1. An Apostolic Mistake in the Syntax of 1 Tim 4.1–5?

One of the passages most strongly marked by apocalyptic eschatology in the Pastoral Epistles is the warning about a coming apostasy from the faith in 1 Tim 4.1–5.Footnote ¹ As translated in the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition (NRSVUE), the passage’s description of the content of the demonic teachings appears to be clear-cut:

The heresy under attack seems related to, if not identical with, the doctrine which according to Irenaeus was taught by Saturninus and his Encratite heirs: ‘They declare … that marriage (nubere) and generation are from Satan … Many … abstain (abstinent) from animal food’; they ‘preached against marriage (ἀγαμία) … Some … have also introduced abstinence (ἀποχή) from animal food’.Footnote ² Irenaeus’ claim that the heretics are ‘thus proving themselves ungrateful to God, who formed all things’ mirrors Pastoral Paul’s statement about all kinds of food as something ‘God created to be received with thanksgiving’ and makes it likely that the church father saw his contemporary opponents through the lens of 1 Timothy, here as elsewhere in Adversus haereses.Footnote ³ This circumstance does not exclude or lessen the possibility that the author of the Pastoral Epistles himself attacked some form of (proto-)Encratite spirituality, especially if he was writing a couple of decades into the second century ce, as seems likely.Footnote ⁴ An early Christian school of thought where sexual and dietary abstinence was mandated is a quite reasonable target for the author’s polemic. The problem, which the present short study sets out to address, is that the Greek text, as commonly analysed, does not readily allow for an interpretation along those lines.

In the Greek text, 4.1–3 is a fairly complex sentence:

The NRSVUE rendition of κωλυόντων γαμεῖν, ἀπέχεσθαι βρωμάτων as ‘They forbid marriage and abstain from certain foods’ is obviously far from literal. Indeed, the participle κωλυόντων, just like the preceding κεκαυστηριασμένων, functions as an attribute of ψευδολόγων, which warrants the translation ‘They (= the liars) forbid marriage’. The infinitive ἀπέχεσθαι, by contrast, is not syntactically linked to ψευδολόγων and therefore cannot refer to an action performed by the ‘liars’.Footnote ⁵ Commentators routinely take ἀπέχεσθαι to be juxtaposed with γαμεῖν, seemingly as another object of κωλυόντων.Footnote ⁶ But the literal translation of κωλυόντων γαμεῖν, ἀπέχεσθαι βρωμάτων thus understood, ‘forbidding marriage and abstinence from certain foods’, is in strong tension with what interpreters ever since Irenaeus have thought that the text ought to say. Only rarely has it been suggested that the common understanding of what 1 Tim 4.3 means needs revision. If Pastoral Paul’s demonic opponents are a group of people who, like the Nicolaitans of Rev 2.14–15 and the ‘strong’ Corinthians of 1 Cor 8–10, insist on eating food sacrificed to idols, they could actually be claimed to ‘forbid abstinence from certain foods’.Footnote ⁷ This reinterpretation of 4.3a is not unthinkable in and of itself, but it raises the question why Pastoral Paul then goes on to argue in favour of receiving all the good things God has created in 4.3b–5, which would undermine his supposed agenda of promoting abstinence. While making sense of the phrasing of 1 Tim 4.3, this reading does not fit the context of the passage and therefore has to be dismissed.

Already in Pseudo-Oecumenius’ commentary on the Pauline epistles, probably composed in the late 700s and then redacted throughout the following two centuries, we have evidence that some interpreters held the phrasing to be due either to a copyist’s error or to an oversight by the apostle himself.Footnote ⁸ Against this opinion, the unknown author of the commentary alleges that the construction κωλύειν … ἀπέχεσθαι βρωμάτων in the sense ‘forbid certain foods’ is in perfect harmony with Attic usage, where κωλύειν can be followed by a negated verb as in ἐκώλυσεν αὐτὸν μὴ ποιεῖν τὰ ἄτοπα (‘He forbade him to do the absurd’). While this construction is not common, it does exist.Footnote ⁹ The argument by Pseudo-Oecumenius that ἀπέχεσθαι in 1 Tim 4.3 equals an optional negation after κωλύειν is severely weakened, however, by the fact that a negation triggered by this verb would then naturally precede γαμεῖν. To leave γαμεῖν unnegated, only then to introduce ἀπέχεσθαι without any intention to reverse the meaning of κωλύειν, would itself amount to an ‘apostolic mistake’ (παρόραμα ἀποστολικόν) of the kind that Pseudo-Oecumenius is reluctant to concede.

2. Invoking Zeugma

Most modern translations instead solve the problem by supplying an additional verb to govern ἀπέχεσθαι: ‘forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain’ (King James Version, italics original); ‘who forbid marriage and enjoin abstinence’ (Revised Standard Version); ‘They forbid marriage and require abstinence’ (New American Bible Revised Edition); ‘They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain’ (New International Version).Footnote ¹⁰ This practice is defended in many commentaries through the claim that the phrase is an example of zeugma.Footnote ¹¹

Zeugma, a category overlapping with syllepsis, refers to the syntactic ‘yoking’ of two words or phrases through one word, in the way that this one word is either used in two different senses or inappropriate in one of the uses.Footnote ¹² Grammarians have identified several examples of the latter type of zeugma in New Testament texts. For example, in ἀνεῴχθη δὲ τὸ στόμα αὐτοῦ παραχρῆμα καὶ ἡ γλῶσσα αὐτοῦ (lit. ‘and immediately his mouth was opened, and his tongue’, Luke 1.64), the verb ἀνοίγειν is only appropriate with στόμα, and in γάλα ὑμᾶς ἐπότισα, οὐ βρῶμα (lit. ‘I gave you milk to drink, not food’, 1 Cor 3.2), ποτίζειν is only appropriate with γάλα.Footnote ¹³ Any listener or reader of these passages would be able to supply the missing appropriate verbs, λύειν with γλῶσσα and ψωμίζειν with βρῶμα, just as modern translators routinely supply the missing verb or replace the extant one with another (‘I fed you with milk, not solid food’, 1 Cor 3.2 NRSVUE). Similarly, as κωλύειν in 1 Tim 4.3 appears only appropriate with γαμεῖν, it is argued that a listener or reader of the passage is expected to supply another verb with ἀπέχεσθαι, perhaps κελεύειν.Footnote ¹⁴ But this would be an example of zeugma that is quite unlike the others. For whereas the relationship between ‘loosen’ and ‘tongue’ is analogous to that between ‘open’ and ‘mouth’ (cf. Luke 1.64), and the relationship between ‘give to eat’ and ‘food’ is analogous to that between ‘give to drink’ and ‘milk’ (cf. 1 Cor 3.2), there is no analogy between ‘forbid marriage’ and ‘command abstinence’. On the contrary, κωλύειν and κελεύειν are opposites. For the identification of the construction in 1 Tim 4.3 as zeugma to be credible, we must find other instances of zeugma in ancient Greek texts where the reader or listener is expected to supply a verb that expresses the opposite of the explicit verb.

Such instances have indeed been proposed. It has even been claimed ‘often’ to be the case that an affirmative word has to be inferred from a negative word, but most of the examples forwarded in support of that claim involve the quite special condition where a negated clause is contrasted with an affirmative.Footnote ¹⁵ There are a couple of more relevant examples. In one of Plato’s dialogues, Socrates utters the following:

As was pointed out long ago, and as is evident from the above translation, one has to supply an antonym of the verb αἴρειν (‘raise’) for the final, elliptical clause to make sense. A hand extended towards the ground is lowered, not raised.Footnote ¹⁶ As correct as this observation is on the semantic level, on the pragmatic level ‘raise’ and ‘lower’ are not opposites here – both can easily be subsumed under the more general ‘extend’, and a reader of Plato will have no trouble supplying an appropriate verb in the elliptical clause. The same cannot be said of Hermes’ words to Charon in the following passage from Lucian:

The passage is not completely unlike 1 Tim 4.3. It employs the verb κωλύειν, which seemingly governs two following infinitives, ἐνεργεῖν and ζημιοῦν. But the reading ‘it will prevent you from doing the work of Death and from embarrassing the revenues of Pluto’s government’ is absurd, which is why the translation supplies the verb ‘compel’ before ‘embarrass’.Footnote ¹⁷ This is how translations and commentators usually suggest that the apparent absurdity of 1 Tim 4.3 should also be resolved, and the passage from Lucian can be invoked in defence of this solution.Footnote ¹⁸ At the same time, it is possible to understand the καί in Lucian’s text as having consecutive force, resulting in the sense ‘it will prevent you from doing the work of Death, so that you embarrass the revenues of Pluto’s government’.Footnote ¹⁹ This is not possible for the asyndetic construction 1 Tim 4.3, which if interpreted as an instance of zeugma would definitely be much harsher and open to misunderstanding.

3. A New Proposal

There is another – and simpler – way of resolving the problem by recognising that the syntax of 4.1–3 has been misunderstood, and this is the solution proposed in the present study. It considers the prepositional phrase beginning with ἐν ὑποκρίσει to consist of everything up to and including κωλυόντων γαμεῖν, forming a parenthetic remark on the means by which the teachings of demons will be propagated: ‘through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared with a hot iron and who forbid marriage’. With ἀπέχεσθαι βρωμάτων, the author returns to the train of thought that had been momentarily paused through the parenthetical remark: ‘some will renounce the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons …: to abstain from certain foods’. This means that the demonic teachings specifically targeted pertain to abstinence from certain kinds of food. The endeavour to prohibit marriage, however, is mentioned in passing as a further characteristic of the hypocritical liars who advocate those teachings.

The proposed reading of the syntax has the advantage of making reasonable sense of the passage without the doubtful appeal to zeugma. It also resolves the slightly awkward asyndetic joining of γαμεῖν and ἀπέχεσθαι that must be assumed on the standard understanding as expressed in translations and commentaries.Footnote ²⁰ Moreover, it fits the immediate context better than the standard analysis, because it explains why 4.3b–5 is exclusively concerned with abstinence from food. To be sure, the antecedent of the relative clause ἃ ὁ θεὸς ἔκτισεν could be taken to be both γαμεῖν and βρώματα, and some commentators’ hermeneutical application of the principles in 4.3b–5 to both food and sex is undoubtedly congenial with the theology of the Pastoral Epistles.Footnote ²¹ There are, however, several features in the text that indicate the rest of the passage to be discussing only the question of food. Firstly, the closeness between the neuter plural βρώματα and the relative ἅ invites an understanding of the former as the antecedent of the latter. Secondly, that which God created ‘to be received’ (εἰς μετάλημψιν) is likely to be food. The noun μετάλημψις and its cognate verb μεταλαμβάνειν can certainly be used with other things than food (e.g., Acts 24.25; Heb 6.7; 12.10), but are common in contexts that deal with the consumption of food (Acts 2.46; 27.33–4; Josephus BJ 2.143). Notably, the only other occurrence in the Pastoral Epistles refers to the farmer’s reception of the first share of the crops (2 Tim 2.6). Thirdly, κτίσμα more readily denotes a physical creature (Wis 9.2; Jas 1.18; Rev 5.13; 8:9) than an activity or institution such as sex or marriage. Fourthly, the repeated insistence on receiving what God has created ‘with thanksgiving’ (μετὰ εὐχαριστίας) echoes Paul’s assertion that the believer who eats anything does so while giving thanks (εὐχαριστεῖν, Rom 14.6; 1 Cor 10.30). Fifthly, the ‘prayer’ (ἔντευξις) by which everything created is sanctified is prob-ably a prayer before meals.Footnote ²² All of this points in the direction of abstinence from food being the sole focus of the argument, and on the reading of 4.1–3 proposed here, there is no need to find an explanation for the silence on marriage.Footnote ²³ The prohibition of marriage, while clearly an element of the hypocritical liars’ agenda that Pastoral Paul manifestly opposes (1 Tim 2.15; 5.14; Tit 2.3–5), is simply not the demonic teaching he is warning about in this passage.

To conclude, this study has shown that a new way of looking at the syntax of 1 Tim 4.1–3a can solve the problems that the standard interpretation has generated. It allows for a reading that respects the actual wording of the Greek text without any need to presuppose a quite dubious instance of zeugma. It also answers the question why the following argument in 4.3b–5 does not address the false doctrine on marriage. This doctrine, while repulsive to Pastoral Paul, is not the specific point he attacks through his warning about the teachings of demons in later days.