Comments on: Answering Matt Slick’s agenda on 1 Timothy 2:12

By: Don Johnson

Don Johnson — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:12:19 +0000

ESV Gen 5:2

Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created.

The ESV translation team stated it believes in male-only leadership in church and home. The point is that names are not translated. A name may have a meaning, but no one thinks the meaning is the name, EXCEPT in this case where they had a masculinist agenda.

By: tiro3

tiro3 — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:15:02 +0000

“claiming that since God called Adam and Eve “man” that this indicates male supremacy”
It always amazes me when they do something like that, and call themselves scholars. It is understandable when a new Christian or someone who has no knowledge of how to study Scriptures makes that kind of mistake. But it is such a basic kind of mistake that they have no excuse to keep proclaiming it as accurate. We have to start at base one with them and keep patiently explaining that the meaning in the original language has nothing whatsoever to do with gender, but is a name for our species.

By: Don Johnson

Don Johnson — Fri, 09 May 2008 13:57:24 +0000

And besides them doing this, some believe it IS scholarship and accept their claims. Never underestimate the power of seeking personal advantage when interpreting Scripture. And this includes me also.

By: Paula

Paula — Fri, 09 May 2008 12:05:28 +0000

Yes, and Grudem and Piper do the same thing with the Hebrew in Genesis, claiming that since God called Adam and Eve “man” that this indicates male supremacy! And yes, they call themselves scholars.

By: Don Johnson

Don Johnson — Fri, 09 May 2008 02:19:29 +0000

I find it AMAZING that anyone would think that finding all references to a phrase in the NASB is scholarship. To be fair, I could see it as a helper TO scholarship, but not as actual scholarship. As you say, it is similar to Grudem claiming that the NT has the word “man” in it, when this is not even possible, as the NT is in Greek.

By: Paula

Paula — Fri, 09 May 2008 01:09:00 +0000

Same thing Grudem does, start with English and read it into the text.

We need to get more Greek experts into this, who are not prejudiced. This was Bushnell’s lament over 60 years ago, that those who control translation and dictionaries have gotten away with murder all these years. They rely on the ignorance of the masses and forbid any to question them. At least most of our opponents aren’t Greek experts either, so we’re all in the same boat, gleaning what we can from available sources.
We are at a decided disadvantage due to the outdated dictionaries and biased commentaries, since those are the “authorities” people look to when deciding who is to be believed. Even the UBS texts have not been free of tampering, as in the case of the name Junia. So we need scholars to come forward and correct these foundational authorities and put an end to this uneven playing field.

By: Cheryl

Cheryl — Fri, 09 May 2008 00:38:35 +0000

That is great detective work. Of course it makes sense. He was looking at the English “a woman” instead of the actual Greek word so he would miss a place that “wife” is listed. That shows faulty research on Matt’s part.

By: Don Johnson

Don Johnson — Fri, 09 May 2008 00:33:01 +0000

On closer reading I see he used the NASB translation and apparently searched for all occurances of “a woman” IN ENGLISH. This is a flawed methodology, he needs to start from the Greek text, say UBS4. That is apparently why he missed the 1 Cor 7 ref. And there may be others, that is one I knew off the top of my head.

By: Don Johnson

Don Johnson — Fri, 09 May 2008 00:06:19 +0000

I meant “without an article” not “with”. Duh!

By: Don Johnson

Don Johnson — Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:25 +0000

In his article “The use of the phrase “a woman” in the entire NT” the title is not even accurate. What he is trying to examine is the term gune with an article or more formally anarthrous gune. He thinks this means “a woman” or “a wife” but that is just one of the possible meanings. It also migft be definite, the absence of the definite article does not require the noun to be indefinite, however, the presence of the definite article does mean the noun is definite. It might also be referring to a class distinguished by the attribute, in this case, womenly people or more simply women. It is up to the other context to provide clues as to which is meant.

So he has a fundamental misunderstanding of Greek from the start.