teknomom

A good example of a word describing a group is the of-mistranslated “huios” when it appears with another noun. For example, what it typically translated “the sons of Israel” should really be “Israelites”; it doesn’t mean only the males. (stole that from Dr. Nyland’s notes)

But it does point out an inherent problem with the old “plain meaning” argument. Translators make a lot of judgment calls, and the cults take great advantage of this. And we know that mere consensus is not always dependable, as in the case of whether Junia was a female or not. Consensus often comes from shared prejudices and not acknowledged scholarship or attestation.

As far as I know, every scholar believes Paul’s meaning in this passage is “a woman” and “a man”, and I’m not aware of any lack of attestation or scholarly doubt about it. If there were disagreement over the articles I’d think at least one comp. would have jumped on it.