The article she directed us to was by Daniel Wallace. That was my introduction to Wallace and to his sexism.
And now Wallace's sexual harassment, it seems, has extended to others who would endorse his views or would practice his practices. Not even a week ago, Suzanne noticed how he or his blog editors had silenced her: "I can't interact with Dr. Wallace's post because I have been blocked for not backing down on points of accuracy in Latin and Greek, or something like that." And then today, Suzanne has been warned by one of the men at the all-male BBB about being one who would "pursue the gender discussion on this posting." Never mind that the BBB posting is all about Wallace's part-1 of his "review" of the NIV 2011, a "review" in which Wallace mentions gender many many times. Never mind that the BBB posting refers to Wallace's review where Wallace himself even uses the word gender there exactly 13 times. Go figure. (Notice, I'd just been sitting by, listening into the conversation up to that point. No longer. Peter Kirk says you can discuss gender not at BBB but at his other blog. Why? I'd say you should also feel free to discuss Wallace and the NIV 2011 and gender here at this blog.)
There's much to say about Wallace's review per se. Kirk has started in on one little point. I'd like to pick that up just a little more here. Kirk gets into the history but not necessarily the Greek. And Wallace is not careful with his own Greek revisionism when he accuses the NRSV translation team of historical revisionism. He says, at one point:
In 1 Tim 3.2, “married only once” [by the NRSV] translates the Greek phrase, “husband of one wife” (though some evidence has been suggested that this phrase might mean simply “married only once”). The text now sounds like Paul would allow women to be elders/bishops, but that seems to be a case of historical revisionism.In fact, the Greek phrase is μιᾶς γυναικὸς ἄνδρα, mias gunaikos andra. Please notice how "the Greek phrase" for Wallace is, rather, exactly the instead-English phrasing of the male-only ESV Bible translators, which they also allow in a footnote to be alternatively, literally, read as "a man of one woman." Now, Wallace (in his parenthetical note) suggests "some evidence" for an expanded meaning. But he doesn't tell us what he means by his italicized "some"; nor does he bother to direct us to where we might find this additional evidence for the additional meanings. So may I please suggest we find the note that Ann Nyland gives for this Greek phrase? Here is what Nyland says, pointing out how Paul to Timothy recognizes faithfulness to one's partner, whether one is a man or a woman, faithfulness whether one is a monogamous husband or a monogamous wife:
μιᾶς γυναικὸς ἄνδρα, mias gunaikos andra. "faithful to one's partner". See also 1 Tim. 5:9, ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή, henos andros gune. For references to where this term, or its Latin equivalent, was used on epitaphs to describe a woman faithful to her husband, see C. Keever, And Marries Another, Hendrickson, 1991, pp. 91-2. Dr. Instone Brewer states, "In New Testament times those phrases meant 'a one-woman man' or a 'one-man-woman', i.e., someone who was faithful. Timothy was being told to make sure his deacons were not sexually immoral, which was very difficult in a society where you were allowed to sleep with your [female] slaves and where a host was expected to provide [female] prostitutes after a banquet." Divorce and Remarriage in the Church: Biblical Solutions for Pastoral Realities, Great Britain, 2003, p. 177.Well, enough of Wallace's review for now. What his blogging is doing and what the BBB now is doing is silencing a woman, preventing her from talking about gender while men only talk about women in the Bible and in Bible translation. Yes, at least the BBB is restricting all of us from talking about women in the Bible and its translation or about aadvarks, as if the two were really the same.
Here, Suzanne rightly calls this "Sexual harassment," what Wallace is doing with his "biblical gynecology." And see how she much more fairly deals with him, even on his terms, not silencing him or using sexual metaphors for the other, but through conversation and a comparison/contrast of views:
