Chris

Cheryl says in her blog post “What does 1 Timothy 2:11-15?” under point #17: “The grammar from 1 Timothy 2:15 requires the identification of a single female to refer back to “a woman” from verse 12.”

But consider Numbers 30:4-5 in the LXX (the Greek OT):
“4 And if *a woman* shall vow a vow to the Lord, or bind herself with an obligation in her youth in her father’s house; and her father should hear her vows and her obligations, wherewith *she* has bound her soul, and her father should hold his peace at her, then all her vows shall stand, 5 and all the obligations with which she has bound her soul, shall remain to her.”

Here a command is given to the congregation. The pronoun ‘she’ refers to ‘a woman’, but the command isn’t just for one specific woman, it is for all women. Apparently, the pronoun ‘she’ does not necessarily restrict the number of the antecedent to only one specific individual.

Cheryl: “It is impossible to remove the connection between ‘the woman’ and the anarthrous noun in verses 11 & 12”

The reason Paul switches to the generic singular form is because he intends to connect his proscription in verse 12 to his argument from the creation order in verses 13-14 where the singulars ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’ are used as representatives of all men and women. In verse 14, ‘the woman’ refers back to Eve and stands the representative of all women.

Cheryl: “’[S]he’ can never be the same thing as ‘they’. In other words ‘she’ cannot be ‘all women’ while at the same time ‘they’ is all women.”

’[S]he’ is any woman, and ‘they’ refers to those women.

So, in context, Paul is giving instructions for women. He switches from plural to generic singular but is still giving instructions for women. The switch to generic singular anticipates his argument from the creation order. Adam and Eve stand as representatives of all men and all women in Paul’s argument. The woman in verse 14 is Eve. So, the woman is representative of all women. ‘She’ in verse 15 refers back to ‘the woman’ in verse 14. All women are still in view here. ‘[T]hey’, in verse 15, can have an inferred antecedent that refers distributively to all of the women in the church because the topic continues to be instruction to women and ‘the woman’ to which ‘she’ refers stands for all women.

If there is some rule of Greek grammar that requires the pronoun ‘they’ to have explicit antecedents in the text, then (unless this rule is extraordinarily arcane) Greek experts would have caught this in 1 Timothy 2:15 and brought everyone’s attention to it. But it certainly appears that most, if not all, Greek experts have made no mention of any such rule here. So, I seriously doubt that there is any such rule that would prevent the Greek ‘they’ in 1 Timothy 2:15 from having an inferred antecedent, especially given how this verse has been understood by most commentators.

Antecedents can be inferred from the text, as in this English example:

1. Few elders attended the seminar. They stayed home instead.

They = the elders who did not attend the seminar. The antecedent is the complement of ‘few elders’ in the set of all elders.

I’ve seen the claim that the switch from ‘she’ to ‘they’ is a problem for patriarchalists several times here, but I have yet to see any documentation to support this alleged violation of the rules of Greek grammar.

Terri Darbi Moore writes (in the previously referenced article): “The plural use of gunhv in verses 9-10 refers to the larger sphere of women, the singular uses in verses 11-12 and in verse 14 referring to Eve have a generic or representative force, and verse 15 expands from the representative back to the larger sphere of Christian women with which the passage began. This shift in number is a characteristic of paraenetic style and occurs throughout the passage, thus there is no reason to interpret it as connoting a change of subject.”

And: “Finally, the shift in number from the apodosis to the protasis, though often a “red herring” to exegetes of this verse, does not demand two different subjects for the elements. There are subtle shifts in subjects throughout the passage, yet the entire message is directed toward the believing women at Ephesus.”

So, I think you haven’t chosen your antecedents very well.