The scholarly article “The Syntactic Flexibility of 1 Corinthians 14:33b” by Aļesja Lavrinoviča, a member of the Association of Latvian Lutheran Women Theologians and a theology doctoral candidate, has been published in the prestigious Journal of Biblical Literature, which has been issued since 1881. We are proud of Aļesja’s achievement!
In the 2012 Latvian translation, 1 Cor. 14:33-34 reads, “As in all the congregations of the saints, let the women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but let them remain in the obedience prescribed by the law.” This has been and still continues to be a controversial passage of Scripture in the theological discourse on the ordination of women.
Aļesja’s research analyzes how and whether the phrase “As in all the congregations of the saints” can be joined to the subsequent statement about women keeping silent in the church community. The conclusions of the work — a syntactic analysis of 1 Cor. 14:33b confirms the suspicions of 19th-century theologians that the phrase “as in all the congregations of the saints…” is an editorial insertion. Linking 1 Cor. 14:33b with the subsequent text about women in the congregations is only one of seven syntactically possible ways in which the text can be read, and it is not the most likely variant of the text’s interpretation.
The published article can be read in the 141st issue of the Journal of Biblical Literature (March 2022) or by contacting the author personally.