One more time! Is the word in 1 Tim. 2:12,
ἐξουσία or αὐθεντειν?
Authority from God or man - exousia -
ἐξουσία Feminine noun Found 102 times in the Bible, making it a BASIC Greek Bible word! Here are some pertinent examples of the use of this word:
"Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except by God’s appointment, and the authorities that exist have been instituted by God. 2 So the person who resists such authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will incur judgment 3 (for rulers cause no fear for good conduct but for bad). Do you desire not to fear authority? Do good and you will receive its commendation," Romans 13:1-4 NET
"Πᾶσα ψυχὴ ἐξουσίαις ὑπερεχούσαις ὑποτασσέσθω, οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν ἐξουσία εἰ μὴ ὑπὸ θεοῦ, αἱ δὲ οὖσαι ὑπὸ θεοῦ τεταγμέναι εἰσίν.2 ὥστε ὁ ἀντιτασσόμενος τῇ ἐξουσίᾳ τῇ τοῦ θεοῦ διαταγῇ ἀνθέστηκεν, οἱ δὲ ἀνθεστηκότες ἑαυτοῖς κρίμα λήμψονται.3 οἱ γὰρ ἄρχοντες οὐκ εἰσὶν φόβος τῷ ἀγαθῷ ἔργῳ ἀλλὰ τῷ κακῷ. θέλεις δὲ μὴ φοβεῖσθαι τὴν ἐξουσίαν; τὸ ἀγαθὸν ποίει, καὶ ἕξεις ἔπαινον ἐξ αὐτῆς·" Romans 13:1-3 Greek
OR
"Then Jesus came up and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." Matt 28:18 NET
"καὶ προσελθὼν ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἐλάλησεν αὐτοῖς λέγων· Ἐδόθη μοι πᾶσα ἐξουσία ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς" Matt 28:18
Not just authority, but ALL Authority Jesus has been given!
Then there is
αὐθεντειν authentein, a word found only ONCE in the entire Bible (Including the Greek OT!) Search in vain in the Greek text below, to find Paul talking about godly authority or exousia. The word is not there, not even in Stephanus!
"διδάσκειν δὲ γυναικὶ οὐκ ἐπιτρέπω, οὐδὲ αὐθεντεῖν ἀνδρός, ἀλλ’ εἶναι ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ." 1 Tim. 2:12 SBL Greek NT
"γυναικι δε διδασκειν ουκ επιτρεπω ουδε αυθεντειν ανδρος αλλ ειναι εν ησυχια" 1 Tim. 2:12 Stephanus TR1550
"But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence." 1 Tim. 2:12 KJV
This word is WRONGLY translated "usurp authority." No, no, no! If Paul wanted me to have godly authority over women, he would have used exousia - ἐξουσία, as he did in other places.
Instead, Paul picks a word found NO WHERE else in the Bible. In fact, in KJV days, they probably had no access to any of the common Greek texts and literature of the day, to compare what this word meant in non-Biblical settings. Now, there are quite a few contemporaneous documents that use this word, and these are the most common definitions.
Authentein -
αὐθεντειν Present Active Infinitive - to domineer, to murder to copulate, to exercise authority.
Please notice - authentein is a verb - an infinitive. To use it to say "a man has authority over a woman" you must change the verb to a noun, because exousia is a noun. Then you have to fiddle around and add a verb, or you have "I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to authority a man..." So basically you have changed the grammar and had to add a word to make it make sense.
Nope, so all the translations I looked at had added a verb. From the ridiculous "usurp" of the KJV above to the words "exercise, have, assume." But, if you translated the word "to domineer" you have an infinitive verb, and one which really fits the context well.
I won't go over the cultural reasons again. But just no to "usurp authority!" It simply does not fit the grammar at all, and is a single handed put down by the KJV translators, who have passed it down in various forms.
Men are NOT to have authority over women. The plan of salvation restores men and women to equals, in the sight of God, restoring what was taken after the Fall.
"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female—for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." Gal. 3:28
"οὐκ ἔνι Ἰουδαῖος οὐδὲ Ἕλλην, οὐκ ἔνι δοῦλος οὐδὲ ἐλεύθερος, οὐκ ἔνι ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ· [a]πάντες γὰρ ὑμεῖς εἷς ἐστε ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ." Gal. 3:28 Greek
Finally, this whole doctrine of men having authority over women, is based on ONE Scripture, 1 Tim. 2:12, that I exegeted partly above. That is just terrible hermeneutics! The first rule of good Bible interpretation, is never make a doctrine out of one verse, especially one that has translational issues.
If you really want to know what God thinks about men and women, and their roles, try this verse.
"Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." Eph. 5:21
And before you go quoting Eph. 5:22-23 The word for "submit" ὑποτασσόμενοιm doesn't even appear in the Greek! (Well, except in those later corrupted TR manuscripts.) None of the earliest and best manuscripts have women submitting to men at all.
But hey, go on believing a lie, verses out of context, bad translations, ignoring or somehow twisting verses to support the theory of male dominance in the Christian church. I know Paul and Jesus are not happy!
I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise
authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. ESV
But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise
authority over a man, but to remain quiet. NASB
I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume
authority over a man;[SUP][
a][/SUP] she must be quiet. NIV
I do not allow a woman to teach or to have
authority over a man; instead, she is to be silent. HCSB
I permit no woman[SUP][
a][/SUP] to teach or to have
authority over a man;[SUP][
b][/SUP] she is to keep silent. NRSV
The list goes on and on…
So you are right and all of these translations are wrong?
You know, I was a teacher, and it is pretty easy to tell when people have poor reading skills. For that matter, anyone with a basic understanding of English and a bit of grammar, can tell when people have poor reading skills.
So, here is what I said, above, quite clearly!
Nope, so all the translations I looked at had added a verb. From the ridiculous "usurp" of the KJV above to the words "exercise, have, assume." But, if you translated the word "to domineer" you have an infinitive verb, and one which really fits the context well.
I looked at about 10 translations, before I posted, a lot more than you put up, just to see what verb they had to add to the word "authority" to make the sentence work. I included various versions, besides the ridiculous "usurp" use "Exercise, have, assume," authority.
So, on what basis do I think all these wise MEN are wrong in their translation? Well, I also told you why about that!
1. bad translations - doesn't use the latest information on a word found only once in the Bible. I will add, when a word appears only once, you can't compare it to all the other places where it is used. So "authority" the noun from exousia, has 102 places in the NT to compare it to. Authentein, used in 1 Tim. 2:12, has NOT ONE PLACE to compare it to. So, use other documents written at or near the same time, and it opens another can of worms. There are over 50 different ways to translate Authentein, and the range and variety is huge.
2. Bad grammar - Authentein is an infinitive. In English, we use "to run" or "to read" to be the infinitive. It is a verb not bounded by time, like present, past, or future. So it is "infinite" in it's application. All languages have something like this, Greek and English are pretty easy to correspond.
Exousia, or the main word the Bible uses for authority is a noun. Now, if I have lost you on the words, "noun" and "verb" well, no point in going farther. But, to make it simple, a noun is a "person, place or thing." So, exousia often is found with an article like "the" or is anarthrous, meaning "no article." A verb is NEVER described this way, you would never say "the to run" or "the domineer." A verb is an action, either transitive, requiring a direct object (known as the Accusative in Greek) or intransitive, not taking a direct object. So, "to have" "to be" are verbs that are important, but not actually a "doing" type of verb.
Oops, got heavily weighed down in the grammar.
So, what did I say above about the bad grammar?
Authority from God or man - exousia - ἐξουσία Feminine noun Found 102 times in the Bible, making it a BASIC Greek Bible word!
Exousia, the word for authority in the other 102 places, is a NOUN.
Authentein - αὐθεντειν Present Active Infinitive - to domineer, to murder to copulate, to exercise authority.
Please notice - authentein is a verb - an infinitive. To use it to say "a man has authority over a woman" you must change the verb to a noun, because exousia is a noun. Then you have to fiddle around and add a verb, or you have "I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to authority a man..." So basically you have changed the grammar and had to add a word to make it make sense.
Authentein is a VERB - an infinitive. So, you can't just plug any old noun in there. In fact, the only way to make it work, is either to find a verb that fits, or add a completely new verb, not in the manuscript. Oops! Pardon me, I just realized looking at the translations you posted, that they also add a preposition "over" which is simply not in the Greek manuscripts, anywhere.
So, in order to make "to exercise authority over - a man" work, you literally need to add both a verb and a preposition. Wow, that's a lot of adding to the grammar, and the meaning!
So, I could say, "I do not allow a woman to teach, nor to murder a man." Or perhaps "I do not allow a woman to teach, nor to domineer a man." And I would be within the parameters of the word "authentein."
However, when I start having to add a LOT of words to force my interpretation, then, I am on sticky ground. Because, is it really saying "to exercise authority over" or would something closer to the documents found at the same time, like "to domineer" be a better, less forced choice?
Because, like it or not, one thing you may not know, is translators make choices with each and every word, they translate, as to which are better choices. (which is another reason I detest the KJV Only position. Like God came down and wrote with his finger on the KJV tablets, the exact right words! No wait, that was God and Moses, or Joseph Smith and Moroni, or .... but I digress)
Now, I think most translators are pretty honest, if they have made it to a translation committee. And certainly, they are great scholars, better than me, I don't deny.
BUT - they are human beings, with prejudices and they often make choices which reflect not the words, but the prejudices. So, King James thinks women need to be kept under control, especially his wife, make sure the translators understand this, and translate in this way, to reflect this bias. To say nothing of the fact that in the 16th century, everyone thought this. Men were on top, women below, in the role/order thing.
Now, you start 400 years ago with a biased translation. Not just in this, but in many things. That gets passed down to succeeding translations. Now, how do I know this? My Greek prof and his father were both on the ESV translating committee when this revolutionary, straight from the Greek and Hebrew translation was started. They made suggestions worked on the committee through the first chapters of Matt. They got to the Lord's prayer in Matt 6, which has HUGE translational issues on most of the lines. So, the committee came up with a version of the Lord's prayer based on the Greek. They were all very excited, and proud to be on this totally new Bible translation committee.
The publishers/editors came in and looked at what the committee had done with the Lord's prayer, and guess what they said?
"Umm, no! Besides the Greek, we also need to stick to the important traditions developed in earlier translations." What they approved was in the end, a modernized KJV Lord's prayer, no connection to what the Greek said. My prof soon quit, after that.
By the way, for the sake of honesty, I brought the whole issue of authentein up in Greek class. My prof sent me to his 50 pages of commentary on that tiny part of 1 Tim 2:9-15, where he basically acknowledged that what I was saying was true, and translational issues in this case come out of your personal bias. And since he was complementarian, by all means, go with the "traditional KJV" traditions of adding verbs, and prepositions, and making women literally "under" men. (Well, if a woman can't be "over" a man, then she must be "under" him, is the way I see it!) I brought it back to class, but he said, I wasn't moving him off his theological position, even if it was translated wrongly!
So, sometimes, Bibles are just not translated right. By whose authority? Because they simply do not say anything close to what any of the Greek manuscripts say. And that isn't scary, when you know God is in control, and he will use all things for good, including mistranslated sections of the Bible.
And progressively, these bad versions are being corrected, doctrine is changing. And when we see Christ face to face, then we will all know what Paul and God really meant!
(I sure hope that wasn't too wordy and complex, again! Sigh!)