Suzanne McCarthy has responded to CBE and CBMW blog exchanges on the meaning of Greek
kephale:
CBE posted on kephale. After a long series of comments including a little nonsense, Gender blog responded. And this is my response to Gender Blog. I posted the following in two comments on cbe's blog.
Open letter to David Kotter of the Gender Blog,
Suzanne presents evidence from her knowledge of Classical Greek. She concludes:
The evidence is overwhelming against the notion that kephale means authority. It is used in reference to Zeus as the beginning, it is used to refer to a small and mobile raiding partly in the army, not the general, it is used to describe the first person in a clan, the progenitor, not the ruler. It is used in many other ways and I have no intention of recreating the various studies. Many people propose it is the source, or the visible or prominent representative. That is also possible. Kephale is not typically used to refer to the person at the top of an organization, as caput was in Latin.
I see no decisive evidence that kephale must mean authority, and much against it.
I would appreciate the Gender Blog admitting that there is a variety of possible interpretations available. There is no need for the remark that those who have experienced a solid education in the Greek language are guilty of “wooden” interpretations, while those who have little education in classical Greek as a language are not. Such unfounded comments are surely counter-productive.
