“No Longer Strangers but Citizens, Together”: A Critical Analysis of Political Rhetoric in Ephesians

Abstract

This dissertation offers an original method of interpretation of Ephesians 5.21–6.9, in order to offer an intratextually oriented remedy to the discomfort evident in some New Testament scholarship around questions of subordination—particularly, that of women. Applying insights from linguistic research on reference (referring), I offer a new reading for this contested passage. Three “pairs” of terms occurring in Eph 5.21–6.9—namely, “woman” and “man,” “master” and “slave,” and “father” and “child”—are usually interpreted as nouns referring to pairs of human referents. Instead, I propose a different line of interpretation, one that is anchored in function, rather than in static definition. My method explores cities as alternate referents of the term “woman,” interpreting the women mentioned (αἱ γυναῖκες) as feminized cities, and the men to whom they are in relation (τοῖς ἰδίοις ἀνδράσιν) as masculinized political rulers. I also suggest that this reading could be extended to the interpretation of “master” and “slave,” and “father” and “child.” I make this case on the basis of my reconstruction of an intratextual pattern of terms in Ephesians that might refer to cities. In order to contextualize this reconstruction, I consider various interpretations of 5.21–6.9 and patterns of subjection in 1.22–23 and 5.22–24, as well as different political interpretations of 2.11–22. My work also is more generally contextualized by research on female-designated referents in biblical writings, that highlights male and female figuration of cities and rulers in ancient Mediterranean textual and visual sources. My reading of Eph 5.21–6.9 interrogates the gendering mention of the women, men, and assembly (ἐκκλησία, usually translated “church”) since the broader academic study exclusively habituates the reading of the text requiring subjection between male and female human counterparts. I propose an equivalence between “the assembly” and “the women” since both are described as subjected in 5.24. The broader coincidences of descriptions of the women and assembly in 5.22–33 means that an interpretation need not reconstruct the mention of women as separate from that of the assembly. Thus, the pattern of subjection in 5.22–24 would only re-mention subjection of the assembly already appearing in 1.22–23. This interpretation would mitigate the problem of readings of Eph 5.21–6.9 requiring subjection between human men and women, since the women mentioned would be cities. Following this line of reasoning, female people do not need to be subjugated on the basis of this particular Pauline text, which is chronically mobilized against them. The women are illuminated in this interpretation as the full assembly, appearing as a feminized spatial construct. I relate this full assembly of women to the collective figuration of cities, which in turn is connected to the idea of political rule in Ephesians. I propose that in writing about “women” called “Assembly” and “men” who love and subject them, Eph 5.21–6.9 expresses this collective political rule in a gendering way, describing it as the love and subjection of many women by many men. My interpretation of the women, men, and subjection therefore foregrounds the construct of “political gender” related to the expression of political rule between masculinized and feminized cities and rulers, which conceives cities as “women,” and political rulers as “men.”