Cheryl Schatz

Hi guys,
Sorry that I have been out of it for a long period of time. Our renovation project has totally sucked my energy dry leaving no time for my blog.

Craig,
You said:

If “the woman” of v 14 is not Eve, does Paul’s argument of v13,14 seem to be missing its ending?

Paul ties in “the woman” to Eve in such a way that what is currently happening to “the woman” (at the time of Paul’s writing) is seen as another Eve situation. While Paul is talking about a specific woman in verse 14 his reference so relates to the original deception of the first woman that Timothy has to understand the seriousness of the situation. There are two deceived women who have husbands who are doing nothing about their wives deception. In verse 14 Paul’s words hint at Eve since Adam is mentioned, but the grammar cannot refer to Eve since it is an on-going consequence of the deception that brings a question in verse 15 about her salvation.

There were several things that I was not able to put into the DVD series because it was already long and I had to cut a bunch of stuff about Adam and Eve and Genesis in order to meet the time restrictions for each session. Also it was pointed out to me after the DVDs came out that the grammar of verse 14 prohibits “the woman” from referring to Eve just as the grammar of verse 15 prohibits Eve from being “she”. I had caught the grammar in verse 15 but missed it in verse 14. What is interesting to me is that it was first pointed out to me by a complementarian and was expanded on by an egalitarian right here on this blog. So while some comps have said to me that if Paul had meant “a woman” to be a specific woman he would have called her “the woman”, verse 14 answers that challenge. Paul calls her “woman” in verse 11 and 12 but qualifies her as “the woman” in verse 14.

What Paul is doing is drawing a conclusion about the specific Ephesian woman by painting a picture of her predecessor and then finishing with the issue at hand with the “second” Eve and her on-going transgression that is currently a matter of discussion has happened to her through the process of deception. Bear in mind that this passage has been an acknowledged difficult passage that up until now, most commentators on the Scriptures have acknowledged that Paul’s use of seldom used words, switching from singular to plural and perfect tense grammar which indicates a present state has made the passage very difficult to understand.

I am going to paste a copy of the grammar of the perfect tense from verse 14 showing the present state:

…and also the future tense of verse 15 of the third person singular “she”.