I Corinthians 14:33b-35: A Textual Adventure–(i.e. What to do with those noisy women in church?)

One of the most controversial and contentious issues in churches today has to do with the role of women in leadership roles. I grew up in an Evangelical culture in which all the leadership roles were filled by men, but at the same time there were women exercising “leadership” roles in areas of church life that weren’t necessarily “officially pastoral,” because, the thinking went, pastoral leadership roles are supposed to be filled men men—it’s in the Bible. After all, Paul talks about the requirements for male leaders; he talks about husbands being “the head” of their wives (I Cor. 11:3; Eph. 5:23); and he talks about women being “in submission” to their husbands (I Timothy 2:8-15).

…and then there are those troublesome verses in I Corinthians 14:33b-35.

Now, I am not going to solve the whole “women in church leadership” controversy in this single post. To the point, my view is that Christians should use the gifts that God has given them—and if a woman is gifted in pastoral work or teaching, she should do so. Furthermore, we know for a fact that there were women in the early church who served in leadership positions: Phoebe was a deacon in the church in Cenchreae (Rom. 16:1); often times rich women believers hosted church gatherings in their homes, and thereby were considered leaders in some capacity; and Paul considered the couple of Andronicus and Junia (Rom. 16:7) to be “great among the apostles.”

Side Note on Romans 16:7
Incidentally, in the earlier version of the NIV, as well as the NASB, the translators purposely translated “Junia” as “Junias,” because in Greek, names that end with a vowel (i.e. Junia) are clearly feminine, whereas names that end with something like -as, -us, or -os (i.e. Junias) are clearly masculine. In Romans 16:7, the Greek is clearly “Junia,” thus connotating a woman. The “problem,” though, was that Paul said these two people were “great among the apostles,” and since there was a presuppositional bias that “women can’t be leaders,” the NIV and NASB purposely changed “Junia” to “Junias” in order to imply that this person was a man, despite the fact that there is no known instance in the ancient world of any man ever being named “Junias.” Simply put, it’s a made-up name, purposely changed by the NIV and NASB translators, in order to mask the clear point that Paul is saying: a woman was considered to be “great among the apostles.”

I Corinthians 14:33b-35—The Textual Argument: Those verses don’t belong there!
In any case, I want to focus on an interesting textual issue regarding I Corinthians 14:34-35, for it is a passage sometimes used to argue against women in leadership positions. To get straight to the point, there is a huge textual problem concerning those verses. This issue first came to my attention while in graduate school at Regent College, in I Corinthians course by Gordon Fee. To the point, what Gordon Fee presented was fascinating, illuminating, and convincing. His argument was basically this: I Corinthians 14:34-35 is not an original part of Paul’s letter; it was probably added later by some anonymous copyist at an early date. 

With that, here’s the case laid out (I’ll be using the NRSV translation):

The Textual Conundrum
First of all, all the known New Testament manuscripts we have do, in fact, have 14:33b-35 somewhere in their texts. The problem, though, is that they get moved around.

In the Western Church, all the manuscripts up until the time of Jerome (400 AD) read this way:

²⁶ What should be done then, my friends? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. ²⁷ If anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn; and let one interpret. ²⁸ But if there is no one to interpret, let them be silent in church and speak to themselves and to God. ²⁹ Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. ³⁰ If a revelation is made to someone else sitting nearby, let the first person be silent. ³¹ For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged. ³² And the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets, ³³ for God is a God not of disorder but of peace. ³⁶ Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only ones it has reached? ³⁷ Anyone who claims to be a prophet, or to have spiritual powers, must acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord. ³⁸ Anyone who does not recognize this is not to be recognized. ³⁹ So, my friends, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues; ⁴⁰ but all things should be done decently and in order. As in all the churches of the saints, ³⁴ women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. ³⁵ If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

In the Eastern Church, though, all the manuscripts read like we have currently have them in our Bibles:

²⁶ What should be done then, my friends? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. ²⁷ If anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn; and let one interpret. ²⁸ But if there is no one to interpret, let them be silent in church and speak to themselves and to God. ²⁹ Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. ³⁰ If a revelation is made to someone else sitting nearby, let the first person be silent. ³¹ For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged. ³² And the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets, ³³ for God is a God not of disorder but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. ³⁴ Women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. ³⁵ If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.³⁶ Did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only ones it has reached? ³⁷ Anyone who claims to be a prophet, or to have spiritual powers, must acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord. ³⁸ Anyone who does not recognize this is not to be recognized. ³⁹ So, my friends, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues; ⁴⁰ but all things should be done decently and in order.

The textual question, therefore, becomes this: Why do these verses get moved around? If verses 34-35 were originally after 33, why did they get moved to after 40? If they were originally after 40, why did they get moved to after 33?

That Curious Bi-lingual Manuscript
A clue to that question can be found in a bi-lingual manuscript of I Corinthians. When it gets to I Corinthians 14:26-40, it has verses 33b-35 after verse 40, BUT those verses have an asterisk beside them AND they are also included in the margin. This is what is known as a marginal gloss. What that suggests is that whoever copied this particular manuscript had, in the manuscript he was copying from, either had these two verses in the margin, and/or had them at them after verse 40, but also with an asterisk—and the asterisk was the copyist’s way of indicating that the verses in question were, in fact, not part of the original manuscript of Paul’s actual letter, but were found in the side-margins of later copies.

Simply put, it is very possible that Paul never wrote verses 34-35, but some later copyist or teacher wrote a side note in the margin of a copy of I Corinthians, perhaps writing down his personal view or opinion. And then, at some point earlier on, the asterisk was lost, and those verses simply got copied into Paul’s letter—sometimes after verse 33, and sometimes after verse 40.

Further Internal Problems
In addition to the issue of this marginal gloss, there are also a number of other internal problems if Paul, in fact, did write verses 34-35 in the original letter:

First, how do you get around the plain meaning of the text? It doesn’t say, “Women shouldn’t be in leadership positions.” It says, “Women should be silent, and not be permitted to speak” AT ALL. And this clearly contradicts what Paul has said elsewhere within I Corinthians. For example, in 11:5, he says, “And every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head….” The point should be obvious: If Paul absolutely never allows women to even speak in church, then why is he talking about the proper way for a woman to prophesy in church?

Second, what do you do with verse 36? It makes complete sense after verse 33a, but it makes no sense after verse 35. Furthermore, in the original Greek, verse 36 begins with an “or.” Yet, because that “or” doesn’t make sense if verse 36 follows verse 35, most translators simply do not translate that “or.” To help visualize this, consider the following:

• (Verse 36 following 33a): ³³ for God is a God not of disorder but of peace, ³⁶ or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only ones it has reached?
• (Verse 36 following 35): ³³ for God is a God not of disorder but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. ³⁴ Women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. ³⁵ If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.³⁶ Did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only ones it has reached? [NOTICE: The “or” at the beginning of verse 36 is gone]

Thirdly, there is the overall context of chapter 14 to consider.  The chapter as a whole is about intelligibility and order during Church worship—it’s not about asking questions. Simply put, verses 33b-35 address an issue that is completely foreign to the point of the chapter. It simply does not fit in with the argument. By contrast, when one reads 36 right after 33a, the logical flow of the argument remains interrupted, and the verses make sense. The problem in the Corinthians church was that their meetings tended to get chaotic in their worship, and Paul is talking about the importance of order. He’s basically saying, “God is a God of order in all the churches, so you need to have order in your church service as well, or do you think you’re somehow better than all the other churches? Do you think you’re special?”

Fourthly, there is the problem of Paul appealing to the Law (i.e. …as the law says). The fact is, the Law (i.e. Torah) doesn’t say this. Nowhere in the Torah is there a commandment that women are to remain silent in worship gatherings. It is impossible to believe, therefore, that Paul, a Pharisee who was an expert in the Torah, would mistakenly claim this commandment was in the Torah when it clearly wasn’t in the Torah. This “commandment” actually is a later rabbinic interpretation that is found in Josephus.

What Are We to Conclude?
Given all this, we must seriously consider the probability that verses 33b-35 were not part of Paul’s original letter. They clearly contradict his attitude toward women elsewhere in his letters, and even in I Corinthians itself. They do not fit into the argument of the chapter, and the appeal to the authority of the Torah on this matter is faulty.

Now, the hang up most people will have with this explanation will not be over the evidence that has been presented. It will be over the idea that there is an “error” in the Bible—and therefore, their idea of inerrancy would be put into question. This is a very serious issue, and should not be treated lightly, however, it should be stated that most people’s concept of inerrancy is based on a faulty understanding of how we got our New Testament.

The New Testament we have in our Bibles is not copied directly from the original manuscripts. The fact is, we don’t have the original manuscripts. We have thousands of copies. Therefore, the New Testament you read in your English Bibles is the result of the work of theologians and scholars who have gone through those thousands of manuscripts, compare them all, and have decided what is most likely the closest to the original text. Does that mean the New Testament is unreliable? Quite the opposite, really—there is so much manuscript evidence, that the reliability of the New Testament books is actually strengthened. And, although there are many discrepancies (or variants) found in the manuscripts, the vast majority of them make no difference whatsoever to the reliability to the text, and do not have any effect on any theological claim.

Of course, with I Corinthians 14:33b-35, the variation does make quite a bit of theological difference. Therefore, we are left with a choice:

1. We keep it in, and use it as scriptural basis to prohibit women from leadership positions in the church—but if we do, we have to purposely ignore the obvious contradictions and textual problems that it raises. And, if we are to be consistent, we would have to go all the way with what those verse say, and not allow women to even speak in church.
2. Or we can disregard those verses, based both on the textual problems and the theological contradictions that keeping those verses introduces. We’re not disregarding them simply because we don’t like what they say, but because they logically don’t fit into Paul’s argument, and there is evidence they don’t belong in the original letter.

And so, with all that, what are we to conclude? I’ve concluded that the New Testament writers were inspired, but the later scribes were not. Fortunately, the sheer amount of manuscript evidence we have has made it possible for us to note where any significant mistakes may be. And the fact is, there really are hardly any to begin with. Besides, if suggesting verses 33b-35 aren’t part of Paul’s original letter makes you uncomfortable, let me just ask one basic question: Do you know of any Christian community who has ever followed that supposed command never to let women even speak?

I don’t know of any. Neither did Paul…