gengwall

So, to Cheryl’s point which Mark refutes. When we look at a phrase like “head over all things”, we think authority because in English, such a phrase could legitimately mean “authority over all things” because in English, “head” can mean “authority”. We have to get out of our English mind set and definitional universe and think about how the Greeks defined “kephale“, not how we define “head”. In the Greek definitional universe, “kephale over all things can’t mean “authority over all things” because “kephale doesn’t ever mean “authority”. That becomes even more true when the metephor is in place, because the concept of the anatomical head being in authority over “all things”, whatever that may be, “to the [anatomical] body”, is nonsensical. The Greek speaker, being given that definition of the verse, would, I imagine, give quite a puzzled look. But staying within the Greek definitional universe of kephale and the Greek understanding of the relationship of the anatomical head to the anatomical body, Cheryl’s explanation makes perfect sense, especially to Paul’s audience, but even to us once we remove our English blinders.