Endnotes to Appendix 1 Part A

1. Richard S. Cervin, "Does Kephale Mean 'Source' or 'Authority' in Greek Literature? A Rebuttal," Trinity Journal 10 NS (1989), 85-112.

2. Trinity Journal 6 NS (1985), 38-59; reprinted from the appendix of George W. Knight III, The Role Relationship of Men and Women, rev. ed., (Chicago: Moody Press, 1985), 49-80.

3. Italics mine.

4. In this article I am citing the page references from my earlier Trinity Journal article rather than from the article as it appeared as an appendix to George Knight's book (see note 2).

5. Later in this article I discuss the claim of some recent interpreters that kephale does not mean authority over in this and other passages dealing with Christ's rule. To my knowledge, no commentary and no lexicon in the history of the church has denied the meaning ruler or authority over in this passage until 1981, when Berkeley and Alvera Mickelsen suggested the meaning top or crown in their article, The 'Head' of the Epistles (Christianity Today, February 20, 1981, p. 22). But they give no argument for this interpretation except to assert it. And they admit that the context is discussing Christ's authority over everything in creation (ibid.).

6. Cervin also briefly mentions the argument that kephale in the LXX only seldom translates Hebrew ro'sh when referring to leaders. Because this argument is developed more fully by the Mickelsens, I treat it below (pp. 450-453).

7. Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 2nd ed., trans. William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, rev. F. Wilbur Gingrich and Frederick W. Danker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979; henceforth referred to as BAGD), p. xxi.

8. See below, p. 444, for more detailed discussion of Cervin's objection to this passage in Plutarch.

9. In this quotation, the emphasis on the word theologians is mine. Cervin seems determined to show that those who specialize in the interpretation of the New Testament do not have competence in understanding the meanings of terms. But why should the fact that one specializes in the study of New Testament literature automatically mean that one is incompetent in lexicography or linguistics or classical Greek? Especially in the case of Bauer's Lexicon this is certainly a false assumption. To continue to call such scholars theologians when their specialty is lexicography is both inaccurate and misleading to readers.

10. Moises Silva, Biblical Words and Their Meaning: An Introduction to Lexical Semantics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983), p. 172.

11. Silva, Biblical Words, p. 171.

Endnotes to Appendix 1 Part A

12. Peter Cotterell and Max Turner, Linguistics and Biblical Interpretation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1989), comment on Herodotus 4.91:

However, the singular word is also used of the mouth of the river… and the easiest explanation of both of these usages of kephale is that they derive from the lexeme's established sense of extreme end… we do not need to posit that they represent new senses, source and mouth respectively, for which we have no corroborating evidence…. (p. 142)

13. Philip Payne, Response, in Women, Authority and the Bible, ed. Alvera Mickelsen (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986), pp. 118-136.

14. He says that one example is not a metaphor at all but a simile and has nothing to do with 'source' or 'authority.' Regarding a number of other passages in Artemidorus he says, Several of the passages cited by Payne do not warrant the interpretation of 'source,' however (p. 92).

15. Some (though not Cervin) have also suggested (in personal correspondence to me, without attribution) that an example of kephale meaning source may be found in The Life of Adam and Eve 19.3, which calls sinful desire (Greek epithumia) the head of every sin. But once again this text is ambiguous: Head here could well mean just beginning or starting point, first in a series. Moreover, the example is hardly reliable for NT evidence, since it is only found in two 13th A.D. century Italian manuscripts, designated A and B by R. H. Charles (The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament [2 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913] 1:146; compare discussion of manuscripts on pp. 124-125). Charles himself does not think the reading kephale to be correct here and follows manuscript C in its reading rhiza kai arche, therefore translating this different phrase root and beginning (p. 146). James H. Charlesworth (The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha [2 vols; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983-85] 2:279) translates origin, but notes that kephale here corresponds to Hebrew ro'sh, maning head or first (279, note e). (The Greek text is found in C. von Tischendorf, Apocalypses Apocryphae [Leipzig, 1866] 11).

From Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood edited by Piper J and Grudem W, p. 426-32. Copyright ©1997 by Crossway Books. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois 60187, (www.gnpcb.org). Download for personal use only.