Should women be allowed to preach to a mixed audience? 1 Timothy 2:11-15 (Part 3)

1 Timothy 2 has been cited to prohibit all women for all time to teach to a mixed (male and female) audience. But does it? This is the third in a series on 1 Timothy 2. Parts One and Two can be found earlier on this blog.

Today we tackle the difficult to interpret word authority. It has been traditionally understood as a prohibition against women “exercising authority” over men in any church context. Some translations even cite the word as “usurp authority.” This would indicate that a woman teaching would be taking the God-given authority to teach away from the men.

“But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.” (1 Timothy 2:12)

The big question here is the verb authenteo. What did Paul mean? Unfortunately, there are no other instances of this word being used in the rest of the NT. So we have to look at outside sources for context.

In the earliest instances of this word, it was used to denote murderers. It gradually changed over centuries to mean one who kills with their hands, either others or themselves.

In the Septuagint, a collection of the best and most reliable Greek manuscripts translating the Old Testament from Hebrew to Greek (and what seems to have been the favorite translation in the early Church), we have another source of context for authenteo. It is found in the Wisdom of Solomon 12:4-6: “They practiced magic and conducted unholy worship; they killed children without mercy and ate the flesh and blood of human beings. They were initiated into secret rituals in which parents murdered (authenteo) their own defenseless children.”

Another context found in ancient writing is in the apocryphal book, 3 Maccabees. Ptolemy IV of Egypt issued a decree forcing Jews to worship his pagan god: and “…those who resisted were to be forcibly seized and put to death [authenteo]…” (3 Maccabees 2:28).

Writers at the time of Paul (the first century AD) used the word for someone who caused their own death or murdering themselves (Philo Judaeus) and for being a perpetrator of a crime  involving poisoning or a slaughter (Flavius Josephus) .

In no instance (and there are many more) is authenteo used to denote legitimate or wholesome authority.

It had a sinister meaning in both Classical and Koine Greek, certainly the very opposite of the behavior Paul commands for all believers: love, respect, and submission for the common good.

Why would Paul then use authenteo here in his instruction to the Church? Why would he qualify men’s authority as sinister? Or did he have a different group in mind?

The early Church fathers (in the second century) often used authenteo, translated as supreme power, in addressing the heresy of Gnosticism.

Remember, Paul is writing this letter to Timothy in response to a heresy being spread in the church at Ephesus. Since he doesn’t name it, we have to gather clues to what that heresy was, as we are viewing only one-half of the conversation (Paul’s response to what he and Timothy both know to be true in the situation). What we find is consistent with the early tenets of Gnosticism. (We will discuss Gnosticism in another post.)

There is another word Paul does use to denote authority within the church quite often: exousias. (You can find it in 1 Cor 6:12, 7:4, 9:4-6; Colossians 1:13, 2 Thessalonians 3:12, Romans 6:15, 9:21, and others.) Yet in this passage in 1 Timothy, Paul chooses authenteo, never to use it again in the rest of his writings.

This seems to indicate Paul is addressing another kind of authority, one not a legitimate kind of authority within the church.

Putting the words of 1 Timothy 2:11-12 together: quietly [hesuchia] learning [manthano] in submissiveness [huppatasso], not exercising authority [authenteo] over man, seems to depict someone who has not learned the basic truths of the gospel and is teaching a very damaging false doctrine. This was a specific problem for a specific church. It is a huge stretch to make Paul’s admonition a rule that restricts all women for all time.

And if Paul thought this a general prohibition for all the churches, why, in all the times he lists the spiritual gifts in his epistles to other churches, does he not specify gender limitations? Wouldn’t they have needed to know this as well as the believers in Ephesus?

In the next post, we will continue on into 1 Timothy 2: “For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve…” Was Paul using Genesis 2 as an indication that creation order signified a God-designed hierarchy between men and women? Stay tuned.