Deborah…Unless There’s A Dude (Part 5)

In our last two articles, Deborah…Unless There’s A Dude (Part 3 and Part 4), we looked at the first two keys to interpreting and understanding the 1 Timothy 2 passage. 

In addition to the first key, the unique context of Ephesus with the Artemis cult and its impact on women’s relationship with men in the city, and to the second key, the uniqueness of the word “authentein” inaccurately being translated as “authority,” the third key is the relationship between all the components of this passage -- that includes dress, appearance and speech.

This is the key we will be focusing on in this article. 

As a reminder, 1 Timothy 2: 11-12 states the following: A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. (New American Standard Bible, 1995, 1 Tim. 2:11-12) 

Often, people treat these verses in complete isolation by ripping it away from the verses that precede it. 

But without taking their context into consideration, we cannot rightly understand what Paul is saying nor can we comprehend accurately what first-century hearers would have understood.

So let’s back up in the text a bit. What comes right before these verses? 

“Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, 10 but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness.” — (New American Standard Bible, 1995, 1 Tim. 2:9-10) 

Without awareness of the biblical and cultural context of 1 Timothy 2, many read verses 11 and 12 and conclude: “A woman should not teach men or be in leadership over men. 1 Timothy 2 says that. There’s nothing more to say. It’s straightforward. Case closed.” 

However, there is an inconsistency even in that approach. 

Because if you just read it as a blanket, straight-forward, prohibitive statement, for all times and all places, there aren’t two things prohibited in those verses, but actually three. 

Pay attention. 

“A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.” — (New American Standard Bible, 1995, 1 Tim. 2:11-12) 

In summary, what are the three? 

  1. A woman must quietly receive instruction and remain quiet. 

  2. A woman is not allowed to teach. 

  3. A woman is not to exercise authority over (authentein) men.

Those who say, “case closed, this passage is conveying  timeless truth,” what do they do with all three of these? 

They certainly hold to the second (no teaching) and third (no authority), so why not hold to the first first, quietness or silence? If you were being congruent, saying, “Well, this is just a straightforward, simple reading of the text - same in all times and all places,” you would. 

Furthermore, if you’re going to relax the instruction to be quiet/silent on some cultural basis or grounds (saying what it means then is not what it means today), why not the second and third? 

Do you see why it's problematic? 

But nevertheless, we don’t argue based on others’ arguments but from conviction born out of the Word of God.  

Is there anything in this passage to help us understand what is being said and what isn’t? 

There is. There are some principles to unpack.

The first principle, not surprisingly, is context.

When we put all four verses together in one paragraph, what do we read? 

“Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, 10 but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness. 11 A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. 12 But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.” — (New American Standard Bible, 1995, 1 Tim. 2:9-12) 

We don’t just read about remaining quiet, not teaching and not exercising authority (authentein) over men; we also read about braided hair, gold, pearls and costly garments. 

Yet, no woman coming into church today gets flagged by a bouncer at the door for that wedding ring with bling and gets asked, “Whoa, is that gold? If so, you’re outta here!” 

No one is told to go based on braids. 

And no one has to show where they shop, and how much they paid for clothes, to have access granted. 

The instruction around those things is not applied today in the same way the restriction on teaching, in many circles, is. 

At minimum we are seeing 7 prohibitions in this section for wives (or for women, as some translate it). Altogether, what are they? 

  1. Remain quiet

  2. Not allowed to teach 

  3. Not exercise authority over (authentein) men

  4. Wear proper clothing

  5. No braided hair

  6. No gold

  7. No pearls 

Yet, only two of these seven get applied woodenly – one of those that women can’t be in authority over men, which we’ve shown is NOT what the word authentein means at all.

We have a situation where the present day application of the first four prohibitions around detailed dress are being dismissed on cultural grounds, 

with people saying, “Well, the specific application of the timeless truth under those dress restrictions is expressed differently today.” 

But if that’s the case, shouldn’t it be the same for the timeless truth underlying the speech restrictions today? 

So we have to ask, “What does the Bible teach as a timeless principle of values and morals and how does application vary in different contexts?” 

What you’re going to see here is that all of these prohibitions fit into one value applied in that context. 

What do no braided hair, no gold jewelry, no pearls, no expensive clothes and no teaching men all have in common? 

They all share the same underlying principle. They are all expressions – in that culture – of the same timeless truth found in verse 9. Let’s look at it again. According to this verse, how are women to adorn themselves? “Modestly and discreetly” we are told.” 

Better translations say “with modesty” – the Greek, word αἰδοῦς – and self-control – the  Greek word, σωφροσύνη. 

In what way does the “modesty and self-control” mentioned in 1 Timothy 2:9 get modeled in the quietness of 1 Timothy 2:11-12? Or conversely, in what way, would a lack of quietness (1 Tim. 2:12) do the same thing as braided hair, gold, pearls and costly garments addressed in 1 Timothy 2:9?

Let’s see how. 

Again, “modesty” is the Greek word αἰδοῦς and can be translated as “a sense of shame or honor, modesty, bashfulness, reverence, regard for others, or respect (1).” (Bible Soft Inc., 2011)

That is a wide range of meaning, right?

Modesty, honor and submission all in one word: “aidous.”

Σωφροσύνη or self-control meant “soundness of mind, self-control or sobriety (2).” (Bible Soft Inc., 2011)

Again, it’s a word for modesty, but in the sense of a regulated behavior, a controlled manner of behavior.

In this context, the appearance stuff and the speaking stuff are both immodest. 

They are both loud. 
They are both a distraction 
They are both disruptive. 

They both draw attention to oneself, distracting attention away from the Lord, and they both bring contention, disrupting the social norms needlessly.

The point is this. Everyone separates the speech of this verse from the part about αἰδοῦς and Σωφροσύνη (or respectful, restrained modesty), but it all goes together. 

It’s why the Corinthians text that we looked at in Deborah…Unless There’s A Dude (Parts 1 and 2)  addresses the impact of wives’ dress, not just the impact of wives’ speech, similar to now.

In short, the dress and speech restriction go together. It’s all about a respectable, restrained modesty in appearance, in dress, and in speech. 

That is the third key. 

That, of course, then begs the question, “Why does modesty matter?” 

Certainly there is an honoring God in modesty – by not distracting from what is His –  but there is more. 

Theologian Bruce Winter in his book Roman Widows, Roman Wives writes, 

“First century wives, depicted both in statues and in literature, are recorded as having worn distinctive clothing requiring a considerable amount of fabric. It was intended to signal modesty that was the mark of a married woman (3).”

— (Winter, 2003, p. 99)

That was the historical practice. 

However, in the first century, it’s well documented that hip, new fashion trends were setting in in Rome. The rich and famous women were putting on the first episode of Roman Housewives (Kardashian style), and the women of the empire could not stop watching. The clothing they were wearing suggested they were not married, and those trends were spreading from Rome to the Greek world. 

Bottom line? The new trend of women’s dress was disrespectful and dishonoring of husbands. 

That is why the term modesty and respect and honor got combined into one word. It meant the same thing then. It was all “αἰδοῦς.”

Commenting on the hetairai (shameful woman), Winter writes, “McGinn has documented the immodest dresses, outlandish hairstyles, and lavish jewellery including gold and pearls which distinguished the hetaira from the modest wives in first-century society…(4)” (Winter, 2003, p. 100)

That word αἰδοῦς, meaning respect, honor, reverence, and modesty all at the same time, shows that to dress modestly was to keep one’s I-do’s. αἰδοῦς (I-duce) was the proper keeping of I-do’s. We tracking? 

This wasn’t new either. 

Winter, quoting Athenaeus in Deipnosophists 523B, says, “The law of Syracusans had stipulated that ‘a woman should not wear gold or a flowery dress or have clothes with purple unless she accepted the name of a public hetaira (prostitute)(5). (Winter, 2003). 

Additionally, Winter cites Dalby’s work: “This Greek phrase, ‘dresses and gold’ is the standard statement of the two accouterments of a hetaira (6). (Winter, 2003). 

Listen, for women to dress like this, in the first century, was dishonorable to their husbands and contentious in the church, not to mention a major distraction. The wives speaking, in that cultural context, also created the same outcomes. That is why they, dress and speech, are all mentioned together right here in this one paragraph. 

Everyone wants to separate the speaking in church parts of the passages from the clothing and hairstyle parts, making the “no teaching” piece timeless but the “appearance” pieces culturally-conditioned and no longer applicable. However, they all went together and all communicated the same thing then: a lack of honor toward one’s husband.

Seneca who died 65 AD wrote this about his own mother. It sheds a lot of light on how so many of these issues came together.

Unchastity, the greatest evil of our time, has never classed you with the great majority of women; jewels have not moved you, nor pearls; to your eyes the glitter of riches has not seemed the greatest boon of the human race; you, who were soundly trained in an old-fashioned and strict household, have not been perverted by the imitation of worse women that leads even the virtuous into pitfalls; you have never blushed for the number of your children, as if it taunted you with your years; never have you, in the manner of other women whose only (re)commendation lies in their beauty, tried to conceal your pregnancy as if an unseemly burden, nor have you ever crushed the hope of children that were being nurtured in your body; you have not defiled your face with paints and cosmetics; never have you fancied the kind of dress that exposed no greater nakedness by being removed. In you has been seen that peerless ornament, that fairest beauty on which time lays no hand, that chiefest glory which is modesty (7).” (Seneca the Younger, Reprinted in 1958, p. 471). 

What are you seeing here? The chief glory of modesty is depicted how?

Modesty is depicted as chastity, restraint in dress, restraint in appearance and mothering. 

It shouldn’t surprise us to hear that the way you dress signaled who you were, what you were. I mean we get that, right? 

Back then women wearing head coverings was a cultural norm that signified marriage. 

To uncover publicly represented something similar to being either so young you’re not married yet (very young in that day) or a prostitute, and so in 1 Corinthians 11, the apostle Paul writes that women should keep their heads covered when praying or prophesying and that to not do so was to be “inclined to be contentious” (1 Cor 11:16).

On top of that, women in that society did not teach in public. There were exceptions, but few. 

The Christian church gatherings, which had women praying or sharing a prophetic revelation, were certainly pushing the cultural boundaries. Women were doing more at church than in surrounding culture, that is clear. 

But, if teaching gets interpreted in a particular context as anti-submission to a husband (which it did in that culture), then not only is that then unbiblical (because anti-submission is) but it also is a threat to the spread of the Gospel, and so Paul is rightly going to forbid that. 

Today, it’s different; but then, for a man’s wife to get up and teach, while he as the husband sits there and learns, was no different than a woman serving in the military while the husband sat at home. 

While both are accepted today, both would have been statements of anti-submission to husbands then, just as dressing immodestly was.

We’re going to come back to this and tie it all together, but the point is that modesty of dress, appearance and speech sent a message of honor and submission to the husband.

The timeless truth here is that submission in marriage is what the Bible commands in all places and times. 

Modesty is a message of submission, and aidous and sophrusanay were a modeling of that submission.

In that context, to teach and not be quiet and submissive in the gathering, was to domineer (authentein) and that is going to lead to our next point. 

For the fourth and fifth final keys to unlocking 1 Timothy 2, please see Deborah…Unless There’s a Dude (Part 6). 

1 Bible Soft, Inc. “STRONGS NT 127: αἰδώς” in Thayer Greek Lexicon. (2011). https://biblehub.com/greek/127.htm
2 Bible Soft, Inc. “STRONGS NT 4997: σωφροσύνη” in Thayer Greek Lexicon. (2011). https://biblehub.com/greek/4997.htm
3 Winter, Bruce W. (2003). Romans Wives, Roman Widows. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
4 Winter, Bruce W. (2003). Romans Wives, Roman Widows. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
5 Winter, Bruce W. (2003). Romans Wives, Roman Widows. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
6 Winter, Bruce W. (2003). Romans Wives, Roman Widows. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 
7 Seneca, L. A.. Editor Basore, J. W. (1958). “To Helvia on Consolation” in Moral Essays: In Three Volumes. Harvard University Press.


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