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The Ancient World Behind the Text: Ideas
The customs, offices and ideas a first reader knew without being told, what each meant then, and the nearest thing you already know.
Household codes
From Aristotle on, moral writers told the male head of a household how to rule his wife, his children and his slaves, in that order. Religions under suspicion used the same form to show Rome they were no threat to the family.
A company handbook spells out who reports to whom, and the boss's own duties take up one line at the end. Greek and Roman moral writers had a standard way to talk about the home. They addressed the man at the head of it and told him how to rule three kinds of people under him: his wife, his children and his slaves. Romans worried that new religions from the East would undermine the family, so groups under suspicion often showed that they kept these values. Paul's letters use the same form, in the same order, and speak to every member of the household by name.
Household codes go back at least to Aristotle in the fourth century BC (the cultural backgrounds notes). Many thinkers used them to teach the male head of an elite home how to govern his wife, his young children and his slaves, the order Aristotle followed. Keener adds that Paul takes the form straight from standard Greco-Roman moral writing. The codes spoke to the head of the house. They did not normally address wives, children or slaves themselves. Many Romans distrusted religions from the East, such as the cult of Isis, Judaism and Christianity, fearing they would erode traditional family values. Members of these minority faiths often used the codes to show they supported those values; the cultural backgrounds notes add the earlier cult of Dionysus. Wright and Bird write that pagan critics were ready to accuse Christians of threatening the social order. Most ancient writers expected wives to obey, and some marriage contracts demanded absolute obedience. Keener writes that "ancient household codes never list love as a husband's duty". The CSB Study Bible says society recognized wives' duties to husbands but not necessarily the reverse. To call every member of a group, the head included, to submit to one another "was unheard-of" (Keener). Wright and Bird read the codes as the place where Jesus' lordship shows in the most obvious social unit. They call it revolutionary to give instructions to children and slaves, treating them as responsible people. Keener reads the leaders' rules of 1 Timothy 3 as doing a household code's work for churches that met in homes. His notes add that groups thought to unsettle the order of masters and slaves drew particular suspicion.
An analogy: a new company adopting an old staff handbook and keeping its headings so the inspectors recognize them. What matters is what has been written under each heading.
Because the codes were written to the head of the house about ruling others, a list that speaks to wives, children and slaves directly and gives husbands and masters duties of their own, like the one that begins at Ephesians 5:21, departs from the usual address of the pattern while keeping its shape. Colossians 3:18 opens the same form, and 1 Peter 2:18 begins a version addressed to slaves and wives in a setting of suspicion.
Not an internal rulebook a company can rewrite at will. A handbook governs staff by agreement. The ancient codes described legal power a male head really held over wife, children and slaves, so Paul was writing inside a structure his readers could not opt out of.
Two points. What submitting to one another in Ephesians 5:21 means. Keener says calling all members to submit to one another was unheard-of and that every instruction that follows rests on it, and Wright and Bird write, "Mutual submission is the order of the day". The ESV Study Bible takes it as "submitting to others according to the authority and order established by God," explained by the examples that follow, and rejects absolute mutual submission; the CSB Study Bible calls 5:21 a hinge on which what follows depends. Second, whether Paul's codes uphold or unsettle their culture. Keener says Paul undermines the codes' basic premise, the absolute authority of the male head, even as he relates Christianity to his culture's standards; the cultural backgrounds notes call the instructions a lifestyle apologetic that upholds the best in traditional values while adapting the codes, and their article on marriage roles ranks Paul with the moderate minority, such as Xenophon and Musonius Rufus; the ESV Study Bible says the commands do not merely reflect the culture of the day but present God's ideal for every marriage.
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- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Ephesians 5:21-6:9, 5:22-6:8, 5:25 and 6:1
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, introduction to Ephesians 5:21-33, and on Ephesians 5:21, 5:22-24 and 5:25
- ESV Study Bible, study notes on Ephesians 5:21 and 5:32
- CSB Study Bible, notes on Ephesians 5:21 and 5:25
- N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World, ch. 20, Colossians, Philemon, and Ephesians, The Argument of Colossians, section 6, and The Argument of Ephesians, section 7
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on 1 Timothy 3:14-15
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on 1 Timothy 6:1-2
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article Marriage Roles in Antiquity
