Cheryl Schatz

gengwall,
You said:

First, why not start immediately with the definate article in vs. 11. Second, what should Timothy do with other couples who might be in the same boat? If we could be certain that there was ONLY this one couple in Ephesus that had this problem, I would say there is no reason to stray into a general prohibition.

I am very glad to read this and I think the proof is the fact that Paul only is discussing only one deceived woman teaching her husband because Timothy is given the promise that she will be saved if… If there were other couples in the same situation can anyone read Paul’s claim to be the worst of the worst and then not believe that Paul would also have faith that they too could be saved if…?

But I don’t believe we can be certain of that. In fact, I we can’t even be certain that Timothy wrote only about the one couple.

I believe the proof is in the fact that only one woman is said to be still in the transgression and only one woman’s salvation is questioned. These two things would be out of order if there was more than one woman that was included in the special prohibition.

Timothy could have said “we have some trouble in a few marriages in the congregation. One such troubled marriage is that of Jhn and Jane Doe, but they are simply emblimatic of several others. Here are Jane and John’s specifics…” I mean, we really don’t know whether or not Timothy wrote anything beyond of his specific couple.

Then it appears that it is safer to just accept what is written and not to speculate about what is not written and what may be going on in Ephesus beyond what God wanted us to know about.

But we do know that Paul did not begin his instructions for this problem by clearly identifying a the specific couple.

This is not true. An anarthrous noun does not mean that it isn’t about a specific man or woman. It is not about the definite article that is not there in the beginning that would disqualify this to be about one couple. It is the context. I believe that verse 15 would be written in a prejudicial way if Paul was ignoring all deceived women to claim that one of them could be saved. And the fact that the prohibition hinges on the deception of Eve and she is compared to a specific woman is just more evidence that not all women are “like” Eve but this specific woman was in the same boat as Eve was.

I am not the brightest tool in the tool shed, but I could figure out how to deal with similar problems but different by working through the one example given by Paul. Paul doesn’t have to be generic for Timothy to understand a principle given because of one deceived female teacher.

Now I would seriously consider other examples of where Paul spoke this way about other examples or used generic examples of specific problems, but I don’t know of any other examples that would prove that Paul had a whole whack of unidentified people in mind so that he had to create a generic example. It just doesn’t fit in my mind. Perhaps someone can make this one fit, but honestly I can’t see it because there are so many improbabilities.

Definately a possibility, but it doesn’t fit with the fact that Paul began without being definite about who he was speaking of. It is just as likely IMO that Paul would go from general to specific as it would be that he would go from specific to general, and the former fits the grammar.

I think you are stuck on thinking that “woman” without the definite article cannot be a specific woman. Just as “man” without the definite article cannot be a specific man. Paul has used this grammar before, but I don’t think this is going to make you accept an anarthrous noun because you are stuck in a general thinking pattern. Maybe we just need to let this one go and perhaps you may be more open to seeing that it is possible (and consistent) for Paul to be speaking about a particular woman and a particular man and them alone in 1 Timothy 2:12.