any person ... faithful to their partner

In the previous post, I quoted Ann Nyland's exegesis of a Greek phrase in I Timothy 3:2.  Let's look at that a little more.  First, however, let's back up to I Timothy 3:1.  Eventually, then, let's go even further back to Aristotle and his Politics.

In I Timothy 3:1, Nyland translates the Greek pronoun τις as "any person."  NRSV translates it "whoever" and so does NIV 1984, TNIV, and NIV 2011; ESV, similarly, translates it "anyone."  Lest anyone misses it, Nyland also gives a footnote to make clear that the little pronoun is "Non gender-specific in the Greek."

The question then becomes, for I Timothy 3:2, must the "anyone" or the "any person" be restricted to males only.  Is this what Paul was writing to Timothy as we read their mail?  For Nyland, it doesn't really matter so much because she finds that Paul uses similar phrases for partner faithfulness in a relationship, whether he's specifying a one-woman man or a single-man woman.  Thus, she has her readers consider together Paul's two phrases:

μιᾶς γυναικὸς ἄνδρα, mias gunaikos andra. "faithful to one's partner".  See also 1 Tim. 5:9, ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή, henos andros gune. 

Let's just compare what NRSV, TNIV, NIV 2011, NIV 1984, ESV, Richmond Lattimore, Willis Barnstone, and Julia Smith have respectively done with these Greek phrases in English translation.  And then we'll get back to Aristotle.

married only once / married only once - NRSV

faithful to his wife / faithful to her husband - TNIV, NIV 2011

the husband of but one wife / faithful to her husband - NIV 1984

the husband of one wife / the wife of one husband - ESV

married to one wife / widow of one husband - Lattimore

a man of one wife / the wife of one man - Barnstone

husband of one wife / wife of one man - Smith

Most translators specify some sort of marriage relationship in the phrase.  The Greek, nonetheless, does not demand this.  Moreover, most of these translators use a gendered spouse word for the one phrase or the other.  NRSV and Nyland, nonetheless, see this spouse gender specification as not so important for Paul.  The context of widows makes clear what is what in 1 Tim. 5:9.  And the "any person" or "whoever" or "anyone" of 1 Tim. 3:1 (the τις) seems to leave wide open the question of the gender, although clearly Paul has written ἄνδρα and the γυνή when referring to the sorts of persons who might be faithful to their partner.

Now, when we leave Paul and go back to Aristotle, the household rules and the politics of city states and the practices of leadership get much, much more restricted.  One little and very clear example is Aristotle's assertion as follows.  There's his Greek and then H. Rackham's English translation (1277b, around line 20):

ἀνδρὸς καὶ γυναικὸς ἑτέρα σωφροσύνη καὶ ἀνδρεία (δόξαι γὰρ ἂν εἶναι δειλὸς ἀνήρ, εἰ οὕτως ἀνδρεῖος εἴη ὥσπερ γυνὴ ἀνδρεία, καὶ γυνὴ λάλος, εἰ οὕτω κοσμία εἴη ὥσπερ ὁ ἀνὴρ ὁ ἀγαθός· ἐπεὶ καὶ οἰκονομία ἑτέρα ἀνδρὸς καὶ γυναικός· τοῦ μὲν γὰρ κτᾶσθαι τῆς δὲ φυλάττειν ἔργον ἐστίν).

temperance and courage are different in a man and in a woman (for a man would be thought a coward if he were only as brave as a brave woman, and a woman a chatterer if she were only as modest as a good man; since even the household functions of a man and of a woman are different—his business is to get and hers to keep).

What Aristotle is assuming and is asserting to be scientific fact is that men and women are different such that they really are not partners at all in the human race.  They're not partners, that is, unless you objectively see females as deficient males and as lesser than males in every role, in each domain.  Aristotle would regard Paul and Timothy as barbaric if they allowed a woman to hold office over a man, to be the bishop of a church, and so forth.  The real interesting question for us today is How much, if at all, did Paul follow Aristotle and whether he tried to get Timothy and other men to do the same?

Nyland (and perhaps the NRSV for I Timothy) seems to suggest that Paul is much more egalitarian that Aristotle's Nature would let him be.  What matters for Paul, Ann Nyland appears to claim, is that any person may prove responsible and may be recognized when faithful to their partner.