Philip B. Payne

On Friday, July 29, 2011, from 12:30 – 2:00 PM I will be presenting the Christians for Biblical Equality Annual Meeting Plenary Lecture 1 at the Doubletree Guest Suites Seattle Airport/Southcenter. The title of the lecture is “The Biblical Foundation for Mutual Submission and Shared Authority Between Men and Women in Church and Marriage.” Click here to download the PowerPoint for this lecture. If you do not own PowerPoint, you may download the Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer or you may install LibreOffice, a free Open Source Office Suite that is compatible with Microsoft Office.

On Saturday, July 30, from 2:50 – 3:50 PM I will lead a workshop on “Justice and Equality for Women Created in God’s Image: The Scriptural Mandate for Ministry and Marriage.”

Hope to see you there!

Kriste Patrow is the contact person to use special discount coupon UPCBE11 for a discount on your registration, also available on site. Her telephone number is 612-872-6898 (good until she leaves for the Conference Wednesday, July 27, 9:00 AM CST).

Professor Aída Besançon Spencer of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary reviews Man and Woman, One in Christ in the latest issue of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, calling it “a mammoth achievement, a book of exhaustive scholarship.” Read the complete post…

The Irving Bible Church of Irving, Texas invited me to participate in two two-hour “We Engage” panels March 29, 2011 discussing 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 and 14:26-40. Professor Sandra Glahn of Dallas Theological Seminary and Dr. Alice Mathews of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, also on the panel, gave excellent insights. The moderator, Jackie Roese, did a magnificent job adding humor and tying everything together. I loved the opportunity to provide satisfying answers to difficult questions. Everyone was respectful of the others’ views, and all the responses I heard were enthusiastically positive. All 51 copies of Man and Woman, One in Christ I provided sold out. One lady told me, “Until tonight, I hated Paul. Now I respect him.” You can listen to the audio of the panel in English at: http://www.irvingbible.org/media/all-audio/ and a Spanish translation of the panel at http://irvingbible.org/media/series/details/we-engage-panel-2011-spanish/. The next day I had a wonderful time seeing Bill Eubanks’, SMU’s, and Charles Ryrie’s Bible collections. Charles Ryrie and Bill Eubanks were fascinated by photographs of the eight distinctive distigme-obelos symbols at the precise locations of widely-recognized, multi-word interpolations in Codex Vaticanus B, including one at the exact point appropriate to mark 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 as an interpolation.

Kevin Giles, a Biblical Theologian well known for his carefully researched books on Paul and Gender and the Trinity, has kindly authorized me to post his insightful study, “The word ‘role’ in complementarian literature”:
In post 1970s ‘complementarian’ literature the term ‘role’ plays a fundamental part.  If honest communication is to take part between ‘complementarians’ and egalitarians the use of this word must be put on the table and carefully examined. Read the complete post…

I was in the midst of a delightful conversation with Dr. Teresa Okure of the Catholic Institute of West Africa, Port Harcourt, Nigeria, at the Society of Biblical Literature in Atlanta in November, 2011, when she noticed my SBL exhibitor badge and asked “Are you the Philip B. Payne who wrote Man and Woman, One in Christ? I just wrote a review of that fine book.” Read the complete post…

Even if in the NT no women were identified by name as elders, overseers, or pastors, and many men were, this would not logically exclude women from those leadership positions any more than the actual lack of Gentile men identified by name as elders, overseers, or pastors in the NT excludes Gentile men from those leadership positions. Read the complete post…

S. A. from S. Barrington, Illinois, asks for comment on a statement by Alexander Strauch arguing that since Jesus was male, “biblical eldership … must be an all-male eldership. Read the complete post…

Two new reviews on Amazon.com give Man and Woman, One in Christ a five star rating (just like the two earlier reviews). Following are the complete contents of these new reviews. I have interspersed a few personal comments into the second review. Read the complete post…

A Critique of Thomas R. Schreiner’s “Philip Payne on Familiar Ground: A Review of Philip B. Payne, Man and Woman, One in Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Paul’s Letters.” JBMW (Spring 2010) 33–46 Read the complete post…

Susanna Krizo wrote comments based on thinking that 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 addresses women in the church in Corinth who were cutting their hair off and men who were growing long hair, both of which Paul opposes. I explained that if Paul were trying to keep women from cutting their hair off, it does not make sense that he would give the command in 11:6 “If a woman will not cover herself, then she should cut off her hair.” I believe our correspondence may be helpful to others since it sheds light both on various [mis]readings of 1 Cor 11:2-16 and how my interpretation answers these questions.

The key insight of this discussion is that Paul gives the proper answer to the question of 1 Cor 11:13, “Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a woman to pray to God uncovered?”  in verses 14-15, “Does not the very nature of things teach you that it is degrading for a man to wear long hair, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory, for her hair is given to her as a covering.” By conjoining these questions, Paul associates “uncovered” with hair and explicitly states that “hair is given to her as a covering.” Consequently, Paul here defines hair as a woman’s covering and explains that if she wears it “as a wraparound,” it is her glory. Since verses 14-15 identify long hair as degrading to a man but the glory of a woman, they also answer the question raised by 11:4 regarding men’s head covering: “What ‘hanging down from a man’s head’ is disgraceful?” Long effeminate hair is disgraceful. Read the complete post…

Philip B. Payne and Paul Canart, “Distigmai Matching the Original Ink of Codex Vaticanus: Do they Mark the Location of Textual Variants?” pages 199-226 in Patrick Andrist, ed., Le manuscrit B de la Bible (Vaticanus graecus 1209): Introduction au fac-similé, Actes du Colloque de Genève (11 juin 2001), Contributions supplémentaires. Lausanne, Switzerland: Éditions du Zèbre, 2009, has been published and is available for free download at the above link or under this web site’s Publications : Articles page. This is probably the most important collection of essays on Codex Vaticanus B ever published. For a full description of this volume and a complete list of its essays see Le manuscrit B de la Bible (Vaticanus graecus 1209).  It can be purchased at the discounted price of $49 from our secure on-line Order Form.

Daniel Buck read my book as a result of interacting with me in another forum. We have had an ongoing communication regarding the implications of “one-woman man” in 1 Timothy 3:2, and he gave me permission to share our interaction with all of you.

Daniel Buck asked, “You make a big deal of the fact that 1 Timothy 3:1–13 has no masculine pronouns. But there aren’t any feminine pronouns in 1 Timothy 5:3–14, a passage discussing the role of widows. So what’s to keep men who have lost their wives from serving as widows?” Read the complete post…

On January 14, 2010 I posted a critique of the paper Peter Head presented at the New Testament Textual Criticism Seminar of the Society of Biblical Literature meeting November 21, 2009 entitled, “The Marginalia of Codex Vaticanus: Putting the Distigmai in their Place.” Head’s paper argued that all of the Vaticanus Distigmai should be dated to the sixteenth century and were penned by Juan Gines de Sepulveda. The famous aphorism derived from H. L. Mencken aptly describes Head’s thesis: “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.”

Update: On March 22 I revised my Jan. 14 response to Peter Head, giving proof of the antiquity of distigmai. Thanks to Timothy A. E. Brown for recommending these revisions.

Update: I have again revised this critique on March 27, 2010, correcting an error. Thanks to Brendan Payne  for this observation.

Update: I have again revised this critique on March 30, 2010, standardizing the spelling of obelus, metobelus, and hexaplaric. Thanks to Professor Keith Elliott for this recommendation.

Update: I have again revised this Critique on March 31, 2010, including reference to Amphoux. Thanks to Professor Keith Elliott for this recommendation.

Update: I have again revised this Critique on April 15, 2010, adding images of the marginalia and making it much more concise.

Some people try to restrict Paul’s affirmation of women prophesying in 1 Cor 11:2-16 to prophesying  done only outside of assemblies of believers. Six factors demonstrate that 1 Cor 11:2-16 refers to practices in gatherings of believers, namely in the church. Read the complete post…

Paul Adams continues his insightful reviews of Man and Woman, One in Christ, which you can read in full at http://inchristus.wordpress.com/. Following are highlights from his reviews of chapters 6-15:

“Readers are highly encouraged to spend time with this masterpiece. (Note: Those who choose to ignore the footnotes do so to their loss. Payne has painstakingly annotated all of his sources and provided considerable comments showing where some have either misrepresented or under-represented the data to support their alternative interpretations.)

Chapter 7 “1 Corinthians 11:2-3: Head/Source Relationships” is worth the price of the book many times over. Read the complete post…

David R. Booth from Balcatta, Western Australia, asked for help in assessing what he has been taught about “Adam’s Federal Headship” in Romans 5. Read the complete post…

I was greatly encouraged to receive emails from David R. Booth from Balcatta, Western Australia, sharing how my book helped to change his views from his previous complementarian position:

“Thank you so much for your book, Man and Woman, One in Christ. I have found it a most challenging and edifying read. From the purely exegetical perspective I think your book is the best I have read to date and certainly places the onus on  the ‘complementarian’ camp to refute. Read the complete post…

I found the following reviews of Man and Woman, One in Christ in respected blogs. Scot McKnight, Jesus Creed, writes, “Simply put, this is the most technically proficient study ever published on women in the Pauline texts.” Read the complete post…

At the New Testament Textual Criticism Seminar of the Society of Biblical Literature meeting November 21, 2009 Peter Head presented a paper entitled, “The Marginalia of Codex Vaticanus: Putting the Distigmai in their Place.” This paper argued that all of the Vaticanus Distigmai should be dated to the sixteenth century and were penned by Juan Gines de Sepulveda. The famous aphorism derived from H. L. Mencken aptly describes Head’s thesis: “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.”

I have written a response to Peter Head and updated it several times.

The latest update is available in the March 17, 2010 post.