Man & Woman

A minority of versions, including the old NIV, translate verse 11, “In the same way their wives are to be.…” The NIV 2011, however, translates it, “In the same way the women are to be….” The translation “their wives” is doubtful for eight reasons: (more…)

What an amazing year it has been! I have been overwhelmed by the uniformly enthusiastic responses to all the seminars I have given on the oneness of man and woman in Christ in Conferences in Uganda and Kenya, Universities, Seminaries, and churches. It was a special delight to be back at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School before Thanksgiving, where response to “How Complementarian is the Bible?” and its many follow up discussions were uniformly positive. You can see the full video of the Seminar on YouTube at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29LlmlrL7fw&feature=youtu.be

(more…)

I am having a delightful time teaching a course on Women, the Bible, and the Church on many Fridays from 6 through 9 PM and Saturdays from 9 AM through noon from January through March. Following are some photos of the class.

Phil teaching at Fuller Seminary Northwest

Phil teaching NS561 at Fuller

Phil making a point at Fuller Seminary

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).

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. (more…)

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 (more…)

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?” (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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.” (more…)

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.

So you don’t have to just imagine what the distigme-obelus symbol looks like just before 1 Cor 14:34-35, I have provided photographs of it and another distigme-obelus at the end of Luke 14:24 just before the interpolation that likewise would have occurred immediately after the end of the line marked by the distigme-obelus or at the very beginning of the following line, namely the interpolation  between Luke 14:24 and Luke 14:25, “many are called but few are chosen,” which is not  in the RSV, nor is it mentioned in an RSV footnote). Below both of these distigme-obelus photographs are photographs of other shorter horizontal bars called paragraphoi from that same page. To see these photographs, click here. (more…)

I received this question from Don Johnson, who is reading my book.

Question: I am enjoying your book. I love your exposition of Eph 5. I have a question on 1 Cor 14. Before reading your book, I favored the idea that 1 Cor 14:34-35 is a quote from legalists at Corinth. The way I taught this is “the law/Torah says” is a ref. to the so-called Oral Torah of the Pharisees, which does limit women; and the 2 eta’s (sometimes translated as “or” but which I translate as “Bunk!”) in v. 36 which can be expletives of repudiation, per Nyland’s The Source New Testament (which she translates as “Utter Rubbish”) and others likewise.

Answer:  Thanks for your thoughtful question. The repudiation of a false prophecy interpretation of 1 Cor 14:34-35 is, I believe, the most credible of the many attempted interpretations of these two verses viewed as a part of Paul’s original letter delivered to the church in Corinth. For a while I was a proponent of this view after I realized the anachronism of trying to interpret in a narrow sense the thrice-repeated unqualified prohibition of speech by women in 1 Cor 14:34-35. That was before I looked closely at the text critical question and realized how powerful the arguments for interpolation are. (more…)

Nancy and I had many happy reunions with good friends at the annual meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society and the Society of Biblical Literature in New Orleans Nov. 17-23. Scores of people were absolutely delighted to be able at last to buy Man and Woman, One in Christ at the Linguist’s Software exhibits. 

Phil with his Zondervan editor Verlyn Verbrugge

Zondervan had a huge eight foot tall banner/poster of my book where they sold many more of my book at their exhibits. Christians for Biblical Equality also sold many and displayed a poster of the book at their booth.

 A highlight at ETS was my presentation of a paper: “The Codex Vaticanus Distigmai as Evidence that 1 Cor 14:34-35 is an Interpolation.” The feedback was universally positive.

 I enjoyed seeing old friends at the Tyndale House (Cambridge, England) breakfast, the Gordon-Conwell breakfast and Sunday worship, the Zondervan author breakfast and lunch. I also had fascinating discussions at the Linguist’s Software booth, and enjoyed dinners with special friends.

The first two are crucial studies for understanding Paul’s teaching regarding slavery.

The first gives twelve reasons to understand 1 Corinthians 7:21-23 as an encouragement for slaves to gain freedom if they can. These factors are crucial because some people have interpreted Paul as discouraging slaves from gaining their freedom and has been used to support slavery.

The second shows how Paul applies maximum social pressure on Philemon to free his slave Onesimus.

These two articles support the understanding of Galatians 3:28 argued in my book that in Christ there is no special privilege given to slave over free or to male over female. These studies show that Paul in practice undermines the slave/free dichotomy.

The third is a critique of Preston T. Massey’s article in New Testament Studies 53 (2007): 502-523. Massey states five conclusions regarding the meaning of “covered” in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. His article cites passages that contradict each of his five conclusions. He is unwarranted in concluding that “covering” implies a garment.

To see or download these studies, in the red box at the top of this page click on Publications, then click on Supplemental Studies.