The Meaning Source "Does Not Exist": Liddell-Scott Editor Rejects Egalitarian Interpretation of "Head" (Kephale)

A recent letter from one of the world's leading Greek lexicographers, P.G.W. Glare, has undermined a foundational building block in the egalitarian view of marriage. Glare denies that the word "head" ever had the meaning "source" in ancient Greek literature. Yet this meaning is essential to egalitarian interpretations of Scripture regarding marriage.

Some Background

For several years egalitarians have reinterpreted the verse, "for the husband is the head (Greek kephalē) of the wife as Christ is the head of the church" (Eph. 5:23). They did not want to admit that the husband's role as "head" meant he had authority to lead in the marriage. As an alternative interpretation that removes the idea of authority, they have said that "head" really means "source," because (they claim) that is what the Greek word kephalē ("head") meant in ancient Greek literature. They go on to say that if the word "head" just means "source," then there is no unique male authority in marriage, and no male "headship" (in the commonly understood sense) taught in this verse or in the similar expression in 1 Corinthians 11:3.

Now this reinterpretation was not persuasive, because husbands are not the "source" of their wives in any ordinary sense of "source." But egalitarians have continued to make this claim nonetheless and have said "source" was a common sense for kephalē in Greek.

Their one piece of evidence from Greek dictionaries (lexicons) was found in the Greek-English Lexicon edited by H. G. Liddell, Robert Scott, and revised by Henry Stuart Jones (ninth edition: Oxford: Clarendon, 1968, pg. 945). Part of the entry in the Liddell-Scott-Jones lexicon (LSJ or simply Liddell-Scott) reads as follows (with examples given for each section):

II. 1. Of things, extremity

a. In Botany

b. In Anatomy

c. Generally, top, brim of a vessel...capital of a column

d. In plural, source of a river, Herodotus 4.91 (but singular, mouth); generally, source, origin, Orphic Fragments 21a; starting point [examples: the head of time; the head of a month].

Even this entry did not prove the egalitarian claim that a person could be called the "source" of something by using kephalē, because the major category for this lexicon entry had to do with the end-point of "things," not with persons (persons are in view in Ephesians 5:23, with Christ and a husband being called "head").

In addition, people who used this lexicon to say that kephalē could mean "source of a river" failed to notice that the LSJ lexicon said it meant source of a river "in plural," but it also said that in the "singular," kephalē meant "mouth" of a river. Now the word kephalē in Ephesians 5:23 is in the singular. This shows how inappropriate it is to use this entry in LSJ to apply to Ephesians 5:23. The egalitarians who use this argument have never explained why they cite the plural example from Liddell and Scott (source of a river) and apply it to the singular example from Ephesians 5:23. If they want to use this entry from Liddell and Scott at all, to be consistent they should apply the singular definition "mouth" to the singular use of kephalē in Ephesians 5:23. This would give the impossible result, "for the husband is the mouth of the wife as Christ is the mouth of the church"!

In an article written in 1985, I argued that the reason kephalē could be applied to either the source or the mouth of a river was that in these cases kephalē was used in a fairly common sense to mean the "end-point" of something. In this way, the top of a column in a building was called the "head," and the ends of the poles used to carry the Ark of the Covenant are called the "heads" of the poles in the Septuagint translation of 1 Kings 8:8. This is a natural and understandable extension of the word head since our heads are at the "top" or "end" of our bodies. In fact, this is what the editors of Liddell-Scott-Jones intended, for they placed the river examples as a sub-category under the general category, "of things, extremity."

The entry in LSJ also quoted another text, Orphic Fragments 21a, which said, "Zeus the head, Zeus the middle, Zeus from whom all things are perfected." But this text is also ambiguous, because the meaning "beginning, first in a series" would easily fit here. (For example, my oldest son is the "beginning" or "first" of my sons, but he is not the "source" of my other sons.) So this quotation also fails to establish a distinctive sense "source" for kephalē.

Nevertheless, egalitarians persisted in mentioning the "source of a river" example as if it somehow gave a basis for them to say that "source" was the best meaning in Ephesians 5:23. And for popular audiences who could not check LSJ for themselves, it sounded quite convincing. (For further details, see "Does kephalē (‘Head') Mean ‘Source' or ‘Authority Over' in Greek Literature? A Survey of 2,336 Examples," Trinity Journal 6 NS [1985], pp. 38-59, and then, answering objections and arguing this in more detail, "The Meaning of kephalē: A Response to Recent Studies," Trinity Journal 11 NS [1990], pp. 3-72. The 1990 article also appears as an appendix to Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, edited by John Piper and Wayne Grudem [Wheaton: Crossway, 1991] pp. 425-468.)

The Letter From The Editor Of The Liddell-Scott-Jones Lexicon

Early in 1997, I decided to send a copy of my 1990 article on kephalē to the editor of the Liddell-Scott lexicon in Oxford, England, so that their editorial team might at least consider the evidence and arguments in it. To my surprise, the current editor of Liddell-Scott, P. G. W. Glare, responded in a personal letter dated April 14, 1997, which I quote here with his permission.

Regarding kephalē, Glare says, "The entry under this word in LSJ is not very satisfactory." But he adds, "I was unable to revise the longer articles in LSJ when I was preparing the latest Supplement, since I did not have the financial resources to carry out a full-scale revision."

With regard to my study of kephalē, he writes, "I am in broad agreement with your conclusions." He adds, speaking of the usage in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament), "kephalē is the word normally used to translate the Hebrew r'osh, and this does seem frequently to denote leader or chief without much reference to its original anatomical sense, and here it seems perverse to deny authority" (italics added).

Then Glare adds the following comment: "The supposed sense ‘source' of course does not exist and it was at least unwise of Liddell and Scott to mention the word. At the most they should have said ‘applied to the source of a river in respect of its position in its (the river's) course'" (bold added). Coming from someone who, because of his position, can rightfully be called the preeminent Greek lexicographer in the world, this is a significant statement. Glare adds that "in most cases the sense of the head as being the controlling agent is the one required" when dealing with similes or comparisons.

Finally, with respect to my 1990 article, he adds, "I shall file it in the hope that one day we will be able to embark on a more thorough revision of the lexicon."

Other Recent Evidence

In a related development, further evidence for the use of kephalē to mean "end-point" and not "source" in the texts claimed by egalitarians is found in John Chadwick's Lexicographica Graeca: Contributions to the Lexicography of Ancient Greek (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996). Chadwick, a member of the Faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge, says that his book "arose from working on the new supplement to Liddell and Scott as a member of the British Academy's Committee appointed to supervise the project" (p. v). He says, "kephalē can mean simply either extremity of a linear object" (p. 181), and then quotes the two examples where it can refer to either end of a river (what we would call its "source" or its "mouth"). He then says the same variety of usage is found with Greek archē, which can mean either "beginning" or "end." He explains, "in English a rope has two ends, in Greek two archai" (p. 181). Returning to kephalē, he turns to the quotation about Zeus from the Orphic Fragments 21a, and says, "On the same principle as the rivers, it may also mean the starting point" (p. 183, referring also to Placita, 2.32.2.)

Finally, an analysis of the last decade of debate over kephalē from the perspective of modern linguistic principles is found in Max Turner, "Modern Linguistics and the New Testament," in Hearing the New Testament, edited by Joel Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, and Carlisle: Paternoster, 1995), pp. 165-172. Turner, who is Director of Research and Senior Lecturer in New Testament at London Bible College, analyzes the texts where the meaning "source" has been claimed and shows that other, established senses are preferable in each case. He says that the meaning "source," as claimed by some, "is not recognized by the lexicons, and we should consider it linguistically unsound" (p. 167, italics added).

Conclusion

Where does this leave us with regard to the dispute over kephalē in the ancient world? Up to this time, Liddell-Scott was the only lexicon that even mentioned the possibility of the meaning "source" for kephalē. All the other lexicons for the New Testament gave meanings such as "leader, ruler, person in authority" and made no mention of the meaning "source" (see Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich-Danker, p. 430; Louw-Nida, 1:739; the older lexicons by Thayer, p. 345, and Craemer, p. 354; also TDNT, 3:363-372; the sixth German edition of Walter Bauer, Griechisch-deutsches Wrterbuch [1988], p. 874-875; and most recently A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint edited by J. Lust, E. Eynikel, and K. Hauspie [Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1996], p. 254.)

But now the editor of the only lexicon that mentioned the meaning "source" in any connection says that the supposed sense "source" for kephalē "of course, does not exist," and says that it was "at least unwise" for Liddell and Scott to mention the word source. (If it was "at least unwise," we may conclude that it was perhaps more than unwise.) Moreover, he agrees that the meaning "leader or chief " is clearly attested for kephalē.

This letter therefore seems to indicate that there is no "battle of the lexicons" over the meaning of kephalē, but that the authors and editors of all the lexicons for ancient Greek now agree (1) that the meaning "leader, chief, person in authority" clearly exists for kephalē, and (2) that the meaning "source" simply does not exist.