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Ephesians 5:22 and The Tyranny Of Bible Verses
Welcome back!
Ephesians 5:22 is both a cornerstone and a stumbling block for biblical teachings about the relationship between husbands and wives.
Every English translation I know treats Ephesians 5:22 as a complete sentence, with some form of the verb “submit.”
My post, Why Ephesians 5:22 Does Not Command Wives To Submit To Their Husbands had one intention.
My post refers to the Greek version of 5:22 to make the point that there is no verb in Ephesians 5:22.
This means that every translation that turns a verbless phrase into a complete sentence is mistranslating the Greek.
The real culprit in all of this is that the Bible was divided into chapters and verses centuries ago.
I made two posts on another blog about how the Bible got its verses, and some of the consequences of dividing up Bible books into discrete, and often badly divided, verses.
“Meet Your Enemy: The Bible Verse”
“How The Bible Got Its Verses”
Ephesians 5:22 is one of the most obvious examples of getting it wrong.
The purpose of this post is not to analyze the meaning of the verb hupotasso in Ephesians or anywhere else in the New Testament, or to suggest a better translation than “submit.”
My purpose here is to make the point that by separating the flow of the argument about “submission” into separate verses, translations have not only missed the point, they have turned an original argument about mutual submission into something that only wives are to do.
The real culprit in all of this is the traditional division into chapters and verses. In order to keep the numbering system, translators add a verb that dramatically changes the meaning of the whole.
I wonder what difference it would make to believers if translators could break out of the restrictive tyranny of Bible verses to read all of Ephesians as one whole.
This would mean that translators would not feel the need to add a verb that does not exist in Greek, just to make a complete sentence out of a verbless phrase in Greek.
And just imagine how this could change the way that husbands and wives think about their relationships.
By
Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
