re: #554 Obdicut

Even accepting that translation, there is no reason to translate it idiomatically in the way that you did. Unless one wants to translate it in that fashion.

Oh. Well, fine - take Thayer literally - it becomes “i will not suffer a woman to exercise dominion over or be an absolute master of…”. Hardly sexist.

How do you then reconcile the logic of Eve being deceived, after, and Adam not? Simply there as color text, bearing no logical relation to the passage that immediately preceded it?

So this passage is less about translation and more about context. Remember, in this book, Paul is writing to Timothy who was sent to Ephesus and encountered some unsound offshoot of Christianity; the primary feature was that an unusual number of women were involved in spreading and promoting something that was no longer Christianity.

So Paul starts the verse with, colloquially, a Genesis parallel. That is, “in Genesis, a woman was responsible for a deception, and you have that here too.” So the instructions for Ephesus were, ladies, Eve sinned too but was redeemed through childbirth, i.e. being a good mother and example to her children.

In context: ladies, you’re guilty of deception, just like Eve. and just like Eve, you can get back on the straight and narrow by raising your family right.