I can’t think of a writer who has summarised the sheer volume of data so helpfully. Firth succinctly and persuasively demonstrates God’s valuing of women and their active participation in his purposes. Both sides of the debate can praise God for ... the way [he] has used many women to save his people.
There is much more that could be said. But the upshot of it all is this: I am convinced that the Greek text in its context is best translated in line with most of our modern English translations. Bird’s translation ... might fit better with his Artemis-inspired backstory, but it has not been convincingly established.
Psalm 84 reveals God’s people content in God himself. They come before him in humility, with no sense of entitlement. They know that true blessing is to be found in the presence of God, and that we journey to him in his strength by trusting always and only in him.
Artemis is never mentioned in 1 Timothy, which Bird acknowledges. This really is a problem for his argument ... There is no clear reason in the text to drive us to see Artemis’s shadow looming.
The book’s editorial framing ... defines away the more complicated reality that both egalitarianism and complementarianism share an eagerness to declare God’s ‘Yes’ to women, even as they disagree on the shape of that affirmation.
