Kristen

Mark said:
“Waht intrigues me the most is that most mainstream egals argue that ’one woman man’ is becasue men had more than one wife at that time (in fact iv’e seen Cheryl write that somewhere also), yet now you want to apply that phrase to women. Which way do you want it? When one argument fails another just seems to be advanced in its place. How much historic revisionism will egals continue to produce.”
I personally have never said that “one woman man” is specifically in reference to polygamy. If Cheryl says so, fine. But must all egals agree with one another? Not all comps do! In fact, there is a large group of comps who would restrict a woman’s teaching not just to “authority in the public congregational setting” but to any woman teaching any man anything related to spiritual matters or theology. This is why the Southern Baptist Seminary fired its woman professors.
As far as “historical revisionism,” that is simply unfair. History is just like any other discipline– as more research is done and new manuscripts are found, earlier ideas about what was actually meant by a particular text, may be replaced with newer understandings. That’s not “revisionist,” that’s just letting our knowledge of history develop.
The newest historical data says that “one-woman man” was an idiomatic expression that meant “faithful spouse.” Since the masculine gender in the ancient Greek language was inclusive, “one-woman man” (unlike “one-man woman) can include both sexes. They did not have the gender-neutral word “spouse.” “One-woman man” was the only way they could express the thought “faithful spouse” to include both men and women.