Sue

“As regards lexicons, i’m rather stunned at your claims that kephale never has authority attached to it. Have you overstated your case here? I find it much more reliable to listen to experts in this regard, especially one’s who publish prior to the whole comp/egal debate in recent decades. Was it you who also said BDAG is unreliable in this regard?”

Mark,

Are you serious about pursuing this. If you are then please follow my blog. I can show you all the relevant passages in the different lexicons.

The places where kephale is listed as having authority are only those places in the NT that are under discussion. However, in order to establish the meaning of the word from other contexts, we should look at the meaning of kephale in literature outside of the NT.

First, apart from the LXX, there is no evidence prior to the NT that kephale meant leader or authority, or anything of the kind. Second, in the LXX, in the fvast majority of cases, the Hebrew word for “head” that is rosh, was translated by one of the usual Greek words for leader. Only in the highly anomolous case of Jephthah do we see the word kephale being used. This is a much debated passage.

There is no case in Greek literature prior to the NT, where the word kephale was used for a person in order to indicate that he was the authority over his own wife, family, house, tribe or nation, – other than Jephthah. Even then, he wasn’t leader of his own clan, but brought in for a certain reason.

Just saying ….