1. Introduction
The authenticity of the passage about women's silence in 1 Cor 14 is one of the most hotly debated text-critical issues in Pauline scholarship. Did Paul's letter originally include the lines ‘As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church’ (1 Cor 14.33b–35), or were these words added by a later hand?Footnote 1 For over a century, debates on the authenticity and meaning of this passage have had implications for ideas about the position of women in church and society.Footnote 2 Today, the view that this passage is an interpolation has considerable support among New Testament scholars, in spite of a general scepticism towards conjectural emendation.Footnote 3 Few scholars seem to wonder where this emendation originated and how it became an accepted position. Some may suppose, given its nineteenth-century origin, that it was associated from the start with the issue of women in the ministry. Yet as this article will show, the conjecture in fact originated in a very different context, one that was highly invested in the process of conjectural emendation, but largely uninterested in gender issues. What makes these origins even more significant is that, while the Urheber of this conjecture, the Dutch Mennonite minister Jan Willem Straatman, based his claim about the spuriousness of the text on many of the same arguments that are significant to its defenders today, he relied on a reconstruction of early Christianity that would not be acceptable in contemporary scholarship, and is highly problematic given its anti-Jewish tendencies.
That such problematic tendencies are a feature of scholarly thought on these verses has already been observed by Marlene Crüsemann, who argues that interpreters of this passage, whether they see it as authentic or not, rarely pass unscathed between ‘the Scylla of hostility to women and the Charybdis of anti-Judaism’.Footnote 4 Crüsemann, however, does not refer to Straatman, and erroneously suggests that the emendation was ‘put forward in brief academic neutrality’.Footnote 5 It is important, therefore, to address this misunderstanding about the origins of the emendation, and its history. Straatman has so far been a mere footnote in contemporary scholarship, appearing in the critical apparatus of many editions of Nestle-Aland's Novum Testamentum Graece, but rarely beyond that.Footnote 6 Yet understanding the origin of what has become such a central text-critical issue is important, both for the discipline of textual criticism, and for New Testament scholarship more broadly, especially with regard to the presence of anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic tendencies in our field. This article will thus not reflect on the validity of this conjectural emendation as such, but will rather clarify its curious and problematic origins, and its influence and afterlife. In doing so, it contributes to the ‘historical turn’ in textual criticism and illustrates the value of studying textual conjectures apart from a search for an original or underlying text.
Before turning to Straatman's discussion of 1 Cor 14.33b–35 specifically, it is important first to understand his ideas about textual criticism and the context in which he makes his conjecture. After examining his emendation, we will then turn to the anti-Jewish tendencies in Straatman's reconstruction of early Christianity, especially in light of similar ideas in the work of F. C. Baur and the Tübinger Schule. Finally, we will look at the afterlife of his conjecture and the persistence in scholarship of the idea that the instruction about women's silence has a Jewish-Christian origin, as Straatman first suggested.
2. Textual Criticism: Straatman's Expectations and Methods
Even though Straatman was one of the most prolific producers of conjectural emendations of his time, he was not a textual scholar, but worked instead as a minister in the Mennonite church in Groningen. While he was initially well-liked by his flock, attitudes changed after Ascension Day of 1861, when Straatman came out to his congregation as ‘a Modernist’. From this point onwards, his views seem to have become increasingly controversial, leading eventually, in 1867, to a painful break with his church and a resignation from the ministry.Footnote 7
Like its German and other European counterparts, Dutch Modernism – in which Straatman was only a minor figureFootnote 8 – was concerned with the challenges posed by an increasingly positivist world-view and by insights from the natural sciences.Footnote 9 Modernists attempted to bridge the gap between scientific discoveries and Christian faith by rejecting traditional ideas about the Bible as revelation, or about the divine nature of Jesus, and by opposing supernaturalism. The historical-critical method favoured by Modernists further undermined established Christian tradition concerning Jesus’ life and ministry, including a questioning of the resurrection. David Friedrich Strauss’ Leben Jesu had already broached this subject in 1835, yet in the Netherlands it was not until Straatman's time that this debate erupted in full, with several ministers denying in their Easter sermons that Jesus had truly risen from the dead.Footnote 10
In 1862, only a year after he declared his Modernist allegiance, Straatman took a stance in this debate by challenging the evidence for the ‘physical and visible resurrection’ in his first monograph De realiteit van’s HEEREN opstanding uit de dooden en hare verdedigers (‘The Reality of the Lord's Resurrection from the Dead and its Defenders’).Footnote 11 In this work, Straatman systematically comments and critiques possible New Testament witnesses for the resurrection, focusing especially on 1 Cor 15, which was seen by others as a crucial text. Straatman denies that Paul is a credible source for the resurrection, since the apostle was not an ear- or eyewitness to the disputed events of the third day. For the reality of the historical fact, Straatman sees Paul as a witness of the second order only.Footnote 12 Towards the end of his discussion of 1 Cor 15.1–11, Straatman raises doubts about the authenticity of these verses. The more he examines this passage, he observes, ‘the more I am convinced that this text was not written by the apostle, but was inserted only later, with the certain intention of establishing unity and agreement between Paul and the other apostles’.Footnote 13 Straatman sees the text as an attempt to bring pagan-Christian and Jewish-Christian attitudes closer together, making Paul ‘slightly less liberal-minded’ and Peter and his friends ‘slightly more’.Footnote 14 He does not elaborate on this question of authenticity, but ‘hopes to return to it soon’.Footnote 15 His subsequent two-volume work, Kritische studiën over den 1en Brief van Paulus aan de Korinthiërs (‘Critical Studies on the 1st Letter of Paul to the Corinthians’) is devoted to the argument that 1 Corinthians is corrupt not only in chapter 15, but also in many other places, including 1 Cor 14.33b–35.Footnote 16
Straatman's interest in conjectural emendation was thus not intrinsic to his theology, or methodology, but seems to have grown especially from his doubts about the authenticity of the resurrection account in 1 Cor 15. His first work discusses many aspects of the historical reliability of New Testament witnesses without any reference to text-critical issues. By the time he came to write Kritische studiën, however, questions relating to the early reception of Paul's letters and the formation of the canonical text were front and centre for Straatman. This work was written with the express aim of identifying later additions to 1 Corinthians, not in order to establish an original text, but only to confirm that the original form of the letter had been tampered with, and thereby strengthen Straatman's claim that the resurrection account in chapter 15 was a later addition. The passage about women's silence was for him a clear example of such a case, as he writes: ‘There is perhaps in the entire New Testament no text which betrays its falseness as clearly as this one.’Footnote 17
3. Conjectural Emendation in Kritische studiën
In the introduction to Kritische studiën, Straatman explains that his doubts about the Pauline authorship of 1 Cor 15.1–11, as expressed in his first work, were not well received. Critics dismissed his suggestion as an empty and possibly dangerous novelty, which might eventually undermine the status of Paul's letters or even the status of Paul himself.Footnote 18 Straatman rejects such concerns as completely misplaced: ‘textual criticism has no enemy as powerful as the firmly rooted reverence for the text of the N. Testament’.Footnote 19 Even though, as he observes, the dogma of the inspiration of the text had been given up as outdated and untenable, and there was no longer a general belief that divine providence kept the biblical books safe from any alteration, this acknowledgement of the abstract possibility of textual corruption had so far not led to a rigorous re-examination of the text. He bemoans the reverence and affection for the words as they were handed down, and observes, with a play on 1 Cor 13, that ‘perhaps nowhere is love as powerful to believe all things, hope all things, and bear all things, as in the field of textual criticism and exegesis’.Footnote 20
This strong regard for the canonical text is Straatman's reason for prefacing his renewed discussion of the spuriousness of 1 Cor 15.1–11 with an examination of earlier chapters of 1 Corinthians, in order to show similar signs of interference from other hands.Footnote 21 He believes his position will be strengthened if he can demonstrate that the Pauline letters were used ‘with the greatest freedom’, by Christians of the first and second centuries, who saw no objection to having Paul express their rather than his opinions and convictions.Footnote 22 Once this has been established, his misgivings about the authenticity of Paul's witness to the resurrection would be more likely to receive a serious and impartial evaluation.
In addition to the emendation on 1 Cor 14.33b–35, Straatman proposes no fewer than eighteen conjectures in the first volume of Kritische studiën, mostly in chapters 11–14 of 1 Corinthians.Footnote 23 The majority of these are also original emendations of which Straatman counts as the Urheber. Yet in spite of his emphasis on the importance of textual criticism, the methods employed by Straatman were actually not very sophisticated, either by our standards or by those of his own time. Other textual critics of the nineteenth century and before had developed explicit principles and criteria, or used a series of subsequent steps in order to assess texts.Footnote 24 Straatman does not offer any explicit principles of criticism, and his unusual objective – not to determine an original text, but rather to find corruptions, the more, the better – leads to some speculative claims. His emphasis is primarily on the meaning of words and phrases, which are examined in comparison with other Pauline texts. The views of ancient and modern commentators are discussed, and generally found wanting. Detailed discussions of variant readings are rare, and when they do occur, they are generally limited to a comparison between the Textus Receptus (TR), Codex Vaticanus and Tischendorf's critical text, although Straatman also refers in a general way to ‘the most celebrated codices’ or ‘the best manuscripts’, yet without detailing which manuscripts he actually means.
Straatman typically puts forward two reasons for rejecting the Pauline origin of a particular phrase or passage. The first is that the text breaks the coherence of Paul's argument (‘redebeleid’) and that omitting a certain word, phrase or verse actually strengthens the reasoning put forward in the section of the letter. The second reason is the problematic meaning of a text – problematic, that is, in light of Straatman's understanding of the language and ideas characteristic of Paul, especially their liberal, Gentile nature.Footnote 25 In terms of the categorisation developed by Kamphuis et al., of problems that textual critics can observe, Straatman is mainly concerned with passage-related and author-related problems, and suggests conflicts in terms of both style and content.Footnote 26
The dangers of this approach, particularly its subjectivity and possible introduction of bias, are evident in Straatman's treatment of 1 Cor 14.33b–35 and elsewhere in his work. It relies heavily on a reconstruction of Paul's intention and style, as well as a reconstruction of the nature and origin of possible textual interventions, which necessarily precedes the analysis of any given passage. As will be discussed in more detail below, Straatman repeatedly attributes words and verses that he characterises as un-Pauline to a later Jewish, or Jewish-Christian, author who wanted to counter Paul's ‘law-free’ message. Based on this approach, the passage on women's silence struck Straatman as one of the most obviously inauthentic texts in the New Testament.
4. The Conjecture on 1 Cor 14.33b–35 in Detail
Straatman's introduction to this passage illustrates his understanding of the ways in which the original Pauline text was altered:
There is in chapter 14 a further most striking example of the free use of the Pauline letters in the earliest Christian church, and an eloquent example of the truth that this church saw no objection whatsoever to inserting any commands, remarks and any other thing in these letters, even if these ran completely contrary to the spirit and views of the great apostle. We cannot marvel enough at the childish naivety with which later pastors and overseers of communities let the apostle pronounce their insights and their wishes, without considering that in doing so, they caused Paul to contradict himself irreconcilably … But also the insertion itself is frequently done so clumsily and without any thought that only the reverence for the God-given text of the N. Testament writings can explain how it is possible that these additions have not long since been removed.Footnote 27
For Straatman, the passage thus constitutes a clumsy addition that should never have been inserted and should long ago have been corrected. After this introductory statement, Straatman goes on to cite the Greek text (without translation), in the version of Codex Vaticanus. Even though Straatman frequently mentions Codex Vaticanus – which he used in the edition of Kuenen and Cobet – and often does so with approval, he does not elsewhere take this manuscript as his standard text.Footnote 28 The Vaticanus text as quoted by Straatman reads:Footnote 29
Ὡς ἐν πάσαις ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις, τῶν ἁγίων αἱ γυναῖκες ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις σιγάτωσαν· οὐ γὰρ ἐπιτρέπεται αὐταῖς λαλεῖν, ἀλλὰ ὑποτασσέσθωσαν, καθὼς καὶ ὁ νόμος λέγει. εἰ δέ τι μαθεῖν θέλουσιν, ἐν οἴκῳͅ τοὺς ἰδίους ἄνδρας ἐπερωτάτωσαν· αἰσχρὸν γάρ γυναικὶ λαλεῖν ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ.
Straatman then lists deviations in the TR and Tischendorf, starting with the addition of ὑμῶν after αἱ γυναῖκες, which connects τῶν ἁγίων to ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις, rather than to αἱ γυναῖκες, as in Kuenen's Vaticanus, which has rather idiosyncratic punctuation. TR and Tischendorf also share variations on the verbs ἐπιτρέπεται (ἐπιτέτραπται) and ὑποτασσέσθωσαν (ὑποτασσέσθαι). Finally, where Vaticanus reads αἰσχρὸν γάρ γυναικί, ‘it is shameful for a woman’, TR and Tischendorf add a form of the verb εἰμί, and TR has the plural ‘women’. (TR: αἰσχρὸν γάρ ἐστι γυναιξίν; Tischendorf: αἰσχρὸν γάρ ἐστιν γυναικί). While Straatman mentions these variant readings, he does not discuss the meaning or relevance of any of them, nor does he draw any direct conclusions from their occurrence.Footnote 30 He appears to rely simply on creating an image of a chaotic textual situation, the implication of which is that the status of the verses as such is also therefore less certain and the possibility of interpolation more likely.
Worth noting here is that Straatman does not refer to the transposition of verses 34–5 that occurs in several manuscripts, where they appear at the end of the chapter, after verse 40.Footnote 31 This transposition has played an important role in later discussions of this passage.Footnote 32 The lack of reference to the transposition could be deliberate, but it is also possible that Straatman simply did not know of it. While it is clear that Straatman used Tischendorf's editio septima, this work came in two versions, only one of which contains a reference to the transposition: only the apparatus of the maior version of Tischendorf's seventh edition mentions the transposition, not the minor one.Footnote 33 Unfortunately, the references to Tischendorf in Straatman do not allow for a clear determination of which version he actually used, so it remains uncertain whether he had any knowledge of this variant. Since Straatman appears interested in piling up the different readings that are attested, mentioning the transposition of verses 34–5 might have worked well within his particular strategy, so it is possible to assume that he would have mentioned it had he known. However, the emendation that he suggests differs from the transposition in including verse 33b as well, so it is also possible that he would not have wanted to include a reference to it.Footnote 34
From the discussion of textual differences, Straatman immediately turns to the use of the term ἐκκλησία, which, he observes, occurs here ‘somewhat bewilderingly’ in several different meanings in short succession: first in the sense of corporations, next as community gatherings, and finally as the presence of the community.Footnote 35 The command to be silent in the gatherings appears to have the character of a ‘synodic decision’, inserted in the passage at a later date. Straatman further supports the idea of an insertion by looking at the place of the passage in the chapter as a whole. The lack of coherence is immediately apparent and supported by the fact that ‘all commentators’ regard this passage as ‘an appendix’. These verses ‘unmistakably have the character of a command derived elsewhere and inserted here most inappropriately’. Without them, Straatman maintains, verse 36 follows naturally on 33a, discussing the πνευματικά, spiritual gifts, that are central to the chapter.Footnote 36
Straatman then returns to the use of the construction πάσαι ἐκκλησίαι, which he sees as reflecting a later time when not only the number, but also the degree of organisation of the communities had increased. At that time, ‘the division between Jewish- and pagan-Christians was already in the past’, and the ‘catholic’ Christians of the period desired unity in thought and uniformity of practice, attempting to put one law in place over ‘all communities’.Footnote 37 According to Straatman, the spirit of this command was not that of Paul, the ‘liberal envoy of the cross’. It reflects, in his words, ‘the Jewish-Christian, not the Pauline spirit’. If Paul in Galatians rejects the ‘most holy rule of the law’, that of circumcision, how could he appeal to the law here, on such a minor issue?Footnote 38
The final argument put forward by Straatman is the contradiction he identifies between this passage and Paul's instruction in 1 Cor 11 that women cover their heads when praying and prophesying and his words about man and woman in Gal 3.28. Here Straatman's reasoning is again worth quoting in full:
But the final doubt disappears when we place these verses next to the opening of Ch. 11, with which they stand in direct contradiction. There, Paul desires that the woman, when she prays or prophesies in the community, does so with a covered head, from which it is evident with irrefutable clarity and distinction that speaking in the gathering of the community was, according to the judgement of the apostle, not only not inappropriate for women, but even allowed, if they followed the rules of decorum. Here, on the other hand … speaking in the gatherings is denied to her by the law, and they have nothing else, nor better to do, than silently obey and submit. Here they are not even allowed to ask for information or clarification. Her development is of so little concern for the writer that he refers them, if they want to learn something, to their husbands. Paul thought so highly of the woman who had put on Christ that he, in Gal 3:28, grants her the same honour and the same rights as the man, and places her on one level with him, saying: ‘In this, i.e. in Christ, is neither Jew nor Greek, neither servant nor free, in this is no man and woman.’ Here on the other hand, the woman is apparently a creature of lesser rank, serviceable to the man and dependent on him. Here, she does not need to concern herself with things of the spirit. She only needs to listen and accept, and if there is something that she does not understand, well, then she waits, until she arrives home, and asks her husband. And specifically her own husband, no other, not a teacher, nor a prophet, but her husband!Footnote 39
Straatman's aversion is palpable in this section. For him, instructions such as these cannot have come from Paul as he is known from other texts, particularly on the issue of women's status and behaviour. Straatman rejects the suggestions that the apparent contradiction between chapters 11 and 14 can be reconciled by assuming a change of heart on the part of Paul. Before we accept that 33b–35 is genuine, he writes, ‘one would have to convince us that Paul was a fickle and inconsistent man’, who was ‘wont to renounce his principles, and every now and then put aside his conviction’ in order to proclaim ‘in an extraordinary way and in an unusual style and form’ completely different ones.Footnote 40 This Straatman is not willing to do:
No, as long as we can hold the apostle, based on his writings, for the liberal-minded man who fought bravely and intrepidly all the days of his mission against Jewish legalism and works-righteousness, as long as we can see and honour in him the man who devoted his life to the freedom brought by Christ, we will keep claiming that Ch. 14.33b–35 contains words that were not written by Paul, and maintain that in his original letter, verse 36 followed immediately upon verse 33a.Footnote 41
These words conclude Straatman's discussion of the passage. In characteristic style, he then immediately follows this passionate plea with the observation: ‘This passage reminds me of another, which reveals the hallmark of its falseness to no lesser extent’, and straightaway launches into a discussion of 2 Cor 6.11.Footnote 42
As is clear from this summary, many of the arguments that dominate the discussion about this emendation today are mentioned by Straatman, with the exception of the transposition of verses 34–5. The place of the verses in the chapter overall, the various uses of the term ἐκκλησία, the reference to the law and Paul's attitude towards women in 1 Cor 11 and Gal 3.28 are all recurring topics.Footnote 43
It is important to note that in spite of the passionate concern for women's status here, such an interest was not a feature of Straatman's thought more generally. He can express very different ideas about Paul's attitude towards women, for example in his discussion of 1 Cor 11.10 (διὰ τοῦτο ὀφείλει ἡ γυνὴ ἐξουσίαν ἔχειν ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς διὰ τοὺς ἀγγέλους, ‘for this reason a woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels’). Straatman rejects an interpretation of ἐξουσία as referring to a woman's power, and argues that Paul's reasoning in this section of 1 Cor 11 as a whole does not refer to a woman's power, but rather to the opposite, to a woman's inferiority (‘minderheid’) to men.Footnote 44 Here, he seems to be quite comfortable with the idea that Paul would argue from women's subordination to men.
Elsewhere in this work and in Straatman's writing generally, any interest in, or concern for, the relative positions of women and men appears to be completely absent. His praise of Paul's character and writing, which was extensive, did not contain any further discussion of his attitude towards women. Straatman's proposals for reform in his own church, which led to his break with the Mennonite congregation, and which were quite radical in other regards, did not include any suggestions for changing the role of women in the church.Footnote 45 His appreciation for Paul's ‘high opinion’ of women thus surfaces only in the discussion of this emendation on 1 Cor 14 and nowhere else. The reconstruction of early Christianity and the development of the letter to the Corinthians that is evident in Straatman's discussion of this passage, however, is characteristic of his thought more generally, and is worth a closer examination.
5. Anti-Jewish Tendencies in Straatman's Reconstruction of Paul's Letters and the Development of Early Christianity in their Nineteenth-Century Context
In this notion that Paul's liberal, free-spirited message was corrupted by later Jewish-Christian tendencies, and by a subsequent Catholic attempt to bring the two streams together, Straatman was heavily dependent on the work of the Tübinger Schule and especially F.C. Baur. There are several instances in Straatman where this influence becomes explicit, such as when he speaks of the benefits of reading Paul's letters ‘not by the candle of Churchly harmonizing, but by the clear shining torch of Tübingen criticism’.Footnote 46 He also refers specifically to ‘the knowledge of the division of the apostolic church that we possess, thanks to Tübinger criticism’.Footnote 47 Straatman quotes Baur extensively on one occasion in Kritische studiën, and it is easy to identify the similarities in their respective approaches to Paul. When discussing the instruction to women to cover their heads ‘because of the angels’ (1 Cor 11.10), Straatman quotes Baur: ‘It is not Paul's habit to break the logical order of his thoughts by such incorrect insertions … One can expect a Christian who still clung to the old traditions of Judaism to have thought that wearing veils benefits women, so that there would not be a recurrence of what once happened with angels, according to Gen. 6:1, but not Paul …’Footnote 48
For both Baur and Straatman, the struggle of early Christianity was the struggle between Paulinism and Petrinism, between Gentile and Jewish Christianity, between a law-free and a legalistic message.Footnote 49 According to Baur, all Christian literature of the first two centuries could be divided between these two camps, with the subsequent Catholic synthesis appearing as a third category.Footnote 50 In this struggle, Baur and Straatman share a clear preference for the Pauline message, and this preference coincides for both with a very negative and highly problematic anti-Jewish tendency. The purest form of Christianity is the Pauline form, and later developments constitute a corruption through Jewish influence.Footnote 51 The notion that the ‘canonical Paul’ had obscured the ‘real Paul’ and that the task of the interpreter was to realise the liberation of Paul from canonical tradition, which we find so clearly in Straatman, was characteristic of this type of thought.Footnote 52 In this sense, Straatman's approach to Paul, to early Christian history and to textual criticism is typical of a particular strand of nineteenth-century theology.
Baur's understanding of this division in early Christianity, which he sees mirrored in his own time, has been classified as ‘Orientalist’, where the Orient appears as the negative foil for the more enlightened Occident.Footnote 53 In Baur's view, the Orient is associated with the old, with particularism, Palestinian Judaism, Peter and the Roman Catholic church. On the side of the Occident stands the new, universalism, Alexandrian Judaism, Paul and the Protestant church. Although Jews can be found on both sides of the opposition, they are largely connected with what is negative and limited. In this sense, Baur's ideas are ‘inherently racist’, since they presuppose that ‘in order to attain “freedom” the Jews or Jewish-Christians must be influenced by Greek thinking’.Footnote 54 As the main architect of such Orientalist ideas in New Testament exegesis, Baur had a significant influence on later scholars, including Straatman. Although Straatman's historiography is far less developed and can only be reconstructed for this period from occasional references in his text-critical evaluations, it draws on similar stereotypes of Jews as legalistic and opposed to freedom. It therefore contains the same anti-Jewish tendency as Baur, as well as much European New Testament scholarship of the time.
In spite of agreeing with Baur on early Christian divisions, Straatman had his own views on the outcome of the struggle between the Pauline and Jewish-Christian tendencies. Baur's view was that Petrinism was the stronger tradition and that Paulinism required reinforcing by the ‘Catholic’ church. Straatman, however, believed that Paul was a success among Christians of all types, and that the Catholic church needed to strengthen the legacy and memory of the other apostles, not that of Paul. This difference is evident in their respective understandings of the book of Acts: according to Baur, Acts was intended to rehabilitate Paul, and bring unity to the church, while making major concessions to Paul's attitude towards the law.Footnote 55 Straatman believed that Acts intended to rehabilitate Peter and the other apostles, in light of the general success of Paulinism, also among figures such as ‘Marcion and other Gnostics’.Footnote 56 The Catholic church needed to create a counterweight against the popularity of Paul, and through him elevate the status of the Jewish-Christian, Petrine tradition.
This understanding of the history of Christianity and of Acts also plays a role in the interpretation of 1 Cor 15 that Straatman develops in the second volume of Kritische Studiën. The Paul that we encounter in this passage, the Paul who passes on traditions about the resurrection that he has received, is, according to Straatman, the Paul of Acts: ‘the friend of Peter and James’, ‘the Catholic Paul’.Footnote 57 The passage stems from a time when Petrinism and Paulinism had come closer to each other and was inserted ‘to make the great apostle of the Gentiles to an irrefutable witness of Catholic church doctrine’.Footnote 58
Straatman's ascription of the verses on women's silence to later Jewish and Catholic authors thus matches his reconstruction of the passage on the resurrection, which was his main focus. Both texts are attributed to Paul's Jewish and Catholic opponents, who adapted his letters at a later time, to suit their interests. For both passages, Straatman relies on a historiography which, from a modern perspective, is severely compromised.
6. The Afterlife of Straatman's Conjecture
In the years after the publication of Kritische Studiën, Straatman's proposal was discussed in scholarly works in both Dutch and German. In 1880, two publications ensured that his emendation became a recognised part of the history of text-critical scholarship. Both these studies were written in response to a competition organised by Teylers Godgeleerd Genootschap (Teyler's Theological Society), requesting a treatise on ‘the application of conjectural criticism to the text of the New Testament writings’, a topic of interest in the Netherlands at the time. Willem Christiaan Van Manen and Willem Hendrik Van De Sande Bakhuyzen each composed an overview of the state of scholarship which included Straatman's conjectures, but they each evaluated his emendation on 1 Cor 14.33b–35 quite differently. Van Manen wholeheartedly embraces Straatman's conjecture and includes it in a selection of emendations that he believes would be convincing to any ‘unbiased and skilled’ reader.Footnote 59 In characteristically hyperbolic style, he writes that anyone who was made aware by Straatman of the non-Pauline origin of these verses, ‘would no longer be able to consider this piece the work of the apostle’.Footnote 60 Van de Sande Bakhuyzen is more cautious, and ultimately suspends judgement, especially because the transposition of verses 34–5 does not correspond to Straatman's inclusion of 33b.Footnote 61 The six other nineteenth-century sources that reflect on Straatman's conjecture show a similarly mixed reception: three accept it, two reject it and one discusses it without taking a final position.Footnote 62
In spite of the sometimes extensive and detailed discussion of Straatman's argumentation in these publications, neither his defenders nor his detractors – who could be quite scathing – engaged with the historiography and the anti-Jewish tendencies that support his emendation. These aspects did not attract attention or require refutation in this period, when in biblical scholarship generally the figure of a ‘virtual Jew’ such as the one relied on by Straatman was ‘fundamental to the putative extraction of a proto-Christian moral core from the Old testament and the often insufficiently new New Testament’.Footnote 63
Two further emendations on 1 Cor 14 were proposed not long after Straatman: Karl Holsten suggested in 1880 that 1 Cor 14.33b–36 is spurious, and Wilhelm Bousset did the same for 1 Cor 14.34–5 in 1907.Footnote 64 While neither of these authors explicitly attributes the addition of the verses to a Jewish interpolator, both share the larger understanding of Judaism that also underlies Straatman's view.Footnote 65 The emendations to this part of 1 Cor 14, in their various forms, are thus firmly rooted in a view of Paul, Judaism and early Christianity that has become – or rather should have become – increasingly problematic in New Testament scholarship.
Yet the idea that the interpolation has a Jewish origin continues to surface long after Straatman. I will give a few examples to illustrate this tendency, from sources that argue for understanding parts, or all, of 1 Cor 14.33b–36 as a later addition. The only reference to Straatman in twentieth-century scholarship on 1 Cor 14 occurs in Gottfried Fitzer's monograph on these verses. Fitzer mentions Straatman as the first person to advise striking this passage from the letter.Footnote 66 Without further reference to Straatman, Fitzer ascribes the addition to ‘an evaluation of women that clearly stems from Jewish tradition’, which influenced Christian communities at the end of the first century.Footnote 67 In a similar vein, Gerhard Dautzenberg argues that the passage derives from the context of the Jewish synagogue.Footnote 68 He suggests that it is hardly a coincidence that similar commands are not known to us from ‘Palestinian and rabbinic sources’, because an explicit command would only occur when such a dominant tradition is questioned.Footnote 69 In his commentary on 1 Corinthians, Gordon Fee compares the reference to the law in 1 Cor 14.35 to a similar statement in Josephus and concludes that this suggests ‘that the provenance of the glossator was Jewish Christianity. Under any view this is difficult to reconcile with Paul’.Footnote 70 August Strobel takes a similar position in his commentary, seeing the passage as reflecting ‘a particularly Jewish attitude’, which is ‘completely foreign to the early Christian church’.Footnote 71 Finally, Robert Jewett, in his study on an American perspective on Paul, offers an echo of Straatman in arguing that the redaction of these verses points to ‘an early Catholic circle of the Pauline school’, while the question in verse 36 ‘has the argumentative force of making the pattern of female subordination favoured by Jewish-Christian congregations normative for all congregations’.Footnote 72 Jewett concludes that ‘Paul's concept of the spiritual integrity of Gentile Christianity is completely contrary to the authoritarian logic of this passage’.Footnote 73
In more recent scholarly arguments for this interpolation, we can thus see a worrying continuation of the idea that the verses on women's silence are likely to derive from a Jewish context which was specifically hostile to women. Unfortunately, this idea has not remained limited to academic sources, but has spread to popular understanding and can be easily found online. The interpolation is presented there as ‘a slogan or rabbinic saying based on the Jewish “oral law,” not the written word of God’, or as based on ‘Jewish prejudice that considered it shameful for a woman to speak in the synagogue’.Footnote 74 All these characterisations, scholarly and popular, perpetuate the misconception that we can neatly distinguish Paul from Judaism, and suggest that there were other (Christ-following) Jews who were more Jewish than he was. They further rely on a distinction between the ideas and practices of Jews and those of others in antiquity, and suggest that we can measure both separately on a scale of sexism, as if they were not highly diverse and intertwined.
Perhaps it is good to emphasise that not all scholars who see the text as an interpolation take this problematic approach, nor do all scholars who understand the passage to be authentically Paul, or a quotation of Corinthian views, escape it.Footnote 75 The recognition of this issue also does not necessarily have consequences for the validity of the interpolation position as such. Yet scholars have not offered a consistent alternative context for the origin of the passage to replace the Jewish origin story and, with the exception of Crüsemann's important article on the subject, there has been no substantial criticism of this worrying tendency in scholarship on the emendation. Given that the anti-Jewish origin story was essential in the formation of the emendation, this silence is more than uncomfortable.
7. Conclusion
The conjectural emendations on 1 Cor 14.33b–36 have a curious history and origin, and as we have seen, Straatman's emendation was only a by-product of his main focus, which was to question the historicity of the resurrection and the authenticity of its description in 1 Cor 15. The issue of gender did not fundamentally interest Straatman, although he did passionately argue for Paul's ‘high view of women’, in rejecting the authenticity of this text. It is clear that Straatman was idiosyncratic in his goal and approach to the letter, especially in his wish to find corruptions. Yet much of his thought and argumentation is identifiable as characteristically nineteenth-century. This is especially true of his understanding of Paul and his message, and of the opposition to Paul in his own lifetime and beyond. The struggle between Pauline and Jewish Christianity and the influence of later Catholic Christianity constitute crucial elements in Straatman's reconstruction of early Christianity, and of the formation of Paul's letters.
Given its fundamental entanglement with nineteenth-century understandings of history and theology, the longevity of Straatman's emendation becomes all the more remarkable. Even though the emendation was subsequently reinvented and reformulated, mostly without reference to Straatman, the arguments he put forward have remained dominant in subsequent discussions throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Later scholarship not only considers aspects such as the possible contradiction with 1 Cor 11 and Gal 3.28, the relationship of the passage with chapter 14 as a whole and the different meanings of the term ἐκκλησία, but also puts forward the notion of the passage as particularly Jewish and therefore un-Pauline. The idea that there was an ideal, pristine Gentile Christianity which was subsequently corrupted by Jewish influence is a dangerous myth that is closely associated with Christian anti-Semitism. It is important to be aware of the enduring influence of this myth within our discipline and to challenge it where possible.
