Should Wives Submit?

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

Incoming transmission.

SPEAKER_2 (0:04)

Hello, this is Matt and McKinley from History Dispatches. We are the father-son duo bringing you the weird, the wild, the wacky, and the craziest tales from across time. From the ice bowl, to the great heathen army, and the head of Oliver Cromwell, the same head they kept on a pike for three years. Yep, all here on History Dispatches. New episodes every weekday. Find out more at historydispatches.com or wherever you get your podcast app.

Dan Beecher (0:31)

As conspiracy theories go, okay, you know. No, definitely not, but like, okay.

Dan McClellan (0:43)

Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher (0:45)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan (0:46)

And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How go things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher (1:00)

They go.

Things are trucking along. I'm pretty excited about today's episode because A, we're going to uphold the patriarchy, which we always love to do. And B, we're going to get into some space stuff. We're going to get into some conspiracy theories. I hope everybody's got their tin hats ready to go, their tin foil hats.

Dan McClellan (1:30)

Yeah, I don't even know if I can say those notes or if that's...

Dan Beecher (1:33)

Yeah, I like that I've terrified you enough about copyright infringement or trademark or whatever the heck it is.

Dan McClellan (1:40)

We've built a fence around the law, as it were, regarding my ability to sing anything terribly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan Beecher (1:49)

And I think our listeners also thank me for beating that into your head.

Dan McClellan (1:53)

When you said patriarchy, all I could hear was Fergie in that tonight's gonna be a good... Is that what it's called?

Dan Beecher (2:00)

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Dan McClellan (2:01)

Yeah, where she goes, smash it! So that's all I thought about. I don't know why it was Fergie's voice doing it that way.

Dan Beecher (2:10)

I like it, I like it. Well, why don't we get into our chapter and verse and smash that patriarchy?

Dan McClellan (2:17)

Let's do it.

Dan Beecher (2:21)

OK, so the chapter and verse that we're getting to is Ephesians 5 verse. Oh, what verse is it? You know.

Dan McClellan (2:29)

Well, 22 is the main one. Yeah. But like if you wanted to try to get the whole sense unit, it's really got to be like verse 18 through to the end of the chapter.

Dan Beecher (2:40)

OK.

Dan McClellan (2:41)

But we're not going to focus on all of that. We're really going to zoom in on verse 22, which is...

Dan Beecher (2:48)

Yeah, you don't want to start with 18, because 18 says, Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery.

Dan McClellan (2:54)

And we don't want anybody to know that it's in the Bible.

Dan Beecher (2:56)

Yeah, no, no, no, no.

Dan McClellan (2:57)

No, no, no. That's actually where the sentence begins. And this is this is part of the controversy of of Ephesians 5, 22 And if you have heard people talk about this, I'll just read 5, 22, just verse 22 from the NRSVU. And then we'll talk about why it's a bit of a mistranslation. Okay. It says, Wives, be subject to your husbands as to the Lord. And then verse 23 says, For the husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior.

So, and there's a pilcrow in the NRSV UE. And for those of you who grew up on the right side of the tracks, a pilcrow is the little backwards P paragraph indicator, basically. And a lot of translations of the Bible present verse 22 as the beginning of a new section. It's not even its own sentence. In fact, it doesn't have a verb in it. The verb is actually a participle that is in the previous verse. Now, this is actually relevant to what's going on here. A participle is like an ing verb in Greek. So I am running has a subject, a verb, and then this gerund, running. But the verb in the sentence is am. You are saying I, and then you are connecting it to running with the verb am.

Dan Beecher (4:34)

Am doing run.

Dan McClellan (4:35)

Yeah, so the am is the actual verb of that clause. And running is helping out. And so in verse 22, we don't even have a participle. It's verse 21 that has the participle. And verse 22 is just, we're gonna borrow the force of the participle from verse 21 But even verse 21 is not its own sentence. We have to go all the way back to verse 18