"Women be silent." An anti-Montanist edit of Paul?

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Irish1975
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"Women be silent." An anti-Montanist edit of Paul?

Post by Irish1975 »

1 Corinthians 14:33ff, prohibiting women from speaking in church, seems to be secure in the textual tradition, despite some variations in where it is placed within the chapter. Some form of it was in the Marcionite version, according to Tertullian, Epiphanius, and Adeimantus.

On the other hand, Irenaeus seems to be ignorant of Paul's prohibition--

Against Heresies, 3.11.9

Alii vero ut donum Spiritus frustrentur, quod in novissimis temporibus secundum placitum Patris effusum est in humanum genus, illam speciem non admittunt, quae est secundum Johannis Evangelium, in qua Paracletum se missurum Dominus promisit; sed simul et Evangelium, et propheticum repellunt Spiritum. Infelices vere, qui pseudo-prophetae quidem esse volunt, prophetiae vero gratiam repellunt ab Ecclesia: similia patientes his, qui propter eos qui in hypocrisi veniunt, etiam a fratrum communicatione se abstinent. Datur autem intelligi, quod huiusmodi neque Apostolum Paulum recipiant. In ea enim Epistola quae est ad Corinthios, de propheticis charismatibus diligenter locutus est, et scit viros et mulieres in Ecclesia prophetantes. Per haec igitur omnia peccantes in Spiritum Dei, in irremissibile incidunt peccatum. Others, again, that they may set at nought the gift of the Spirit, which in the latter times has been, by the good pleasure of the Father, poured out upon the human race, do not admit that aspect [of the evangelical dispensation] presented by John's Gospel, in which the Lord promised that He would send the Paraclete; but set aside at once both the Gospel and the prophetic Spirit. Wretched men indeed! who wish to be pseudo-prophets, forsooth, but who set aside the gift of prophecy from the Church; acting like those who, on account of such as come in hypocrisy, hold themselves aloof from the communion of the brethren. We must conclude, moreover, that these people cannot admit the Apostle Paul either. For, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, he speaks expressly of prophetical gifts, and recognises men and women prophesying in the Church. Sinning, therefore, in all these particulars, against the Spirit of God, they fall into the irremissible sin.

Here Irenaeus alludes to 1 Cor 11:5, where Paul indirectly approves of women prophesying in church. He is criticizing people who reject the Gospel of John, either because they don't like the spiritualist practices that it encourages, or because spiritualism had some association with women prophesying in church and perhaps exercising other functions of authority; or for both reasons. (The editors of the Ante-Nicene Fathers edition put "Montanists" in parentheses where Irenaeus refers to these people, but isn't that doubtful? Montanists liked gJohn and praciticed spiritualism, ecstatic prophecy, etc. So I wonder if the clause "who wish to be pseudo-prophets" had originally referred to people who want to exclude pseudo-prophets. This reading would make better sense of the comparison to those who avoid church because they don't want to rub elbows with hypocrites.)

Turmel thinks that Irenaeus would have cited or alluded to the prohibition in 1 Cor 14 (or in 1 Timothy 2:11ff) if he had known it. Neither does the anonymous anti-Montanist in Eusebius EH book 5.16ff help himself to the apostolic prohibition, either this one or the one in 1 Timothy, despite having an axe to grind against Priscilla and Maximilla, leaders of the Montanist movement. Thus Turmel concludes that these passages were not present in the NT until the time of Origen, and naturally would have been inserted by anti-montanists.
ces textes tombaient à pic [arrived just in time] sur les prophetesses montanistes
(One could ask whether the whole of chapter 14 is anti-montanist, since it puts a restraint on speaking in tongues to no edifying purpose. In Elaine Pagels' book The Gnostic Paul, she apparently found no commentary by the 2nd century Valentinians et al. on any part of chapter 14.)

One further point, in favor of a late interpolation, is the unmoored clause at 14:33b, which doesn't fit the preceding sentence, and sounds silly when appended to the following sentence because of the repetition of the phrase "the churches." Translators have to fudge it, while the editors of the NA28 leave it dangling in empty space--

32 καὶ πνεύματα προφητῶν προφήταις ὑποτάσσεται, 33 οὐ γάρ ἐστιν ἀκαταστασίας ὁ θεὸς ἀλλ’ εἰρήνης.

Ὡς ἐν πάσαις ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις τῶν ἁγίων

34 αἱ γυναῖκες ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις σιγάτωσαν· οὐ γὰρ ἐπιτρέπεται αὐταῖς λαλεῖν, ἀλλ’ ὑποτασσέσθωσαν, καθὼς καὶ ὁ νόμος λέγει.

Sloppiness doesn't necessarily tell us where the late edits are, but they do indicate fraud to some degree. If the text is disjointed and incoherent, then someone was trying (and failing) to join things together.
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Re: "Women be silent." An anti-Montanist edit of Paul?

Post by DCHindley »

Out of curiosity, Irish, where did you find your Latin of Irenaeus?

Aside from one chapter I had located, which by all appearances someone had painfully transcribed, I cannot locate any online Latin texts of the entire Latin translation of the lost Greek *Against Heresies*.

I tried to scan it once from Harvey's volumes, but he used such a fancy font that ligatures were impossible for ABBY OCR to read accurately. Migne's volumes have been reprinted so many times from the same old plates that they are almost illegible. How could one scan that?

Thanks!

DCH
Irish1975 wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 9:59 am 1 Corinthians 14:33ff, prohibiting women from speaking in church, seems to be secure in the textual tradition, despite some variations in where it is placed within the chapter. Some form of it was in the Marcionite version, according to Tertullian, Epiphanius, and Adeimantus.

On the other hand, Irenaeus seems to be ignorant of Paul's prohibition--

Against Heresies, 3.11.9

Alii vero ut donum Spiritus frustrentur, quod in novissimis temporibus secundum placitum Patris effusum est in humanum genus, illam speciem non admittunt, quae est secundum Johannis Evangelium, in qua Paracletum se missurum Dominus promisit; sed simul et Evangelium, et propheticum repellunt Spiritum. Infelices vere, qui pseudo-prophetae quidem esse volunt, prophetiae vero gratiam repellunt ab Ecclesia: similia patientes his, qui propter eos qui in hypocrisi veniunt, etiam a fratrum communicatione se abstinent. Datur autem intelligi, quod huiusmodi neque Apostolum Paulum recipiant. In ea enim Epistola quae est ad Corinthios, de propheticis charismatibus diligenter locutus est, et scit viros et mulieres in Ecclesia prophetantes. Per haec igitur omnia peccantes in Spiritum Dei, in irremissibile incidunt peccatum. Others, again, that they may set at nought the gift of the Spirit, which in the latter times has been, by the good pleasure of the Father, poured out upon the human race, do not admit that aspect [of the evangelical dispensation] presented by John's Gospel, in which the Lord promised that He would send the Paraclete; but set aside at once both the Gospel and the prophetic Spirit. Wretched men indeed! who wish to be pseudo-prophets, forsooth, but who set aside the gift of prophecy from the Church; acting like those who, on account of such as come in hypocrisy, hold themselves aloof from the communion of the brethren. We must conclude, moreover, that these people cannot admit the Apostle Paul either. For, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, he speaks expressly of prophetical gifts, and recognises men and women prophesying in the Church. Sinning, therefore, in all these particulars, against the Spirit of God, they fall into the irremissible sin.

Here Irenaeus alludes to 1 Cor 11:5, where Paul indirectly approves of women prophesying in church. He is criticizing people who reject the Gospel of John, either because they don't like the spiritualist practices that it encourages, or because spiritualism had some association with women prophesying in church and perhaps exercising other functions of authority; or for both reasons. (The editors of the Ante-Nicene Fathers edition put "Montanists" in parentheses where Irenaeus refers to these people, but isn't that doubtful? Montanists liked gJohn and praciticed spiritualism, ecstatic prophecy, etc. So I wonder if the clause "who wish to be pseudo-prophets" had originally referred to people who want to exclude pseudo-prophets. This reading would make better sense of the comparison to those who avoid church because they don't want to rub elbows with hypocrites.)

Turmel thinks that Irenaeus would have cited or alluded to the prohibition in 1 Cor 14 (or in 1 Timothy 2:11ff) if he had known it. Neither does the anonymous anti-Montanist in Eusebius EH book 5.16ff help himself to the apostolic prohibition, either this one or the one in 1 Timothy, despite having an axe to grind against Priscilla and Maximilla, leaders of the Montanist movement. Thus Turmel concludes that these passages were not present in the NT until the time of Origen, and naturally would have been inserted by anti-montanists.
ces textes tombaient à pic [arrived just in time] sur les prophetesses montanistes
(One could ask whether the whole of chapter 14 is anti-montanist, since it puts a restraint on speaking in tongues to no edifying purpose. In Elaine Pagels' book The Gnostic Paul, she apparently found no commentary by the 2nd century Valentinians et al. on any part of chapter 14.)

One further point, in favor of a late interpolation, is the unmoored clause at 14:33b, which doesn't fit the preceding sentence, and sounds silly when appended to the following sentence because of the repetition of the phrase "the churches." Translators have to fudge it, while the editors of the NA28 leave it dangling in empty space--

32 καὶ πνεύματα προφητῶν προφήταις ὑποτάσσεται, 33 οὐ γάρ ἐστιν ἀκαταστασίας ὁ θεὸς ἀλλ’ εἰρήνης.

Ὡς ἐν πάσαις ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις τῶν ἁγίων

34 αἱ γυναῖκες ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις σιγάτωσαν· οὐ γὰρ ἐπιτρέπεται αὐταῖς λαλεῖν, ἀλλ’ ὑποτασσέσθωσαν, καθὼς καὶ ὁ νόμος λέγει.

Sloppiness doesn't necessarily tell us where the late edits are, but they do indicate fraud to some degree. If the text is disjointed and incoherent, then someone was trying (and failing) to join things together.
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Re: "Women be silent." An anti-Montanist edit of Paul?

Post by andrewcriddle »

The verses are in Tertullian's own text and Tertulian was a Montanist himself.

Andrew Criddle
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Irish1975
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Re: "Women be silent." An anti-Montanist edit of Paul?

Post by Irish1975 »

DCHindley wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 7:19 pm Out of curiosity, Irish, where did you find your Latin of Irenaeus?
Sorry for the delay, was traveling.

I found it through Ben’s text excavation site. He gives the Ante-Nicene Fathers translation, but with links on each page to Migne’s edition. There didn’t seem to be a Greek original for that passage.

What do the Irenaeus experts use? Seems like there is a lack of good scholarship. I know that in recent times Litwa published an unaffordable bilingual edition of Hippolytus’ Refutation.
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Re: "Women be silent." An anti-Montanist edit of Paul?

Post by Giuseppe »

andrewcriddle wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 9:04 am The verses are in Tertullian's own text and Tertulian was a Montanist himself.

Andrew Criddle
Did Tertullian become Montanist after his activity as Catholic writer (at least of the texts survived until now under his name) ?
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Re: "Women be silent." An anti-Montanist edit of Paul?

Post by DCHindley »

Irish1975 wrote: Sat Oct 30, 2021 7:23 am
DCHindley wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 7:19 pm Out of curiosity, Irish, where did you find your Latin of Irenaeus?
Sorry for the delay, was traveling.

I found it through Ben’s text excavation site. He gives the Ante-Nicene Fathers translation, but with links on each page to Migne’s edition. There didn’t seem to be a Greek original for that passage.

What do the Irenaeus experts use? Seems like there is a lack of good scholarship. I know that in recent times Litwa published an unaffordable bilingual edition of Hippolytus’ Refutation.
The edition that I believe represents the latest scholarship was by W. Wigan Harvey, published in 2 volumes in 1850's. I found the two volumes at www.archive.org. The full text has not survived in the original Greek, only the Latin translation. The Greek of book 1 was quoted in its entirety by Epiphanius. Parts of that book and pieces here and there in the rest survive as Greek fragments. Harvey sets the Greek text in parallel with the Latin where it has survived, and sometimes the passages overlap revealing slight differences that probably represent a combination of factors.

Unfortunately, the font he chose for the Latin was fancy schmancy, which did not scan well using ABBYY. It didn't help that he liked to put some text in italics, and in that mode distinguishing ae from ai was almost impossible to my naked eye.

There is a unicode Greek text of either Migne or Harvey's text over at the website hosted by Ruslan Khazarzar at
http://khazarzar.skeptik.net.

Migne's texts reproduces this or preceding editions, but after about a million printings from the same plates, the plates had wore away until they are almost illegible.

The Latin of Irenaeus was not available in Bibleworks (when I still had a working copy) even as a user contributed text.

I wonder if Latin Irenaeus is in the Perseus database? Doubt it tho.

DCH
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Irish1975
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Re: "Women be silent." An anti-Montanist edit of Paul?

Post by Irish1975 »

1 Corinthians 14:34-36

αἱ γυναῖκες ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις σιγάτωσαν· οὐ γὰρ ἐπιτρέπεται αὐταῖς λαλεῖν, ἀλλ’ ὑποτασσέσθωσαν, καθὼς καὶ ὁ νόμος λέγει. εἰ δέ τι μαθεῖν θέλουσιν, ἐν οἴκῳ τοὺς ἰδίους ἄνδρας ἐπερωτάτωσαν· αἰσχρὸν γάρ ἐστιν γυναικὶ λαλεῖν ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ. ἢ ἀφ’ ὑμῶν ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ ἐξῆλθεν, ἢ εἰς ὑμᾶς μόνους κατήντησεν;

mulieres in ecclesiis taceant non enim permittitur eis loqui sed subditas esse sicut et lex dicit
si quid autem volunt discere domi viros suos interrogent turpe est enim mulieri loqui in ecclesia
an a vobis verbum Dei processit aut in vos solos pervenit

1 Timothy 2:11-12

Γυνὴ ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ μανθανέτω ἐν πάσῃ ὑποταγῇ· διδάσκειν δὲ γυναικὶ οὐκ ἐπιτρέπω οὐδὲ αὐθεντεῖν ἀνδρός, ἀλλ’ εἶναι ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ.

mulier in silentio discat cum omni subiectione docere autem mulieri non permitto neque dominari in virum sed esse in silentio


Tertullian—

Adversus Marcionem 5.8.11

Aeque praescribens silentium mulieribus in ecclesia, ne quid discendi duntaxat gratia loquantur (ceterum prophetandi ius et illas habere iam ostendit, cum mulieri etiam prophetanti velamen imponit), ex lege accipit subiciendae feminae auctoritatem, quam, ut semel dixerim, nosse non debuit nisi in destructionem.


De Virgis Velandis 9

Non permittitur mulieri in ecclesia loqui, sed nec docere nec tinguere nec offerre nec ullius virilis muneris, nedum sacerdotalis officii sortem sibi vindicarent.

De Baptismo 17

quam enim fidei proximum videtur ut is docendi et tinguendi daret feminae potestatem qui ne discere quidem constanter mulieri permisit? Taceant, inquit, et domi viros suos consulant.
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Irish1975
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Re: "Women be silent." An anti-Montanist edit of Paul?

Post by Irish1975 »

andrewcriddle wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 9:04 am The verses are in Tertullian's own text and Tertulian was a Montanist himself.

Andrew Criddle
What does this prove? That the verses are attested in the 200s, after Irenaeus? Or in Marcion?

It’s not as though Tertullian couldn’t have been a patriarchal Montanist.
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Re: "Women be silent." An anti-Montanist edit of Paul?

Post by andrewcriddle »

Irish1975 wrote: Sat Oct 30, 2021 12:57 pm
andrewcriddle wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 9:04 am The verses are in Tertullian's own text and Tertulian was a Montanist himself.

Andrew Criddle
What does this prove? That the verses are attested in the 200s, after Irenaeus? Or in Marcion?

It’s not as though Tertullian couldn’t have been a patriarchal Montanist.
Tertullian definitely was a patriarchal Montanist.
IMO the evidence of his Biblical text is still relevant.

Andrew Criddle
Last edited by andrewcriddle on Sun Oct 31, 2021 12:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: "Women be silent." An anti-Montanist edit of Paul?

Post by andrewcriddle »

Giuseppe wrote: Sat Oct 30, 2021 7:47 am
andrewcriddle wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 9:04 am The verses are in Tertullian's own text and Tertulian was a Montanist himself.

Andrew Criddle
Did Tertullian become Montanist after his activity as Catholic writer (at least of the texts survived until now under his name) ?
Tertullian alludes to the verses in Veiling of Virgins It is not permitted to a woman to speak in the church.
This work probably belongs to his Montanist period.

Andrew Criddle
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