Ephesians 5:21-33 And The Lack Of Marital Unity In The Roman Empire

By Jack J. Gibson

[Jack J. Gibson is Adjunct Professor of Bible, Lancaster Bible College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.]

Contemporary discussions on the relationship between husbands and wives in Ephesians 5:21-33 often relate Paul’s statements and instructions to modern marriage without adequately considering the nature of the marriages of Paul’s original readers.[1] Commentators often seem to assume that there were no differences between types of marriages among Paul’s readers. Discussing the submission of the wife in 1 Peter 3:1, Elliott asserts that Paul “reflects conventional norms and expectations regulating marital relations and uxorial [wifely] conduct in the Greco-Roman and Israelite world.”[2] Lincoln observes that “the early Christian codes . . . turn out in practice to be in line with the variety within the consistent patriarchal pattern throughout Greco-Roman society, where subordination of wives to husbands … was the overarching norm.”[3]

However, this is not entirely accurate. Marriage regulations among Romans, Greeks, and Jews differed significantly. While submission of wives to husbands was commonplace among Greeks and Jews, it was extremely rare for Roman wives to be in submission to their husbands. And while divorce was bilateral according to Roman and Hellenistic law, Jewish law allowed only the husband to initiate a divorce. Thus a metropolitan center such as Ephesus would have included people in a diversity of forms of marriage in close proximity with one another. Members of each culture would have been cognizant of these differences. The merits of each system would doubtless have been debated in the forum, home, and bathhouse. This would have included Christians from all three cultures—Roman, Greek, and Jewish.

In addition divorce was easily obtained in Hellenistic and Roman marriages. First-century Jewish marriage contracts reflect a movement toward making divorce easier as well. In light of these conditions a question arose regarding marriage: Among Christians should the Roman, Hellenistic, or Jewish marital system be adopted? Or should a combination be chosen? Or something new altogether? Before discussing Paul’s instructions on how marriages should function, it would be appropriate to look at options current in the first century and how each culture—Roman, Greek, and Jewish—attempted to strengthen the institution of marriage.

Roman Marriage

Concerning the law of persons another division follows. For certain persons are legally independent (sui iuris), certain are subject to someone else’s law. But again, of those persons, who are subject to someone else’s law, some are in power (potestas), some in marital subordination (manus)… . This law belongs to Roman citizens; for there are almost no other men, who have such power over their children as we have (Gaius, Institutes of Gaius 1.48-49, 55).

During the era of the Roman republic, a married woman who was also a Roman citizen was in a position of subordination. However, depending on the type of marriage, the individual to whom she was subordinate could be either her father or her husband. In the first instance the father (paterfamilias) exerted patria potestas over his daughter. This existed from the day she was born to the day her father died. This power was officially absolute, though social conventions tended to limit it somewhat.[4] Besides all legal transactions being subject to the father’s approval, including marriage and divorce, he also had the right to force his daughter to divorce.[5] One of the prime concerns was to keep the property of the husband and wife separate. This led to a law prohibiting the exchange of gifts between spouses (Ulpian, Digest 24.1.1, 3; Paulus, Digest 24.1.2),[6] certainly not a practice guaranteed to strengthen the bonds of matrimony. Of course a husband might still theoretically exercise control within his own household in a practical sense, especially while his wife was young. Roman law, however, did not support him in this unless she officially entered usus,[7] and her father would have the legal option of exerting his authority over his daughter whenever he chose.

The second form of marriage involved the woman being transferred from the authority (patria potestas) of her father to that of her husband (manus). Though not identical, the authority the husband had over his wife in a manus marriage was similar to what the father had over his daughter before the marriage,[8] with the wife required to be completely obedient to her husband.[9] A manus marriage did not exist at the outset of a marriage; instead the father’s authority over his daughter was transferred to her husband only after she was married and lived together with her husband for one year (usus). Roman law allowed a woman who did not want to enter manus to interrupt usus by spending three nights a year away from her husband.[10]

While manus marriages predominated in the early Roman Empire, a switch occurred around the middle of the first century B.C., with greater numbers of marriages no longer involving manus (at least among the upper classes), which meant the father retained patria potestas over his daughter.[11] However, manus marriages did not disappear. For example during the principate of Nero, Pomponia Graecina was “left to the jurisdiction of her husband” and tried “before a family council … for alien superstition” by her husband Aulus Plautius (Tacitus, Annals 13.32). Thus even as marriages without manus became more common, the option remained for a woman to alter the type of marriage from one without manus to one with manus by not interrupting usus for one year.

A major difficulty in assessing marriage in the Roman world is that the relevant sources are often concerned solely with the upper classes. A prime reason for marriages without manus was to ensure that any property that might be gifted or willed to a wife would accrue to her father, even if she were married.[12] It may be that the percentages of marriages without manus were greater where legacies were more common (among the wealthier class), and that marriages with manus continued to be common among the poorer classes. Yet as marital unity was not encouraged by either form of Roman marriage, such uncertainty does not adversely affect this study.

Under Augustus, in 18 B.C. and A.D. 9, new legislation was passed that significantly modified the position of women in marriage (Cassius Dio, Roman History 54.16.1-2; 56.1-10; Suetonius, Divius Augustus 34; Tacitus, Annals 3.25, 28).[13] These laws seem to have been intended to buttress the place of marriage in Roman society.[14] Marriage was required for men and women of a certain age, as was remarriage following divorce or the death of a spouse.

Children were also encouraged. A married freeborn woman with three children (four if she were a freedwoman) was granted emancipation from either her father (if she were under patria potestas) or her husband (if she were in a manus marriage). She thus became legally independent (sui iurus) and free to conduct financial transactions without the approval of a male. Even if she had not given birth to a sufficient number of children, a woman in a marriage without usus would become independent when her father died. This right of sui iurus was seemingly viewed as a high honor by many women, as evidenced by its inclusion on several inscriptions.[15]

Thus there were three different possible circumstances for a married female Roman citizen. She could be in a legal situation of submission to her father, one of submission to her husband, or be legally independent of both.

As marriages without manus became more common, so did divorce. In Roman law a marriage existed as long as both the husband and wife and each of their fathers (if still alive) consented. “Sleeping together does not make marriage, but consent does” (Cicero, De oratore 1.56.239; Livy 4.9.4-6; Ulpian, Digest 50.17.30; cf. Paul, Digest 23.2.2; 45.1.134; Julian, Digest 23.1.11).[16] Similarly, the withdrawal of consent constituted the revocation of a marriage (Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum 5.4.1; Gaius, Digest 24.2.3).[17] Divorce was thus easily attainable, and later jurists suggested that it was considered normal in many circumstances such as the attainment of a priesthood, sterility, old age, ill health, or military service (Digest 24.1.60-61; cf. Cicero, Epistulae ad familiares 8.7.2).[18]

That Augustus felt the need to pass legislation requiring marriage implies that successful marriages were on the decline.[19] Seneca, writing in the mid-first century A.D., reported that divorce among women was rampant (De beneficiis 3.16; cf. Martial, Epigrams 6.7; Juvenal, Satirae 6.224-230). Though he may have been overstating reality from a misogynist agenda,[20] there is likely some truth in Seneca’s characterization. Likewise a funerary inscription in Rome from the first century B.C., eulogizing a wife of forty years, notes that “marriages as long as ours are rare, marriages that are ended by death and not broken by divorce” (ILS 8393).

Yet Augustus’s purpose was not specifically to promote unity within marriages. Among other issues this legislation was intended to address, the problem was the failure of citizens to marry or to remarry, not divorce itself.[21] So the Roman solution to the marriage crisis was not to strengthen marital unity, but simply to require Roman citizens to remarry if divorce occurred. Treggiari is correct in noting that “the availability of divorce and the ability of either husband or wife to divorce unilaterally without validation by public authority would strongly affect the nature of marriage, even if neither spouse chose to exercise the option.”[22]

In fact it is possible that Augustus’s provision that emancipated a woman after having three children may have had its own deleterious effect on marriage, encouraging a woman to consider herself independent from all men, including her husband. A liberalizing trend appears to have created what some scholars term the “New Woman.”[23] With legal independence and greater financial security, wives tended to engage in the same type of casual adultery already common among their husbands, leading to a further separation of spouses.

This trend is clearly seen among royalty. Cleopatra (Suetonius, Divius Julius 52.1-2; Divius Augustus 17), the last pharaoh of Egypt, was involved in affairs with both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Julia, daughter of Augustus, had several lovers and was exiled because of her adultery (Suetonius, Divius Augustus 65; Tacitus, Annals 1.53). Valeria Messalina, third wife of Claudius, was both sexually licentious and controlling, and convinced her husband to put numerous people to death. She was eventually executed on the charge of adultery (Pliny, Naturalis historia 10.172; Juvenal, Satirae 6; Suetonius, Divius Claudius 26.2; Tacitus, Annals 11.12, 26-38).

While the life of the common person differed from that of royalty, stories about these nontraditional wives could not have failed to become topics of discussion for women of all social classes. Some would surely have condemned and ridiculed these women. Others, however, would have been strongly influenced by them.[24]

Hellenistic Marriage

The male is by nature superior and the female inferior, the male ruler and the female subject (Aristotle, Politica 1.2.12).

Apart from some papyri discovered in Egypt, most of the data on Hellenistic marriages (those involving Greeks who were not Roman citizens) comes from the classical rather than the Roman era. Aristotle wrote that since the male is by nature superior and the female inferior, the male should rule and the female be in submission (Politica 1.2.12). The male, he said, is by nature better fitted to command than the female (ibid., 1.5.2).[25] In classical Athens a woman was obliged to marry the man her father (or male guardian, if her father had died) had arranged for her. On marriage the authority over a woman passed from father to husband (cf. P.Eleph. I; 311 B.C.).

Though the father (or closest male relative) reserved the right to compel the dissolution of the marriage in the classical period, by the first century B.C. this right had been negated at least in Roman Egypt, with only the husband or wife having the authority to initiate a divorce, with no social stigma attached to those who did divorce.[26] Whether this change was limited to Greeks living in Egypt or was common throughout the Hellenistic world is unknown.[27] One element in Hellenistic marriages that did continue was that the wife remained under the authority of her husband; a marriage contract in Egypt (P.Oxy. III 496; A.D. 127) notes that the daughter was given (ἔκδοσις) to the husband by the father (cf. P.Giss. 2; 173 B.C.). Also of note is P.Tebt. 104 (92 B.C.), which states that the wife is to obey her husband.[28] Plutarch wrote that a wife should not have friends of her own and should worship the gods of her husband and should “shut the front door tight upon all queer rituals and outlandish superstitions” (Conjugalia Praecepta 19).

While some marriage contracts do stipulate that a husband was to be sexually faithful to his wife (P.Eleph. I; P.Tebt. 104; B.G.U. 1052 [13 B.C.]; P.Oxy. III 496), it seems to have been socially acceptable for husbands to engage in casual adultery with slave girls.[29] Xenophon (Oeconomicus 10.12-13) noted that he preferred his wife to a mistress because she came willingly to him (whereas a mistress’s favor must be purchased). But this simply means that Xenophon’s rationale for abstaining from adultery was purely selfish, and not done for the sake of his wife. Some later philosophers, such as Musonius Rufus in his work On Sexual Indulgence, chastised husbands who committed adultery with slave girls, but these teachings do not seem to have had a significant effect on sexual licentiousness. Even Plutarch, who extolled the virtue of love in marriage, cautioned husbands from committing adultery because such acts make wives angry and cause them to commit adultery themselves. However, his specific suggestion is that a husband be “clean of intercourse” immediately prior to coming to his wife’s bed. Presumably, so long as he was discreet, adultery was permissible.

Indeed, Plutarch advised a wife not to become angry or annoyed if her husband did commit adultery after becoming drunk, but rather recognize that her husband is respecting her by “shar[ing] his intemperance or violent behavior with another woman.”[30]

Unlike Roman marriages, there does not seem to have been an attempt to address the problem of divorce among Hellenistic marriages. Women were given greater economic protections in case divorce did occur, thus better enabling a woman to provide for herself and perhaps even find a new husband. But there was no significant incentive for a husband not to divorce his wife apart from the need to return her dowry.

Jewish Marriage

The woman, says the Law, is in all things inferior to the man. Let her accordingly be submissive, not for her humiliation, but that she may be directed; for the authority has been given by God to the man (Josephus, Against Apion 2.201).[31]

According to rabbinic tradition a woman was transferred from the authority of her father to her husband at the moment of marriage (m. Ketub. 4.5; 7.8).[32] Technically this was viewed as a type of transference of property (m. Qidd. 1.1-5) and has its roots in the Old Testament (מֹהַר, “bride price,” Gen. 34:12; Exod. 22:17; 1 Sam. 18:25). By the rabbinic period and likely in the first century as well the amount paid by a prospective husband was so minimal as to be merely symbolic (m. Qidd. 1.1).[33] Yet symbols are not immaterial, especially in a society such as second-temple Judaism, where symbolism was closely connected to reality. The wife was in a completely subordinate position to her husband (t. Qidd. 1.11).[34] Her vows could be overturned by her husband if they were regarded as “afflicting his soul,” and all that she acquired belonged to her husband (m. Ketub. 8.1).

In addition to the small bride price paid by the husband,[35] a marriage contract (ketubah) was arranged in which a lien was placed on the husband’s property, which would provide a payment to the wife in the event of divorce or death. In the few marriage contracts discovered in the Judean desert, the amount of the ketubah ranged from ninety-six to two thousand denarii.[36] Thus unlike the 'מהַר, the ketubah was not symbolic; instead it was quite substantial. While only the husband could initiate a divorce, he would be responsible for the payment of the ketubah, which might cause him to reconsider;[37] in m. Ned. 9.5 a story is related in which a husband retracted his request for a divorce because he could not afford the ketubah.[38]

This, however, was the only significant deterrent to divorce that seems to have existed in second-temple Judaism. While the morality of arbitrary divorce was questioned in some sources (e.g., Prov. 5:15-19; Eccles. 9.9; Mal. 2:14-16; t. Gitt. 90b), in the first century A.D. the view of the school of Hillel predominated, which held that divorce was acceptable in such seemingly incongruous matters as a wife spoiling a meal or a man finding another woman more beautiful (m. Gitt. 9.10; cf. Philo, De specialibus legibus 3.30; Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews 4.253). And even the obligation to pay the ketubah could be abrogated if the wife had committed an unworthy act. Along with adultery, possible infractions allowing the husband to keep the ketubah following a divorce included a wife who spoke with another man, scolded so that neighbors heard her voice, cursed her husband’s parents, kept secret vows from her husband, or proved to be barren (m. Ketub. 7.6-9; 11.6; m. Gitt. 4.8).

Evidence also suggests a tendency toward a Hellenization of Jewish marital practice. Of the eight Jewish marital contracts that have been discovered (three in Aramaic and five in Greek, all of which date to the first half of the second century A.D.), only two of the Aramaic documents (P.Mur. 20; P.Yadin 10) record that the husband is taking a wife “according to the custom of Moses and the Jews.” The other Aramaic contract (P.Mur. 21) and the five Greek contracts (P.Mur. 115, 116; P.Yadin 18, 37; XHev/Se. Gr. Inv. No. 870) exclude this phrase, and two of the Greek contracts (P.Yadin 18, 37) state that the husband is to provide for his wife “according to the Greek custom” (P.Yadin 37 adds “and Greek manners”).

Even more instructive is the fact that P.Yadin 10 and P.Yadin 18 are both written by the same individual (Babatha), thus suggesting that Jews may have felt free to be married in either the Jewish or Greek manner. Tal Ilan opines that a husband may have preferred a Hellenistic marriage because it would allow for an easier divorce; he would not be responsible for the payment of a ketu-bah.[39] This is made more likely since marriage contracts written in Greek would have been accepted in Hellenistic courts.[40] The Babatha contracts were discovered next to the Dead Sea and date to the time just before the Bar-Kochba revolt when Jewish nationalism was strong. It seems likely that Diaspora Jews would have been even more prone to be married according to Hellenistic custom. Of course this indicates that the deterrent to divorce (the ketubah) may not have been common in Jewish marriages.[41]

In addition, while the ketubah may have had the effect of limiting the number of divorces (without specific demographic data regarding marriages and divorces, one may only speculate as to its effectiveness), it would not have specifically promoted unity within marriage. The wife may have had greater marital security. But in a system that designated a marriage as the transference of property, however symbolic this financial exchange may have been, it would have been countercultural for a husband to view his wife as an equal partner in marriage.

Paul’s Response: Create Unity In Marriage

Two concepts in Ephesians are of prominent importance to this study. Paul wrote that a new οἰκονομία was to be established, different from that to which Paul’s readers had previously belonged (Eph. 1:9-10; 3:3-10), whether Roman, Greek, or Jewish, or some combination of the three. And unity is intended to be a central principle of this new οἰκονομία. The verb ἀνακεφαλαιόω in 1:10 includes the concept of unity; all things are unified through their being summed up in Christ. In 3:6, Gentiles are united with Jews as “fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” The two concepts are also brought together in 2:19-22. Both Jews and Gentiles belong to God’s οἰκεῖος (“household”), are unified as “fellow citizens,” and are “built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.” Also the theme of the unity of the body is prevalent throughout 4:1-16 and undergirds the parenesis of 4:17-32.

Following the form of a Haustafel (“domestic code”) commonly known throughout the Greco-Roman world,[42] Paul set forth in 5:22-31 the details of how the traditional pairs within an οἰκονομία (husband/wife, father/child, master/slave) should relate to each other. In his discussion of the marital relationship Paul’s instructions directly confronted the marriage crisis described above. The central principle that should guide husbands and wives is unity, as stated in Genesis 2:24—”For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh”—and quoted in Ephesians 5:31.

Each of the other οἰκονομία had responded to this crisis in its own way. The Augustan legislation attempted to compel Roman citizens to marry soon after divorce. At the most, however, this would have succeeded in maintaining a high marriage rate, not a low divorce rate. In the Hellenistic world the return of the dowry to the wife in the event of divorce gave her greater security, but this would not have significantly decreased the rate of divorce, as the dowry had previously been payable to the father of a divorced wife. Jewish law mandated the payment of a ketubah following most divorces, but its deterrence factor was limited by the option of Jews to be married according to Hellenistic law. And in none of these οἰκονομίαι was there an emphasis on marital unity. The ability of Roman wives to become emancipated would have had the effect of facilitating the exaltation of the “New Woman,” separating husbands and wives even further. Hellenistic wives may also have been influenced by this cultural phenomenon. Nor would the attempt by Jewish law to make divorce more difficult have necessarily promoted harmony between husband and wife. The promotion of marital unity simply does not seem to have been a significant concern of either philosophers or legislators.

An exception to this tendency is stated in the Ephesian Haustafel, dedicated to the relationship between husbands and wives. It addresses the issue of marital unity in a manner that would have been pertinent to Romans, Greeks, and Jews. Paul’s twice-stated command that wives are to submit to their husbands (5:22, 24) would have been very applicable to Roman Christians. After all, the average Roman wife did not submit to her husband. Instead, she continued to submit to her father (if she was in the more common marriage without manus), or if she had borne sufficient children and had been emancipated, she submitted to no one. Whether such a wife identified with the “New Women” or was a more “traditional” woman, she was not in a position of submission to her husband.

As already noted, this had the effect of causing disunity within marriage. Even Roman marriages that did not end in divorce would not necessarily have been characterized by unity.

In the Roman context Paul’s words that wives are to submit to their husbands meant entering into a manus marriage of a new sort. As described above, this was possible at any time for any Roman wife by simply continuing to live with her husband for an entire year and thus not interrupting usus. Therefore this statement by Paul to wives would have been understood by them as meaning they were to enter into a type of marriage in which a wife submitted to her husband rather than her father, and that she was not to follow the trend of the “New Woman” in allowing her newly achieved emancipation to lead her to adopt an independent identity separate from her husband. In the new οἰκονομία of God, she should favor a relationship with her husband that promoted unity, rather than obstructed it.

While the issue of unity tended to be more bilateral in the Roman context, given the greater independence of Roman wives, it was primarily male-driven in the Hellenistic and Jewish worlds. In both Hellenistic and Jewish marriages, as well as in Roman manus marriages, the husband’s relationship with his wife was characterized by domination and governance. And among Jews married according to Jewish law, only the husband could initiate a divorce. Thus while a Roman wife could respond to Paul’s call for marital unity by entering into a manus marriage and submitting to her husband, there was little that Hellenistic and Jewish wives could do to promote marital unity. Indeed they were already in a position of submission to their husbands. So any attempt by Paul to effectively respond to the marriage crisis of his day would have to be primarily directed toward the responsibility of the husband.

In a forthcoming study on κεφαλὴ in Greco-Roman literature, Michelle Lee-Barnewall makes a compelling case that Paul’s argument in Ephesians 5:22-33 was extremely countercultural. She asserts that κεφαλὴ, when it appears in the context of head/body imagery (as it is in Eph. 5:22-33) emphasized the superiority of the head over the body. Seneca, for example, described how Nero as capite was to be protected at all costs (De clementia 1.4.3) and the members of the body (Roman citizens) should be expected to sacrifice themselves for his benefit (ibid., 1.3.3-4). Thus “for the head to endanger itself is not seen as a noble action, but rather a misguided one.”[43] In addition, the capite was meant to be loved, not necessarily to love others (ibid., 1.3.4; 1.5.1-2).

Paul, on the other hand, presented a very different perspective. To quote the title of Lee-Barnewall’s essay, he was “turning κεφαλὴ on its head.” Rather than the wife sacrificing herself for her husband (her κεφαλὴ), Paul admonished the husband to sacrifice himself for her (v. 25). Though certainly the wife is to love her husband, the emphasis given here is for the husband, as the κεφαλὴ, to love his wife. Lee-Barnewall contends that this reversal would have been surprising to Paul’s audience, who would have understood it as important to the health of the body for the head to receive the greatest priority.[44]

Though the husband is to be in a position of authority over his wife, it is a type of authority never seen before or since (apart from Christ). In every human οἰκονομία, the κεφαλὴ is a position of honor. Such a person is waited on by servants; every need of the κεφαλὴ is met by others. In the οἰκονομία of God, however, the situation is reversed. The κεφαλὴ is the one who sacrifices.

The husband who loves his wife in this way will continually sacrifice himself for her in the same way Christ loves the church and sacrificed Himself for her (v. 25). The husband’s decisions should be based on what is best for his wife, not for himself. She is to take priority over himself. If he is supposed to be willing to die for her, certainly he should be willing to do anything else for her. This is how a husband fulfills his portion of the mutual submission entailed in verse 21: he subjects himself to his wife by always sacrificing his own needs for hers.

Paul’s declaration in verse 32 that he was talking about the mystery of Christ and the church supports this interpretation. Christ is the Head of the church, but in a manner completely unanticipated. His leadership over the church involves His sacrifice for the church.

No admonition to husbands could have been more countercultural to the Roman, Greek, or Jewish man. Instead of being the ruler of the household, he is to be its servant. The husband’s obligation goes far beyond being sexually faithful to his wife. And in no teaching anywhere in Roman, Greek, or Jewish writings is such a solution to the problem of disunity within marriage put forth.[45] Rather than focusing on the rights of the husbands and wives, rather than providing financial incentives for the promotion of marriage, Paul drove right to the heart of marital unity by presenting the sacrifice of Christ on the cross as the model for the relationship of the husband to the wife.

This is not a form of equal, mutual submission. This is not a marriage in which husbands submit to their wives in the same way wives submit to their husbands. This is instead a type of marriage in which the submission of husband to wife is greater than the submission of wife to husband. The wife is to submit to her husband, and not to her father. She is to submit to her husband, and not embrace an emancipation that separates her from her husband. But the husband’s submission to his wife is far more comprehensive. In the new οἰκονομία of God, the husband is called on to be willing to sacrifice everything for his wife, up to and including his life. For the husband, this is what it means for him to love his wife. The wife, in return is to respect her husband and show respect to him for his sacrifices on her behalf (v. 33). A marriage characterized by such love and respect will indeed be a unified marriage.

Notes

1. Two examples are Gilbert G. Bilezikian, Beyond Sex Roles: A Guide for the Study of Female Roles in the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985); and George W. McKnight, “Husbands and Wives as Analogues of Christ and the Church: Ephesians 5:21-33 and Colossians 3:18-19,” in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, ed. John Piper and Wayne Grudem (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1991), 165-78.
2. John Hall Elliott, 1 Peter: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 554.
3. Andrew T. Lincoln, Ephesians, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, 1990), 359. See also Peter H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 115; Paul J. Achtemeier, 1 Peter: A Commentary on First Peter, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 206-7; Peter T. O’Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians, Pillar Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 413. A notable exception is Harold W. Hoehner, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 734-35, 740-41.
4. Susan Treggiari, “Divorce Roman Style: How Easy and How Frequent Was It?” in Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome, ed. Beryl Rawson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 34.
5. Keith Hopkins, Death and Renewal, Sociological Studies in Roman History 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 86-88; Judith Evans Grubbs, Women and the Law in the Roman Empire: A Sourcebook on Marriage, Divorce and Widowhood (London: Routledge, 2002), 195-98. This law was not abrogated until the mid-second century A.D. A prominent example of the utilization of this right is when Augustus compelled his adopted son Tiberius to divorce his first wife Vipsania Agrippina, whom Tiberius loved, and instead marry Julia the Elder, the daughter of Augustus (Suetonius, Tiberius 7.2-3).
6. According to Alan Watson this “prohibition seems to extend back into the Republic and be due to custom” (The Law of Property in the Later Roman Republic [Oxford: Clarendon, 1968], 229).
7. When a wife lived with her husband uninterrupted for a year, she entered what was called usus, or “use”; in marriage, this implied the wife was now under the possession, or authority, of her husband, just as if she was his daughter.
8. Both Valerius Maximus (Memorable Deeds and Sayings 6.3.7-12) and Aulus Gellius (Noctes atticae 10.23.4-5) record instances of husbands judging and executing their wives in the early Roman republic; however, while they wrote in the first and second centuries A.D., respectively, it is unclear whether the right of life and death (ius vitae nesisque) was given to a husband over his wife in a manus marriage (even if rarely used), or if it was limited to the father who had patria potestas over his daughter.
9. Cf., for example, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates romanae 2.25.4.
10. A woman could enter manus in other ways, but these had largely disappeared by the first century A.D. See Gaius, Institutes of Gaius 1.109-13; Tacitus, Annals 4.16; and Susan Treggiari, Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002), 13-28.
11. Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 30, 34.
12. Ibid. 32.
13. Ibid., 60-80; and Thomas A. McGinn, Prostitution, Sexuality, and the Law in Ancient Rome (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 70-84. While most of the information regarding marriages is restricted to the aristocratic class, Hopkins observes that “changes in legal practice probably reflected widespread changes in social attitudes” (Death and Renewal, 90).
14. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill argues that they were also intended to solidify the process by which property was transmitted (“Family and Inheritance in the Augustan Marriage Laws,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 207 [1981]: 58-80).
15. CIL XI.6354; CIL VI.1877; CIL VI.10246; SEG IV.544; CIL III.755. Cf. Grubbs, Women and the Law, 40-43.
16. Alan Watson, The Law of Persons in the Later Roman Republic (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967), 41-47.
17. Cf. Treggiari, “Divorce Roman Style,” 33-37.
18. Cf. Watson, The Law of Persons, 54-55; Richard Saller, “Patria Potestas and the Stereotype of the Roman Family,” Continuity and Change 1 (1986): 7-8; Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 435-65; and idem, “Divorce Roman Style,” 37-38.
19. Cf. Cassius Dio, Roman History 56.1; and Hopkins, Death and Renewal, 78-97.
20. Seneca (De clementia 1.5.5; De ira 22.19.4, 20.3; De constantia 14.1) follows Aristotle and Plato in declaring women to be inferior to men.
21. McGinn, Prostitution, Sexuality, and the Law in Ancient Rome, 78-83.
22. Treggiari, “Divorce Roman Style,” 46.
23. Elaine Fantham et al., Women in the Classical World: Image and Text (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 280-93; and Bruce W. Winter, Roman Wives, Roman Widows: The Appearance of New Women and the Pauline Communities (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 1-74.
24. Susan E. Wood observes that “a woman living in any city or town in the Roman Empire would have known the faces of most members of the ruling family, even if she had never seen them in person. . . . The married women of the imperial family would provide her with examples of appropriate ways for a wife to behave” (Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 B.C.–A.D. 68 [Leiden: Brill, 1999], 1). Juvenal rhetorically asked, “Is there any woman who will hold back from what an emperor’s wife has done?” (Satirae 6.617). See also the idealization of sexual promiscuity in the poetry of Ovid.
25. Cf. Plato, Leges 6.781A; Respublica 5.455D, 457A. While Plato’s view of women was more egalitarian than Aristotle’s (Plato contended that women should receive equal access to education), both clearly viewed women as inferior to men.
26. Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (New York: Schocken, 1975), 62-65, 129.
27. Pomeroy cautions against making the assumption that Hellenistic law was uniform throughout the eastern provinces (ibid., 126; cf. 129, 158).
28. See A. S. Hunt and C. C. Edgar, Select Papyri I; LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932), 6. See also Plato, Meno 71 E.; and Aristotle, Politica 1.2.12.
29. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves, 128.
30. Conjugalia praecepta 16-17, 44. A Neopythagorean text urges the wife to “bear all that her husband bears, whether he be unlucky or sin out of ignorance, whether he be sick or drunk or sleep with other women. For this latter sin is peculiar to men, but never to women. Rather it brings vengeance upon her. Therefore, a woman must preserve the law and not emulate men. And she must endure her husband’s temper, stinginess, complaining, jealousy, abuse, and anything else peculiar to his nature. . . . And if her husband thinks something is sweet, she will think so too; or if he thinks something bitter, she will agree with him. Otherwise she will be out of tune with her whole universe” (Holger Thesleff, The Pythagorean Texts of the Hellenistic Period, trans. Flora R. Levin [Abo: Akademi, 1965], 142-45).
31. Cf. Philo, Hypothetica 7.3-5. Richard A. Baer describes Philo’s contention that the masculine part of the person (the rational) should rule the feminine part (the sense-perception) (Philo’s Use of the Categories Male and Female [Leiden: Brill, 1970], 14-64).
32. Similar to some Hellenistic marriage contracts, a Jewish marriage contract from A.D. 128 (P.Yadin 18) states that the father, Judah, son of Eleazar, had given (ἔκδοτος) his daughter Shelamzion to Judah, son of Kimber. While technically a girl was emancipated from her father when she turned twelve and a half if she were not yet married (m. Yeb. 13.6; m. Ned. 11.10), in such a strong patriarchal society, a girl over this age likely remained under her father’s authority. Cf. Leonie J. Archer, Her Price Is beyond Rubies: The Jewish Woman in Graeco-Roman Palestine, Journal for the Society of the Old Testament Supplement (Sheffield: JSOT, 1990), 151-53.
33. Tal Ilan, Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), 88-89.
34. Cf. Archer, Her Price Is beyond Rubies, 207-36.
35. P.Mur. 115, l. 5; cf. the discussion in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert II, 252. The more fragmentary P.Mur. 20 may also include the payment of a bride price (Archer, Her Price Is beyond Rubies, 177-78).
36. Yigael Yadin et al., eds., The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Nabatean-Aramaic Papyri (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2002), 86-90, 126-27. Cf. m. Ketub. 1.2, which requires a minimum ketubah of two hundred zuz for a virgin or one hundred for a widow or divorcée.
37. Cf. y. Ketub. 8.11, 32b; t. Ketub. 12.1; Leonard Swidler, Women in Judaism: The Status of Women in Formative Judaism (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1976), 157-59; Daniela Piattelli, “The Marriage Contract and Bill of Divorce in Ancient Hebrew Law,” Jewish Law Annual 4 (1981): 77-78; Archer, Her Price Is beyond Rubies, 159-64, 180; and Ilan, Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine, 89-94, 147.
38. Cf P.Mur. 19. A wife could appeal to the courts to place pressure on her husband to divorce, but the husband had the option of refusing to abide by the court’s ruling. Unless he submitted a bill of divorce, no divorce could occur (Archer, Her Price Is beyond Rubies, 220).
39. Ilan, Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine, 174.
40. Hannah Cotton, “A Cancelled Marriage Contract from the Judaean Desert,” Journal of Roman Studies 84 (1994): 84.
41. Additional evidence that Jews were appealing to Roman or Greek courts for the purposes of divorce can be found in the Mishnah and Palestinian Talmud, both of which include statements that a divorce granted by a Gentile court was invalid, unless done in accord with Jewish law (m. Gitt. 9.8; y. Gitt. 9.8).
42. On Haustafeln in Greco-Roman literature see Martin Dibelius, An die Kolosser, Epheser, an Philemon (Tübingen: Mohr, 1913), esp. the excursus after Col. 4:1; Karl Weidinger, Die Haustafeln, ein Stück urchristlicher Paränese, Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1928); James E. Crouch, The Origin and Intention of the Colossian Haustafel (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972); Wolfgang Schrage, “Zur Ethik der neutestamentlichen Haustafeln,” New Testament Studies 21 (1974): 1-22; Dieter Lührmann, “Wo man nicht mehr Sklave oder Freier ist: Überlegungen zur Struktur Frühchristlicher Gemeinden,” Wort und Dienst 13 (1975): 53-83; Klaus Thraede, “Zum historischen Hintergrund der >Haustafeln< des NT,” in Pietas: Festschrift für Bernhard Kötting, ed. Ernst Dassmann and Karl Suso Frank (Münster: Aschendorff, 1980), 359-68; and David L. Balch, Let Wives Be Submissive: The Domestic Code in 1 Peter (Chico, CA: Scholars, 1981).
43. Michelle Lee-Barnewall, “Turning Kephaleœ on Its Head: Paul’s Argumentative Strategy in Eph. 5:21-33,” in Christian Origins and Classical Culture: Social and Literary Contexts for the New Testament, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts, Vol. 1 of The New Testament in Its Hellenistic Context (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming), 8; cf. Seneca, De clementia 1.4.1-2.
44. Lee-Barnewall, “Turning Kephaleœ on Its Head,” 10.
45. Plutarch gives the closest parallel to Paul’s emphasis on unity within marriage. Plutarch stated that “a marriage between lovers has a natural unity; a marriage for money or children is made of units joined together” (Conjugalia praecepta 34). As strength comes from ropes that are intertwined, so should the husband and wife gain strength from one another in order that “the copartnership may be preserved through the joint action of both” (ibid., 20). Property, too, should be joined into a common account, so that the wife relies not on her dowry (ibid., 20, 22). Cf. Lisette Goessler, “Advice to the Bride and Groom: Plutarch Gives a Detailed Account of His Views on Marriage,” in Plutarch’s Advice to the Bride and Groom, and A Consolation to His Wife, ed. Sarah B. Pomeroy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 110-11. However, Plutarch still held to a view of marriage dominated by hierarchy rather than service. The wife should submit (ὑποτάσσω) to her husband, the husband should control his wife “as the soul controls the body, by entering into her feelings and being knit to her through goodwill . . . it is desirable to govern a wife, and at the same time to delight and gratify her” (Plutarch, Conjugalia praecepta 33). In Solon 20.3 Plutarch recommended that a husband and wife should engage in sexual relations three times a month so as to “remove many of the annoyances which develop . . . and prevents their being altogether estranged by their differences.”