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To Susanna #76

All evidence indicates that Paul was extremely well educated within Greek society and would have been very familiar with the various uses and nuances of Greek words both in the current Koine and the literature of earlier dialects such as Attic and and Ionic. As to Ephesus – its cultural history was primarily Greek, it started as a Greek colony and never quite lost its Grecian roots despite its multicultural blending. Certainly not all of the citizens would have been familiar with the literary nuances of the word from Attic, but an audience never fully is and we were talking about the penmanship of Paul.
I never said nor meant to imply that “hupotasso” was used only as a military word at the time of Paul – in fact I explicitly said quite the opposite. It had drifted into common parlance in a variety of instances – quite akin to a number of English military phrases which have come into general use in non-military contexts. They retain their original imagery but lose their military technical meaning. And this is the most probable way of understanding it, a non-military use of an originally military word. Non-military in use but retaining its historic imagery “to arrange oneself under” – hence is it most directly translated “to submit.” If we had a specific word in English for a junior officer following the orders of his commanding officer this would probably be an ideal translation of nuance but we do not have such a word. (I guess in this sense it might be translated “wives form ranks under your husbands” but this would be confusing for other reasons.)
And your argument regarding Roman citizens and their government doesn’t work. While the Roman government recognized no “king” so that any citizen was theoretically equal to any other citizen under law, all citizens were still under the authority (submitted to) the government itself (at least theoretically).