Hear Me Out: What if 1 Timothy 2 is About Marriage, not Preaching?

The case is stronger than you think

IN THIS ARTICLE: It’s commonly taught that 1 Timothy 2:11-15 is about a woman preaching to a mixed group in a public worship setting. But we can make a strong biblical case for seeing this passage as about a domineering wife who is lording it over her husband, which would have brought shame on the church in that culture. In our time and place, this serves as a warning to both wives and husbands.

“And I said, ‘It's a woman's country, she has her liberties here. And she'll ruin it, she's the ruination of the world.” — False teacher William Branham.¹

Last week, we saw that in 1 Timothy 2:11-15, which many take very narrowly as a prohibition on women preaching, “Paul abruptly switches from talking about plural women (in verses 9-10) to a singular woman. This is indisputable in the original Greek, regardless if some English translations obscure it. The movement is:

1. a woman + a man (verse 11-12)

2. the example of one woman and one man (the first two, who are married) (13-14)

3. “she will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness …” (15)

Who are the “she” and “they” of verse 15? Most naturally, she is “a woman” of verse 12, and they are the woman and man of the same verse.”

Scholars like Gordon P. Hugenberger,² Sandra Glahn,³ Fredrick J. Long,⁴ and Cynthia Westfall⁵ present compelling evidence that this passage is intended to curtail the domineering behavior of a wife to her husband. The CEB translation of this passage concurs (see their list of editors and translators here). Mike Bird finds this credible, too.⁶ Earlier sources, such as Martin Luther,⁷ agree (Long also cites “important Medieval translations of the 13th and 14th centuries”).⁸ And in 1859, Salvation Army co-founder Catherine Booth wrote:

We challenge Mr. Rees, or any other person, to bring forward any proof that the apostle here refers to the conduct of women in the church at all. “It is primarily an injunction,’ says the Rev. J.H. Robinson, ‘respecting her personal behavior at home.”⁹

“Mr. Rees” does not appear to have brought any proof.

Why marriage? Paul uses the classic passage on marriage, Genesis 2:18-24, to support his argument and concludes with a focus on childbirth, which could indicate that the passage is talking about home life, not a church service. 2 Timothy 3:6-7 says false teachers were preying on women in their homes. In Paul’s day, “house” issues were “church” issues.

The words translated as “man” and “woman,” ἀνήρ and γυνή, are the same words for “wife” and “husband.” (Koine Greek does not have separate words for man/husband and woman/wife). Hugenberger finds that every time the singular forms of γυνή and ἀνήρ appear near one another elsewhere in the New Testament, they mean “wife” and “husband.”¹⁰ ¹¹ This reflects cultural expectations of the era.

But wouldn’t it be odd to write that a wife must not do something to “a husband” instead of “her husband”? Shouldn’t Paul have used a possessive pronoun for “her” or the definite article (“the”) before ἀνήρ in verse twelve if this is about spouses? Not necessarily in Greek. Hugenberger finds examples where ἀνήρ alone means “her husband” even though the Greek doesn’t include a possessive pronoun or definite article (Luke 1:34; 2:36; 16:18; 1 Cor 7:10).¹² There is simply no grammatical rule excluding a translation of “wife” and “husband.”

Also, the verbal, conceptual, and structural parallels between this passage and the household code of 1 Peter 3 could mean that Paul and Peter are each referencing a household code tradition.¹³ I discussed 1 Peter 3 extensively here. Note the parallels in this partial reproduction of Glahn’s chart:¹⁴

In Ephesus, “perhaps Paul feels that a wife who violates cultural understandings of proper decorum by domineering her husband will hurt the church’s witness.”¹⁵ If a wife were lording superior Bible knowledge over a husband and using her knowledge to dominate the relationship, this would have disgraced the church in that culture, as we saw in my articles on 1 Peter 3 and the household codes in Ephesians, Colossians, and Titus. This would create even more problems if a wife were spreading “the other teaching” of the false teachers Paul had expelled in 1 Timothy 1:19-20.¹⁶

Long writes that the movement of 1 Timothy 2 is evident when we see this section as about marriage: “Structurally 2:1-15 moves from broad and general scope to particular scope, from social organization at the broadest scale of “all people,” “kings and all in authority” (2:1-2, 4) to the smallest scale and entry point of social organization, “the bearing of children” (2:15).¹⁷ Indeed, this interpretation helps makes sense of the verse that has puzzled countless interpreters:

But she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. (1 Tim 2:15)

Which of these two options makes more sense of that verse:

1. That the preceding four verses are talking about a Sunday service

2. Or that they are talking about a husband and wife?

Westfall writes, “There are several interpretive options (and alternate translations) for ‘yet she will be saved through childbearing,’ but none of them make sense as a conclusion to a discussion of the conduct of men and women in a worship service.”¹⁸ A marital setting also makes sense of Paul’s use of the first married couple, Adam and Eve, as an illustration in verses 13-14.

One Weird Word

Finally, why am I saying Paul wants to curtail a “domineering” wife? Contemporary English translations like the ESV say a woman must not “exercise authority” over a man in 2:12. The Greek word that these translations render “exercise authority” is αὐθεντεῖν, the infinitive form of αὐθεντέω, a rare word that is used nowhere else in the Bible and only a few times in ancient Greek literature.

The Greek lexicon considered standard for New Testament scholars (BDAG) defines αὐθεντέω (authenteō) as “to assume a stance of independent authority, give orders to, dictate to.”¹⁹ Lidell Scott Jones, the primary reference work for Greek texts from the eleventh century B.C. to hundreds of years after the New Testament, defines it as “to have full power or authority over, to commit a murder, to hold in absolute sway.”²⁰

Current linguistic research shows that the “basic semantic concept of the word αὐθεντέω can be described as the autonomous use or possession of unrestricted force” and that a “comparable English word is ‘eradicate.’”²¹ Lynn Cohick describes it as “abusive authority.”²² Scot McKnight translates it as “to overwhelm.”²³ Complementarians and egalitarians have conducted extensive studies of the word, and even leading complementarian scholars cannot limit the definition, as Paul would have understood it in the first century, to the routine, benevolent exercise of authority.²⁴

Paul could have used one of the three common Greek words for authority, which he used for church authority in 2 Corinthians 10:8–9 (ἐξουσία), 13:10 (ἐξουσία), 1 Timothy 6:1 (ἡγέομαι), and Titus 2:15 (ἐπιταγή). And Paul expressly gives wives authority (ἐξουσία) over their husbands’ bodies in 1 Corinthians 7:4. Why αὐθεντέω here? This is about abusive, domineering behavior within a home.

In 1 Timothy’s context, the wife is the problem. But it would be wrong for a husband to act this way, too. Perhaps the most relevant later use of αὐθεντέω outside of Bible times comes from early Church Father John Chrysostom – we would expect this famed Bible teacher to use the word similarly to Paul, steeped as he was in Paul’s epistles (and given that Chrysostom was a native speaker of Koine Greek). In his tenth homily on Colossians, Chrysostom uses αὐθεντέω (the exact form is αὐθεντέι) to say that a husband must not do this to his wife.

His use of αὐθεντέι is translated into English as “act the despot.”²⁵ Despot, of course, means a ruler or other person who holds absolute power and exercises it cruelly or oppressively. Synonyms include “dictator,” “tyrant,” “totalitarian,” and “oppressor.” Should a wife or any woman act like a tyrant or oppressor to her husband or any man? Of course not (nor should a man to a woman, as Chrysostom says).

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Next Monday, we will examine all the questions and counterarguments to the claim that 1 Timothy 2:11-15 is about marriage, including the arguments that the focus on men praying in 1 Timothy 2:8 must refer to a Sunday worship service and that words like “learn” and “teach” must have some form of public education in view. If you have questions or counterarguments, please subscribe so you don’t miss next Monday’s post. Whether I can convince you or not, I promise you will find the argument that this passage is about marriage much more robust than you may have thought.

But even if we prefer “woman/man” to “wife/husband,” it doesn’t help the contemporary position that bans women from preaching but then approves of women writing biblical worship songs, leading men to Christ, counseling men outside of a church setting, and other instruction outside the pulpit. The focus on “a woman” and “a man” precludes such a restriction. Thankfully, this prohibition was not timeless but necessary for the mid-first-century church in Ephesus. And even if we prefer “woman/man” to “wife/husband,” αὐθεντέω is not about the routine exercise of authority but overbearing, hostile domination.

See you next week, when I’ll show that there is no clear textual marker that would lead us to believe 1 Timothy 2:11-15 is talking about preaching in a Sunday service.

1. William Branham, 1960, Dec 8. . (60-1208). Accessed April 25, 2025. https://william-branham.org/site/research/topics/women

2. Gordon P. Hugenberger, “Women in Church Office: Hermeneutics or Exegesis? A Survey of Approaches to 1 Tim 2:8-15,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 35/3 (September 1992): 354.

3. Sandra L. Glahn, Nobody’s Mother: Artemis of the Ephesians in Antiquity and the New Testament (Westmont, IL: IVP Academic, 2023), 134.

4. Fredrick J. Long, “A Wife in Relation to a Husband: Greek Discourse Pragmatic and Cultural Evidence for Interpreting 1 Tim 2:11-15,” The Journal of Inductive Bible Studies Volume 2:2 (Summer 2015): 13-43.

5. Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle’s Vision for Men and Women in Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 286–90.

6. See also (below)

Can We Apply the New Testament Household Codes Today?

7. Martin Luther, Commentary on 1 Timothy. Accessed April 18, 2025. https://archive.org/details/luthersworks0028unse/page/276/mode/2up?view=theater

8. Long, “A Wife in Relation to a Husband”: 14.

9. Catherine Booth, Female Teaching: Is It Scriptural for Women to Preach & Teach?, ed. CrossReach Publications (Independently published, 2017), 29.

10. Hugenberger, “Women in Church Office”: 354.

11. I believe 1 Corinthians 11:3-15 may be an exception, but even though Paul uses the singular in this passage, he indicates that he is talking about womanhood and manhood in general by writing “every man” in verses 3-4 (πᾶς ἀνὴρ) and “every woman” (πᾶσα δὲ γυνὴ) in verse 5.

12. Hugenberger, “Women in Church Office”: 353

13. Glahn, Nobody’s Mother,134.

14. Glahn, Nobody’s Mother, 134.

15. Long, “A Wife in Relation to a Husband”: 13-14.

16. Lyn Kidson, “Fasting, Bodily Care, and the Widows of 1 Timothy 5:3-15” (Early Christianity, 11 no 2, 2020): 191-205.

17. Long, “A Wife in Relation to a Husband”: 19.

18. Westfall, Paul and Gender, 289.

19. BDAG, s.v. “αὐθεντέω.”

20. LSJ, s.v. “αὐθεντέω.”

21. Cynthia Long Westfall, “The Meaning of αủθεντέω in 1 Timothy 2.12,” Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity & Judaism; vol. 10 (2014): 166-67.

22. Lynn H. Cohick, Women in the World of the Earliest Christians: Illuminating Ancient Ways of Life, 1st edition (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 138.

23. Scot McKnight, The Second Testament (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023), 233.

24. Jamin Hübner, “Translating αυθεντέω (authenteō) in 1 Timothy 2:12,” Priscilla Papers Vol 29, No. 2, (Spring 2015): 16-26. Accessed April 18, 2025. https://www.cbeinternational.org/resource/translating-%CE%B1%E1%BD%90%CE%B8%CE%B5%CE%BD%CF%84%CE%AD%CF%89-authenteo-1-timothy-212a/

25. John Chrysostom, “Tenth Homily on Colossians,” A Select Library of the Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol 13 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 304.