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Though Paul himself was concerned primar-

ily with the “neither Jew nor Greek” component

in this trilogy of pairs, more recent discussion has

become occupied with the “no male and female”

part. Conclusions drawn from the latter range from

those who accommodate homosexuality² to others

who see no more in the verse than that the pairs

should learn to be compatible.³ The present study

comments upon the unusual wording of the verse,

which has been only slightly, if at all, reckoned by

translators and commentators but which is, never-

theless, vital to the meaning (which is irrelevant to

gender roles). Given the deluge of material written

on this verse, it comes as somewhat of a surprise

that practically no attention has been given to even

the most elementary rules of exegesis.⁴

Two grammatical oddities call for comment.

First, the word “is” in the clause “there is neither …

nor” is not a form of the usual word “to be” (eivmi,)

but is, rather, from the not-so-common e;neimi.

Four synonyms are, in various contexts, rendered

by some form of “to be” in NT Greek, yet none is

exactly synonymous with any of the others. Paul

employs them all. First from the group, gi,nomai

frequently indicates that some change is taking

place and thus often means “occur” or “happen”:⁵

cristo,j … gino,menoj … kata,ra (Gal 3:13; “Christ

… becoming … a curse,” NIV, NSRV ); o` no,moj

paidagwgo.j h`mw/n ge,gonen (3:24, “the law was our

disciplinarian,” NRSV).

The most common word for “be” or “exist”

is eimi,:⁶ Ti,toj … [Ellhn w=n (2:3, “Titus … was a

Greek,” NIV, NRSV); ouvk evste. u`po. no,mon (5:18,

“you are not under law,” NIV ). If one wants to

emphasize resources for existence, a third synonym,

u`pa,rcw, is employed, and helping words such as

“actually” or “really” better bring out the meaning:⁷

Su. vIoudai/oj u`pa,rcwn (2:14, “You, though a Jew,”

NRSV ). Lexica are in agreement on the above

distinctions among these frequently occurring

synonyms.

The rarer word e;neimi, however, is found in

only four other NT passages.⁸ ;Eneimi has a usage

all its own among verbs in the “to be” semantic

range. The word means “to be or exist in a certain

context.”⁹ Louw and Nida give the definition “to

exist, with respect to particular circumstance,” and

cite Luke 11:41, where ta. evno,nta means “what

is in (your plates and cups).”¹⁰ Newman concurs

that it means “to be in or inside” and cites the same

passage.¹¹

The lexical definition is corroborated by other

NT eivmi, compounds, all of which maintain sepa-

rate meanings: a;peimi, “be absent,” (2 Cor 10:1),¹²

the impersonal e;xestin / e;xon, “be permissible,”

(1 Cor 10:23),¹³ pa,reimi, “be present,” (Gal 4:18),¹⁴

su,neimi, “be with,” (Acts 22:11),¹⁵ and the hapax

sumpa,reimi, “be present with,” (Acts 25:24).¹⁶ If

e;neimi, (“be in [here]”) were not semantically dis-

tinct from eivmi,, it would be the unique case among

eivmi, compounds.

Other NT passages confirm the usage of

e;neimi when focusing upon the immediate situa-

tion: 1 Cor 6:5 asks, ou[twj ouvk e;ni evn u`mi/n ouvdei.j

sofo,j, “Is it possible that there is nobody among

you wise enough?” (NIV). The contextually rein-

forcing word ou[twj precedes ouvk e;ni (Col 3:11

similarly employs o[pou, as will be noted later). James

1:17 describes God as the one parv w-| ouvk e;ni …

avposki,asma (“with whom there is no … shadow,”

NRSV), referring to his being “father of lights.”

Judging, then, not only from lexica but also

from eimi, synonyms and compounds as well as NT

contextual usage, one may conclude that the evi-

dence favors seeing the distinctiveness of e;neimi as

calling attention to the matter at hand and against

those who see only a (perhaps emphatic) synonym

of eivmi,.¹⁷ The latter word expresses more general

kinds of truths in the NT, including Galatians

(1:11; 3:12, 20; 5:23).

The question then becomes, “What is the

contextual matter under discussion in Gal 3:28

to which e;neimi calls attention”? Since neither of

the pairs “servant–free” and “male–female” is men-

tioned again in the book, we are brought back to

the first pair ( Jew–Greek) as the subject of this and

every chapter (1:13, 16; 2:7–9, 12–15; 3:14; 4:8, 21;

5:6; 6:15). Since Paul is obviously upset (1:6; 2:6;

3:1; 4:11, 16, 19–20; 5:12), it is helpful to inquire

into who and what the problem is. Literature on

the subject is abundant.¹⁸ Briefly stated, there is no

reason to look beyond the “Pharisee believers” of

Acts 15:5 (from Judea, 15:1) for the (type of ) trou-

blemakers. Galatians 2:4 calls them yeuda,delfoi

(“false brothers”). Though scholarly attempts are

made to be more politically correct when dubbing

Paul’s opponents (including Hay’s “missionaries”¹⁹),

it is more exegetically helpful to adopt the point of

view of the writer himself who describes them as

“agitators” (oi` tara,ssontej, 1:7; so 5:10 and Acts

15:24; Gal 5:12 says they are oi` avnastatountej

[“those causing a disturbance”], a word used in

Acts 21:38 of a “revolt” [NIV, NRSV]).

As to specifics, the rebels are attempting to

impose Jewish rituals (no,moj, 2:16 + 32 times in

Galatians), calendar observances (4:10), kosher

food laws (2:12) and circumcision (2:3 + 12). In

objecting to these rules, Paul argues for faithful-

ness to Christ (pi,stij, 1:23 + 21; pisteu,w, 2:7 +

3; pisto,j, 3:9), which includes baptism (3:27) and

proper conduct (5:13–6:10).

Our present pericope indicates that how one

gets “into” Christ (eivj Cristo,n, vv. 24, 27), who

can be “in” Christ (evn Cristw/|, vv. 26, 28) and who

“belongs to” Christ (Cristou/, v. 29) continues to

be the subject. Verse 28 gives examples by elimi-

nating some restrictions. One does not have to be

Jew, free, or male; Greeks, servants, and females are

also eligible. The latter is significant because of the

importance some were attaching to circumcision.

A textual variant is enlightening in this regard,

namely that the word “one” (“you are all one”) is

omitted in the oldest MS (P46) as well as in a* and

A. The variant was not noted in the UBS Greek

NT until the fourth edition (1994) and is perhaps

too hastily dismissed by the committee as a hap-

lography (u`mei/j ei‐j evste).²⁰ Even if the reading is

not the original, the variant sheds light upon how

early copiers and their readers understood the pas-

sage. Instead of ei‐j evste evn Cristw/|, P46 and A have

evn Cristou/ (“you belong to Christ”).²¹ The impor-

tant concept was not the word “one”; rather, it was

“being in” and “belonging to” Christ, which concurs

with the emphasis of verses previous and following.

If one wants to know who is eligible to be

“in Christ,” Gal 3:28 is relevant to the discussion;

but if one wants to know about gender roles and

responsibilities, one should go to epistles that have

a context on that subject, including 1 Corinthians

(11:1–16; 14:34–35), Ephesians (5:21–33), Colos-

sians (3:18–19), 1 Timothy (2:8–15), Titus (2:1–8),

and 1 Peter (3:1–7). Galatians 3:28 is also not “a

‘window’ text through which to assess and adju-

dicate other Pauline texts.”²² Neither our clause,

the verse, the pericope, the chapter nor the book of

Galatians addresses gender roles.²³

Translators could help clarify this verse by

attending more carefully to the wording and con-

text. Among other items (and in the interest of an

“equivalent” philosophy of translation in meaning

and structure where feasible), ouvk e;ni occurs before

each of the pairs, and this rhetorical emphasis should

be preserved (per the KJV tradition, Moffatt, NAB,

NJB, Chas. Wms., NCV, TNIV) instead of translat-

ing it only one time and then listing the pairs ( JB,

NLT, NEB, REB, CEV, Holman, TEV, NIV).

Secondly, the special nuance of ouvk e;ni is

worthy of exploration. Translations that sound as

though gender differences do not exist (“there are

no more distinctions between” [ JB] or “There is no

such thing as” [NEB, REB]) are misleading. The

common “There is no/neither” ([N]KJV, NAB, [T]

NIV) or equivalent is not helpful either. Moffatt

(“There is no room for”), Young’s Literal Transla-

tion (“there is not here”), and NRSV (“There is no

longer”) are among rare attempts to call attention

to the immediate subject.

More of this kind of effort has been made

in the closest parallel to our verse, Col 3:11. As

in 1 Cor 6:5, ouvk e;ni is preceded by a reinforcing

word—in this case o[pou. The renderings of NEB

and REB (“there is no question here of ”) and CEV

(“It doesn’t matter if you are”) can well instruct

translators of Gal 3:28. Other possibilities are “This

is not a matter of whether one is,” “It makes no

difference whether one is,” or similar in Gal 3:28.²⁴

Colossians 3:11 is also instructive as to how

ouv k e; n i is to be understood. Genders are not

included in the best MSS of this list, but social

roles are (dou/l oj, ev l eu, q eroj). Unlike Galatians,

Colossians does have a Haustafel pericope in which

separate instructions are given to the parties in the

pair (vv. 22–25), showing that ouvk e;ni still allows

for distinction and structure. The context concerns

conduct (v. 5), the point being that the Creator’s

standards apply to everyone regardless of status or

lack thereof (v. 10).

A second, and final, neglected grammati-

cal feature of Gal 3:28 is the gender of a series of

adjectives. With the exception of the noun [Ellhn,

the entries in the pairs, as well as the word “one,”

are all adjectives. All are masculine except “male”

and “female,” which are both neuter! All are with-

out nouns, thus are substantival or, as some prefer,

“independent.”²⁵

What also escapes the usual reader is that

the word “one” (ei[ j ) is not the same gender as

employed, for example, by Jesus when he says, “I

and the Father are one” ( John 10:30) and that his

disciples should be the same (17:11, 21–22). John’s

word is the neuter e[n. Neuter is the broader cat-

egory of the three genders and may encompass not

only the other two but entire sentences, pericopes,

and subjects as well. Jesus says (Matt 10:27), o[ le,gw

u`mi/n evn th/| skoti,a| ei;pate evn tw/| fwti, (“What

I tell you in the dark, speak in the light”). When

Paul wants to affirm, not his person but his office

of apostleship, he says ca,riti de. qeou eivmi o[ eivmi

(“but by the grace of God I am what I am,” 1 Cor

15:10).²⁶ John’s First Epistle begins with this same

neuter o] but clearly says in the same verse that the

subject is lo,goj (masculine) and zwh, (feminine), a

“grammatical incongruity.”²⁷ It is the whole busi-

ness “about” (peri. tou/) the logos that he wants

to present and thus employs the all-encompass-

ing neuter: “That which,” or “the matter about.”

]O (neuter) is the content of the avggeli,a (femi-

nine), “message” (v. 5).²⁸ In the Gospel, Jesus and

the Father are “one thing,” that is, together as a unit

and about the same business, a matter he wishes for

his disciples.²⁹

This broad scope covered by the neuter gen-

der also best accounts for its employment in the

words “male” and “female.” The phrase in our verse

(and in practically all Judaeo-Christian Hellenistic

references to “male and female”) echoes the LXX

of Gen 1:27, where the words are also neuter.³⁰ The

subject is broader than just the original individuals,

for they are representative of the human race (~da)

existing in two modes. Similarly in Galatians, the

subject of maleness and femaleness is irrelevant to

being admitted “into Christ.”

Another gender observation in our verse is

that the “one” is masculine, that is, “one person”

(NEB, REB, Cassirer, New World). Taking the

words contextually, again, instead of literally, indi-

viduals in the list have all done the same thing,

and God views the matter as though it is the same

person, without additional prerequisites, who has

come into Christ and is clothed with Christ (v. 27)

and who, consequently, belongs to Christ, is Abra-

ham’s progeny, and therefore an heir to the promise

to Abraham (v. 29).

Galatians 3:28 supports no view of gender

role issues, “egalitarian,” “complementarian,” or

otherwise. Unlike other NT books, Galatians has

no pericope addressing Haustafel responsibilities. It

does address qualifications for admission into the

household—who can be “in Christ.” Translators

yet have work to do attending to the two gram-

mar matters discussed in this article: the contex-

tual emphasis inherent in the verb e;neimi and the

gender of the adjectives in the verse. In view of the

above, the following is proposed as a translation:

¹This article has been adapted with permission from the author’s

“Galatians 3:28: Grammar Observations,” Restoration Quarterly

51, no. 1 (2009): 45–50.

²E. Louise Williams, “The Broken Walls of Galatians 3:28,” Word

and World 20, no. 3 (Summer 2000): 231.

³Elizabeth Behr-Segel, “Orthodox Tradition as a Resource for the

Renewal of Women and Men in Community,” in The Community

of Women and Men in the Church Report of the WCC’s Conference in Sheffield, England, 1981 (ed. Constance F. Parvey; Philadelphia:

Fortress, 1983), 63.

⁴Among monographs is Talitha Wiley, Paul and the Gentile Women:

Reframing Galatians (New York: Continuum, 2005); and Richard

Hove, Equality in Christ? Galatians 3:28 and the Gender Dispute

(Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1999). For essays and periodical litera-

ture, Gal 3:28 competes for Flomax fedex shipping the most number of contributions on a

single verse. Watson E. Mills, Bibliographies for Biblical Research,

NT Series 9, Galatians (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1999), 38–45, lists

forty-two entries published on just the verse, with another twenty-

three on the pericope. Since Mills’s (incomplete) listing, another

twelve items on the verse and five more on the pericope have

appeared, per my count via New Testament Abstracts. Items over-

looked by Mills include eleven on the verse and one on the peri-

cope. When contributions doubtlessly overlooked by all are added,

the total publications on this passage may well come to a hundred

items.

⁵BDAG, 197.

⁶Ibid., 282.

⁷Ibid., 1029.

⁸In addition to our verse, cf. Luke 11:41; 1 Cor 6:5; Col 3:11; Jas

1:17.

9BDAG, 336.

¹⁰Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of

the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: UBS,

1989), 157.

¹¹Barclay M. Newman Jr., A Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament (Stuttgart: German Bible Society, 1993), 60.

¹²BDAG, 100.

¹³Ibid., 348.

¹⁴Ibid., 773.

¹⁵Ibid., 968.

¹⁶Ibid., 958.

¹⁷E.g., F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to Flomax fedex shipping the Galatians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 187.

¹⁸Views, with bibliography, are summarized by Richard B. Hays, The Letter to the Galatians (Nashville: Abingdon, 2000), 181–200. For various rhetorical analyses based on Hellenistic parallels, cf. Mark D. Nanos, The Galatians Debate (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson,

2002).

¹⁹Ibid., 185, where it is adopted from J. Dunn.

²⁰Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (Stuttgart: Deutche Bibelgesellschaft, 1998), 526.

²¹Reuben J. Swanson, New Testament Greek Manuscripts: Variant

Readings Arranged in Horizontal Lines against Codex Vaticanus:

Galatians (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1999), 6:45.

²²David M. Scholer, “Galatians 3:28 and the Ministry of Women in

the Church,” Covenant Quarterly 56, no. 3 (1998): 8.

²³Concurring with Hove, Equality, 141, 145, et al.; and Peter Barnes, A Study Commentary on Galatians (Darlington, England: Evangeli- cal Press, 2006), 181. Literature on a subject is sometimes more revealing about interests at the Flomax fedex shipping time of the literature than about the subject. Of the one hundred items (see n. 4 above) published on the Gal 3:28 pericope, practically all have appeared since 1985. All the while vigorous academic discussion is going on (summarized by Carroll Osburn, Women in the Church: Reclaiming the Ideal [Abilene, TX: ACU, 2001]), consequences are ignored. In searching for the cause of escalating abortions, divorces, elderly neglect, homeless-ness, homosexuality, and Flomax fedex shipping female vulgarity and violence that is fast filling up women’s prisons, the trail does not lead to Mennonite homemakers. Cf. James Garbarino, See Jane Hit: Why Girls are Becoming More Violent and What We Can Do About It (NY: Penguin, 2006); Marci Putman, “Uprooting Feminism,” Homeschooling Today 17, no. 2 (March–April 2008): 28–32; and Elisabeth Elliot, “The Essence of Feminity: A Personal Perspective,” in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Femi-nism (ed. John Piper and Wayne Grudem; Wheaton, IL: Crossway,

1991), 394–99.

²⁴Concurring with Edward L. Miller, “Is Gal. 3:28 the Great Egali-

tarian Text?” Expository Times 114, no. 1 (Oct., 2002): 11, “It is not a matter of …”; and with Arichea and Nida, Translator’s Handbook,  85, “there is no difference between how this takes place for Jews and Gentiles.”

²⁵Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (Grand Rap-ids: Zondervan, 1996), 294.

26Ibid., 338.

²⁷C. Haas, M. de Jonge, and J. L. Swellengrebel, A Translator’s Hand-book on the Letters of John (New York: UBS, 1972), 22.

²⁸Rudolph Bultmann, A Commentary on the Johannine Epistles

(Hermeneia; trans. R. Philip O’Hara; Philadelphia: Fortress,

1973), 8.

²⁹BDAG, 291.

³⁰Hove, Equality, 67.