5: SAYING SOME VERSES NOT PART OF BIBLE 51ancient manuscripts. But, on the other hand, two factors lead me to think
of it rather as a different method of rejecting the authority of these verses
for the church today. (I am not speaking of Fee’s intention, which I do not
know, but of the actual process he followed and the result he reached.)
First, out of the thousands of ancient New Testament manuscripts
that exist today, not one manuscript has ever omitted these verses (the
Western manuscripts that move the verses to follow verse 40 are unreli-
able elsewhere in any case, but they still include these verses). This makes
this passage significantly different from the other two examples Fee men-
tions where something not original has crept into the text tradition (John
5:3b-4 and 1 John 5:7).^6 In those cases the oldest and best manuscripts
lack the added material, but in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 no manuscript
lacks this material. So Fee’s procedure is different from every other text-
critical decision made by editors of the Greek New Testament through-
out history: he thinks we should exclude a passage from the New
Testament that is included in every manuscript we have! In fact, this is
not a highly doubtful text, but one that is given a “B” rating in the United
Bible Societies’ fourth edition of the Greek New Testament,^7 indicating
that it is “almost certain” in the eyes of the editors of that text.^8
The second thing that leads me to see this not merely as a text-
critical decision but as a rejection of the authority of some verses of the
Bible is the fact that the most decisive factor for Fee’s conclusion is not
the evidence from ancient manuscripts but rather that he thinks that
these verses, which say that “the women should keep silent in the
churches” (1 Cor. 14:34), are impossible to reconcile with 1 Corinthians
- This makes me think that this is ultimately not a text-critical ques-
tion but an objection he has to the content of these verses.
Fee says, “these verses stand in obvious contradiction to 11:2-16,
where it is assumed without reproof that women pray and prophesy in
the assembly.”^9 But virtually all other interpreters in the history of the
church have seen various ways to reconcile 14:34-35 and 11:5.
Therefore Fee incorrectly sees those two passages as being impossible to
(^6) Fee, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 705.
(^7) The Greek New Testament, 4th rev. ed., ed. Barbara Aland, Kurt Aland, Johannes
Karavidopoulos, Carlo M. Martini, and Bruce M. Metzger (Stuttgart: Deutsche
Bibelgesellschaft and United Bible Societies, 1994) (abbreviated as UBS^4 ), 601.
(^8) UBS (^4) , 3*.
(^9) Fee, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 702.