Craig

I hope I’m not driving you all mad. You may all cry out “Oh no, not another suggestion from Craig! At the risk of boring you to tears, here goes…

If I am understanding things correctly, then to harmonize v12 and v15 grammatically, there are only 2 possible alternatives:
1 In v12 “a woman” refers to a particular Ephesian woman,“a man”refers to a particular Ephesian man/husband, In v15 “she” refers to the same woman, and “they” refers to both the woman and the man/her husband. This is Cheryl’s view. It has to overcome difficulties of a) v11,12 “sounding” generic to many people, and b) context- many people see the chapter dealing more with groups of people.
If the second possible grammatical alternative which I outline below is untenable, then this first alternative is the only possible one left, and so must be Paul’s meaning. We must accept the difficulties and work toward understanding the solutions to those difficulties -which Cheryl has been so wonderfully kind in working so hard at for us. Thank you Cheryl.
2 The second possible grammatically correct alternative would see “a woman”, “a man”,”she”, and “they” as all generic. Many accept “a woman” and “a man” (v12) as generic. Would that then mean “I do not permit any woman to teach-authentein any man”? This certainly includes prohibiting this activity to one man, but doesn’t necessarily sound to me like Paul would only be prohibiting this activity if it was to one man, but also to a number of men as the case may be.
I have heard many explanations that are”sort of” generic for v15 but none are precise if I understand properly what is meant by generic. I have a question. If “she” and”they” are generic in v15, and linked to v12, then does “she” then refer to any woman involved in authenteining a man and “they” to any woman involved in authenteining a man together with any man she is authenteining? I may well have missed it, but I don’t think I have heard this ever suggested as an alternative. I may be wrong, but I think I recall people usually referring to “she” as women in general, and “they” as women also, or perhaps “they” as women and men in general when thinking in terms of this alternative.
So am I correct in my understanding of what “she” and “they” in v15 would mean if they are generic, and grammatically linked to v12?
If I am, then for Cheryl’s explanation to be the only one possible, I must dismiss this second alternative as a viable option.
It has positives of context and being generic in v12 where many think it ‘sounds” generic.
It has two potential negatives that I can see:
a How could it be, that any woman who is teaching and authenteining a man, will be saved if she herself together with any man she is authenteining continue in faith etc. As I think about it, could Paul be drawing attention to how much of a team effort is needed to save these women? Imagine a deceived woman who has taught and authenteined ten men. If one of the men gives in to her false teaching and believes her (and possibly has sex with her as a result)- what an encouragement that would be in her deception. On the other hand, if all ten were united in their stand against the false teaching, what a help that would be in coming out of deception and into true faith and continuing on. (I wrote this before I saw your comment Cheryl @ #131, so I need to think about that more)
b v14 and the Greek tense regarding the woman. As I understand it, the traditional way of understanding Greek tenses points to “the woman” of v14 having to be alive at the time of writing, and so must be the particular Ephesian woman. This seems conclusive, but when I have mentioned this with Pastors at church, and another Moore Theological College student, they are all quick to tell me that the traditional understanding of the Greek is not correct, due to the new “verbal aspect theory”. I don’t know Greek, so at this stage I have no answer for this and so this point is not conclusive for me.
If anyone is still interested in my ramblings, and wants to help rule out option 2, so that only Cheryl’s view remains, please do. Or if anyone can see any merit in option two, I would be interested in knowing this also.
Thanks again everyone for putting up with me. 🙂