gengwall

Hi Craig. I have just a brief comment after reviewing your discussion with pinklight. Paul is referencing Eve’s deception, but Eve is not the current actor who has been deceived. I don’t mean to suggest that Eve is completely out of the picture at the end of vs. 14, but only that Eve is the example for the contemporary situation.

Now, as to some of your other questions.

Even if the verbal aspect theory was correct and we couldn’t be sure about vs. 14, there is nothing in that theory that affects the grammar of vs. 15 where “she” is a singular woman whose salvation is in the future. So the vs. 15 woman still can’t be Eve and also can’t be all women of even a subgroup of women because singular is singular. So, punting on vs. 14 still doesn’t support a comp view of vs. 15.

More importantly, the passage becomes more and more nonsensical the more “comp-ish” it becomes. The fact is that it makes perfect sense (at least to me) and flows smoothly all the way from vs 11-15 if vs. 14 and 15 say what we are saying they say.

I generally opt for the simple reading of a passage if it makes sense. Regardless of verbal aspect theories and comp wishful thinking, the passage makes the most sense if “the woman” of vs. 14 is not Eve. It fits the plain text (Adam is named twice but Eve is not named in the last part of the verse), it fits the plain understanding of the perfect tense (whereas the VAT leaves us hanging without a clear interpretation), it matches up “the woman” with “she” in vs. 15 and maintains the integrity of a contemporary woman interpretation, it holds up Eve as an individual example instead of making her some strange and otherwise unexplained representative of all women, and it shows how Adam and Eve both support Paul’s general commentary on deception, false teaching, and salvation. The only reason this passage is so “confusing” is that the English interpretations are all over the map. But the plain reading with focus on the Greek is very clear. Why would we reject the plain reading in favor of inconclusive, incoherent interpretations? Unless, of course, we had an agenda other than seekign the truth that we wanted to promote.