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?

Euripides Reads Torah, Paul Does the Classics

.... Now I’m no scholar of the Christian Scriptures (although I have taught courses on them a time or two), but when obvious parallels exist it is incumbent upon modern readers to pay attention. The parallels of Dionysus and Jesus were evident to early Christians, so what I noticed was nothing new. When the followers of Dionysus, however, strike a rock with their sticks and water flows out, I wondered if Euripides had read his Torah!

--Steve Wiggins, "Paul Does the Classics," Sects and Violence in the Ancient World

Two Cultural Sources of Paul's "Sarx"

Before claiming to understand exactly what Paul meant by the Greek word σάρξ [sarx], an English language translator does well to consider Paul's sources and how they used the word. Paul (or someone using his name) wrote the word nearly 100 times in the extant texts we call the New Testament. This same Paul quoted from the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures (the Septuagint or LXX), which uses sarx well over 200 times. And Paul - in Luke's history (Acts 17) - quoted out of his verbal working memory the sayings of various Greek poets and playwrights. And Paul writing in Greek - to Jews and Greeks in Rome (Romans 12) - is the only New Testament writer to use Aristotle's logical-method word, λογικη [logikē, or "logic"). And Paul - if it's not too much of a speculation - may have read popular Greek works of his day.

In this post, I want to look at some examples of writings that Paul may have read.  Let's consider (1) the LXX and (2) a poet / playwright in this post.  If we have time, in another post, then, we'll consider (3) Aristotle and (4) a first-century novelist .

How did other writers use the Greek word σάρξ [sarx]? (How) might this have colored and shaped and otherwise influenced exactly what Paul meant by the word?

(1) LXX

The very first use of sarx in the Septuagint (by the Jews in Egypt, in Alexander the Great's namesake city, translating their scriptures into the language of the new Greek empire) is in Genesis 2:21 -

καὶ ἔλαβεν μίαν τῶν πλευρῶν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀνεπλήρωσεν σάρκα ἀντ’ αὐτῆς

Roughly, it's conveying this,

that God took a rib from the first human being and closed up the "sarx" in its place.

The story goes on quickly to make clear that this human being has out of him, formed by God, a new human being. And the first says of her (in Greek-translated Jewish language):

τοῦτο νῦν ὀστοῦν ἐκ τῶν ὀστέων μου καὶ σὰρξ ἐκ τῆς σαρκός μου

In essence, he's saying the following:

"This now is bone out of my bone and 'sarx' out of my 'sarx'."

And he goes on reasonably to call her γυνη "gunē" (or "woman" or "wife") - which is funny in Greek, because the word rhymes with the Greek words for "Genesis" and for "birth" and for "generations" and for "ground." There is an ambiguous, playful set of meanings here. And I want to emphasize that from the get-go the LXX uses sarx in gendered ways, that semantically (to get at all the meanings) there has to be some understanding of "woman" and there has to be a bit of an appreciation for "womanly" ways of meaning making and of language.

It is funny in another way too:  the first human being looks at the second human being and declares, in Greek, ἐκ (ek "out of").  This preposition in this context is something that connotes a conception and a birth. The preposition is used when talking about a newborn coming "out of" the mother.  So the first human being (a male) is like the mother (a female) of the second human being, is like that in Greek in the beginning.  The second human being is actually the female in the story. And she becomes the first mother, of course.  And in Matthew's genealogy where he includes some females in the patrilineage of Jesus, Matthew writes "out of Tamar" and "out of Ruth" and so forth using this same Greek preposition.  But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

So then the writer of Genesis (and the translators too) will do something even funnier. In a sentence a little later, the father and mother (and the idea of mother and father in conception and in birth) get left behind:

ἕνεκεν τούτου καταλείψει ἄνθρωπος τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν μητέρα αὐτοῦ καὶ προσκολληθήσεται πρὸς τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ καὶ ἔσονται οἱ δύο εἰς σάρκα μίαν

More or less, this means:

"Therefore, this human will leave his father and his mother, and he will stick together with his woman (womb-man, birthing wife, baby generator), and the two will become merged into a single 'sarx'."

The LXX uses sarx in other startling ways we don't have time for.  The consistent thing is that the referents are things that are, as we say in English, fleshly:  skin, muscle and sinew, as mixed with blood and bone in a carcass or body.  But the gendered beginnings of the word (in the beginning, in Genesis) is how this all starts.

(2) A Greek Poet / Playwright

We could laugh all day reading funny Greek poetry and plays in which the Greek word σάρξ [sarx] is used.  I just want to look at one example.  I've chosen it because I think Paul at a particular point in his life might have been drawn to it.  It's the play Hecuba by the writer Euripides.  The antagonist Polymestor gets blinded.  This is not too different from Paul's getting blinded on his way to Damascus, where he's going to arrest and kill or otherwise "persecute" some of the earliest Messianic Jews (as noted in Luke's history, Acts 22).

Let's read the E. P. Coleridge English translation around line 1056 (and I'll drop in sarx and some other Greek words, bolding the pertinent English references to females)."  Again, here's Polymestor talking immediately after getting blinded by the woman protagonist Hecuba:

Woe is me! where can I go, where halt, or turn? shall I crawl like a wild four-footed beast on their track, as my reward? Which path shall I take first, this or that, eager as I am to clutch those Trojan murderesses that have destroyed me? You wretched, cursed daughters of Phrygia! to what corner have you fled cowering before me? O sun-god, would you could heal, could heal my bleeding eyes, ridding me of my blindness! Ha! hush! I catch the stealthy footsteps of the women [γυναικῶν gun-] here. Where can I dart on them and gorge on their flesh [σαρκῶν sark-] and bones, making for myself a wild beasts' meal, inflicting mutilation in requital of their outrage on me? Ah, woe is me! where am I rushing, leaving my children unguarded for maenads of hell to mangle, to be murdered and ruthlessly cast forth upon the hills, a feast of blood for dogs?

Of course we can only imagine that Paul might have read this.  We only conjecture that if Paul had read or seen or heard Euripides's play Hecuba that he would have identified Hecuba's blinding Polymestor with Jesus Christ's blinding Paul.  But, if he did, then perhaps we could also speculate that sarx as Euripides used it made some impact on Paul.

I want to consider again how gendered this Greek word is.  As with the first uses of sarx in the LXX, Euripides's use of sarx (in the mouth of the sexist antagonist Polymestor) is gendered.  Specifically, it refers to women, to females, and their bodies.

---

When we look at Aristotle's uses of sarx, we'll look at how gendered the word is by the objective scientist.  Likewise, when we look at how one of Paul's  contemporaries -- a  Greek novelist -- used the word, then we'll also see sarx making statements about a woman and her beauty and the desires of men for her because of that.  But the look at these two other cultural sources for Paul's sarx will have to wait for another post if there's time.

To reiterate some of the things shown in this post, there's gendered reference to sarx in some of the texts Paul was familiar with.  Certainly Paul knew and quoted the LXX, and perhaps he heard, watched, read, or was otherwise familiar with the play Hecuba.  The ways females and women are associated with the Greek word σάρξ [sarx] is not, I would say, lost on Paul.  When Paul starts writing to Greeks and to fellow Jews in Rome in particular, exactly what he means by the word can be seen in this light.  (So again, if there's time for another post, we may get to that).

Anne Carson and Anne Lamott on Resurrection

Listen to silly Anne Lamott and foolish Anne Carson, wanting hoping desiring so gullibly to keep open the historic and literary possibilities of resurrection, as women see it. The one Anne speaks of Jesus, the other Anne of another Greek-fabled drama, Alcestis in Alcestis by Euripides.

Euripides, of course, is that one of whom the Historian F. A. Wright, in his Feminism in Greek Literature from Homer to Aristotle says: “Euripides and Plato are almost the only [male] authors who show any true appreciation of a woman's real qualities, and to Euripides and Plato, Aristotle, by the whole trend of his [sexist, bigoted] prejudices, was opposed.” But I’m reading the “scholarship” of another “historian” (supposedly) who scoffs, like Aristotle, at true appreciation of a woman’s views. I’m talking about James F. McGrath and his newly published book The Burial of Jesus: History and Faith. McGrath is crying for reviews, but not this one here. In his book, again and again (on more than a dozen pages so far), McGrath feels like he has to pooh pooh the inclusion of women as credible witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus in the gospel of Mark. Not surprising. His historiography is straight phallogocentrism. What I mean by that is this. Hélène Cixous, in her book Stigmata: escaping texts, translates and quotes “Clarice Lispector, who did not think in terms of phallogocentrism.” Cixous points out that Lispector provides a definition of the term: “We have seen this before; it is the ‘phallocratic system’ . . . this is how she [Lispector] conceives of it: a ‘system of inflexible last judgment, which does not permit even a second of incredulity’” (123). Now the English translation of Cixous’s French translation of Lispector’s Brazilian Portuguese has yielded the term. The three together have made “phal-” from Aristotle’s φαλλικὰ (“ph-a-l-l-ika”); “logo,” from Aristotle’s λόγος (or “l-o-g-os”) which he himself makes (by) his λογική (or “l-o-g-ikē” aka LOGIC); and “centric” from Aristotle’s κεντρική (or “k-e-n-tr-ikē”). McGrath, like father Aristotle, does not permit even a second of incredulity. He redefines “faith” and “history” under the guise of “religion.” Enough of that then.

Here’s Anne Lamott in Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith:

I don't have the right personality for Good Friday, for the crucifixion: I'd like to skip ahead to the resurrection. In fact, I'd like to skip ahead to the resurrection vision of one of the kids in our Sunday school, who drew a picture of the Easter Bunny outside the tomb: everlasting life, and a basket full of chocolates. Now you’re talking.

In Jesus’ real life, the resurrection came two days later, but in our real lives, it can be weeks, years, and you never know for sure that it will come. I don’t have the right personality for the human condition, either. But I believe in the resurrection, in Jesus’, and in ours. The trees, so stark and gray last month, suddenly went up as if in flame, but instead in blossoms and leaves--poof! Like someone opening an umbrella. It’s often hard to find similar dramatic evidence of rebirth and hope in our daily lives. (140).

Here’s Anne Carson in Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides:

What does Alkestis' resurrection mean for the sacrificial contract that Admetos had negotiated with Death? This question is never addressed in the play. Mathematically Death is down one soul; common sense (what the Greeks call Necessity) tells us such a situation can’t last. But Herakles seems a character able to override common sense. He releases Alkestis simply by choosing to do so. As if to say, within every death a life stands waiting to be set free, should anyone have the nerve to do it. As if to say, try looking deep into a house, a marriage, or an idea like Necessity and you will see clear through to the other side. Death, like tragedy, is a game with rules. Why not just break the rules?

Rules broken by Euripides in Alkestis include the rule of closure. What are we to make of the ending? Can we be sure the veiled women is alive? that she is Alkestis? that she will live happily ever after with her husband and children? Critics have doubted all these. There is a kind of nuptial drama staged in the final scene--perhaps a parody of the ancient Greek wedding, which centered upon an unveiling of the bride before the eyes of her husband and some exchange of words between them--that stalls oddly at its peak moment. Here the bride is unveiled to her husband at 971/1121 (or so it seems to me; critics doubt this too) but she will not be permitted to speak for three days due to her death-polluted condition. An eerie silence carries her into the big dark house of her unconventional husband.

I find I want to say less rather than more about Alkestis. Not because there is less in this play but because the surface has a speed and shine that evaporate with exegesis, like some of [Alfred] Hitchcock’s plots. Or a trembling of laughter, terrible if it broke out. (248-49)