1 Cor 14

If you are in the area, I would love to see you at one of my upcoming talks in Washington, Texas, Uganda, and Kenya.

Redmond, WA, March 31, 2012, main speaker at the Christians for Biblical Equality Puget Sound Spring Meeting at Overlake Christian Church, 9900 Willows Road NE, Redmond, WA 98052 from 2:00 – 4:30 PM.

Houston, TX, April 27-28, 2012, two plenary sessions, each with Q & A at the conference entitled”New Creation, New Tradition. Reclaiming the Biblical Tradition of Man and Woman, One in Christ” at the Heights Church of Christ, 1548 Heights Boulevard, Houston, TX 77008. http://www.cbehouston.org/Pages/aboutus.aspx (more…)

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).

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.

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.

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…)

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…)

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.

I will be at the ETS and SBL annual meetings in New Orleans in November. The Evangelical Theological Society Annual Meeting is Nov 18-20, and the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting is Nov 21-24. At the ETS Annual Meeting I will read a paper on “Codex Vaticanus Distigmai as Evidence that 1 Cor 14:34-35 is an Interpolation” Thursday at 8:30 AM in the Waterbury Ballroom (2nd floor, Sheraton).

At both meetings I will be selling signed copies of my new book Man and Woman, One in Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Paul’s Letters, for only $14.99 (retail is $29.99).

At ETS I will be at booth 617, and at SBL I will be at booth 440. Please drop by and see me.

I received this question from someone who read about my book on the Zondervan Koinonia blog.

Question: Why would 1 Cor 14:34-35 be an interpolation?

Answer: 1 Cor 14:34-35 would be an interpolation if it was not originally in the text of 1 Corinthians but was added later in the margin. (more…)