Paul and Pseudo-Paul: Authorship, Ideology, and the Difference of Androprimacy

Abstract

This essay proposes a new conceptual approach to authorship and gender ideology in the Pauline corpus through the neologism ‘androprimacy’. I maintain that in addition to the scholarly literature that has engaged questions of authorship in the Pauline corpus and its relevance for the ordination of women, approaching this topic from the angle of ‘androprimacy’ exposes a distinct structure of sex-based discrimination that Paul rejects (1 Cor 11.11–16) and that the author of 1 Tim (1 Tim 2.11–15) affirms, demonstrating that androprimacy was a contested ideology in the first century, a relevant finding for promoting women’s ordination.

The Pauline and Pseudo-Pauline corpora have long been regarded as the unavoidable loci for addressing the question of women’s ordination. Studies have found, unsurprisingly, that the Pauline and Pseudo-Pauline epistles lend credence to any range of positions on the matter, from the neutralization and subordination of women’s authority to equal and unimpeded access to all ecclesiastical ranks. None of this is news to New Testament scholars, as even the most cursory review of the literature indicates.1 In brief, the debate concerning women’s ordination frequently turns on a Pauline and Pseudo-Pauline axis: is there evidence for or against women’s ordination? Of course, all of this assumes that Scripture cannot simply be bracketed away in discussing this subject, as it is the single most determining factor for contemporary practice in many churches. Several assumptions go into this belief, and it would be impossible and impractical to tease them out here. But the common denominator in all these debates is that the Pauline corpus is unavoidable in discussing this subject, so that is the focus of this essay.

Two of the most disputed passages concerning women’s ordination are 1 Cor 11.1–16 and 1 Tim 2.9–3.1 (or briefer sections of these passages, as detailed below), because they seem to prescribe hierarchical structures that, by many accounts, appear to subordinate women (Merkle 2006; Padgett 1986; Payne 2006; Penner and Stichele 2005; Klinker-De Klerck 2001; Davis 2017; Greenbury 2018; Kowalski 2017; Ranzolin 2014; Alejandrino 2014; Baum 2014). Certainly, there are other relevant texts, but for the purposes of this essay, these will suffice, since I am not undertaking an exhaustive review of contested loci, which has been conducted by others (see below), but simply proposing a new conceptual approach to the topic that may then be extended to other texts. From the outset, a number of well-known issues plague the exegesis of these verses. For example, while 1 Cor is universally acknowledged as an authentic Pauline epistle, the case has been made that 11.3–10 (much as 1 Cor 14.33b–35) is an interpolation by a misogynist of later decades who sought to restrict the freedom that Christian women, particularly in Pauline communities, may have enjoyed at an earlier stage of ecclesiastical development or, as I believe, concurring with several scholars, those verses are Paul’s quotation of a query sent to him by the Corinthians to which he responds in 11.11–16 (Murphy-O’Connor 1986, 1988; Walker 1987, 1989a, 1989b, 2004; Mount 2005; Butticaz 2016). Doubtless, it would be convenient to be rid of all the intricacies of 11.3–16, but I, for one, am not convinced that its subordinating logic and misogynistic tenor are as discursively transparent as some may assume and in fact argue that it differs ideologically in a key respect from 1 Tim 2.11–15, particularly if we interpret 11.3–10 as a Corinthian view that Paul subverts in 11.11–16. 1 Tim 2.11–15, in turn, is part of what is almost universally considered a Pseudo-Pauline epistle that promotes, in my view, a far clearer logic of women’s subordination than what we find in 1 Cor 11.10–16 but, significantly, rather close to the Corinthian subordinative logic of 1 Cor 11.3–10. In brief, I maintain the Pauline authenticity of 1 Cor 11 (divided into 3–10 as a Corinthian text and 11–16 as a Pauline rejoinder to that text) and the pseudepigraphic status of 1 Tim 2.11–15. What is original about my contribution is a shift in conceptual approach that differs from most models used today.

Historically, scholars have attempted to adjudicate differences between the authentic and pseudepigraphic Pauline works through a range of historical–critical methods that include style and statistical comparisons, theological differences, Paul’s chronology (especially as recounted in Acts), earlier and later stages of ecclesiastical development, and so on.2 Some of these methods have been more successful than others and have accordingly received wider acceptance in the scholarly community. However, my goal here is not to interrogate the validity of these methods or even to develop one or another further; scholars can make up their own minds about New Testament topics and methodological approaches that have been perennially covered—and most have likely already done so. Rather, I want to render a distinct structure of sex-based discrimination intelligible that I call “androprimacy” and to suggest its relevance for questions of authorship and ideology. I argue that Paul challenges and subverts the androprimal logic of 1 Cor 11.3–10 in 1 Cor 11.11–16, whereas the author of 1 Tim 2.11–15 affirms it. If so, it is possible to obtain a new angle on gendered discourse in the Pauline and Pseudo-Pauline corpora that allows us to tease out their ideological differences more effectively, not only for discussing questions of authorship and attribution, but also for showing that the earliest Christian constructs of sexual difference and corresponding ecclesiastical dynamics were far from monolithic and uncontested.3

1. First-Century Androprimal Ideologies

Androprimacy (and derivative terms) is a neologism I have coined for the study of religion and gender, but which has wider applicability, depending on how scholars understand and appropriate it for their projects.4 I define androprimacy as totalizing male precedence however conceived and deployed, but am open to expansive definitions and to further recalibration of the term if other scholars find it useful for their research. I maintain that androprimacy as a concept has the capacity of rendering a distinct structure of sex-based discrimination intelligible. So, although androprimacy is similar to and nearly always allied with other sex-based logics of discrimination (e.g., patriarchy, misogyny, androcentrism, etc.), it is not exactly the same as any of these. In fact, I would even suggest that androprimacy often functions as the condition of possibility for other forms of social hierarchization (e.g., patriarchy) and discrimination (e.g., female ecclesiastical subordination) that have especially adverse structural consequences for women, though at times, other structures, especially androcentrism, might itself undergird androprimal assumptions. In brief, androprimacy is a distinct sexist structure and has complex systemic relations to other logics of sex-based discrimination.

More specifically, androprimacy can also have virtually infinite instantiations across a range of categorical variables. For example, we may speak of ontological androprimacy, understood as the verticalized or hierarchized organization of being that positions manhood at the cusp and reads anything beneath that as ontologically inferior. In late antiquity that would mean that boys, girls, women, eunuchs, and enslaved people (whether male or female) would be somehow subordinated to these schematics and would derive their worth by virtue of their relative approximations to a masculine ideal that was categorically off-limits to most of these groups—or to which they would eventually come (in the case of boys), but whose rights and privileges they not yet fully enjoyed (Walters 1997). Alternatively, we may consider ethical androprimacy, understood as the belief that men alone have access to supreme ethical standing, or ecclesiastical androprimacy, understood as the precedence men have in church settings over others. Simply put, androprimacy effectively puts the man first and relegates all else to secondary, derivative, and/or subordinate positions that are always relative to a vertically hierarchized male point of reference.5 This, in brief, is androprimacy by way of general definition, though its peculiar instantiations can and do shift across geochronological axes of social difference, and my analysis can of course be enriched and complemented with matters of intersectional identities, including age, class, citizenship, race, etc.

The first century Greco-Roman Christian world was intensely androprimal. This much is apparent at the complex intersections of biological, ontological, social, political, religious, and other kinds of androprimacies that consistently cast female individuals as inferior instantiations of a male prototype, often typified by Adam. I cannot dwell on most of these aspects of androprimal societies at length here because I am primarily interested in exploring the intersection of biological, ontological, and chronological androprimal ideologies in the two passages that concern this essay, perhaps, especially, because that is where the differences between Paul and the author of 1 Tim become most apparent.

Before examining these intersections, it bears mentioning for the sake of background that many scholars of gender in Greco-Roman antiquity and late antiquity have consistently turned up the same results, often working independently of one another: women were, with few exceptions, considered inferior instantiations of a male body that was held up as an ideal form of the human being (Holmes 2012; Swancutt 2007; Clarke 2003; Keuls 1985; Skinner 2005; Williams 1999; Hjort 2001; King 1998; Fleming 2000; Fausto-Sterling 2000). Thus, rather than holding to models of sexual dimorphism, as is sometimes the case in some groups today, the Greco-Roman ancients assumed a more fluid model of sexual difference, where one’s place was not determined ontologically, but performatively, along coordinates on a single and verticalized axis that positions the man at the top and subordinates all others to him.6 Jonathan Walters has lucidly described this social hierarchization as follows:

The pattern that emerges is that of a social pyramid. At the apex are the small class of viri, true men, adult Roman citizens in good standing, the impenetrable penetrators. Just below them are sets of people—freeborn male youths and respectable women—who are potentially penetrable because they are not or not yet men, but who are defined (because of their family connections with respectable Roman men) as inviolable, and therefore under the protection of the law. Below them on the lowest slopes of the pyramid are those, whether male or female, who are beatable and sexually penetrable (Walters 1997, pp. 29–45).

Androprimacy here is virtually self-explanatory: (freeborn) male bodies are given biological precedent over others, who are considered incomplete instantiations of an ideal male. It is entirely likely that this biologically androprimal assumption hinged on the sedimentation of sustained androcentric worldviews and political structures that gave it the appearance of normalcy. And it is precisely this normalcy that in one way or another Paul will contest, and, by contrast, the author of 1 Tim will affirm. In other words, the fact that they had a fairly similar cultural milieu does not mean they arrived at the same conclusions; indeed, it is precisely in these differing conclusions that they are seen farthest apart and that the uncontested status of androprimacy in antiquity can be put in question.

2. Androprimacy in 1 Cor 11.3–16

The Pauline authenticity of 1 Corinthians is not in question. Nonetheless, a handful of passages in this letter have been interrogated as post-Pauline interpolations that include, especially, 11.3–16 and 14.34b–35 (Hurley 1973, pp. 190–220; Merkle 2006, pp. 527–48; Mount 2005, pp. 313–40). It is hardly surprising that both texts are primarily concerned with gender dynamics in church. The dismissal of these two textual loci as later interpolations by a patriarchal ecclesiast can be attributed in part to certain contemporary ideological commitments to Paul’s relative (or radical) ecclesiastical egalitarianism.7 Certainly, I concur that Paul was in some sense an oddball for Greco-Roman gender ideologies in his own highly idiosyncratic ways, but, it goes without saying, he did not practice any variety of twentieth or twenty-first century feminism any more than he embodied any stripe of twentieth or twenty-first century traditionalism: he was an itinerant first-century Jew in the Greco-Roman world committed to the kerygma of Christ. So, there is nothing remarkable about the fact that his views on men and women have limited overlap with contemporary ones, regardless of the plethora of today’s ideological differences. What matters for our purposes is that scholars have satisfactorily shown that there is little material evidence to doubt the authenticity of 1 Cor 11.3–16, while the data that discredit 14.34b–35 as a later interpolation are significant.8 For these reasons, I focus on 1 Cor 11.3–16 in this section before examining 1 Tim 2.11–15 in the next to examine the ideological differences that set them apart.

Much debate has surrounded what precisely the problem addressed in 1 Cor 11.3–16 was (Beduhn 1999, pp. 295–320; Bedale 1954, pp. 211–15; Belleville 2003, pp. 215–31; Black 1993, pp. 191–218; Blattenberger 1997; Christian 1999, pp. 291–95; Finney 2010, pp. 31–58; Gundry-Volf 1997, pp. 151–71; Hjort 2001, pp. 58–80; House 1988, pp. 47–56; Hurley 1973, pp. 190–220; Kittredge 2000, pp. 103–9; Lakey 2010; Martin 2005, pp. 255–73). It is possible that Paul was responding, as he did in 1 Cor 7, to very specific questions raised by the Corinthians concerning church discipline (Peppiatt 2015, pp. 66–84). In this case, the problematic is twofold: whether and why women should cover their heads when praying and prophesying in ecclesiastical gatherings. Nonetheless, it is impossible to affirm without a doubt that Paul provides a clear answer, simply due to the text’s apparent convolutedness (Ranzolin 2014, pp. 173–94). That is because Paul seems to affirm that women should cover their heads if they do not want to dishonor them (11.5–7), that they should do this because women originate from and for the sake of man (11.8–9), but also that in the Lord women do not only originate from men but men also originate through women (11.11–12), and that in God’s churches, there is no custom of women covering their heads (11.16) (Merkle 2006, pp. 527–48; Kittredge 2000, pp. 103–9; Martin 2004, pp. 75–84; Thompson 2003, pp. 237–57; Padgett 1984, pp. 69–86; Padgett 1986, pp. 121–32). On its face, the logic seems patently contradictory, and while traditionalist sensitivities may wish to reconcile Paul to himself or to show how every letter in this epistle is his, I see no reason to discount the possibility that Paul is quoting a Corinthian query in 11.3–10 and then responding to it in 11.11–16, as Lucy Peppiatt, and others before her, have maintained.9 And of course, none of this is foreign to Paul’s modus operandi, as is evidenced by chapter 7 in the same letter.

Taken this way, Paul would be setting up his response to the quote with a preface in 11.1–2: “Become imitators of me, just as I am of Christ, and I commend you, because you commemorate me in every regard and preserve the traditions just as I have transmitted them to you” (μιμηταί μου γίνεσθε, καθὼς κἀγὼ Χριστοῦ. Ἐπαινῶ δὲ ὑμᾶς ὅτι πάντα μου μέμνησθε καὶ καθὼς παρέδωκα ὑμῖν τὰς παραδόσεις κατέχετε). With these words, Paul reminds his readers that they ought to take Paul as an example because in this way they become imitators of Christ, as he does. Paul next engages in some kind of positive psychological manipulation by praising their adherence to the traditions they received from him immediately before introducing the contested points. Perhaps the objective of setting up the problem this way is to predispose the readers to accept Paul’s injunctions in 11.11–16, which follow immediately after his rewriting of the Corinthian quote in 11.3–10.

The quotation of the Corinthian query would most likely begin with 11.3. This is not entirely improbable because it starts with what could well be someone’s statement in Corinth: “I wish you to know that” (θέλω δὲ ὑμᾶς εἰδέναι) which next introduces what this hypothetical speaker said: “the source of every man is Christ, and the source of woman is man, and the source of Christ is God” (ὅτι παντὸς ἀνδρὸς ἡ κεφαλὴ ὁ Χριστός ἐστιν, κεφαλὴ δὲ γυναικὸς ὁ ἀνήρ, κεφαλὴ δὲ τοῦ Χριστοῦ ὁ θεός).10 It is possible that this sentence reflects the oral delivery of this statement for the reason that it does not have the symmetry that a careful writer would have given it in the calmness and collectedness of composition. That is, if the purpose were to show a hierarchy, why begin in the second tier (Christ–man), move to the third (man–woman), and then return to the first (God–Christ)? Would it not make more sense to suppose that the hierarchy would either begin in descending or ascending order, that is, God–Christ–man–woman or woman–man–Christ–God? In other words, the relative lack of symmetry possibly reflects an impromptu oral medium of delivery that does not signal the greater care that an author would have put into its written form.

In 11.4, men are excused from covering their heads while praying or prophesying because they will otherwise dishonor their heads. By contrast, according to 11.5–6, women must cover their heads: “Every woman who is praying or prophesying with an unconcealed head shames her head, as that is one and the same thing as a shaved [head]. So, if a woman will not be concealed, let her also be shorn; but if it is shameful for a woman to be shorn or shaved, let her be concealed” (πᾶσα δὲ γυνὴ προσευχομένη ἢ προφητεύουσα ἀκατακαλύπτῳ τῇ κεφαλῇ καταισχύνει τὴν κεφαλὴν αὐτῆς· ἓν γάρ ἐστιν καὶ τὸ αὐτὸ τῇ ἐξυρημένῃ. Εἰ γὰρ οὐ κατακαλύπτεται γυνή, καὶ κειράσθω· εἰ δὲ αἰσχρὸν γυναικὶ τὸ κείρασθαι ἢ ξυρᾶσθαι, κατακαλυπτέσθω). I take it that the threat of cutting off women’s hair is a manipulative move and not an actual proposal that would fix the ritual problem because, presumably, if women cut off their hair and prophesy in that state they will still be dishonoring their heads (Payne 2006, pp. 9–18; Levine 1995, pp. 76–130; Thompson 1988, pp. 99–115). Thus, the point made appears to be that women ought to have long hair and cover their heads—whether with their own hair through some elaborate updo or with some kind of head accessory (Patterson 2018, p. 132). The object, then, is not to offer women a way out of covering their heads, but of strong-arming them into covering their heads one way or another.

The text has all the makings of a disputation, most likely that of Corinthian leadership with a penchant for women donning headgear, because the direction changes next from psychological threats to chiastic argumentation on the basis of androcentrism and androprimacy. So the argument “While man needs not be concealing his head since he is the image and splendor of God, the woman, by contrast, is the splendor of man: For man is not from woman but woman from man—and further, man was not made for the sake of the woman but woman for the sake of the man” (ἀνὴρ μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ὀφείλει κατακαλύπτεσθαι τὴν κεφαλήν, εἰκὼν καὶ δόξα θεοῦ ὑπάρχων· ἡ γυνὴ δὲ δόξα ἀνδρός ἐστιν. οὐ γάρ ἐστιν ἀνὴρ ἐκ γυναικός, ἀλλὰ γυνὴ ἐξ ἀνδρός). The argument is meant to function by a chiastic amalgam of androcentrism, androprimacy, and androcentrism: woman is the splendor of man (an androcentric perspective), woman is secondary to and derivative from man (an androprimal perspective), and woman is made for the sake of man (an androcentric perspective). The argument thus shifts from the threat of cutting off women’s hair to affirming their inferior position in an androprimal scale of being: woman came from man, not man from woman. Any appeal to this logic, as we see in the text of 1 Tim 2.13 (see below), has often been taken as a transcultural claim that categorically bars women from leadership. John Jefferson Davis has made the following point in regard to this Edenic logic: “It has been argued that, since verse 13, referring to the chronological priority of Adam over Eve in creation, is both a creation narrative and before the fall, the conclusions drawn from it by the apostle are not simply reflective of cultural circumstances or the sinful human condition, but are normative for all times and places and, consequently, bar the ordination of women to certain offices in all circumstances” (Davis 2017, p. 16). Admittedly, a modern reader might struggle to see what exactly the connection is between chronological or ontological derivativeness (even if, for the sake of argument, we grant this point) and women’s subordinate position in ecclesiastical gatherings, but it is precisely the fact that the speaker here does not need to articulate what that link is that indicates that androprimacy as a structure of sex-based discrimination has become discursively sedimented and systemically effective in promoting the subordination of women. That is, the ideological givenness of androprimacy as a modicum of oppression is most visible in the fact that its mere invocation—and, I underline, not its elucidation—suffices for subjecting women to a practice from which men are somehow excused.

The quote, if that is what it is, ends with its most perplexing note in 1 Cor 11.10: “For this reason, the woman needs to have authority over her head due to the angels” (διὰ τοῦτο ὀφείλει ἡ γυνὴ ἐξουσίαν ἔχειν ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς διὰ τοὺς ἀγγέλους). As before, this passage has elicited tremendous controversy, in large part because its meaning is so obscure (Stuckenbruck 2001, pp. 205–34; Sullivan 2004; Benjamin 1995, pp. 131–64; Beduhn 1999, pp. 295–320). To what does this “authority” refer? A symbol of a man’s power and authority over a woman that functions as an apotropaic against sexually-entitled angels, such as those that impregnate women in Gen 6, also known as the Watchers in the opening chapters of Enoch? Does this phrase mean a woman should have free choice as to what to do regarding her head? That woman has authority of prophesying and praying, to return to 1 Cor 11.5 (Finney 2010, pp. 31–58)? I admit I have a pessimistic view of this likely male Corinthian author, but even so, my sense is that the author is once more engaging in manipulative behavior. Is it possible that he invokes the angels to threaten women with the possibility of sexual violence as another strategy for forcing them to acquiesce to male dominance? This threat was already real enough for first-century women (especially in Corinth, known as a hotbed of houses of ill-repute), but it fans their pre-existing and perfectly well-founded fears further by suggesting that unless they comply with male directives, they are likely to be the victims of the high-run passions of bodiless powers. And indeed, why should women take this threat lightly? After all, Greco-Roman scriptures were replete with celestial beings that regularly assaulted women and this phenomenon even had some precedent, as noted earlier, in Gen 6 and the opening chapters of the Book of Enoch, which is effectively an expansion of the events unfolding in Gen 6.11 Furthermore, this kind of fear-mongering is consistent with the flat, threatening tone of 1 Cor 11.5–6, so I would not put it past the author to resort to another cultural resource to promote women’s subordination.

And yet, the text takes a sharp turn at 11.11–16, which intimates, as I have suggested, that 11.3–10 is a quotation contained in the letter the Corinthians sent to Paul and the following six verses are Paul’s rejoinder.12 There are good reasons to believe this. For one, the first word immediately after 11.10 is πλὴν, one of the strongest and most emphatic adversarial conjunctions that signals contrariness in Greek rhetoric. And this change in position is not simply grammatical: it is hard to miss the ideological difference between 11.3–10 and 11.11–16. While 11.3–10 promotes the subordination of women by appealing to androprimacy, especially at 11.8, 11.11–12 for its part subverts and challenges the very logic of androprimacy deployed in 11.8 to legitimate women’s inferior position. Thus, Paul writes: “Nonetheless, neither is the woman without the man nor the man without the woman in the Lord, because just as the woman is from the man, so also the man is through the woman, and all are from God” (πλὴν οὔτε γυνὴ χωρὶς ἀνδρὸς οὔτε ἀνὴρ χωρὶς γυναικὸς ἐν κυρίῳ· ὥσπερ γὰρ ἡ γυνὴ ἐκ τοῦ ἀνδρός, οὕτως καὶ ὁ ἀνὴρ διὰ τῆς γυναικός· τὰ δὲ πάντα ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ; 1 Cor 11.11–12). The ideological construct in Paul’s crosshairs here is 11.8: the argument from androprimacy. Paul’s response matters because it signals his ideological conflict with and rejection of androprimal discourse. In other words, the affirmation of man’s ontological, biological, or chronological primacy—understood as the legitimation of Adam’s primacy over Eve and figuratively, of all men over all women—cannot be validly extended to justify women’s inferior position in church because both Adam and Eve, man and woman, are equalized by virtue of their biological co-dependency and of their inescapable ontological contingency on the divine (Payne 2006, pp. 9–18; Payne 2009; Shoemaker 1987, pp. 60–63; Ranzolin 2014, pp. 173–94).

Indeed, and by contrast with the lack of symmetry in 11.3, Paul expresses the symmetrical co-dependency of man and woman by using the same preposition, “without” (χωρὶς), rhetorically to underline their biological mutuality, while also distinguishing their functions in reproduction by means of two different prepositions: “from” (ἐκ) and “through” (διὰ). Accordingly, Adam’s androprimacy over Eve disappears, giving way to the current state of affairs, where woman is “from” man inasmuch as men produce semen and ejaculate it “from” themselves (Paul was unaware of women’s ova), while man (and, of course, woman) can only be born “through” woman. The result is a discursive displacement of ontological, biological, and chronological androprimacy in favor of a circular co-dependency of men and women on one another and of radical dependence on God.

Since Paul has now undermined the logic that promotes women’s subordination by challenging the implicit discursive structures of androprimacy, he reasonably assumes that the matter is open for debate. Therefore, he puts the question to the Corinthians: “Judge among yourselves: is it appropriate that an uncovered woman be praying to God? Is it not the case that nature itself teaches you that if a man grows long hair it is his dishonor, but if a woman grows long hair it is her splendor? Well then, hair is given to her in the place of a hair-wrap (peribolaion)” (ἐν ὑμῖν αὐτοῖς κρίνατε· πρέπον ἐστὶν γυναῖκα ἀκατακάλυπτον τῷ θεῷ προσεύχεσθαι; οὐδὲ ἡ φύσις αὐτὴ διδάσκει ὑμᾶς ὅτι ἀνὴρ μὲν ἐὰν κομᾷ ἀτιμία αὐτῷ ἐστιν, γυνὴ δὲ ἐὰν κομᾷ δόξα αὐτῇ ἐστιν; ὅτι ἡ κόμη ἀντὶ περιβολαίου δέδοται [αὐτῇ]; 1 Cor 11.13–15). The first question is meant to answer itself. Surely, women should not be uncovered when they pray to God. In this sense, Paul shows himself to be relatively accommodating: Sure, women should not be uncovered when they pray to God. But he follows this question with another that effectively excuses women from having to wear what I translate here as a “hair-wrap” (peribolaion/περιβόλαιον). This contested head apparel was, as far as visual culture from the first century can show, a somewhat long fabric that was employed to style the hair and to cover part, most, or all of the head—but, and I will stress this, the peribolaion was subject to women’s style preferences and was far from monolithic in its implementation (Gill 1990, pp. 245–60; Thompson 1988, pp. 99–115). A conceptual analogue can be found in most traditional Eastern Orthodox liturgical settings that are the closest indigenous traditions to what Paul is addressing; in these settings, women still use some kind of fabric to cover part, most, or all of their head, but the garment itself and how the woman chooses to arrange it on her head are extremely idiosyncratic and may even reflect a woman’s freedom of self-representation within larger cultural and ecclesiastical bounds. The color and patterns, length, thickness, and materials of the head covering vary immensely, as do the ways in which women wear it on any given day. But the point that Paul makes, quite emphatically, is that because nature teaches the Corinthians that long hair is splendorous for women, that, for that very reason, it is given to them (he seems to imply, by God) in the place of a hair-wrap.13 Simply put, Paul comes down here on the side of women: their hair is their covering; they need not wear anything additional, since their hair has been given them by God for their glory. In this, Paul grants the point in 11.5: yes, women should not pray or prophesy uncovered, but that is ultimately immaterial because they have hair for a covering.

Finally, Paul comes full circle from where he started in 11.1–2, “But if anyone seems keen on contentiousness, we do not have this particular custom—nor do the churches of God” (Εἰ δέ τις δοκεῖ φιλόνεικος εἶναι, ἡμεῖς τοιαύτην συνήθειαν οὐκ ἔχομεν, οὐδὲ αἱ ἐκκλησίαι τοῦ θεοῦ; 1 Cor 11.16). As I noted at the beginning of this section, Paul had begun this discussion by urging the Corinthians to imitate him (11.1) and by praising their preservation of the traditions they received from him (11.2). He now concludes by harkening back to both of these points: If someone in Corinth is going to press the matter, that person should look to 11.1–2. Paul’s claim that “we” (the referent is uncertain, perhaps a royal we) do not have that particular custom is another way of saying that Corinthians may insist that women cover their heads with a peribolaion, but, in doing so, they will fail to uphold the injunction to imitate Paul (11.1), they will be departing from the tradition they received (11.2), and will be practicing a custom that is different than that of the churches of God (11.16). In sum, Paul rejects the androprimal logic that would subordinate women, the symbol of which is the “authority over her head,” and in fact challenges the assumed self-evidence that undergirds the faulty logic that interprets Adam’s biological, ontological, and chronological primacy over Eve as totalizing male precedence over all women in Paul’s present.

3. Androprimacy in 1 Tim 2.11–15

By contrast, 1 Tim 2.11–15 deploys a strikingly similar logic of androprimacy as that found in 1 Cor 11.8–9 but, most significantly, has no “πλὴν moment” that rejects this ideology. Put another way, 1 Tim 2.11–15 deploys androprimacy as sufficient and self-evident justification for women’s inferior ecclesiastical positions and is never put in doubt. Indeed, by comparison, version 2.0 of androprimacy deployed in 1 Tim 2.11–15 is even more intense and mordent than that referenced in 1 Cor 11.8–9. And this substantial difference in ideological commitments, rendered conceptually intelligible by using androprimacy as a systemic logic of sex-based discrimination, is precisely what I maintain differentiates Paul from the author of 1 Tim 2.11–15,14 and can likely be used as a further analytical variable in the study of Pauline and Pseudo-Pauline literature.

1 Tim 2.11–15 is already prefaced by a highly invasive prescription in 2.9–10 that enjoins women to be arrayed with good deeds instead of with expensive and fancy apparel. The fact that this (doubtless, male) author believes he has the authority to tell women what to wear and not to wear is similar to the invasive and manipulative logic found in 1 Cor 11.5–6. But the author goes further, directly contradicting Paul’s tacit understanding (1 Cor 11.13) that women simply do pray in church (ostensibly, not in silence), when he states “Let a woman learn in quietude in complete subordination; also, I do not allow women to teach or to domineer a man, only to be in quietude” (γυνὴ ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ μανθανέτω ἐν πάσῃ ὑποταγῇ· διδάσκειν δὲ γυναικὶ οὐκ ἐπιτρέπω, οὐδὲ αὐθεντεῖν ἀνδρός, ἀλλ’ εἶναι ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ; 1 Tim 2.11–12). The dynamics described here leave little wiggle-room: women are expected to be entirely silent, to learn exclusively from men, and to forego any didactic or leadership position. Even compared to 1 Cor 11.3–10, the gendered dynamics are appallingly harsh on women. In 1 Cor 11, the concern was whether women should cover their heads—one way or another—in order to pray and prophesy (presumably, out loud); here, the author’s point is that women must be inaudible and utterly subordinated to men.

Some scholars have made efforts to soften the foregoing passage, largely by claiming that translations misrepresent the social dynamics in view and, moreover, that they miss how revolutionary it was in the first century for Greek or Roman women to be allowed to learn at all (King and Lee 2021, pp. 52–66; Oden 1989, p. 97). For his part, Thomas Oden has argued that the scenario of learning described by (Pseudo-)Paul implies subordination to God, not to the man or patriarchy, and he highlights that one must make a “large leap of logic to assume here that women are to be submissive to men” (Oden 1989, p. 97). Oden’s claim is undisguised wishful thinking and misdirection, a classic case of an exegesis that misses the forest for the trees. His laser-focus on each word in the sentence has made him lose sight of the meaning of the sentence itself. If (Pseudo)-Paul does not allow women to teach, as he expressly states (διδάσκειν δὲ γυναικὶ οὐκ ἐπιτρέπω, “Also, I do not allow a woman to teach”), presumably women are not being submissive to other women involved in teaching. For his determined focus on every iota in the text, Oden somehow fails to distinguish, as (Pseudo-)Paul does, two different actions here, teaching and domineering; the conjunction between the two phrases is οὐδὲ, a disjunctive that marks a discrete separation from what has come before and what comes after. (Pseudo-)Paul does not allow women to teach nor to domineer men. These are two different activities that (Pseudo-)Paul has closed off to women. Certainly, (Pseudo-)Paul would also disapprove of women teaching men in a domineering way, but that is not the sense of the passage. Rather, Oden has taken the second phrase as necessarily qualifying the first, but the grammar of the disjunctive οὐδὲ does not allow it.

Similarly, King and Lee, heavily dependent in their interpretation on Oden, argue that the text does not necessarily imply that women are not allowed to teach at all (King and Lee 2021, pp. 56–57). While their pushback to English renditions of the text and what they may imply are pertinent to a lay audience, it is doubtful any New Testament scholar is relying on English translations to make meaning of the passage, so that their contention is specious. Moreover, their analysis of the text is perplexing, since they concur with Oden in interpreting teaching and domineering together, the latter qualifying the former. They write “If the first verb means ‘teach’ and the second means ‘usurp authority’, it is most likely to be an infinitive expressing purpose, in which the second clarifies the first, with the conjunction ‘and’ (kai) as explanatory: ‘to teach so as to dominate’” (King and Lee 2021, p. 57). I am uncertain what to make of this interpretation of the text, because the N-A critical edition of the text has no kai (καὶ), but, as I have indicated, οὐδὲ. Nor does the critical apparatus of the text identify a single variant in any manuscript or papyrus that gives the alternative reading of καὶ. Further, even a cursory examination of the earliest Christian sources that cite this passage turns up a single instance of the coordinating conjunction καὶ, but only ever οὐδὲ.15 Indeed, if one runs this search, one turns up a very interesting contradiction to King and Lee’s point, from an indigenous speaker of the language, and quite a speaker, we might add. In the earliest known citation of this Pseudo-Pauline text, Origen’s fragmentary commentary on 1 Corinthians, the Alexandrian makes this point: “for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church, and ‘I do not allow a woman to teach’ simply, but also ‘nor to domineer a man’ (αἰσχρὸν γὰρ γυναικὶ λαλεῖν ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ, καὶ διδάσκειν δὲ γυναικὶ οὐκ ἐπιτρέπω ἁπλῶς ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ αὐθεντεῖν ἀνδρός). Origen here indicates that Paul is not simply saying that women cannot speak or teach in church, because it is “shameful” (αἰσχρὸν), but also, as a distinctly different action here now separated by three words, to domineer men. Origen understood the passage as indicating two different actions and I am most inclined to concur with him. In other words, while I might admire the ethical commitments that drive attempts to reduce the express misogyny of this Pseudo-Pauline epistle, I am uncertain about both their convincingness or their close grounding in the text itself. There should be little shocking about a first-century text being misogynistic relative to our ethical standards. In sum, I find contentions that 1 Tim 2.11–12 is not as subordinative or misogynistic as some have maintained uncompelling.

The increased demand for women’s subjection just overviewed in 1 Tim 2.11–12 required a stronger line of argumentation than that offered in 1 Cor 11.3–10. To do so, the author proposes a more radical form of androprimacy “because Adam was formed first, thereafter Eve. Furthermore, Adam was not deceived; rather, because the woman was thoroughly deceived, she has become engaged in transgression”16 (Ἀδὰμ γὰρ πρῶτος ἐπλάσθη, εἶτα Εὕα· καὶ Ἀδὰμ οὐκ ἠπατήθη, ἡ δὲ γυνὴ ἐξαπατηθεῖσα ἐν παραβάσει γέγονεν; 1 Tim 2.13–14). The first verse is chronologically androprimal because it legitimates women’s subordinate status on the bare fact that Adam was formed first. The second verse promotes ethical androprimacy: Man has a higher ethical standing because he was not tricked by the serpent. By contrast the woman was “thoroughly deceived” (ἐξαπατηθεῖσα) by the serpent and has made it her business since then to transgress. My translations may strike the reader as unusual, but my intention is to draw out how androprimal discourse is functioning as a strategy of female subordination. That is especially significant in 2.14, where I render ἡ δὲ γυνὴ ἐξαπατηθεῖσα ἐν παραβάσει γέγονεν as “rather, because the woman was thoroughly deceived, she has become engaged in transgression.”

Further, the participle ἐξαπατηθεῖσα contrasts with Adam’s ἠπατήθη by the emphatic force that the prepositional prefix adds the following: Adam was not tricked—not even a bit—while Eve was utterly and completely deceived. The author is manifestly making a semantic distinction, adding greater force to what happened to the woman, by adding the emphatic prepositional prefix. But significantly also, I understand the circumstantial force of ἐξαπατηθεῖσα as causative: because it is the case that the woman has been thoroughly tricked, that has become a stative feature of her “nature,” so to speak, that is, it is now her business to be engaged in transgressing all boundaries. This is not a common rendering of the passage, but it probably should be to convey the full misogyny that underlies it.17 There is good reason to believe that ἐν παραβάσει γέγονεν has an occupational sense: Eve’s occupation, and that of all women after her, is to be constantly transgressing boundaries. The construction γίγνομαι + ἐν + dative noun often functions as an occupational periphrasis and is entirely common in Greek.18 In effect, that is why the verb that describes Eve and women’s action is a perfect, not an aorist—as is the case with Adam who once-and-for-all was not deceived (and, figuratively in him, all men). Eve was, and, in her as type, women continue to be, engaged in transgression. That is precisely why the author proffers such categorical injunctions to keep women from engaging in their “characteristically” transgressive behavior: women must be silent, they must be subjected, they must not have authority over men.

Hence, the author offers Eve/women the following way out: “But she will be spared through child-bearing on condition that they remain in faithfulness, in love, and holiness with self-control—the formula is reliable” (σωθήσεται δὲ διὰ τῆς τεκνογονίας, ἐὰν μείνωσιν ἐν πίστει καὶ ἀγάπῃ καὶ ἁγιασμῷ μετὰ σωφροσύνης. Πιστὸς ὁ λόγος; 1 Tim 2.15–3.1) (van der Jagt 1988, pp. 201–8; Grey 1991, pp. 58–69; Walters 2004, pp. 703–35; Porter 1993, pp. 87–102; Hutson 2014, pp. 392–410; Hubbard 2012, pp. 743–62). The androprimal logic extends further here in the grammatical oddity that shifts from Eve’s singular verb, “she will be spared,” to all women’s plural, “they remain.” The typifying of all women in Eve is meant to generalize this author’s imaginary of Eve, as struggling with chronic transgressive behavior, for all women as a strategy of domination. That is why the author proposes a way of keeping women in check from being “engaged in transgression” by suggesting that they concern themselves instead with bearing children and with remaining faithful, loving, and holy.19 The issue here is that this intensely misogynistic author suspects that women suffer of a recurring condition of transgression that must be kept in check through the cultivation of their self-control, the very thing that Eve (and, figuratively in her, all women) did not have. And the author is convinced this works, which is why I have taken the much-debated phrase, πιστὸς ὁ λόγος,20 as the concluding remark to 2.15: the formula he just gave for keeping women in check is effective in keeping their natural predisposition to transgress in check.

Of course, this passage is distasteful to contemporary egalitarian sensitivities if understood in the way I have suggested. But that is not my main point—that much is obvious and probably irrelevant here; my point is that the logic of androprimacy that undergirds the extreme misogyny of 1 Tim 2.11–3.1 was already contested as an ideology in the first century by none other than Paul himself, who had spoken in no uncertain terms against an even softer version of androprimacy as articulated in 1 Cor 11.3–10 in what I have maintained is a Corinthian query. And that is what I find significant about comparing these two passages through the conceptual lens of androprimacy. Androprimacy was manifestly a discursive structure of female subordination that, in these cases, looked to Adam’s chronological, ontological, biological, and/or ethical primacy over Eve as a means of justifying—so the assumption went—the inferior and subordinate positions of women in earliest Christian congregations. This structure attempted to extend the secondariness and derivativeness of Eve to all women as sufficient evidence to continue the domination of female subjects by men, who instantiated, they believed, Adam’s self-restraint and variety of primacies. These primacies, in turn, led to a plethora of other androprimacies, including ecclesiastical androprimacy, in subsequent centuries when Paul’s contestation of this ideological construct in Christian congregations by appeal to mutuality and co-dependency became all but forgotten amid the sound and fury of a range of androprimal pronouncements imputed to his name. And yet, the formula is reliable: when we examine gendered ideology from the perspective of androprimal discourse it becomes possible, I believe, to tease a range of gender constructs apart and to hold that there was already apostolic resistance to sexist logics of female subordination predicated on Adam’s primacy over Eve. Put another way, androprimacy was first contested by apostolic authority, which is to say that contemporary resistance to androprimal discourse—which must be named and rendered intelligible as such—is in fact consistent with apostolic tradition.

4. Conclusions

This essay has examined gender discourse in Pauline and Pseudo-Pauline texts, 1 Cor 11.1–16 and 1 Tim 2.9–3.1 respectively, from the conceptual standpoint of “androprimacy.” I introduce androprimacy to New Testament studies here as a conceptual resource that might allow us to render a distinct sexist structure intelligible in the interest of teasing a variety of gendered ideologies apart. Here, I have specifically focused on differentiating Paul as the author of 1 Cor 11.1–16 from the author of 1 Tim 2.9–3.1 by maintaining that the former text in fact subverts the androprimal logic expressed by the Corinthians and cited by Paul in vv. 3–10, while the latter text emphatically embraces and deploys it to subordinate women in ecclesiastical settings.

Several, perhaps significant, conclusions may be drawn from my analysis. For one, there is further reason to believe that Paul is not only the author of 1 Cor, which is essentially undisputed, but certainly also of 11.1–16, particularly if these verses are understood as an erotapokriseis, a questions-and-answers genre, that engages Corinthian queries and ultimately affirms women’s relative ecclesiastical freedom. But I have also indicated that the substantive ideological differences, precisely on the point of androprimacy, are further evidence that 1 Tim is not an authentic Pauline epistle. Rather, while statistical, grammatical, and theological analyses might turn up somewhat inconclusive results for the most skeptical traditionalists, I find that a significant difference in ideological presuppositions—especially when they are as radically pronounced as they are here and, just as significantly, discursively tacit—can function as relatively reliable datapoints for adjudicating matters of pseudepigraphy. And even if they are not, what is incontestable is that, already in the first century, antagonistic alternatives to androprimal discourse were not only thinkable but had already been intelligibly articulated by one of the foremost apostles, who maintained that customs based on androprimal presuppositions were inconsistent with “the churches of God”.