say submission because that is a unique word, like a functional mutuality that screams equality, where the wife is specifically submitting to her husband. And then because the husband is the authority, look what Jesus, the ultimate authority did. He gave up his life for the wife. I don't need to describe that relationship as one of submission to say that it's one of mutuality and equality. That's the last 10-minute rant. My last sentence is what I would love for you to comment on. Yeah, I completely agree with that.

I mean, I guess my question back to you would be, why not read 525 and following as a form of submission? As long as you, so this is my thing. It's like, you just, like, if we just view submission, as long as you, so this is my thing. It's like, you just, like, if we just view submission very narrowly as like, I get an order, I do that. Right. Like, then yeah, of course, that's not, that's not what we're talking about. You know, I mean, I just immediately think of a Philippians two and it's like, okay, you know, here, here is Christ who has all authority and he is emptying himself for the sake of the church, you know,

so that the church can be exalted. It's like, and that, that is definitely a form of submission in the sense that like Jesus laying down his, you know, his own authority, his own, you know, everything, everything that he had with the father, he's given up for the sake of his church. And so it just feels to me like I can just grant that, you know, like, I'm just like, if you want to read mutual submission to that, it's like, okay, you know, fine. Yeah. If we want to call that submission, but, but the issue is that it's taking it too far then to, to, to say that that affects the wife and husband role in such a way that the husband is now submitting

to the wife in the same way. Because they all have distinct roles, right? And so if we're talking about mutual submission, that's fine. But the question again is just like, how? What is the description of the submission? Right? The wife isn't laying down her life for the submission okay right that the the the wife

isn't laying down her life for the husband right that's not her role i mean so so clearly in each of the cases even if we say there's mutual submission we we can't say that they're identical submissions right and so that that's where i would land i I mean, I don't know. Does that make sense? It is making sense. So in my, in everything I'm saying, I'm like 70% where I'm at. Yeah, I'm kind of like off the cuff here. Yeah, I'm generally teasing out kind of, and I've spent the last probably three months

in Kefla and Ephesians 5. So I've really just spent a whole like few weeks just doing nonstop research on just ancient household codes. Like even bringing in just the genre that Paul's even working within is important too. And there's so many things going on here. The passage is so beautifully more complex than people, I think, make it out to be.

And I enjoy, I love that journey. And I embrace the complexity. Anyway, and I, I, I braced it complexity anyway. So in correct me if, so here's, is it a moot? Okay. So I've gathered my thoughts. My hesitation was just saying five 21 mutual submission. Therefore the whole thing's mutual submission is that when Paul does, when the new Testament writers do the, use the language of actual was it hupotasso or whatever,

submission, it is always one of the, never says husband submits to your wives, never says that Christ submits to the church. Are you saying that I, that might be a little bit pedantic or it might be, what's the word I'm looking for here? Are you saying that's not that important that the actual word isn't used in a bidirectional sense when the behavior is described in a way that could be categorized broadly as a conceptual submission? Is that, I'm so nervous talking about linguistic terms

around you because I feel like I'm not using words correctly, but does that make sense? I mean, am I, am I getting, am I getting too hung up on the specific word submission, not being bidirectional? Um, when, when clearly I'm hearing you say, if somebody is giving up of not just of their money, time resources, but their very life on behalf of somebody else that that is in the purview of what we would describe as a submissive posture yeah so that that's that's basically my my point i mean i but that being said okay so so you know like like in a fee in philippians 2 right um when when it says that, you know, but he emptied himself and, you know, taking on the form of a servant, of a slave, right?

There is no, this is a description of what Jesus has done for the church. And there is no hupotasetai here describing Jesus. Now, does that mean that there's no hubotasetai, you know, here describing Jesus. Now, does that mean that there's no submission?

Like, I don't know. I mean, slaves, you know what I mean? Taking on the form of a slave. I mean, it's like, again, a servant is so weak, you know, but slave, you know, to them, it was a slave. So I guess my point would be, I don't have a super strong opinion on, I just read mutual submission. I say, okay, like I can totally see that.

I can understand how the husband should submit to, the husband dying for the wife can be called submission, right? And so if I read 521 in a broad sense, you know, so submitting to one another in the fear of Christ, meaning everyone does it to everyone. And then the rest of the passage is working out how each individual person is doing that with all their different social relationships. I'm fine with that. You know, it's like, I mean, of course, right? I'm fine with that you know it's like what like I mean of course right if if you want to limit the the submission to like 521 to 24 where that word is found fine like I I think that's I think it's really beyond the point I mean I think this is to the to to your point about like this kind of being a weak argument who cares right like like either way like who cares either way whether

you call it submission or not we right either way we either way, we have a description. We have a description of what the husband is supposed to do and what the wife is supposed to do. Right. And if we want to call that submission, that's fine. Um, but in, in the description of the wife,

right, is to, it uses this word and it's submit to the husband as the church submits to their, the Christ, the King, you you know so it's the question how does that work out and then for the husband it's like okay you're supposed to love as as the as the king has has loved right he took on the form of a slave for his bride and so it's like i i if you don't want to call that submission, that's fine. If you want to call it submission, that's fine. Like, but either way, it doesn't change the actual description.

Right. So that would be my, my point is like, whether you read 521 is. No, that's, that's exactly kind of what I'm getting at. So that's helpful. Okay. So I'm not violating any major linguistic rules or whatever, but it sounds like your description to me, it's like, kind of like, who cares? And also, I haven't even mentioned this, I think most, almost every single Christian reader approaches this conversation and this passage with a secular view of submission. Meaning, it's bad, it's negative, it's lesser than.

But Christianity turned that upside down. Upside down. Jesus was a slave. He's called a slave. Strength, integrity, holiness, submission. Like it's so, we read this passage from like a Roman point of view or an American point of view or a secular atheist point of view. And that submission is bad. Submission is performed by weaker people towards people in a higher position or a better position. And if you're the one submitting, you're lesser than. Like all these things that make us read the passage, wives submit to your husbands and kind of go, ugh. We're bringing secular assumptions to this virtue that Christ turned upside down. Am I correct?

I mean, would you affirm that? I do it. When I hear the word submit, I still have to train myself to say, no, Christ gutted this from the inside out and made submission a, a source of strength and power and courage and honor, you know, which didn't exist in the ancient world or in today's world. Yeah. Yeah. No. And I, and I think that's honestly, it really shows how much in the church we have been influenced by that perspective, you know? And it's, it's, it's cause you can't, you can't say that without some you know and it's it's it's because you can't

you can't say that without some sort of qualification and it's like how how have we gotten here where like jesus you know came not to be served but to serve and to give us life as a ransom for many it's like you know this is this should be the norm for everyone you know it's like submission if our if our king did it right like we we all have to do You know, it's like submission. If our, if our King did it right, like we, we all have to do it. You know, it's just like, that's, that's the nature of the Christian life. Um, so yeah, I mean, I, I, I completely agree. I just, it is, it is unfortunate even that we are in this kind of position where it's like, we're having this conversation and there's going to be some people that, you know, all of a sudden like we're, we're getting hated on for,

you know, like, yeah. I mean, I think just following Jesus's lead in this respect, you know, like he did turn the world order upside down. One of the best articles I've seen written on this,

and I read it a while ago and now I've read a lot of stuff since then and I've come back and read it and I still think it's the best take on the passages. Michelle Lee Barnwall's turning Kefale on Its Head. She wrote a really great book called Neither Complimentarian Nor Egalitarian. So she has this middle-of-the-road take on everything and she challenges both sides. And I think her take on Kefh and his passage and light of the household codes and everything

is absolutely stellar scholarship. Anyway, I guess let me tease out further kind of my suggestion that I think taking Kephaleh as conveying some sense of authority leads to what could be classified as a more egalitarian reading. Because I do, I do think a case can be made,

um, that Paul is sensitive to a social environment that Christianity clearly honored and valued women and slaves, um, uh, much higher than most social movements of the day. You have stuff in some of the, um, what they called the, uh, other religious cult movements of the day. You have stuff in some of the, what they called the other religious cults of the day, Mithras or not Mithras. Is there Austrianism?

No, I wasn't going there. But there was some other, there's a word that people use, some of the mystery cults, the mystery religions. Oh, okay, okay. There was some mystery, yeah, in the first century that actually had this really high elevation of women. And we know from many passages in the ancient world that these mystery religions and elevating women were disrupting the social fabric of the Roman world. And they got hammered by some of the Roman elites. We know from other passages, especially in the pastoral epistles, and Peter as well,

1 Peter 3, that when they talk about male-female relations, they did so with a kind of apologetic in view, meaning they were very cautious about giving the perception that they were disrupting the social fabric too much. One of the most, I mean, there's several statements in the pastorals, but I think it's a Titus 2.5 that says, wives, submit to your husbands so that, do you know this? So that the word of God won't be blasphemed. Let me just make sure I get this right. Yeah. So this is referring to teaching young women submitting to their own husbands in order that the word of God might not be blasphemed.

And then later on in verse nine, he says something similar. And you get the very clear impression that there was this social reputation that people were a negative reputation that Christianity was having. And we know this from later texts, right? Where they thought that the Eucharist, that Christians were cannibals because they were eating the flesh and blood of their Savior. And these love rituals were interpreted as being, you know, orgies. And Christianity had this reputation that was going out. And Paul was concerned about that to some extent. So going back to my point, I think Paul is essentially saying, you husbands, you think

you're authority over your wives? Yeah. You're authority. You're right. Yeah. You're the head. Yeah. You're the head of the household.

Yep. You're the head. Head means authority. Are you the authority? Yep. Just like Christ was authority over the church. And guess what? Let me explain to you what Christian authority looks like. So he affirms their social authoritative position.

And then as Barnwell, I believe, argues, turns it right on its head to say, because you're not, you're not an authority, you're a source. And that doesn't mean it's because you're an authority. Therefore, grab a washcloth and wash your wife's feet, lay down your life for your wife. Because in the Christian household, authority is turned upside down. Yeah, yeah. That's great. I mean, yeah.

I mean, I don't know if you've read much in rabbinic literature as well about what they say about women. None of it is good. Oh, yeah. I mean... Or Josephus and Philo. Yeah. Yeah. But what's interesting about the rabbinic literature is that, you know, the rabbis,

the predecessors of the rabbis are the Pharisees. And if Paul is an ex-Pharisee, right? I mean, this is the world he's living in you know where where you can divorce your wife for any reason like any like if she walks outside looking about her house with her head uncovered yeah yeah you can just divorce her right and so so for paul to be you know an ex-pharisee and to and you know obviously like there's all kinds of issues with rabbinic literature and how early is it and which passage and whatever. But the point is that here we have really the exact opposite, right, kind of statements about how husbands should treat their wives. Right. And that's the, again, going back to your point of it was turning the world upside down, but also Paul's world.

And when Paul gives this command, I mean, I think certainly all the Greco-Roman stuff is in the background, but also his Jewish background is, he's coming from a place where women were not valued like this. You wouldn't, I mean, you can't find that in rabbinic literature. It doesn't exist. And so for Paul to be saying this, he is saying like, this is a totally new world we're living in. You know, it's all about loving,

like our king showed us how to love. And that's a new thing. And now, even though everything in the culture and even his religious, you know, culture the oracles of God, they're like the people. He doesn't call them pagan sinners, right? Like he calls the Gentiles. But he recognizes that this is different now. You know, this is a new way to relate to the family that even within Judaism just wasn't seen before Christ.

Here's going, yeah, that's absolutely, yeah. And I mean, Josephus and especially Philo, Philo stands kind of, he's got one foot in the Greco-Roman and one foot in the Jewish world. And when it comes to the household codes, as I've recently seen, this is where the Greco-Roman world and and when it comes to the household codes as i've recently seen um this is where the greco-roman world and there's diversity there i don't want to just say

it's all one thing but in general the greco-roman world and the jewish world was in very much agreement when it came to the man being the head of the house and man you know um so so yeah it's both a greco-roman and jewish thing and going back to my point, though, I think if we translate kephale a source, not only is I think that's linguistically less likely, but it actually makes Paul's rhetorical argument lose its teeth. Right. It undermines, this is how you be the authority. Yes. It undermines the rhetorical power of the reversal that's going on that passage. And then going back to why I think Paul or the New Testament as a whole only uses submission linguistically one directionally, meaning the word submission is only used wives submit to your husbands, not vice versa, is because

in the household codes, again, as I've recently seen, this was a deep concern from Aristotle onward that the wife was submissive to her husband. Only it was like, husbands, make sure you subjugate. It was more in the active sense, subjugate your wives. Wives are rarely addressed firsthand. They didn't have that kind of agency. was the Christian movement was already interrupting the social fabric and they were getting attacked for it. I think he's fine maintaining the language of husband is authority, wives submit, to

keep that posture to where it didn't invite more critique than necessary. So he was able to maintain the veneer of the Greco-Roman expectation that man was an authority and all this stuff, you know, and he uses the language. Because if he came right out and said, wives, submit to your husbands and, you know, husbands, submit to your wives and man, you're the head of the wife and wife, you're the head of the band. And if he just interrupted that that much, that would have invited tons of, I think, unnecessary critique rather than just Paul using the same language that Greco-Roman world is using, but gutting it from the inside out conceptually. That's my theory. I'm 71% sure of that right now. It does actually, having bathed in these Greco-Roman household code, I'm like, oh, Paul's very aware of this genre. It's eerie how close he is to Aristotle

and some first century Greco-Roman writers in describing the household. He's very, very aware and mimicking the same genre. That's not really that debated. That just says, okay, he's being very intentional and specific with how he's interacting with these other household codes, is my working theory, at least.

I could be totally wrong. It's super interesting. And I do think, too, that one of the issues is that we often, like the wife's submission is often, in the Greco-Roman world, it was often husbands subjugate your wives, right? And that's not what's being said, right? And I think that's, but I think that's often how it's being read is the issue in the Christian world, right?

You know, it's complementarianism is husbands subjugate your wives. And that's never said, you know? And at the end of the day, like if we're talking to husbands, humanitarianism is husbands subjugate your wives. And that's, that's no never said, you know, and, and at the end of the day, like, if we're talking to husbands, it's like, you only have one role, like you're, you're, you're not told at all to subjugate your wife in any way. Like, your only role is to love your wife and later, later on in life for it. So it's, it's, yeah, it's like, important that you should know what I guess what your wife should be doing but the way that you need to be acting regardless is 25 and on right um and and call it what you will um you know like submission or not either way i would say that at philippines too it's being

described as you know taking on the form of a servant a slave you know you know? And, and it's, it's, that's, that's the kind of language that is used of Christ everywhere, right? He's, he, he is walking in humility. And so you have to do the same for, for your wife. Yeah, absolutely. That's, I, even in the modern way of framing it, people talk about, they use the word subjugation and I just don't even like that. Am I correct to say that submit and subjugate aren't exactly the same thing? Like even if,

even if someone who was a landed commentarian, awesome. I might land commentarian. Who knows? Um, I would never use a language subjugation. Like that's just, that doesn't reflect,

I think that's an important distinction. Is that, am I correct on that? Yeah, for sure. I, I mean, I,

I would agree with you, you know, but this is not, now we're talking about English. So yeah, my sure. I mean, I would agree with you. But now we're talking about English. So not my area of expertise. Yeah. Well, hey, I got to run, man. This is so helpful.

And thanks for helping me work out my thoughts in real time. Where can people find Biblingo and your work? We didn't get to Pistis Christi. I didn't. That's a Greek phrase. But yeah, where can people find your work and where can people find Biblingo? Yeah, Biblingo, Biblingo.org. In terms of the stuff that I've done, it'd probably be best to go to my academia page.

I'm usually pretty up to date on there. I'm working on a lot of different projects, most of them i think are are on there but um you can also just check out you know biblical languages podcast that's another our podcast and we talk about all things biblical languages um and honestly if you go to biblingo.org a lot of stuff is there you can pretty much find anything um you can get a free 10-day trial and Cool. Thanks for coming on The El Gerardo, bro. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.