Every now and then I’ll do a post that raises some questions to do with a tricky passage in 1 Corinthians. There has already been a little discussion on “baptism of the dead” (1 Cor 15:29) here on the theologer forum – where I tried to contribute an interpretive suggestion. But today, it’s that old chestnut: Is 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 an interpolation? My aim will not be to give a simple opinion on the answer to that question, but to suggest some important issues to consider in trying to arrive at an answer.
Firstly, there are textual issues to consider. These verses are not missing from any known manuscripts – but are differently situated in some manuscripts. I can’t improve on the summary given by D.C. Parker in his recent book An Introduction to the New Testament Manuscripts and Their Texts:
The most important observation is that a small group of witnesses place the verses after verse 40. These are the Greek manuscripts 06 010 012 88 915, the Syriac Peshitta and the Latin manuscripts 61 89 with Ambrosiaster and Sedulius Scotus. The Latin witnesses are largely the bilinguals, whose agreement takes us back either to the mid-fourth or the third century. The other Latin evidence, including Ambrosiaster’s writing between 366 and 378 in Rome, suggests that the reading was widespread in the Latin world. Indeed, as Fee points out, it is the reading of all witnesses except those which represent the Vulgate text, known from about 400 onwards. That is, the only text in the west before 400 placed the verses after verse 40. [p275; emphasis mine]
But, as Parker goes on to point out, there is early and wide attestation for the canonically-recognisable placement of these verses, particularly in the Greek tradition – including P46. Furthermore, J. Kloha has argued that dislocation of passages in the bilingual manuscripts of Paul is not uncommon, and is not a reliable sign of interpolation.
Secondly, there are issues to do with ancient letter writing and collation. E. Randolph Richards has demonstrated that ancient letter writers such as Paul wrote in the context of community, utilised the skills of professional secretaries, went through drafts and revisions, and made use of pre-formed materials. In particular, Paul’s letters often involve co-senders – such as Timothy or Silvanus. These co-senders are not simply the same as those who send their greetings in the letter endings, indicating that they had some involvement in the authoring of the letter. 1 Corinthians is from Paul “and Sosthenes the brother”. Richards reasons that if this Sosthenes is the one known to us in Acts, then he was the ruler of a synagogue, and thus familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures, as well as conceivably able to carry some weight in the (relatively lengthy) letter-writing process alongside Paul.
All of these sorts of issues urge a caution: Material that (from a literary point of view) doesn’t appear to fit smoothly should not automatically be considered a “post-Pauline interpolation”. A passage that is somewhat ill-fitting may be a piece of pre-formed material (such as from a previous letter by Paul, or from a sermon by Sosthenes) – or it may indicate the diversity of emphasis within the authorial team (undoubtedly under the leadership of Paul, but surely with the possibility of genuine contribution from Sosthenes). Alternatively, an ill-fitting passage may simply be an addition late in the editing process, but still by Paul/Sosthenes.
Thirdly, there are issues to do with literary consistency. The issues above don’t disqualify the questions of literary consistency – they qualify questions of literary consistency – cautioning us not to jump too quickly to one “inevitable” conclusion. In terms of literary consistency, Fee argues:
once one recognizes the improbability of authenticity on transcriptional grounds, then several questions of intrinsic probability are more easily answered: (1) One can make much better sense of the structure of Paul’s argument without these intruding sentences…. (2) …these verses stand in obvious contradiction to 11:2-16, where it is assumed without reproof that women pray and prophesy in the assembly…. (3) …some usages in these two verses seem quite foreign to Paul. [Fee, 1987, pp701-702]
Fee’s first and third items should be tempered by the recognition that the two verses do contain terminology and themes that fit exeedingly well with the context – as Witherington and Thiselton note:
The four key terms (as Witherington rightly asserts) are laleo (repeatedly from 14:14-32), sigao (14:28,30,34), en ekklesia (14:28,35; cf.34); and hupotasso (14:32,34). [Thiselton, 2000, p1152]
Fee’s second item, then, is perhaps the most important: How does 11:2-16 fit with 14:33-34? Hays has put the challenge well:
Those interpreters who do regard 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 as belonging originally to Paul’s letter have to explain how these verses fit together with 11:2-16 and how they work within Paul’s argument. [Hays, p247]
Garland’s suggestion attempts to deal with both of these problems, by seeing the restraint placed on women as subordinate to the contextual evaluation of prophecies [p655]:
Overarching principle: Let all things be done for edification (26)
- Restraints concerning speaking in tongues (27-28 )
- Restraints concerning prophecy and discernment (29-36): Restraints on the number of prohets speaking and others discerning (29); Restraints on a prophet speaking (20-33a); Restraints on wives in discerning (33b-36)
- Injunction (37-38 )
Encouragement of prophecy and tongues (39)
Is this persuasive?…
Fourthly (finally), there are issues related to historical plausibility. In other words, is the model of church order/authority suggested by a cautious reading of these verses (with women/wives who remain silent in terms of discernment of prophecy) historically likely during the mid-fifties when Paul was writing this letter?
Okay, this post is getting uber-long, so I’ll just jump to my own opinion at this stage: I think there still needs to be more work done on this passage before I’ll be convinced that it’s certainly an interpolation. To be honest, I think that any suggested way of dealing with this passage (whether along the lines of Fee or Garland or whoever…) brings problems with it: I haven’t found anything to be completely neat… so I am open to be persuaded, but at the moment, I’ll take the verses as original.
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Matthew, thanks for this scholarly post. I’ll have to copy this to a word document and file it.
At least, you admit to it being original for the time being. I will you too.
Well, Fee’s objections have been successivefully answered except with 11:2-16. I agree with you on that one. We need to remain tentative in our interpretations.
But 14:34-35 must be considered as original and not an interpolation. I look forward to the responses to this post.
I’m with Fee on this one. Have you read his excursus on it in “God’s Empowering Presence” or Eldon Jay Epp’s treatment of it in his book on Junia?
Also one of the things that Fee says that I find particularly interesting is that everyone who argues that it is original to Paul then spends all of their time arguing that it doesn’t mean what it clearly seems to say. They argue it in and then explain it away. : )
Bryan
Thanks for your comments TC & Bryan. I haven’t read Fee’s God’s Empowering Presence – just his treatment of the issue in his commentary. I think Fee’s position there ought to be carefully evaluated – but the questions I have especially concern:
a) Kloha’s textual point – that dislocation in Pauline bilinguals is not necessarily a sign of interpolation: If this is true, it significantly weakens Fee’s case
b) The idea that “intrinsic probability” leans so clearly against the inclusion of these verses: I’m not as convinced as Fee of this point
I hear what you’re saying, Bryan, about people arguing the passage in and then explaining it away. Although perhaps the need to ‘explain’ a tension between ch11 and ch14 is a relatively modern phenomenon??? Chrysostom, writing in about 400CE, comments on these verses (which he assumes to be original), and sees no problem reading them in a way roughly similar to Garland’s reading above: He is not unaware of chapter 11’s comments about the participation of women (indeed, he makes reference to this section twice in his discussion of 14:34); but he reads 14:34 as subordinate to the issue of “particular restraints for the sake of edification”:
“Having abated the disturbance both from the tongues and from the prophesyings; and having made a law to prevent confusion, that they who speak with tongues should do this in turn, and that they who prophesy should be silent when another begins; he next in course proceeds to the disorder which arose from the women, cutting off their unseasonable boldness of speech: and that very opportunely. For if to them that have the gifts it is not permitted to speak inconsiderately, nor when they will, and this, though they be moved by the Spirit; much less to those women who prate idly and to no purpose.”
Chrysostom here appears to assume that in the context of calling for an orderly congregational use of speaking gifts, Paul is demanding a halt to the disturbance of “those women who prate idly and to no purpose.” He doesn’t explicitly try to explain how this ‘fits’ with chapter 11; but, arguably, he sees the differing context as making the distinction obvious.
Anyway, it seems like I’m arguing that the passage in question definitely isn’t an interpolation… but I’m not – I’m just saying that there are enough questions about the interpolation theory to leave me, as yet, unconvinced.
If, according to Chrysostom, Paul is speaking against women who “prate idly and to no purpose”, is he perhaps taking the position also taken by many moderns that these verses don’t prohibit women from taking a full part in the worship service, but only from chattering during it, as many women and some men are prone to do still today?
But, as Parker goes on to point out, there is early and wide attestation for the canonically-recognisable placement of these verses, particularly in the Greek tradition – including P46. Furthermore, J. Kloha has argued that dislocation of passages in the bilingual manuscripts of Paul is not uncommon, and is not a reliable sign of interpolation.
What other dislocations are comparable? Fee has said that this dislocation had unique characteristics.
P46 had Julia in Rom. 16:7. Although early it is not recognized as identical with an original manuscript.
I cannot imagine that anyone today would argue that men have a better grasp of speaking in tongues or prophecy than women. I have none at all, mind you. Just a thought.
Fee argues that this interpolation started out very early on as a marginal note by a scribe that eventually made it’s way into the text in two different places in traditions that were unaware of each other (the East and West) until Jerome happened to travel to the Jerusalem to make his translation. I find it interesting that Earl Ellis (who’s writing the ICC commentary on 1 Corinthians) argues that it was also a marginal note but it was Paul’s marginal note. It seems like the textual evidence leads him to the marginal note conclusion as well (instead of the verse being a displacement) except he’s not willing to call it non-Pauline.
If you get a chance to check out Fee’s argument in GEP I highly recommend it as it is very careful and nuanced and he responds to the criticisms he received of his position in his 1 Corinthians commentary. In fact I think one of the weaknesses of both Thiselton and Grudem in answering Fee is that neither of them show any awareness of Fee’s detailed argument in GEP (despite it being out since 1994) in which he responded in greater detail and really hammers his points home. I think many don’t realize but much Fee spends much of his time arguing against the probability that this verse would be transposed from one place to another and in fact he challenges those who think it was to come up with a probable historical explanation as to how this would happen. Now this may not seem like such a big task to accomplish unless you’ve read his arguments as to why it seems so improbable that this could be a scribal mistake either by carelessness or by deliberately removing the verse and then placing it back in.
Bryan
Thanks for the continued thought-provoking discussion people…
Peter: Well I certainly wouldn’t call Chrysostom a proto-feminist! – but he does acknowledge the participation of women: “Their women used both to pray and prophesy unveiled and with their head bare (for then women also used to prophesy) but the men went so far as to wear long hair as having spent their time in philosophy, and covering their heads when praying and prophesying, each of which was a Grecian custom.”
Sue: As far as I’m aware, we still await the publication of Kloha’s work – you can find a discussion of it here, including reference to other allegedly similar displacements: http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2006/11/kloha-on-silence-of-women.html
Bryan: I’ll have to check out Fee’s stuff in GEP at some point. You raise a worthwhile point about the question of a plausible historical explanation for scribal displacement. Without being up to date on either Fee or Kloha’s recent work, let me attempt to frame it a slightly different way: What would be a plausible historical explanation for (according to Fee’s reconstruction) a scribe making a marginal note, and then for scribes in two other locations including the note in the body of the letter? I expect the answer would be along the lines of: “The church developed a commitment to models of institutional authority which involved the silencing of women, and this commitment was seen as having particular application at this point in the letter.”
My reflections then would be along these lines:
a) Why make a marginal note about women at this point of the letter, rather than the far more obvious position of chapter 11?
b) Couldn’t the same historical situation (the commitment to models of institutional authority which involved the silencing of women) have been a reason for displacement of the verses – attempting to move them from their contextual position (which arguably subordinates the silence command to the situation of wives’ evaluation of prophecy) to the new position, after verse 40, which would imply a more absolute command to female silence?
Anyway, to an extent, I’m just playing devil’s advocate here – the question of interpolation here doesn’t actually affect my own research at all, so it’s more just an interesting question. I’ll be curious to read more on both sides of the debate, and see where things go!
Thanks for the link. Yes, Fee is aware of Kloha’s claim and I think that a commenter pointed out that these phrases that Kloha raises are not exactly comparable. However, there are many who do not agree with Fee either.
Perhaps the most problematic is that these verse do not accord with 1 Cor. 11. I am quite familiar with churches that practice the silence of women, and quite frankly they are perhaps better for women than those which preach that women are “under male authority.” I would rather have my lip buttoned than have to concede a point of Greek grammar to someone else on the basis that they were male and I am not.
[...] it would probably be right to follow it." Taken from Bible.org Interesting tid bits from Matthew Malcolm’s blog (Malcom is a Ph.D student specializing in the book of 1 Corinthians): [...]
It was big of you to try to mitigate the hurtful discrimination inherent in this bit of scipture (1 Corinthians 14:34), but really – women recognize “shut up” when we hear it – and it echos two thousand years later very clearly.
Dr. Ann Nyland suggests that these verses are a quote of the letter written from Corinth to Paul. She cites S. Aalen, “A Rabbinic Formula in 1 Cor. 14,34,” in F. Cross (ed.) Studia Evangelica, II-III. Papers, Berlin 1964, pp 513-25.
This is a footnote in her The Source NT.
Jonathan
I want to thank Jonathan Mitchell for the information on S. Aalen’s work cited by Dr. Nyland. This is news to me. I will pursue it. I have published on this passage several times. I argue that verses 34 & 35 are quotes from the Corinthian letters delived to Paul, which he quotes in order to directly and forthrightly critique in verse 36. So 34 & 35 declare that women are to be silent in church, to which Paul replies with astonishment, “What! Did the word of God orginate with you.” The negative particle H (eta) translated “what” serves to introduce a question which calls what proceeded it into question. Corinthians — “Women should be silent in church.” Paul’s reply — “What” or I prefer “Say What! Did the word of God orginate with you.”
David Odell-Scott
Matthew, I agree that the evidence is inconclusive, at least when the question is assessed in isolation. However, there is other evidence that scribes altered Paul’s words to reduce the authority of women in the church. The disputed letters surely show that this misogynist tendency was strong from the end of the first century.
Take a look at my new blog, where I discuss these issues here.