Greek words

All the People

/ Joan C. Thomson

The vast majority of the time when Paul or the other apostles wrote “men” or “man” the word was anthropos or “all the people.” Many times, the English translations insert “men” when the Greek says simply “ones.” The word translated, as “brothers” is adelphoi, which literally means, “from the same womb” and according to lexicons, “can be rightly translated as brothers and sisters.” In addition, a word often used for “son” actually means child—male or female.  Paul wrote his letters to the entire church in each place, so everything he said in general, applies to women as well.

 

Women Disciples

/ Joan C. Thomson

When the Bible or even Jesus himself referred to “his disciples,” women—many women, were included in that designation.  They weren’t just part of the crowd or an afterthought. “Pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers.” (Matthew 12:48-50; Mark 3:34)  Luke tells us by name just who these disciples were, ”After this, Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; Joanna the wife of Cuza, the manager of Herod’s household; Susanna; and many others.” (Luke 8:1-3)

The same word is always used for disciples whether male or female. Women are not subset disciples but the first rate, real thing—if, as Jesus said, women as well as men, continue in his teachings. (John 8:31, 32)  Jesus’ teachings—and he continued to teach through the apostles, are the only teachings for Christians to follow—he said his sheep listen to only his voice.(John 10:3)  Get to know his word the Bible—especially the New Testament, intimately so you can use it as a filter for all the things that come at you.  Go beyond the English (or your language) translations and you’ll be amazed at the distinctions the ancient Greek makes.  It’s not hard to find Greek interlinear New Testaments and not at all hard to read them.  This is a good starting point in knowing what Jesus truly said. One I use is biblehub.com.

The Head

/ Joan C. Thomson

For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.  Ephesians 5:23

This one verse has been a pivotal point of controversy in the Church but much of the controversy comes from a misunderstanding of one word— “head.”  Paul uses the Greek word “kephale” but we get stuck when we think of the English word head—we think it means “boss.”  When I was co-founding chapter of an international Christian women’s group in Texas and going through leadership training, our team was  told, “We don’t want bosses here, we want leaders.”  And as it turns out, the word kephale has no relationship to boss or even leader though Paul could have chosen one that did—but he didn’t; he and the Holy Spirit knew what they were doing!

Here is a list of what kephale DOES NOT mean: headmaster, head of a family, head of state, head of the clan, head of the household, headman, principal or supreme—all of these come from words other than kephale.  The word simply means that which sits on one’s shoulders—a physical head with eyes, nose, mouth and ears, or it can mean a head of garlic (I don’t think he meant that!) or LIFE.*  So when you read Ephesians 5:23 with the definition of “life”, it would say, “For the husband is the life of the wife as Christ is the life of the church”  Wow!  That makes a difference!  It fits the context of the verse is of husbands laying down their lives for their wives, loving and nurturing them—not ruling them.

* www.perseus.tufts.edu: Liddell,Scott; Georg Autenrieth, A Homeric Dictionary;

www.uchicago.edu Woodhouse’s English Greek Dictionary

 

Is God Masculine?

/ Joan C. Thomson

God has many attributes for us to pattern ourselves after, but God is first of all Spirit (John 4:24) which means God is neither masculine nor feminine.  However, there’s some awkwardness in language since neither Hebrew nor Greek have specific pronouns for he, she or it—they each have one word for all three.  We tend to want to say that this characteristic of God is masculine and that one is feminine (as in nurturing like a mother) but we forget that God had the characteristics before there were humans– male or female.  Since we’re made in God’s image, we get these characteristics from him—not he from us!  And how can we really subdivide them anyway?  God is love.  There’s no way that only women can give love!  Or peace. Or patience.  Of course not, no more than only men are to be courageous.