This blog post is based on a talk given at the 2023 Institute for Biblical Research Group. Information used in this article will be available in a volume edited by Dr Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn with the title “Reading the New Testament around the Globe.”
In 2019, John MacArthur, speaking at a celebration to mark his 50th year of preaching, quipped “go home” when asked about Beth Moore (Religion News Service).[1] Moore was a prominent Southern Baptist speaker and regularly appeared at women’s events (see my article at the time). She had a public role. MacArthur went on to say that day, “I think the church is caving in to women preachers.”[2] MacArthur’s quip reflects the common reasoning that women belong in the home. This assumption is often connected to the instruction in Titus 2 that older women are to teach younger women “to be workers at home.”[3] Although MacArthur’s quip doesn’t reasonably reflect his stated view in his Titus commentary, he still believes that the home is a woman’s special place: “She may have a reasonable outside job or choose to work in the church or to minister in a Christian organization, a hospital, a school, or many other ways. But the home is a wife’s special domain and always should be her highest priority.”[4] The “home” in many modern minds is a private space, strictly differentiated from the public space.[5] However, when one considers the lifestyle on Crete strict divisions between private and public cannot be maintained, especially when it comes to housing. This article considers the anachronistic tendency of some people to take this word οἰκουργός, “busy at home,” to mean that the young wife is to be secluded at home, away from public view and engagement.[6]
Image from Religion News Service
The Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria has a vision of the ideal Jewish matron that is very similar to that of Macarthur and other popular commentators:
The women are best suited to the indoor life which never strays from the house, within which the middle door is taken by the maidens as their boundary, and the outer door by those who have reached full womanhood. Organized communities are of two sorts, the greater which we call cities and the smaller which we call households (οἰκονομία). Both of these have their governors; the government of the greater is assigned to men under the name of statesmanship, that of the lesser, known as household management (τὴν οἰκονομίαν), to women. A woman, 171 then, should not be a busybody, meddling with matters outside her household concerns, but should seek a life of seclusion. She should not shew herself off like a vagrant in the streets before the eyes of other men, except when she has to go to the temple, and even then she should take pains to go, not when the market is full, but when most people have gone home, and so like a free-born lady worthy of the name, with everything quiet around her, make her oblations and offer her prayers to avert the evil and gain the good.
On Special Laws, 3.170–172[7]
There is a startling parallel between MacArthur and Philo views that a women’s appropriate sphere is in the house. But as Dorothy Sly obverses about Philo’s prescription, “it could only be followed in families wealthy enough to afford household help which would free the wife from running errands.”[8] There is an important gap in Philo’s view as noted by Sly, “We are faced with a problem. Where are the women who contribute to the family in a respectable manner.”[9] Do those who think wives should not work outside the home have a similar economic blindspot?
What does οἰκουργός say about the life of a wife on Crete?
First, let’s remind ourselves about what the passage says.
This is the NRSV rendition of Titus 2:1–7
But as for you, teach what is consistent with sound instruction. 2 Tell the older men to be temperate, serious, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love, and in endurance.
3 Likewise, tell the older women to be reverent in behavior, not to be slanderers or enslaved to much wine; they are to teach what is good, 4 so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, 5 to be self-controlled, chaste, good managers of the household (οἰκουργός), kind, submissive to their husbands, so that the word of God may not be discredited. 6 Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled 7 in all things, offering yourself as a model of good works and in your teaching offering integrity, gravity, 8 and sound speech that cannot be censured…
A Short History of the Housing on Crete
Archaeological evidence on Crete from the Classical and Hellenistic periods suggests that the men and women lived relatively separate lives; the men ate regularly in a separate andreion, “a men’s club,” while women controlled the household activities.[10] Unlike Greek cities, Cretan domestic housing did not have separate women’s quarters or a men’s andreion at the front of the house.[11] Hellenistic Cretan housing tended to be on a simple linear pattern with the main cooking and living quarters at the front of the house.[12] Domestic duties were carried out in the front room as suggested by the archaeological finds including fixed grinding stones, cooking hearths, fragments of pottery, and loom weights.[13] In a Greek house, these tasks were normally performed in the courtyard at the back of the house out of sight from anyone in the street.[14] The overall impression is that women in Cretan society tended to live far more in the public eye than their Greek counterparts.[15]
Although there are some examples of Greek housing on Crete, the housing type stays consistently linear into the Roman era.[16] The Romans conquered Crete in 69 BCE. Roman Crete saw a surge in economic activity with the development of ports and roads across the island. We can assume that Cretan housing built in the Hellenistic period continued to be occupied in the Roman era. However, once the Roman administration became established, Roman-style housing began to be built in various centres across the island.[17] This housing, both urban and rural villas, was for the more well-to-do and was more lavishly decorated than the traditional Cretan house.[18] Yet there was a certain continuity between the older style of Cretan housing and the Roman house. The doors of a Roman house were always open to the public, who could wait in the atrium to see the patriarch, or matriarch if her husband was not available.[19] The inside of the house was designed to be seen into and for this reason, Roman women also lived in the public eye.[20] All of this archaeological evidence gives us some tantalising insights into women’s daily life and work on Crete.
Focus on Titus 2:1-7
Titus 2 forms a unit opening with “but as for you, [tell]” (2:1) and closing with “[tell] these things” (2:15).[21] “These things” are consistent with “the sound [instruction]” (2:1), which relates to instruction in the art of living rather than doctrine.[22] The adjective “sound” refers to that which is healthy, so what is being urged is healthy living between the community members rather than the sickness of factionalism and disputes. “You tell” (2:1) begins a long loosely connected series, which unpacks “things which suit the healthy instructions.”[23] Those addressed are “old men” (2:2) “old women” (2:3) “young women” (2:4–5), “young men” (2:6), and “slaves” (2:9–10). The instructions to slaves seem parenthetical to the first four groups coming after a reminder to Titus to be a model “of good works in the instruction” (2:7). Some scholars refer to these instructions as a household code, but the language is more reminiscent of the polis (the city).[24] Rather than addressing husbands and wives (cf. Eph 5), the writer focuses on old men and young men. Their relationship forms a frame (Tit 2:2; 6) in which the older and younger women sit (Tit 2:3-5).
The older man says Plutarch in Precepts of Statecraft is free from “love of contention, love of fame, the desire to be first and greatest, which is a disease most prolific of envy, jealousy, and discord” (788 E).[25] Similarly, in Titus, the older men are to be temperate, serious, prudent (σώφρονας), and sound in faith, in love and in endurance (2:2). A man could be considered “young” from the time of eighteen up until the age of forty. Plutarch thought that younger men needed training and were not to rush into civic affairs. Plutarch advises the young aspiring statesman to find an older mentor, who could act as a model. We thus have standardised advice that the older man sets a pattern for the younger man which is introduced by the “likewise” (Tit 2:6). However, the “likewise” does not directly relate to the older man but is mediated by the “older women” and the “younger women.” The young men are to be “self-controlled” (σωφρονεῖν) as are the young women (Tit 2:5–6), which was the quintessential virtue of youth. This key virtue is “self-restraint” (σωφροσύνη).
The “older man” in Titus is to be a “man of restraint” (σώφρων) and he is to possess two other closely related virtues, “sobriety” and “dignity” (Tit 2:2). These three virtues are closely tied to civic life—the “man of restraint” and who has dignity is the best fitted to lead. The “older women” are “likewise” to attend to their publicly observed virtues (cf.1 Tim 3:11). The women’s virtues parallel the men’s virtues. They are to be reverent in their behavior (ἐν καταστήματι ἱεροπρεπεῖς) as the men are to be serious (σεμνούς); both ἱεροπρεπής and σεμνός have the connotation to be reverent (BDAG). The women are not to be liars, like those who are rebellious (Tit 1:10–2) and paying attention to “Jewish myths” (1 Tim 1:14). In contrast, it would seem they are to be sound (ὑγιαίνωσιν) in the faith (Tit 1:13) as the men are sound (ὑγιαίνοντας) also in faith, in love, and in endurance (Tit 2:2). As the men are to be temperate (Tit 2:2) or “sober,” the women are not to be “slaves to [much wine]” (Tit 2:3). In traditional Roman society, women did not drink wine—a husband could inflict the death penalty for this indulgence. However, in a Christian community that celebrated the Lord’s supper, women would be drinking wine (1 Cor 11:25–6), hence perhaps the warning not to be enslaved.
Then the writer breaks away from the pattern of the men to tell these older women they are to be either “teachers of what is good” or “good teachers” (Tit 2:3). Since a conditional clause follows, it is perhaps best to take it as “good teachers,” who are in a position to train (ἵνα σωφρονίζωσι) the younger women. The virtues that follow are, on first blush, the standard virtues of Greco-Roman wives; for example, Valeria was “kind, affectionate, dignified, blameless; she loved her husband and her children” (SEG 1536). While the virtues of the young women are domestic virtues that every Roman woman was expected to have, they are in no way “private.” That such virtues accompany a good reputation and are praised on tombstones speaks of the public visibility of wives. As we discussed above, “a manager of the household” implies observation by the neighbours as a wife went about her duties. Wives were expected to be at home and not out at dinner parties with their friends (cf. 1 Tim 5:13).
Where the writer departs from the “common virtues” is in the expectation that the young wives will be trained by the older women to be “submissive to their own husbands” (Tit 2:5). This is a surprising twist to the usual Roman norms that wives were to be obedient to their husbands. In the laudatory praise given by the Roman husband for his dead wife, he lists one of her domestic virtues as “obedience” (opsequi).[26] Traditionally the young wife was trained to be obedient by her husband: “As Hesiod instructs, ‘to teach her congenial habits.’ If he is going to teach her, he will give her orders; and if he is going to give his wife orders, he will bring her as close as he can to his own character, as superior leading inferior.”[27] Here in Titus a different educational scheme is set in place. Conventionally the older man would normally train the younger man. Yet the focus here is on the training of the younger women. This is somewhat out of the ordinary. The younger men are urged, like the younger women, to be “self-restrained” (σωφρονεῖν).
So What Can We Say About the Young Woman “Working At Home” (οἰκουργός)?
The word οἰκουργός only appears in the extant literature here in Titus 2:5.
A Greek-English Lexicon (LSJ) suggests that it also appears in Soranus’ Gynecology, but this is an error:
τὰς δὲ θηλείας διὰ τὸ οἰκουρὸν καὶ καθέδριον διάγειν βίον πλῆθος ὑποσυλλεγούσας (Soranus’ Gynecology, 1.27)[28]
So in relation to menstruation, Soranus says that women “accumulate [surplus matter] in considerable quantity because of the domestic (οἰκουρὸν) and sedentary life they lead.”[29]
The word that appears in Soranus’ Gynecology is οἰκουρός, which is glossed in the LSJ as “mistress of the house, housekeeper” when used for a woman, particularly “in praise of a wife.” For instance, Cassius Dio:
For is there anything better than a wife who is chaste (σώφρων), domestic (οἰκουρὸς), a good house-keeper (οἰκονόμος), a rearer of children; one to gladden you in health, to tend you in sickness; to be your partner in good fortune, to console you in misfortune; to restrain the mad passion of youth and to temper the unseasonable harshness of old age? (Book 56.3.3–4)[30]
We see here that the good wife is self-restrained as we have looked at but it must be that οἰκουρὸς means she “stays at home” or is “domestic,” as Cary translates, since she is also a οἰκονόμος a “housekeeper.” This word, οἰκονόμος, is closely related to οἰκονομίαν used in 1 Timothy 1:4 “a manager of God’s household.”
But this is not our οἰκουργός, “worker at home.” As we saw in our archaeology survey, there is evidence that women worked at the front of the Hellenistic era housing grinding, cooking, spinning and weaving. The ideal wife discussed by Cassius Dio is a “housekeeper.” Annette Huizenga in her study of the Pastoral Epistles and Pythagorean advice to women notes that the letter:
Theano to Kallisto concentrates on what this oikonomia (line 4) meant for a woman married to a male head-of-household: “… the first rule over the household for women is rule over the female slaves.” The letter explains that with respect to the supervision of household slaves “a young soul must be brought up in these things from girlhood,” although, as we have seen, under the characteristics of paraenesis it is not necessary to interpret this statement as implying something deficient about Kallisto’s upbringing. The young wife in Xenophon’s Oeconomicus betrays a similar lack of experience in this arena. It seems her mother has laid the groundwork in teaching her “to be moderate” (εἶναι σωφρονεῖν), but it remains for her husband Ischomachus to teach her more particulars about household management, especially how to handle the (indoor) slaves.[31]
The οἰκονόμος in Cassius Dio and oikonomia in Theano’s letter relate more to household management of slaves. As Dorothy Sly pointed out in Philo’s well-to-do household, he assumes the wife has household slaves to do the work for her. However, each household was different, depending on the husband’s occupation. The wife of the bailiff or overseer of an estate was expected to preserve the harvested produce.[32] However, the household duties for the wife of an urban merchant or tradesman would be different, hence the husband needed to train his wife in the specifics of his business. An example of a working wife is the wife of Terentius Neo from Pompeii, who appears to be the business administrator of their bakery.[33] In the mural depicting the couple, he is dressed in his white garments, indicating that he is running for civic office. His wife however is poised with her stylus and notebook, ready for the administrative tasks at hand in their business. However, the word in Titus is not about household management or oversight of slaves, but about work (ἔργον).
This word could be used of “women’s work” as when Odysseus’ nurse said to him “Then be sure, my child, I will tell you all the truth. Fifty women servants have you in your halls, women that we have taught to do their work (ἔργα), to card the wool and bear the lot of slaves.”[34]
In this era, households are economically productive. To instruct a woman to “work at home” was to instruct her to be economically productive.[35] Like Neo’s wife she may even do his work while he busies himself with civic duties. But what is remarkable is that the older woman is instructing the younger woman to work at home. The emphasis of instruction is subtly shifted from the husband to the community. Although the wife is to be submissive to her husband, it is the older women who are “good teachers” and training the younger wives in how to conduct themselves in “what is consistent with sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1). All of this is so “that the word of God may not be discredited” (Titus 2:5). And I think this provides the context for this training. It is not as Annette Huizenga argues:
On the other hand, given that the woman’s role in the household is called οἰκουργός, and the author wants the younger widows “to manage a household” (οἰκοδεσποτεῖν, 1Tim 5:14), the house church roles prescribed for women parallel their roles in the household, so that women are subordinated to men in both arenas, and are excluded from the house church leadership positions of overseer, elder, and deacon.[36]
This actually misses the obvious point that older women are models and trainers of younger women, while older men are models and trainers of younger men. The parallel, while gendered is still a parallel. The young wives are not instructed for the sake of their husbands as are the Pythagorean wives, but for the sake of the word of God. Their public presence as they worked in their house speaks not just for their submission to their husbands but to their submission to the word of God. And this takes us beyond a cloistered existence for Christian women as MacArthur seems to imagine, but to a public presence that commends the gospel to those who see and interact with the Christian woman. And in the twenty-first century, the work of a Christian wife may take her far beyond the actual walls of her house as it did for Beth Moore.
© Lyn M. Kidson, December 2023.
Dr Lyn Kidson is the author of Persuading Shipwrecked Men: Rhetorical Strategies of 1 Timothy 1. WUNT 526. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020.
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Recommended Reading
Women and Teaching in 1 Timothy: A Response to John Piper
Women and Overseers in 1 Timothy
Other articles on Engendered Ideas
Notes
Featured Image: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=177004
[1] Held 16-18th October 2019.
[2] Bob Smietana, “Accusing SBC of ‘caving,’ John MacArthur says of Beth Moore: ‘Go home,’” Religion News Service (October 19, 2019).
[3] John MacArthur, Titus, New Testament Commentary 26 (Kindle edition: Moody Publishers, 1996), loc. 1890.
[4] MacArthur, Titus, loc. 1907.
[5] Wayne Grudem, Evanglical Feminism and Biblical Truth (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2004), 178 –179; Davies, Glenn, “Biblical Study Paper: 1 Timothy 2:8–15,” in B.G. Webb ed., Personhood, Sexuality and Christian Ministry (Homebush West: Lancer Books, 1987), 83–95.
[6] This is a popular view; for instance, see Lori Alexander “Men Prefer Debt-Free Virgins Without Tattoos” (16th July 2018) (my response can be found in this article: The Working, Educated Christian Woman); also by Lori Alexander, “Abandoning Children to Work Outside of the Home is a Violation of Scripture” (26th Nov 2018); Scott Coltrain, “Working Women And Titus 2:5” (31 Mar 2017); this is in spite of the more nuance positions that recognise that economic necessity could take a woman outside of the home; see MacArthur (above), Andreas J. Köstenberger and Margaret Elizabeth Köstenberger, God’s Design for Man and Woman: A Biblical-Theological Survey (Crossway, 2014), 218; the more recent and clearly articulated position by Bill Mounce, “Should Women ‘Work at Home’? How to Understand and Apply Titus 2:5” (October 19, 2023).
[7] Philo, On the Decalogue. On the Special Laws, Books 1-3. Translated by F. H. Colson. Loeb Classical Library 320 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1937), 170–172.
[8] Dorothy Sly, Philo’s Perception of Women, Brown Judaic Studies (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), 197.
[9] Ibid., 197.
[10] John Bintliff, The Complete Archaeology of Greece: From Hunter-Gatherers to the 20th Century A.D. (Chichester, UK: Wiley, 2012), 301; Ruth Westgate, “House and Society in Classical and Hellenistic Crete: A Case Study in Regional Variation,” AJA 111.3 (2007): 423–457 (451).
[11] Westgate, “House,” 426–427.
[12] Ibid., 434, 446, 452.
[13] Ibid, 447.
[14] Ibid., 426–432.
[15] Ibid., 439, 441, 447.
[16] Ibid., 446, 450.
[17] Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, “Rome’s Cultural Revolution,” JRS 79 (1989): 157–64 (84–85).
[18] Rebecca J. Sweetman, “Domus, Villa, and Farmstead: The Globalization of Crete,” in Στεγα: The Archaeology of Houses and Households in Ancient Crete, edited by Kevin T. Glowacki and Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan (Princeton: The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2011), 441–450 (450)
[19] Wallace-Hadrill, “Rome’s Cultural Revolution,” 46, 55–56, 81–83.
[20] Ibid., 50–52, 82–84.
[21] Philip H. Towner, The Letters to Timothy and Titus, NICNT (Grand Rapids; Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2006), 717.
[22] Lyn M. Kidson, Persuading Shipwrecked Men: Rhetorical Strategies of 1 Timothy 1, WUNT 526 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020), 120.
[23] Trans. Lyn Kidson; I. Howard. Marshall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles. ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), 237–238
[24] Kidson, Persuading, 142–146; Barry S. Strauss, Fathers and Sons in Athens: Ideology and Society in the Era of the Peloponnesian War (London: Routledge, 1993)., 32.
[25] Plutarch, “Precepts of Statecraft,” trans. & ed. Harold North Fowler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936).
[26] G.H.R. Horsley, New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids; Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1983), No.8 (33–6).
[27] Aristides, “Reply to Plato,” Or 2.129: Orations, Volume I, ed. Michael Trapp, LCL 533 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017); Plutarch, Marcus Cato, 347; Advice to the Bride and Groom, 145C.
[28] J. Ilberg, Sorani Gynaeciorum libri iv, de signis fracturarum, de fasciis, vita Hippocratis secundum Soranum [Corpus medicorum Graecorum 4. Leipzig: Teubner, 1927]: 3–152.
Retrieved from: http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/Iris/Cite?0565:001:31622
[29] Soranus, “Gynecology,” (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956), 1.27.
[30] Dio Cassius, Roman History, Volume VII: Books 56–60. Translated by Earnest Cary, Herbert B. Foster. Loeb Classical Library 175 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1924).
[31] Annette Bourland Huizenga, Moral Education for Women in the Pastoral and Pythagorean Letters: Philosophers of the Household (Boston: Brill, 2013), 194–195.
[32] Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella, “On Agriculture.” Loeb Classical Library 361 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941), Book 12.
[33] Paul Roberts, Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum (London: British Museum Press, 2013), 107–108; An even clearer example is the case of Bernice the wife Apion, who is a wine merchant (P.Oxy 22 2342).
[34] Homer, Odyssey, Volume II: Books 13–24. Translated by A. T. Murray. Revised by George E. Dimock. Loeb Classical Library 105 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919), 22.422; cf. Homer, Iliad 9.390.
[35] Lena Larsson Lovén, “The Invisible Women of Roman Agrarian Work and Economy,” in J. Rantala ed, Gender, Memory, and Identity in the Roman World, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019), 89–104.
[36] Huizenga, Moral Education, 336,
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