24: WOMEN TEACHING GNOSTIC HERESY? 189to imagine how such a momentous conclusion could have been erected
upon such fragile, tottering evidence” (161). Other evidence used by the
Kroegers is “wildly anachronistic” (163), and contains “outright errors
of fact” (165). On the other hand, “they virtually ignore a vast body of
evidence of a historically much more reliable and relevant quality: the
approximately 4,000 Ephesian inscriptions and the burgeoning sec-
ondary literature surrounding them” (162).^4
Another review of the book is by Albert Wolters, professor of religion
and theology/classical studies at Redeemer College in Hamilton, Ontario.^5
Wolters first summarizes the Kroegers’ argument that 1 Timothy 2:12
should be translated, “I do not permit a woman to teach nor to represent
herself as originator of man, but she is to be in conformity [with the
Scriptures],” and that Paul was opposing a specific feminist heresy at
Ephesus. He then says,
their proposal, both philologically and historically, is a signal failure.
In fact, it is not too much to say that their book is precisely the sort
of thing that has too often given evangelical scholarship a bad name.
There is little in the book’s main thesis that can withstand serious
scrutiny, and there is a host of subordinate detail that is misleading
or downright false.^6Citing several specific examples, Wolters observes that the Kroegers
repeatedly misunderstand the sources they cite, and they fail to men-
tion important recent literature which counts against their own inter-
pretation.... Their scholarly documentation is riddled with(^4) In a response to Baugh in the egalitarian journal Priscilla Papers, Alan Padgett says that Baugh
“nowhere even considers, much less refutes, the idea that a small group of philosophers (like
the Gnostics) might have been teaching the equality of women, contrary to the rest of society”
(Alan Padgett, “The Scholarship of Patriarchy [On 1 Timothy 2:8-15],” Priscilla Papers
[Winter 1997]: 25-26). The word “might” in this statement reveals a desperate grasping at
straws when there is no supporting evidence. I suppose someone could say there “might” have
been people at Ephesus supporting all sorts of different doctrines, but a bare “might have been”
in the absence of facts is hardly a sufficient basis on which to justify rejecting present-day obli-
gations to obey the instructions of 1 Timothy 2:12. If they wish, people are free to believe some-
thing that has no contemporaneous facts supporting it and hundreds of facts against it, but
such a decision can hardly be called rational.
(^5) Al Wolters, “Review: I Suffer Not a Woman,” Calvin Theological Journal 28 (1993): 208-
213; reprinted in Grudem, Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth, 646-651.
(^6) Ibid., 209-210.