A continuation of the Philodemus Fragment -I have suggested setting aside authentein in 1 Tim. 2:12, as proof that a woman should not have authority, because the evidence for the meaning of this word is very obscure. I have found and reproduced in images the Greek fragment and the English paraphrase for one of the two most cited pieces of evidence for authentein meaning "exercise authority". It is this fragment from Philodemus. My intent is to share this information with any who come here to view it.
The first two images here are from Philodemi Volumina
Rhetorica pages 161 and 162 in the electronic version and pages 133 and 134 in the book.The second two images are from The Rhetorica of Philodemus the preface and page 32 of the electronic version and page 304 in the book.
The fragment has over half of the words missing and it is clear that this is a rough paraphrase. In the third image the middle paragraph serves as a paraphrase for fragment IV.
Click on the images to enlarge.In the preface, Hubbell writes that
- "he is far from positive that the correct rendering has in all cases been attained. ... It would perhaps be more exact to call it a paraphrase than a translation. While it has been possible in general to translate almost literally, there are many passages where the papyrus is so fragmentary that nothing more than an approximation is possible, and the gaps must in some cases be filled entirely by conjecture. At times it has seemed best to condense some of the more prolix paragraphs."
It is evident by the amount of text which is reconstructed, and by relative length of the manuscript and the paraphrase, that this is one of the "more prolix paragraphs" and has been greatly condensed.
One suggestion might be to assign authentein the meaning which it had in astronomy and astrology texts in the second century - to dominate or domineer. This is the translation used by Jerome in the fourth century. I don't know if it is possible to find out what was used in the old Latin texts.
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