Susanna Krizo

Greek scholars read the writings they have at their disposal, not everything that was written by the Greeks. Hence they assume that because the word appears first as a military term, it was such originally. Any lingustic will challenge that assumption by pointing out how quickly languages evolve. I grew up bilingual (Finnish and Swedish) and I am still fluent in both languages. But when I go home and listen to the Finnish or Swedish youth, I cannot understand them half of the time for they have changed the meanings of the words. It really only takes a generation or less to change a word and its meaning. That a play writer used the word with another meaning shows clearly that the word had a civilian meaning as well since the other writers were writing about the army, weren’t they? I.e. when used of the army, the word has a military connotation; when used of civilians, the word has another meaning entirely. Ultimately it really does not matter whether the word was used primarily by the military for Paul was not enlisting his readers in the army! If you wish to argue that hypotasso is a military term in Eph 5 you must also argue that kephale is a military term for it would make absolutely no sense to use a military term with a civilian term. Also, you seem to forget that Ephesus was an Asian city under Roman rule. The nuances of Greek words would be foreign to them for they knew only Koine Greek, not the classical Greek from the era of Greek philosophy. Hence, you must also argue that every person who spoke Koine Greek would have understood hypotasso as a military term and nothing else. You must also argue that the Romans in the city of Rome understood their relationship to to government in military terms since Paul uses the word in Rom 13. Unfortunately for your argument they didn’t. The freeborn Roman males saw themselves as equal to their rulers wherefore Augustus was careful to call himself “first among equals.”
(To be continued)