22: UNEDUCATED WOMEN IN EPHESUS? 177ated Adam and Eve: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam
was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a trans-
gressor” (1 Tim. 2:13-14).
(5) If lack of education were the reason for Paul’s prohibition of
public teaching roles for women in the church, it would be unfair and
inconsistent for Paul not to prohibit teaching by uneducated men as well.
Surely there were untrained men in the congregations at Ephesus, includ-
ing new converts and perhaps some poorly educated and illiterate slaves
or day laborers. But Paul does not mention them. Why does he focus on
women? The egalitarian position is inconsistent at this point, for it can-
not explain why Paul excludes all women (even the well-educated ones)
and does not exclude any men (even the poorly educated ones).
(6) Finally, the phrase, “Adam was formed first, then Eve,” cannot
be made to mean that Eve had less education than Adam without doing
violence to the text.^14 The statement does not refer to education but
refers to Genesis 2, where God “formed the man of dust from the
ground” (Gen. 2:7).
So where is the historical evidence that women were not sufficiently
educated to serve as pastors or elders in the church in Ephesus? It has
not been found, and the idea is contrary to the evidence that does exist
both from the ancient world and from the text of Scripture itself. Yet
egalitarians continue to repeat it as if it were established fact.
What is the result of this? Evangelical feminists have changed the
meaning of a text of Scripture. 1 Timothy 2:12 used to say,
(^14) See this argument, for example, in Bilezikian, Beyond Sex Roles, 180; also Walter Kaiser,
“Paul, Women, and the Church,” Worldwide Challenge 3 (1976): 9-12. The problem with this
“lack of education” interpretation of “For Adam was formed first, then Eve,” is that the Greek
word that Paul uses, plassø, does not mean “educated” anywhere in the Bible (sometimes out-
side the Bible it can refer to things like training/forming the soul or training/forming the voice,
but the part of the person being trained is always specified in the context, and that is not the
case here).
More significantly, Paul is quoting the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the
Septuagint), which uses the verb plassøfour times in the very story of creation Paul is referring
to (Gen. 2:7, 8, 15, 19). The word plassøis commonly used in the Septuagint to refer to God’s
act of creation (31 of 49 instances of plassøin the Septuagint refer to creation). In no case in
the Septuagint does this word mean “educate.” So how could Paul mean “educate” when he
used plassøto refer to this very passage in Genesis 2? Paul’s words clearly and simply refer to
the creation of Adam first, and then Eve, as the usage of plassøin the Greek translation of
Genesis 2 indicates. That is surely what the original readers would have understood by Paul’s
words. See Wayne Grudem, Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth (Sisters, Ore.:
Multnomah, 2004), 293-295 for further discussion.