The Man as Head of the House

Essay from the year 2021 in the subject Theology - Biblical Theology, grade: 1.0, Kwame Nkrumah University, language: English, abstract: This exegetical article examines the source of the misconception that the man is the head of the house. It punctures and debunks the patriarchal myth that men have it by divine mandate to lord it over women. I do this by providing a detailed exegetical analysis of Eph 5. 21-24 which for a start does not even say that the man is the head of the house. I argue that the man is described as kephal? of the woman, whether understood as head or source of the wife, not to tell us who is boss but to use the human experience of spousal love as an analogy for the love between Jesus Christ (the husband) and the Church (the wife). Once the analogy is understood, it is no longer about husband and wife but about the Church's relationship with her spouse Jesus Christ.

Tarcisius Mukuka [Dipl. Pastoral Theol & Counselling, Dipl. Phil. & Rel. Studies, STB, SSL, PhD] is a biblical exegete by training. He holds a Licentiate in Biblical Exegesis from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome and a doctorate in Biblical Hermeneutics from the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. His doctoral dissertation was entitled "Orality as Casualty: Contextual and Postcolonial Analysis of Biblical Hermeneutics in Bembaland" (2014). He is currently a lecturer in Religious Studies Education at Kwame Nkrumah University in Kabwe. His research interests include postcolonialism and the Bible, gender and the Bible, religion, politics and power. He is the author of "Spoken Voice/Written Word: Negotiating How We Hear/Read the Bible" (2016) published by Lambert Academic Publishing and "In the Eye of a Very Catholic Storm" (forthcoming), by Crown Arts Publishers