Kristen

All I can say, Gengwall, is that you’ve convinced me. I’m a paralegal, and I understand exactly what you’re talking about.

But even from a non-legal perspective, this makes sense. I mean, I’m the lead administrative assistant/paralegal for a small law firm. Suppose I were going on vacation, and before I left, one of the other assistants said, “I’m worried that we might have [a particular trouble] with client Jane Doe.”
I would not necessarily just say to her, “If Jane Doe does A, you say B.” I would say, “If a client does something like A, we would do B.” And then I might go on and say, “Now as to Ms. Doe herself. . .”

The thing is that Paul wrote this letter to Timothy to delegate to Timothy the authority to act as Paul would act, in Paul’s absence. Some of the things in the letter are probably things Timothy already knew (I mean, was it absolutely necessary to repeat, “As I told you, stay in Ephesus”?) The point is that if anyone objected to Timothy’s actions, Timothy could show them the letter and say, “Look, Paul laid down these policies. I’m just following them.”

So it makes sense for Paul to deal with this one situation (a wife “authenteining” her husband), in terms of policy not just specifics. And it totally explains why he uses “a woman” and “a man” rather than “this woman” and “that man” in his opening statement. As such, it completely removes all objections I had to this interpretation and turns it in my mind from a likely interpretation, to the most likely interpretation.