This post mostly relies on excerpts from Litore’s notes on translation. Thus a lot of “” in what follows.
What Lirore is doing is going back to the meanings of the words used and the historical context to seek a meaning from what the text says rather than what it was taken to mean by Victorian English readers.
From now until “end quote three” I am quoting Litore.
“the Greek sentence begins a verse earlier and continues well past 5: 22, and in Koine Greek, it reads more like this:
Set yourselves in support of one another out of reverence for Christ: wives, for your husbands… husbands, love your wives… etc.
There are several problems with how we use this passage.
The first problem is that we start quoting it midsentence, and so we lose sight of the fact that in any case we couldn’t talk about wives submitting to husbands without also talking about husbands submitting to wives.”
…end quote one…
“more faithfully to both the biblical ideal of the eshet chayil and to the larger context of this passage:
“Wives, go to battle for your husbands.”
“Wives, defend your husbands.”
The word being translated here is a combination of the verb -tasso with the prefix hupo-.
What we miss right away in English is that this verb was a military term for arranging soldiers in ordered formation to confront an enemy.
In fact, if you were to look up the verb in Strong’s concordance (it’s #5021), you would find the following explication:
“/tasso (place in position, post) was commonly used in ancient military language for designating/appointing /commissioning a specific status…”
“tasso was primarily a military term meaning ‘to draw up in order, arrange in place, assign, appoint, order…”
What we’re talking about is not an ancient Greek word for abstract obedience but a concrete metaphor of military support.
The grammar is important, too. The ending of the word hupotassemenoi tells us we’re in the middle voice.
“Arrange yourselves under.” “Deploy yourselves under.”
This is important, because as we will see in this chapter, the women of the early church were called to lives of vigorous activity, not passive subservience.
….end quote two…
“The first-century ekklesia is invited to operate in concert (homothumadon, “of one mind”) like a Greek phalanx or a Roman battle square.
Soldiers in the Roman army fought as a cohesive unit, not as individual warriors.
Each soldier wields a blade in one hand and, with the other, shields the soldier to their left.
It is a military ethos reliant on interdependency.
That is what Ephesians is about—not hierarchy and obedience, but the disciplined and alert support that Christians are called to provide each other.
Hupotassemenoi is actually a remarkable word to use in this first-century Greek text because military metaphors were usually reserved for men.
In Ephesians, however, people of all genders are invited to equip themselves with the “full armor of God” and deploy themselves within a battle-ready unit in support of each other.”
…end quote three…
— Lives of Unforgetting: What We Lose in Translation When We Read the Bible, and A Way of Reading the Bible as a Call to Adventure by Stant Litore
My thoughts based on what Litore writes.
First The pulling in the reference to the Roman military formations from the original text and the interdependent nature of the way they arrayed themselves really brings it home.
Modern military units don’t really have something quite so interdependent where everyone in the line of combat shields the person next to them and relies on the next person to shield them.
That part of Litore’s analysis really brought home what he was saying to me, especially given my fifty year old amateur historian hobby.
Second, I really appreciated his calling out Victorian and feudal overlays to scripture significant. That we need to restore original meaning to the words rather than be submerged in more recent cultural mores
I found the analysis of this part of what we need to restore to the reading of the scripture especially interesting and significant for a church where we believe in the restoration of what has drifted out of the scriptures with changed language and translations.
It makes sense that if we are looking for a restoration or remembrance of things that are lost we are going back to what was written rather than the culture of the times of Queen Victoria.
Otherwise, what restoration was really needed?
For our readers:
- Do you think there was a need for restoration?
- What things do you think we need to restore to our readings and understanding by a more correct translation of scripture?
- Is the “primitive church” 19th century Anglican theology and social structures or something different?
- What other places have you studied the original context of scriptures and learned something?
Wheat & Tares 
1. If the “Church” and “Gospel” were truly restored by Joseph Smith between 1820 and 1844, they would not have gone through so many changes since 1844. Think of changes to the BOM, Book of Commandments, the temple ceremony.
2. If the BOM contained the “fullness of the Gospel” as claimed, we wouldn’t have so many beliefs and doctrines external to the BOM or even ones that contradict the BOM. For example, D&C 132.
3. If the canonized scriptures were truly revealed to or translated by Joseph Smith, they would not resemble so strongly the KJV Bible or other works (View of the Hebrews, Adam Clarke’s Bible Commentary) contemporary to Joseph Smith.
You can either acknowledge #1-3 above or play the mental gymnastics required to ignore or minimize #1-3 above.
(Or you can be unaware of #1-3 above which I assume covers a lot of Church members but hopefully not a lot of W and T readers. )
Interesting how FAIR was more likely to sell people copies of A View of the Hebrews than any other organization.
Josh, that is because for those who have read it there is rarely anyone who thinks it is similar at all to the Book of Mormon.
Adam Clarke’s Bible Commentary is mentioned in passing in the D&C though as part of seeking knowledge out of the best books and Joseph Smith was public about that. No one has a reason to disagree on that point.
Otherwise, the official doctrine is that the restoration is an ongoing and not yet complete process.
Too often we act as if that is not true and that we no longer need to study or learn.
That is far different from Brigham Young acknowledging that there was a great deal of truth that others had that we do not and that we need to study them and bring back the truth they have to build up the church with it.
SR Marsh: Do you really want to debate this? Maybe we should just agree to disagree. But just in case:
1. I could list for you dozens of phrases (not just words) from the BOM that are found in the VOH. The straw man that apologists like to hang out there is that this is not an example of plagiarism because the two books are so different. But two books don’t have to have similar stories or characters to qualify for plagiarism. If the BOM was indeed “translated” from plates, would these dozens of common phrases exist?
2. the same can be said for the commonality between the JST and Adam Clarke’s commentary. If the JST was a “translation” or a “revelation”, why would it be so similar to Clarke’s work? Seeking out the best books is part of revelation, or part of translation? Even a BYU study acknowledged the similarities.
3. when it is stated that Restoration is “ongoing”, that allows for any change any time. RM Nelson could literally announce today that women can now have the priesthood or gay members can marry and people like you would say “that’s part of the ongoing restoration”. Come on.
Josh. What about Leaves of Grass? It has many more shared phrases. Many more. Guess that is proof of plagiarism there. Or maybe it reflects that your metric is flawed.
No disagreement on Clarke. Not only the BYU study but others as well agree and Joseph Smith was clear on what he was doing.
“Come on.” Not a very good response to a massive history of acknowledging that the restoration was incomplete and a rough stone rolling.
You can’t set up a straw man and then get upset if I don’t accept it. That does not get very far in being persuasive.
SR Marsh: you make a fair point about me saying “come on”. That wasn’t helpful to the discussion.
I guess we’ll let our fellow readers decide for themselves what the evidence shows.
Frankly I would love to be done w/ all of it: our all-to-human hierarchy, total confusion re: lgbt, misogyny, nazi politics, money grubbing, generalized stupidity – but there’s a bright little diamond at the center of it all that keeps me in.
& ps, I’m no prize myself.
This is a fascinating topic. “View of the Hebrews” is not.
I read the whole damn thing all the way through when I was preparing my reply to the CES Letter, and it’s readily apparent to me that pretty much everyone who cites it as a Book of Mormon source has never read it. That makes it exhausting to watch the same unexamined VotH arguments being recycled like farts in an airline cabin.
Perhaps we could stick to the topic at hand?
I was kind of sad that no one felt like commenting on the topic. But you take the feedback you can get.
Sent from the all new AOL app for iOS
Stephen,
Your post was greatly appreciated and meshes nicely with the idea of a formidable, valuable and powerful woman described in final passage of Proverbs. Unfortunately the KJV does not do justice to that portion of scripture either.
Yep. I do like the description of warrior women… and for sure during this pandemic I do feel pretty much like I’ve been doing battle for my husband in a church setting, trying to minimise risks the church would seem to be expecting him to take…
I’ve noticed that the posts that stay with me the most aren’t necessarily the ones that generate the highest number of comments or even any discussion at all.
I read some posts and don’t think too much at the time and then after the ideas have had time to geminate in my mind end up being some of the most influential things I’ve ever read.
Your post “Just wanting the best…” will stay with me for a long time. That very week I saw an interaction with a loved one that benefited from my reading that post. I plan to reread it from time to time as I process the ideas you presented in it. I don’t wish to make the same mistakes with friends and family that I don’t want them making with me. I am glad for the insights you shared there and in your other posts. Thank you.
Thank you MW.