- The Roman emperor is called the “head” of the people.
- The god Zeus is called the “head” of all things.
- David as king of Israel is called the “head” of the people.
- The leaders of the tribes of Israel are called “heads” of the tribes.
- The husband is the “head” of the wife.
- Christ is the “head” of the church.
- God, the Father, is the “head” of Christ.
No one has yet produced one text in ancient Greek literature
(from the eighth century B.C. to the fourth century A.D.) where a per-
son is called the kephal∑(“head”) of another person or group and that
person is not the one in authority over that other person or group.
Now sixteen years after the publication of my 1985 study, the alleged
meaning “source without authority” has still not been supported with
any citation of any text in ancient Greek literature. More than fifty
examples ofkephal∑meaning “ruler, authority over” have been found,
but no examples of the meaning “source without authority.”
The question is, why should we give kephal∑in the New
Testament a sense which, when applied to persons, no Greek lexicon
has ever given to it? The egalitarian interpretation of this word is also
a novel one in the history of the church. So far as I know, no one in
the history of the church before the 1970s ever claimed that kephal∑
in Ephesians 5:23 meant “source” in a way that denied leadership or
authority to the husband.^39 More recently, we have a letter from a
scholar who by virtue of position and reputation may rightly be called
the greatest Greek lexicographer alive in the world today, P. G. W.
Glare of Oxford. Glare is the editor of the Liddell-Scott Greek-English
Lexicon: Supplement(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
In a personal letter, which he has allowed me to quote, Glare says:
Dear Professor Grudem,
Thank you for sending me the copy of your article on kefalhv.
The entry under this word in LSJ is not very satisfactory. Perhaps
I could draw your attention to a section of Lexicographica Graecaby
Dr John Chadwick (OUP 1996), though he does not deal in detail
with the Septuagint and NT material. I was unable to revise the
longer articles in LSJ when I was preparing the latest Supplement,
The Key Issues in the Manhood-Womanhood Controversy 57
