Cheryl Schatz

Craig,
You asked:

Am I correct in thinking that in your view Cheryl,
“teach” refers to false teaching by a particular Ephesian woman that may have been directed toward and influencing many people in the church – not just her husband.
“to have authority over” (NIV) is just directed to her husband.
In other words “to teach” and “to have authority over” don’t necessarily have to have the same target group.

Again I am so sorry for my absence. I had some time yesterday but I used it to catch up on areas of ministry that I am behind on.

Here is my answer to your question. I do not believe that “teach” and “authentein” are to two different target audiences. I believe that this was a private matter between the woman and her husband although it is probable that either one of them or both of them let others know that she is teaching him her newfound doctrine.

There are two reason that I don’t believe that there were two different target audiences. First of all the grammar of the passage has two verbal clauses joined together by a conjunction with only one object “a man”. Nominal phrases typically have a subject and an object and since there is only one subject and one object, the normal way to take this grammar is that the “man” is the object of both actions. See my screen print below:

Another example would be in Rev. 2:20 where Jezebel “teaches” and “leads” the same people which are identified as “my slaves”. There is not one group that she teaches and another group that she leads. The conjunction joins teaches and leads by Jezebel towards the one group. The same for 1 Tim. 2:12. The sentence structure would have to be different for the actions to be towards two different groups.

The second reason why I believe from the context that she is teaching “behind the scenes” is that if she was publicly teaching, it would have been easier to stop her as she would have been lumped into the same group as all the other public false teachers. But the inspired grammar gives no indication that she was teaching any others. There were two things that she was doing that needed to be stopped and both actions were being done to “a man”. If you have a close look at Rev. 2:20 you will see the same connection.

Craig, you said:

If “a man” is interpreted as a particular woman’s husband then my friend thinks that would mean that the false teaching must only be towards the husband. This my friend thinks would be unlikely.

I would agree. This is where the sticky situation comes in. Publicly a person can be rebuked, but a private teaching in the intimacy of the marriage is much harder to rebuke.

I also believe that the man that she was teaching was her husband since men didn’t have private discussions with women unless they were their sons or husbands. And since Paul references Adam and Eve and the deception of Eve as a picture of the problem and the reason for the prohibition, it seems quite obvious that the “man” and “woman” were in a similar situation as the other married couple in the garden.

So Timothy becomes aware that the husband is letting his wife teach him. He is allowing her to practice her deception and he is saying nothing. What does one do about a private teaching session between wife and husband when it is someone’s else’s wife and the husband is not correcting her? Do you see how sticky that can be? Public teaching brings a public rebuke but this kind of wrong that is done in the presence of only only one and with a woman that needs to be silenced but she isn’t your wife, well that is a truly sticky situation.

Paul’s concern is mostly for her. In verse 15 he doesn’t say that “they will be saved….if…” He says “she will be saved…if…” The concern was for her salvation so obviously her husband knew better. The deception was being spoken in private not in public and allowing her to continue to practice her deception will not bring her to the truth.

This is how I see it because I want to pay close attention to the grammar. It appears clear to me that the correction that comes in 1 Tim. 2:11-12 is separated from the other public false teaching because it is private and not public and the correction is especially difficult because it makes Timothy responsible to correct someone else’s wife for matters that have been done in their own private home. If there is any other grammar that would correct my understanding, I am open to it. But from what I can see, this is a private matter between a husband and a wife but her salvation is worth taking the risk to correct her in a way that would be culturally inappropriate.

Does this help a little?