For sure, if we say that it is a fact, or speak as if it were a fact, that she added to God’s prohibition, then we ourselves would be guity of adding to God’s word/the bible, since nothing proves that she added to God’s word. That’s all I have to share for the moment. And this is one of my favorite topics, so I’m sure there will be alot more later on! 🙂

As I commented in the other post, there is also no witness to Eve having been mistaken or confused. A child today can accurately remember a simple command, and Eve was undoubtedly intelligent, fully adult, and there were not a multitude of God’s commands to remember.

I am also going to reiterate what I wrote on an older comment stream.  Adam and Eve were, in our “books” at least were created “perfect” in our human way of measuring things.  In God’s books they were not perfect, of course, because no one and no thing is perfect except for God.  So both Adam and Eve were innocent, intelligent, without sin at their creation, and had no bodily or mental defects. We could call them “perfect” as they represented “human” perfection, the very highest that we could ever attain to.  We do know that when Jesus comes back we will be much better than that because we will be like him in his resurrected body which goes beyond our standard of human perfection.

I think it is time that we do not give a foothold to the hierarchists who insist on denigrating Eve with either a childlike inability to get a simple command right or who charge her with sin against God by importing into scripture a charge that Eve added to God’s words without one speck of evidence to support the claim and three witnesses (the serpent, Adam and God) who all were silent on any claim that Eve added to God’s words.

FWIIW, the serpent is asking a question.  We know the serpent is being tricky, but it is not a wrong thing to ask a question.  A question is not a statement.  It is a way to start to rope the woman in, but the question itself is not unfair.

We are to ask questions about what God said.  We are not to do so to try to trick someone.

Hey there,

I’ve recently been studying the topic of women in ministry. Though I’m still not sure which position I take, I’ve found your blog to be an invaluable resource, and most of your articles seem logical, thought-provoking, and well-grounded in Scripture. However, I do have one question about the past couple of posts.

If I understand you correctly, you argue that Eve couldn’t have added to God’s words in Gen. 3:3 because a) God didn’t confront her with this charge, and b) before eating the forbidden fruit she was a sinless woman. Yet in the previous post, you say or at least imply that Adam sinned against God by not protecting the garden and by staying silent while his wife was being deceived (the sin of omission, James 4:17).

When God confronts Adam about eating the fruit, He doesn’t mention the failure to guard and speak up, just like He doesn’t mention Eve’s alleged addition to the command. (There is the verse in Hosea about “dealing treacherously,” but that was written long after Adam’s death; I would think God would tell Adam to his face what all his sins were.) In addition, Adam was just as perfect (relatively speaking) in his pre-fallen state as Eve was. It seems to me the same logic that would acquit Eve would also acquit Adam.

Also, and this is more of a general question about theology, but does Deut. 19:15 apply to God’s finding someone guilty of sin? I’ve always thought that verse was talking more about humans finding someone guilty of a crime, as in a civic setting, and that omniscient God doesn’t need another witness since He alone sees our hearts and judges what we do in secret (Romans 2:16).

Thoughts? And thanks so much for your time!

As time goes on, I am becoming more astonished at what the Bible does not say more so than at what it does say.  Question is, where else do the facts in scripture point to something other than what has been accepted dogma since Constantine, Luther, and Calvin?

In my understanding, truth was begun to be lost with the gentilization of the church by the early 2nd century, with the loss of Jewish context.  But God is restoring truth to his church, in roughly the reverse order it was lost.  One of the early losses was women leaders and this is being restored.

‘The text does not say the woman added to God’s words and it does not say she did not. This is where I see that the Bible is a mirror and whichever way you go shows something about you. This is why I prefer to just point out that we do not know what we do not know.’

Don said this above in the other post, ‘Was the man given authority to rule the woman’. I’m bringing it here because I would like to comment on it here.

There is not a speck of evidence that the woman knew the command that God gave the man, and I’m specificaly meaning exactly what God said word-for-word to him when he was alone, before she was formed, I’m talking about what he explicitly said, not a speck (and I challenge anyone to provide such evidence) therefore there is no place to even begin with saying ‘and it does not say she did not add to it.’ In other words, there’s no room for an argument saying, ‘and it does not say she did not add to it’, since there is no speck of evidence that she even knew it.

If the woman did not know the explicit command given to the man, then no one can argue that she added to it, or that the bible does not say that she did not add to it. The argument cannot even get off the ground.

That’s all for now!

‘This is why I prefer to just point out that we do not know what we do not know.’

Yup. We do not know  what we do not know (that she even knew explicitly what God commanded the alone man).

After my studying the serpent’s words, I see that he was asking the woman about the command that God gave the alone, though he omitted and twisted what God said in his question, and then after the woman responds he then straight out lies, saying the opposite of what God said, though using the same words God commanded the alone man, continues to lie some more and swap words around, and then tops it all off with a truth at the end.

In light of what God said to the alone man, what the serpent asked the woman on what God said to the both of them, and what she responds with, she looks entirely oblivous to what the serpent is doing to the command God explicitly gave the man while he was alone. And as I said elsewhere, what the serpent did would have been easy for the man, to untwist. We can see what the serpent did when we look.

Was it cunning enough for the serpent to manuver in and out of words, while twisting, omitting, and swapping, that the woman had no idea were spoken from God’s mouth to the alone man, while her husband was with her?

Just to clarify, when I said “add to” I was not implying she somehow heard what God told the man.  It was just comparing the text and noting what she said God said was more than what God told the man.

To me it is clear that the man knew the truth (directly from God) and did not guard the garden from the serpent.

I see, Don. You weren’t implying that she somehow knew, either, right?

What I understand though is that when hierarchists say ‘add to’ they imply that she knew what God said explicitly to the alone man therefore she added to that command, and therefore God did not but rather she did.

I am in agreement with you on your post #11. About him, yes, the man did know the truth, directly from God and failed to guard the garden.

My analysis is that we are unsure about the woman, but sure about the man.  And this is enough.  We would like to know more perhaps, but we need to be grateful for what we have.

“As time goes on, I am becoming more astonished at what the Bible does not say more so than at what it does say.  Question is, where else do the facts in scripture point to something other than what has been accepted dogma since Constantine, Luther, and Calvin?”

I am having the same experience, Greg.  I have become very suspicious lately, too. Too many are quoting Calvin, Luther, Augustine, etc.,…and what THEY say about scripture instead of exegiting scripture in context. And so many of our churchy  traditions are no where to be found in the NT.

Hi guys,
I haven’t had time to read the comments yet. I am out of the office and will try to bounce back in as much as I can over the weekend.

Cheryl

‘My analysis is that we are unsure about the woman, but sure about the man. And this is enough. We would like to know more perhaps, but we need to be grateful for what we have.’

But what do we know about what she knew? There’s no evidence she knew what God told the alone man, but there is evidence that she knew something that God said, and the evidence IS her own words. That is what we know. We cannot be unsure about what she said because that’s recorded. We know what she said. But what many are unsure about is what she said, God said but that is being unsure about what she knew (said). We cannot say that what she said, God said is NOT what she knew. We can only say that it WAS what she knew.

The question then is what do we make or what have we made of what she knew (said).

Make sense?

Hi, Anonymous

I’m glad you’ve joined and asked such thought provoking questions! I like it! I try to ask many questions myself, but you’ve helped me see more! For now, I have more questions!
Can one fail to protect the garden, by listening to their wife’s voice (talk about the garden), one of the thing’s God said the man did do after he ate? Does it have anything to do with the serpent specificaly asking about ‘the garden’ with the woman responding about ‘what was in the middle of the garden’? I mean here’s the serpent asking specificaly about the garden, the garden that Adam was suppose to protect.

(I’ve not been able to determine for myself yet, whether or not when the woman spoke of the tree’s location in the garden, that the words were her own, or God’s, though in a comment of mine, from what I said, in ‘Was the man given authority to rule the woman’ it seems as though they are the woman’s words but before I use to think they were words of God’s that the woman was quoting and now, presently I’m trying to determine who’s they were.)

‘FWIIW, the serpent is asking a question.  We know the serpent is being tricky, but it is not a wrong thing to ask a question.  A question is not a statement.  It is a way to start to rope the woman in, but the question itself is not unfair. 
We are to ask questions about what God said.  We are not to do so to try to trick someone.’
I have to comment here. What you said above, I agree. But we also know that the serpent asked a question trying to trick the woman because we can see from his words that he knew what God said to the alone man.

Cheryl, can I just fill up all your posts on and related to this subject with 100 comments each? 😉

I think I just may explode eventualy. 🙂  Whonos?

Anon.,

The man is charged with 2 charges, listening to the voice of his wife and eating from the tree.  Listening to the voice of his wife was not forbidden and is normally a good thing, so one needs to try to discern how this could be 1) a bad thing and 2) violating a previous command.  My solution (and others including Piper and Cheryl I believe) is that this refers to the man JUST listening to the voice when he knew the serpent was wrong (as he was there with her) and this is violating a previous command as he was given the charge to guard the garden.

We know about what she knew. She knew something that God said, and the evidence that she knew something that God said IS her own words. This is what we know. We can be sure about what she said because what she said is recorded. We know what she said. We can only say that what she said was what she knew. We cannot say that what she said, God said is not what she knew.

But where did she get what she knew from? There is only evidence in the bible that when God says ‘you (pl)’ that he is speaking to the both of them. Gen 1. From scripture alone, from the evidence we do have, we can only say that she got it from God when God spoke to them both, like he did do in Gen 1.

So what God said (also), is determined by what she knew (said) and where she got it from is also determined by evidence we have. The evidence we have is where ‘you (pl) is used’ by God, in Gen 1, which shows how God uses it that is, he uses plural ‘you’ when he speaks to the both of them

Oops, that should have been, ‘There is only evidence in the accounts of Genesisthat when God says ‘you (pl)’… ‘

When I underline words, it does not go through when I submit my comments. Not too big of a deal I guess but I like to emphasis or highlight my words in different ways. (And I wish I could edit sometimes!)

Without evidence to begin with there is nothing to consider to begin with.

We have to take the evidence that we do have first which is what we have to consider, then we can take what we don’t have, and weigh what we don’t have against what we do have, and them come to conclusions.

Going backwards:

1. We have what she said, God said.
2. We have God saying ‘you (pl)’ to the both of them.
3. We have what God said to the man and when he said it, and what he said to the man is less than what she said, God said, ‘you (pl).’
4. We don’t have when God said what she said he did.

Conclusion: We have what she knew God said, and we also have why God says ‘you’ (pl).

What you have written is a little confusing.

The basic thing is we have the woman ASSERTION about what God said (to them).  We do not KNOW what God said to them.  It is a gap.

Scratch my last paragraph, in my comment #28. It did NOT come out right. Forgive me!

Comp: she added to God’s word (the command given to the man)
Egal: the bible does not say she added to God’s word
Comp: the bible does not say that she did not add to God’s word

When the comp responds with that, their argument from silence is only continuing. This is because no comp would say it without considering first that she did add to God’s word. And the egal’s response is not from silence since it is in the defense position.

Now this is different from ‘what she said, God said is more than what God said to the man’ or ‘what God said to the man is less than what she said, God said.’ The reason is because here in this case no one is saying that she added to God’s word.

Sorry for all the corrections I have had to make! (I need to slow down when I type it out, I think.)

Yes, Don. The end was very confusing! lol! I don’t know what happened. I think I was too tired and then fell alseep. Does, #30 help some, clear up the end at least?

I would say that we do know what God said to them (what she said) but that we don’t know when he said it. And because others say that we do not know what God said to them, I said, we know what she knew and what we make of what she knew, is the question. This is the question because we cannot say that what she said, God said, is NOT what she knew. How could we? How can we claim, to know more about what she knew? So it’s about what she knew and NOT what we don’t know. Does that make sense? That being the case, there is no gap to begin with. If we accept what she knew then we know what God said.

I’m going to get some more coffee!

I said Pinklight says she is confused.

JUST from the above sentence what can we say?
Can we say Pinklight is confused?  No we cannot.  She may be or may not be.
Can we say Pinklight says she is confused?  No we cannot.  She may have said it or not.

All we can say is that I asserted what I said.

pinklight wanted to rewrite a comment so I deleted her original comment that originally was #28.

5 Anonymous,

I think that your questions deserve to be answered in an article instead in the comment section so that more people are able to read it.  I will use your questions as the basis for my next article.

I appreciate that you found my articles logical and thought-provoking.  These are the same comments that I have been getting from my DVD series.  The basis of my argument comes from the passages themselves but from things in the passages that others appear to have missed.  It is the gift that God has given me and I am blessed to help others to logically think through these issues from a different angle.

We could also say that Adam was confused about guarding the garden. There is a lot of things we could say, but the question is, what can we prove from the context?

I don’t think that Adam was confused about the prohibition.  Neither was Eve.  Adam knew the truth and so did Eve.  That is until she was deceived.  Then she no longer believed the truth.  We know this because this is what the bible says.  Adam was not deceived but Eve was.  She was deceived by the serpent, not by her own inability to understand the command.

There is so much more to consider.  I will work on the next article and if the grandkids give me a break, I will try to get it up by the end of the weekend.

Here’s the re-write for what was post #28:

Without evidence to begin with there is nothing to consider to begin with. Therefore, we cannot consider that the woman added to God’s word because there is no evidence that she did. Just as we cannot consider that the husband is the leader of the wife because there is no evidence that he is. (There is evidence however that God added to his word.)

If we begin with the idea that she added to God’s word we will end up with a conclusion that she added to God’s word. I claim that this is what comps do. It is with what they begin and with what they end. They begin with nothing and end with nothing. Those who accept the woman’s testimony on the other hand begin with her testimony (evidence) and end with her testimony (scripture).

If a comp responds with ‘the bible does not say that she did not add to God’s word’ to an egal that has said, ‘the bible does not say she added to God’s word’ all the comp is doing is continuing their argument/belief from silence while what the egal says refutes the original argument from silence, ‘she added to God’s word’.

Let’s look at a different example. If a comp responds with ‘the bible does not say that the husband is not the leader of the wife’ to an egal that has said, ‘the bible does not say that the husband is the leader of the wife’ again, the comp is continuing their argument/belief from silence while what the egal says refutes the original argument from silence, ‘the husband is the leader of the wife’. On both accounts, the comps position begins with silence, nothing, a blank from scripture and that is where it stays, and where it ends.

Beginning with a belief/argument with no evidence, is nothing to consider, because there’s no evidence to consider to begin with. In other words, we don’t consider what the bible does not say FIRST. First we consider what it does say and then we weight what it does not say to what it does.

So when someone says, ’the bible does not say that she did not add to God’s word’ they are continuing to offer ‘no evidence’. This is so because no one would say, ‘well ghee, the bible does not say that she did not add to God’s word’ without first considering what is not even in the bible, ’she added to God’s word’.

Is the husband the leader of the wife? The bible does not say so.

Did the woman add to God’s word? The bible does not say so.

One thing we need to be careful about is that Hebraic thinking is NOT the same as Greek thinking.  A Hebrew can truncate a statement and the truncated part remains implied, this is totally forbidden in Greek logic chains.  We see examples of this truncation in Jonah, where he gives no escape clause in his warning, yet they escape; and in Mark 8:12 where Jonah is not mentioned as an exception to the “no sign given” yet Mat 12:39, Mat 16:4, and Luk 11:29 DO mention the sign of Jonah.  Skeptics use such verses to claim the Bible contradicts itself and it DOES if only using Greek logic, but the problem is in the using of Greek logic, not the Bible as understood by a Hebrew thinker.

I agree there is no evidence that the woman in the garden was a liar or even childlike.  But anyone can be simply mistaken.  Being deceived means one is mistaken about at least one thing, but the sin did not occur until she ate.  And if she was mistaken about at least 1 thing, I do not see why it could not be more than 1 thing.  I am not saying it is, I am saying we do not know.

Don # 37,

We have Constantine to thank (curse?) for laying the axe to our Hebrew roots as Christians.  The patristic theologians who came after him followed suit and did everything they could to rid the church of Hebraic influence.

It was probably Augustine of Hippo who devised the impeccable linear logic that was to box God up all the way through the reformation of Calvin and Luther.  Black or white, on or off, one or zero, the middle is excluded, paradox is not allowed.

Make no mistake, Greek thinking has helped make us very rich in science, art, and political institutions.  But no system of thought will ever figure out or contain the LORD of HOSTS.

Greg,

” But no system of thought will ever figure out or contain the LORD of HOSTS.”

After being immersed in the subject of the LORD of hosts for about 9 months now, when I read your comment, my spirit within me leaped for joy!  All I can say is AMEN!!!!  What a mighty God we serve and we get to enjoy him for eternity!!!

I think one thing we forget about these first (repeat FIRST) humans whose name was collectively ‘human” (which infers a closeness we don’t understand), is that they had little knowledge of anything and no knowledge of the difference of good and evil. They had little experience of life and no experience of evil, except in the hard lesson of the woman dialoguing with the serpent.

That is not a question of no brains but of inexperience which they both shared. They were in the process of learning via their choices.

Hey Lin,
I know how you feel.  I have been floored by what I have read on Ben Witherington’s blog.  He and I have had a few go-arounds over the last year or so.  I took exception to his claim that the early Christians “noodled” with the original Greek text of the New Testament.  His comments cause people to question the reliability of scripture.  By the way he has a copy of my DVD but it is far too conservative for his liking.  He doesn’t like that I hold to a fully inspired bible with inspired words and inspired grammar.  He does not hold to such a high view of scripture so I am not in his good books.

In my own study of the “LORD of hosts” for the Trinity DVD, I was so overwhelmed with the presence of Jesus in the OT that it blew me away.  It did the same thing for my pastor who read my script.  He said that he saw Jesus in the OT in a way that he had never seen him before.  Is Jesus there in the OT?  Absolutely!  And those who would seek to take him out and make the OT live without the imprint of Jesus in all of the divisions of its scriptures are blinded in my opinion.  I do not know what has blinded them, but I believe they need to be witnessed to.

Luk 24:27

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
Luk 24:44 
Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”

Psalms is the largest and first book of the “Writings” or 3rd section of the Tanakh.
Joh 1:45

Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

Don, Amen!!

And of course Isaiah 9:6–

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Paula,

Absolutely!  And so much more…the Old Testament is full of Jesus!

I used to think there was ONE RIGHT WAY to interpret each verse in the Bible, but more and more I see there are “clouds” of various ways to understand various verses and a believer is to give grace to another with both are in the cloud but not the same.  The other way to address this would be via a quasi-Magisterium and I do not want to go there, that cure seems worse than the disease.

Everyone SHOULD have a current understanding and should be teachable, but if something does not convince them, then it would be bad faith to pretend it did.  We can try to show the non-egals how to understand the Bible in a egal way, but in the final analysis, it is their choice how they understand the Bible, we cannot FORCE them to see it our way or vice versa.  We are left with trying to convince others and they the same.

I am convinced there are believers that do not believe the same as I do about the milk things of the faith in Hebrews 5; BUT I am still to treat them as believers.  How MUCH MORE for the things that are beyond the milk stage.

One way to see my point is that God COULD have spelled things out step by step.  Instead of ONLY having the woman’s quote God could have written words showing how God DID say what the woman said he did and then have her say them and it all fits together, as we might wish.  But for whatever reason God did not do that.  In my words, there are gaps in the account about things we might wish to know; and how one fills in the gaps tells others about oneself, not necessarily about God or what the Bible says or does not say.

We ARE supposed to use our mind to understand the Bible and make connections and use logic, etc.  And if my words do not convince you, nor your words mine, we each go in peace, I see this as a very small piece of the puzzle, there are much bigger fish to fry.

I remember when a Christian counselor told me that everyone has a right to be wrong.  One of my temptations is to try to get everyone to agree with me-me-me since I am right-right-right and I end up being unloving.  And God rebuked me, informing me that love was more important than being right.  (That is, getting the other to agree with me or at least coming to a common understanding.)

On Jonah, obviously until God acts, such statements as Jonah’s are warnings.  We know this from the nature of God.  Yes, Jonah did not want Ninevah to repent, so he went minimalist with his prophecy.

On Mark, it is important to see truncation as a possibility in Hebrew thinking as Mark and Luke have no exception clause for divorce, while Matthew does; this means some try to suppress the exception clause to reconcile the verses, which is exactly the wrong way to do it, but they are trying to be faithful to the text.  Another way to look at the possibility of truncation is that Hebrews have a worldview that fills in the “gaps” in a teaching based on the Bible.  When a verse might appear to show an unmerciful God, they know they are not to see it that way.  Skeptics have a field day with the gaps, pronouncing it all nonsense and worse.

On the woman, the term “tree in the middle of the garden” is ambiguous, as there were 2 trees there.  So while it is not exactly wrong, it is also unclear.

Good points, Don. But I’d like to add a few more.

It is one thing to have separate fellowships based upon personal convictions, but quite another to hound, harass, condemn, slander, and even physically abuse those who disagree with those convictions. That is what many followers of comp. teachings do to egals.

While human pride and sin account for this, it cannot be denied that the theology itself, male supremacism, is the justification used for it. So it is more than a personal conviction, but an aggressive attack upon half the Body of Christ. It is this theology, this teaching, that we must strongly oppose and not “dialog” with. It is to be strongly opposed as per the example of Paul against legalism.

I too have no delusions about winning over people who subscribe to these supremacist teachings. That is why I try to focus my efforts on simply making my personal convictions known (which in itself is seen as a crime by many).

There are many issues in Christianity based upon those “gaps”, and you’re absolutely right, what we put into those gaps is very telling, as is how we treat those who disagree with us. And sometimes how we treat them is out of self-defense, to be fair. But as long as we only attack the teachings and not get dragged into a personality war, we have nothing to be ashamed of.

(Disclaimer: I’m not talking about Cheryl meeting Slick. She’s sticking to scripture and making it all about attitude and faithfulness. At the same time, however, most Christians should not attempt what she’s doing, myself included. I’d fight. And that’s why I don’t debate them anymore, I just write in my blog.)

Yes, of course.  The non-egal holders are radicalizing, it is not just enough to teach what they teach, other teachings are to be excluded.  This is in line with what the ESV and HCSB do in their word choices, by their word translation choices, they make it easy to be non-egal, as the translators are.  And then the many in the ESV group knock the TNIV, saying it is an untrustworthy translation.

When I have been attacked in the past, God gave me a word, “Daniel” which means “God is my judge” and I hold onto that word sometimes when I need to do so.

I think we will see continued radicalizing of the non-egals, as the egal message is going forth and many churches are responding by becoming more egal.

Yes, I really appreciate Matthew.  Each gospel has its perspective and they are all useful.

I totally disagree with the idea of going around the room and seeing what a verse means to each person.  And then taking a vote ala the Jesus seminar.

But it IS possible for people of faith to make different choices for the meaning of some words and phrases and each has a different understanding in good faith.  Many of the meaning choices made by non-egals are possible, it is just that they are not required.   And it IS possible to come up with different understandings of the book of Rev. in good faith, for example.

On context of verses, I agree with pericope context and Biblical subject context, but another is the cultural context of the time the book was written.  This is one that is missing for many discussions on meaning but can be absolutely critical.  The Bible gets to define and refine the words it uses and when it does we are to use that, but it does not contain a complete dictionary of all the words it uses.  The only way to know what those words meant is the way they were used in the culture of the time.

Don,

You said:

But it IS possible for people of faith to make different choices for the meaning of some words and phrases and each has a different understanding in good faith.  Many of the meaning choices made by non-egals are possible, it is just that they are not required.

While I agree that Christians may see a different meaning for some words and phrases, the question is not what a word could possibly mean but what it means in the passage.  I think too often we take a verse out of its context and try to determine the meaning of the words from a limited view.  This is where we run into trouble.  I really appreciate the apologist and author Greg Koukl who says “Never read a bible verse.”  What he means is that we should never try to figure out what the verse means without reading it in its complete context.  If we followed this advise, I think Christians would find themselves in much more agreement.

I did this experiment with a JW elder recently and it worked very well.  I never let him read a proof text without looking at the passage.  I got him to read the chapter before, the chapter the “proof verse” was in and the chapter after and the context disproved his point.  It really frustrated him because even he could see that his text lost all of its weight by looking at the context.  Once we read the context he had to move on to another point.  I would say something like, “Well this verse doesn’t say what you said it means in its context.  We can mark that one off.  Do you actually have a passage that says your point?”  He had already agreed with me that there must be two or three witnesses to prove a point.  An isolated “witness” (pulled out of its context) is not enough to prove any point.

I would also like to add that while scripture has one intended meaning that is put there by the author, scripture also is special in that it is like an onion.  You can peel the layers back to see more and more revelation.  In some respects this is where our differences come in between denominations.  One Christian sees the outer layer of truth and another peels the “onion” back to see further insight inbedded within the text and the inspired words of the text.

On context of verses, I agree with pericope context and Biblical subject context, but another is the cultural context of the time the book was written.  This is one that is missing for many discussions on meaning but can be absolutely critical.

I whole heartedly agree with you!  While understanding the cultural context is very important with each verse, at times it is so absolutely critical that one cannot understand the verse without it.  I think the perfect example of this is 1 Cor. 14:34 where no “law” can be identified in scripture that Paul is referring to.  It isn’t until one knows the tradition of the Jews and the culture of that day that the complete understanding of the passage is unveiled.  This makes the passage a very hard passage.  Paul is one author that has written some very hard to understand passages that require much digging and an understanding of the culture.  These passages are for the mature and they are true meat and not milk passages.

The Bible gets to define and refine the words it uses and when it does we are to use that, but it does not contain a complete dictionary of all the words it uses.  The only way to know what those words meant is the way they were used in the culture of the time.

Yes, this is true.  The most outstanding example of this is Paul’s writing where in several instances he uses a word that is completely unique to the New Testament and at times the word is very rare even in the usage of that day.  We must be extremely careful not to set up our doctrine using one verse in isolation that has one word with limited verification of its meaning.  Without a second or third witness we are treading on dangerous territory.

I should add that the fact that scripture is multi-layered is the reason why we need each other and can learn from each other.  Each person is able to unpeel part of the onion.  When I read your take on a verse it is like “iron sharpening iron”.  I am able to see a perspective to the verse that I may not have seen before.  This isn’t a conflicting view of scripture but an unlayering of the text that allows me to sharpen my own focus.  I also believe this is why Paul said that we are all allowed to prophesy.  Each of us has a perspective that allows us to see the verse from a different angle.  When we put it all together we can see the meaning of the text from the Holy Spirit’s inspiration.  Nothing should conflict.  It all fits together like a giant puzzle piece.  We really do need each other so that we can see outside our own individual “box” that at times causes us to be blinded by a perspective that we may have missed.  In the end it is not a bunch of people sitting around and giving conflicting meanings but Christians giving additional depth to the passage by uncovering the layers.

There is SOME Scripture that have multiple meanings.  Some prophecies have multiple fulfillments.  Some words or phrases are word plays or puns with 2 meanings.  I also think some words Paul uses in Eph 5-6 (for example) are deliberately ambiguous.

Yes, there are some scriptures that have two meanings and some prophecies that have double fulfillment.  If by “deliberately ambiguous” you mean difficult to understand, I definitely agree with that especially with Paul’s writing and Peter also said this.  If you mean lacking clearness or an indistinct word, Jesus did have some words for the general public that he said were not meant for them to understand.  Although seeing they did not see and hearing they did not hear.  But for born again Christians, I think the word was meant for us to understand at least on some level.

So I do agree with you that there are hard passages.  Absolutely.

On Paul, for example, in Eph 6 paternes is plural, but it does not need to be, it could have been written as singular.  If singular it almost certainly would mean father, when plural it might mean either fathers or parents, as the male plural form is used for a group that contains at least 1 man all the way up to all men.

Recall the letters were read in the church meeting, most could not read. My take is the Roman spies sent to suspicious meetings were looking for confirmation that the paterfamilias was in charge, so they would hear paternes and think fathers.  But the Ephesian believers would catch it and know the OT says for kids to honor BOTH their father and mother, etc. so they would understand it as parents, perhaps with the help of an elder to explain.

In Ephesians 6 we have the Greek term for “parents” in Ephesians 6:1 and “fathers” in Ephesians 6:4.  I think that verse 4 is both plural because children is plural but also is fathers in particular because it is the fathers in particular that tend to provoke the children to anger not the mothers.  Verse 1 the parents are to be obeyed and in verse 2 the father and the mother are to be honored.  Verse 2 the “father” is singular.

Maybe I am missing something but it appears pretty clear to me that the passage shows both parents are to be honored but the fathers are the specific ones who are told not to provoke their children.  I don’t think this means that mothers have license to provoke their children.

Of course not.

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Eph 6:4 And fathers, do not provoke your children, but nurture them
 in the discipline and admonition of the Lord.

This is the verse I am commenting on. In the Greco-Roman world the
paterfamilias had the power over kids. But in the believing word, both
parents have the power over kids, it is mutual. So substitute parents
for fathers in the above, it applies to both, but Paul used paternes,
so that the Roman spies at church meetings looking for subversion
would not find it EXPLICITLY in his letter.