Does 1 Timothy 2:12 Prohibit a Woman from Usurping Authority or Exercising Authority over a Man?

Much debate surrounds the word authenteō in 1 Timothy 2:12, as to whether it should be understood as a negative or positive authority that the woman is prohibited to take over a man. When scholars often debate the issue they engage in a lexicographical discussion that I personally think is unhelpful and misleading. That is because both sides agree that the word can be used both positively and negatively, which means that the word does not carry with it any idea of a positive or negative authority. That must be supplied by the context. In essence, these scholars are employing a word study fallacy where contextual reference is confused with meanings of the word itself within its semantic domain. This confusion is often seen in the actual books in popular lexicographical studies that critique word study fallacies themselves. 

The semantic domain of a word cannot be seen in the various contextually confined referents to which a word is applied in a text, but only in the unmarked meaning or meanings a word carries within a particular group or culture. In the case of authenteō, the fact that the word can be applied in both negative and positive contexts means that its unmarked meaning(s) does not carry with it positive or negative connotations. 

This means that if one wants to know whether the word has positive or negative connotations within a particular text, he has only that specific text and its context that is capable of yielding such information. Diachronic studies, therefore, although useful to determine the unmarked meaning(s) is incapable of commenting upon a word’s contextualized use beyond that unmarked meaning(s).

When one approaches 1 Timothy 2:12, therefore, one must ask whether the context gives any indication as to whether Paul means to prohibit women only from exercising a negative type of authority or any type of authority, positive or negative, at all (one assumes that if positive authority is prohibited then certainly negative authority is as well).

I would make the following arguments that Paul is prohibiting women from exercising any sort of authority (positive or negative) over a man, specifically in an ecclesiastical context in 1 Timothy.

1.       The word is actually in a literary ABA’B’ pattern that both compares it with the teaching coupled with it and contrasts it with its opposite activity.

A Γυνὴ ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ μανθανέτω                     B ἐν πάσῃ ὑποταγῇ

“A woman is to learn in silence”                “in all submission”

A’ διδάσκειν δὲ γυναικὶ οὐκ ἐπιτρέπω        B’ οὐδὲ αὐθεντεῖν ἀνδρός, 

“So I do not allow a woman to teach”                           ἀλλ᾿ εἶναι ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ.
                                                                    “nor to be in authority over a man, 

                                                                                             but to be in silence"                                                               

First, it is to be understood that the two ideas are expressed as couplets by the fact that each is framed by the phrase ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ “in silence.” This means that rather than teach or exercise authority, the women is to be in a state of silence when it comes to these two activities.

Second to this, notice that the comparative of one having authority here is teaching. There is no positive or negative connotation in the word didaskō. What was said above of authenteō is also true of didaskō. Any positive or negative connotation must be found in the literary context. Its contrast is “learning in silence.” The contrast of polar opposites creates a figure of speech called a merism, where not only are the two poles in view, but all that they encompass, i.e., everything in between. So the woman is not to teach at all over the man in an ecclesiastical context, but to be quiet when it comes to such activity. The fact that this encompasses all teaching, positive or negative, has implications for its associative term authenteō.

Thirdly, the word authenteō has its contrast, not with a positive authority, which would be expected if its author meant it to be taken as negative, or even a lesser authority, as often communicated with the word exousia, but rather by the command that the woman is to be ἐν πάσῃ ὑποταγῇ “in complete submission.” What this means is that its contrast sets up a merism that indicates the woman is not to exercise any kind of authority over the man at all. Her activity is one of submission ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ “in silence.”

This also means that the silence has nothing to do with whether she can ask questions to learn, read, pray, teach other women or children, etc. It is specifically in contrast to whether she is to teach or exercise authority over a man.

2.       The idea that authenteō has some negative connotation is rooted in the attempt to replace the literary context with a fabricated background context which the text does not reference itself, and even contradicts.

For instance, it is often said that Ephesus had many priestesses who would teach pagan things in the church, women were uneducated and not qualified to teach, specific unruly women in the church were taking over services, etc. None of this is given by the text as to its reason for the prohibition, and its limitation of the prohibition to teach or exercise authority over men alone makes no sense if any of this were in view. Women are spoken of generically rather than as a specific group among the women, and if unqualified or teaching heresy, the prohibition should be more generically applied both to men and women as teachers and in authority and over both men and women as their audience. Nothing of the sort exists in the text, and therefore, the attempt to rewrite the text by replacing the literary context with an imaginative background context is nothing more than eisegesis.

The actual reason given in the text is rooted in the divine assignment of roles in creation (what I have called a “priority argument,” which is a common argument given in 2d Temple Judaism and the New Testament to support a universal command or teaching), as the author argues form the order in which the two were made and the disorder that follows when the woman is not subject to her male counterpart in the garden. The author argues that her salvation is not worked out through taking upon a male role, but the female role of the creation mandate in raising up covenant children through childbearing and godliness.

Finally, this leads the author to offer up the eldership in the following chapter to males only. If the restriction were only over particular females who were unqualified, one would expect the qualifications in Chapter 3 would prevent the unqualified females from entering ministry and allow the qualified ones to do so. However, what is found instead is an eldership restricted to qualified males only.

Hence, due to all of these contextual factors, those who argue for a negative connotation of the word authenteō are not just reading the text differently with good exegesis, but in fact, are employing eisegetical and linguistically fallacious methodologies that ultimately undermine the text and its context.