A Review of Nobody’s Mother: A Foray into History, Exegesis, and Hermeneutics

Discussion surrounding 1 Timothy 2:9–15 and Paul’s take on the role of women in the local church has been ongoing for decades and shows no signs of abating. Sandra Glahn has entered the discussion with her recent work Nobody’s Mother: Artemis of the Ephesians in Antiquity and the New Testament. Her thesis can be summed up in two major assertions. First, she argues that a proper understanding of Artemis of the Ephesians guides us to understand “saved through childbearing” as a promise meant only for Timothy’s congregation: As young, childbearing women turn to Christ, they will no longer need the midwifery of Artemis because he will preserve them through the harrowing dangers they face as they bring a child into the world. Second, properly placing Paul’s writing in the context of Artemis enables us to see that his restriction on women teaching was also only meant for the Ephesian congregation; those restrictions have no place in the church today, so women may freely teach in the local church, even before men. Glahn’s work helpfully illuminates the Ephesian exaltation of Artemis, but it wrongly applies that understanding to the detriment of understanding, interpretation, and application. There are three central problems with Glahn’s work. First, she champions what can be called “local interpretation” without fully wrestling with the larger hermeneutical implications of this method. Second, she engages in a species of parallelomania which sees Artemis as the only hermeneutical key for understanding 1 Timothy. Third, her exegetical discussion of 1 Timothy 2:9–15 traffics in well-known yet weak arguments without seriously engaging the data or discussion. In short, if Artemis was truly Nobody’s Mother, then maybe Paul wasn’t that worried about her after all.