Susanna Krizo

Yes, Paul was well educated in the Greek society, but were his readers? Considering that the majority of the early Christians were illiterate slaves, it is a stretch to say that the readers would have been familiar with the Greek of Plato, Plutarch and Philo as Grudem would have it. I have been to Ephesus. It was quite remarkable city by all standards and bore all evidence of Rome in it with the baths and marble walkways. Certainly it had been influenced by Alexandria the Greek as well, but by the time Paul visited the city, it was under Roman rule. The soldiers present in the city were not Greek, they were Roman. Therefore if Paul was writing to the Ephesians about the army, he would have written to them about the Roman army, not the Greek. You have not yet provided any evidence of kephale being a military term. It is imperative since you argue that women are “junior officers” and should “form ranks under their husbands” and follow their commandments. I cannot find a text in which a husband is called a Centurion. (Or maybe we should call him a Uniurion, since he commands only one private).

Ah, and you confuse the issue about Roman government. About 60-75 % of the population in Rome was made up of slaves, leaving a very small freeborn male population. The great majority of these were politically active, unless they were part of the military. The military could choose an emperor or depose of one for Rome depended on the military to keep their borders intact. In other words, the government worked very closely with the people out of necessity. You may speak of authority and submission, and certainly the Romans were obsessed with the concept of power and glory, but at the end the emperor knew very well that his existence was dependent of the people and to irate the people could cost him his head. Can a wife get rid of her husband when he drives her crazy? Can a husband do the same to his wife? At the end, you do not seem to realize that you are reading the Roman society into the Bible. Certainly this became true in the fourth century when the church married Rome, and already before it when Tertullian transformed the church into a Roman institution by changing the previous ministries into legal offices, barring both women and slaves form leadership (and laity for that matter).