Endnotes to Appendix 1 Part A and Part B

16. We may of course ask the additional question, even if the metaphor of kephale in the sense of leader was not a native Greek metaphor, would non-Jewish Greek speakers have understood it nonetheless? It seems quite likely that they would have understood it, because (1) the quotation from Plato, Timaeus 44d, noted below (example 3), shows that the idea of the head ruling over the body was commonly understood in Greek culture long before the time of the New Testament; (2) the quotations from Plutarch (my examples 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, noted below) are strong evidence of the use of kephale meaning leader in a writer not influenced by the Hebrew Old Testament or the Septuagint; (3) the use of the adjective kephalaios, head-like, in the phrase ho kephalaios, the head-like one, to mean leader or authority over shows that a closely-related adjectival form of this word was used with that meaning in non-Biblical Greek (see Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, rev. Henry Stuart Jones and Roderick McKenzie, supp. ed. E. A. Barber, et al. [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968; henceforth referred to as LSJ or Liddell-Scott], pp. 944-945: metaphorically, of persons, the head or chief ).

17. Once again the numbering of the passages follows that of my original article.

18. I realize that this point does not apply to Cervin's argument directly since he does not depend on Orphic Fragments 21a for his case, but I mention it here because of its relevance for the wider discussion.

19. One more question of a textual variant comes up when Cervin examines my example (9), 1 Kings (LXX 3 Kings) 8:1 (Alexandrinus): Then Solomon assembled all the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes. Before commenting on the text itself, Cervin asserts, The word kephale does not even occur; rather it is found in a variation of Origen's (p. 97). Cervin makes it sound as if I had quoted an example where the word does not occur in the Septuagint but rather was inserted by Origen (early third century A.D.). But in fact the word kephale is found in the Alexandrinus text of the Septuagint (see H. B. Swete, The Old Testament in Greek According to the Septuagint [Cambridge: University Press, 1909], vol. 1, p. 691; cf. E. Hatch and H. A. Redpath, A Concordance to the Septuagint, 2 vols. [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897-1906; henceforth referred to as Hatch-Redpath], vol. 2, p. 761).

20. It is puzzling to be told several times in Cervin's article that I failed to provide the context for a quotation. In this example (which is not unlike a number of others), I originally quoted three lines, and Mr. Cervin quotes five and says I failed to provide the context. (The quotation from Plutarch above is a verbatim quotation from my original article, for example.) It seems quite clear from my original quotation that Plutarch is using a simile, and it does not seem to me that I omitted anything essential for the reader. Of course in these cases there are always questions of judgment about what must necessarily be included in an article without entirely losing its readability, but I do not think I was unfair to the reader or that I withheld essential information about the context in any of the cases in which Cervin suggests that I did so (as in this case).

21. For a discussion of the textual variant, see above, note 19.

22. Philip Payne, Response, in Women, Authority and the Bible, ed. Mickelsen, p. 123, adopts the same interpretation as Cervin regarding this verse.

23. R. H. Charles, Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), p. 297.

24. So also the editor in the Loeb Classical Library edition, p. 388, note c.

25. History of the Septuagint Text, in Alfred Rahlfs, Septuaginta (Stuttgart: W rttembergische Bibelanstalt, 1965), p. xxvi.

26. H. B. Swete, An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek (Cambridge: University Press, 1900), p. 31.

27. Ibid., pp. 39-40.

28. I did not include these examples in my earlier article because they seemed to me possibly to represent prominence instead of rule or authority. But reexamination of the contexts and the realization that exaltation to high position in the Old Testament seems inevitably to carry with it some idea of authority as well have convinced me that authority is in view in these examples also.

29. In subsequent personal correspondence to me (6/5/90), Dr. Cervin agrees that pre-eminence is not a meaning given in LSJ, and indicates that on reconsideration he now thinks the meaning prominence would be more appropriate, because this meaning does not carry the overtone of superiority which is implicit in [the meaning pre-eminence]. Cervin indicates that, although this meaning prominence is not given in LSJ either, it seems to him a valid aspect of the Greek metaphorical use of kephale because it is closely related to the idea of being the physical top or end of a person or object, and therefore the idea of prominence is implicit in the metaphor. In response, the same objections given above seem to me also to apply to this new suggestion: though it may be an overtone of the metaphor, it is not a necessary meaning, it has never been suggested in any lexicon, and, in any case, when applied to persons it cannot be dissociated from the dominant sense of authority, leader, ruler. Why must people search for any meaning but authority over?

30. Berkeley Mickelsen and Alvera Mickelsen, "Does Male Dominance Tarnish Our Translations?" Christianity Today, October 5, 1979, p. 23.

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.