S-U-B-M-I-T, find out what it means to her

In public, Michele Bachmann, candidate for the Chief Executive of the world's largest superpower, says that she will continue to submit to her husband.  However, this submission, she says, is respect.  And this submission, she explains, is mutual.   Here's exactly how she put it last night answering why she did something her husband told her she must do even though she hated doing it:

“Marcus and I will be married for 33 years this September 10. I’m in love with him. I’m so proud of him. What submission means to us, it means respect. I respect my husband. He’s a wonderful godly man and great father.

“He respects me as his wife; that’s how we operate our marriage,” she continued. “We respect each other; we love each other. I’ve been so grateful we’ve been able to build a home together. We have wonderful children and 20 foster children. We’ve built a business and life together, and I’m very proud of him.”

If Ms. Bachmann becomes President, then her relationship together with Marcus should not change.  He may tell her to do some things that she hates, and she will obey; she must do it.  This also came up last evening:

During last night's Fox News debate, moderator Byron York questioned Rep. Michele Bachmann about her 2006 remark that her "husband said you should study for a degree in tax law. You said you hated the idea. And then you explained, 'But the Lord said, 'Be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.'" York asked Bachmann, "As president, would you be submissive to your husband?" The question received loud boos from the audience, and was the subject of attention in write-ups of the debate.

York, after hearing Bachmann's answer, was pleased.  He said:  "I personally thought she handled it very well. She handled it much more human -- it was like a very human moment for her."   So what does York mean by "human"?  Not mousey and wifey and womanly?  Rather mutual and sharing and two-way respectful?

We get the idea, then, that a President Michele Bachmann would have her cabinet submit to her.  In a human sense, therefore, they would love her and would work together to build with her and would mutually respect her.  The question remains where that would leave First Gentleman (not First Lady) Marcus Bachmann.  If he told his wife to do something she hated, then would he get obedience?  And what would be the chain of command for the Commander in Chief?

Now Wayne Leman at BBB blogged on this.  He says "we at BBB" (meaning the all-men team of bloggers at BBB) want to know:

Does the Greek word ὑποτασσω in Ephesians 5:21–and assumed by almost all Bible translators to be implied in the next verse–mean ‘respect’ or something else?

 Yesterday, I linked to an essay, a post, by Wayne Grudem in which he says that "submission is a respectful affirmation" but that submission must only go one way in a marriage.  Submission, he explains, is not "mutual."  Marcus Bachmann is not to submit to his wife Michele Bachmann.  As the husband, he is not to give her "respectful affirmation" in the sense that he is under her.  Rather, she is under him because she is a woman, because she is his wife.  She must respectfully follow his leadership even if he tells her to do something that she hates.

The BBB all-male blogger team want to know what this means.  If you are a woman, then do know that there is a special practice by this team for moderating the comments of females.  The way blogger Theophrastus has tracked this is as follows:

The situation over that the BBB is that all male-blogging team has decided on a secret rule that issues of gender cannot be discussed in blog posts.  However, this rule is inconsistently enforced – it is particularly enforced on women who try to comment on that blog.

If you'd like to comment freely, whether you are a woman or a man, then always feel free to do so at this blog.  Or, if you really want to reply to the BBB questions but find yourself moderated in any particular way by the all-male BBB team, then feel free to do so at the BBBB.  The BBB all-male no-woman team has promised that everybody gets automatically moderated in reply to Wayne Leman's recent post.  The BBBB, however, will allow you to make your comments openly on this same topic or on any topic you somehow want to bring up there.

Now, before we leave the topic of ὑποτασσω as Paul wrote it to Greek readers in Ephesus, I thought we might listen to how his first Greek readers, those Ephesians, may have heard this word.  There's no reason to believe that these Ephesians in Ephesus were uncultured.  There's no reason to think that the husbands and wives to whom Paul addressed his letter would not have attended the local plays.  There's no reason to suggest that they might not have gone to watch the plays by Euripides or even his play that we know today as The Bacchae.

As we all know, the Bacchae were women, not men.  

They were also called maenads, those females who followed and nursed and submitted to the god Dionysus.  The Bacchae or Maenads were "Raving Women."

If you've watched the play by Euripides or have read it, then you know how these raving women murdered a human king for banning their worship of the god.  If it's significant, this particular god, Dionysus, had a human mother.  At any rate, we all know how the Bacchae or Maenads or Raving Females broke the law of the king and killed him.  They did not submit.  They did not like this chain of command, this male hierarchy from the king.  In fact, the mother of this king usurped the male authority and led the raving women.

Here's a memorable moment from the play in which this king, before he gets assasinated, is getting a report on these women and on his own mother (as translated from the Greek of Euripides into English, by George Theodoridis):

But just then she [your mother] shouted, “Hey, my speedy bitches, there are some men here who are hunting us.  They want our submission. Come, run with me.  Arm yourselves with your thyrsus and come with me! Let’s get them”

We just managed to run away and escape the slaughter but they threw themselves, with no spear nor sword, at the calves that were quietly grazing nearby.  One of those women tore a poor, tiny calf away from its mother’s udder and others ripped calves to bloody pieces with their bare hands and then they began eating them raw.

My Lord, you could see bits of flesh strewn all around the place. Whole sides of animals, legs, other chunks of animal flesh hanging from the fir trees, dripping blood.  Huge bulls, my Lord which only a few minutes earlier stood tall and proud, the sort that if one got them angry they’d tear everything apart with their massive horns, well, now they dropped their bodies to the ground and straightaway countless girls dragged them about with their bare hands and… and by the time you blinked your royal eye, my Lord, they’d have the skin torn off those massive carcasses of them bulls.

And then they went flying about like the wild birds that ruin the proud wheat stalks of Thebes, the ones that fly low next to the rushing waters of Asopos river.  Then off them women rushed to the villages of Erythres, near Ysies, at the foot of Mount Kitheron and just like an invading army they turned everything upside down, ripping children out of their houses and taking all sorts of goods from there, which they just threw carelessly over their shoulder without tying anything together; still nothing fell to the dark soil, not even bronze or iron, my Lord!

And, o, my Lord Pentheus [the king], around their hair there was this brilliant fire that had no effect on them. Didn’t burn them one bit.

Then all the men came out fuming with anger and fully armed, wanting to bring these Bacchants into submission [ὑποτάσεις], but then, my Lord, if only you could have seen this most awesome thing!  Most terrible thing to see.

So the Ephesians would get that submission was not mutual in some contexts, that the king was to be obeyed, that women especially raving females should be under male gods and male leaders.  This was a gendered thing.  A one-way sexist thing.  Or was Paul suggesting mutual submission of all one to another also?