The history · late 4th century · John Chrysostom

Chrysostom reads the elder rule as one wife

In Homily 10 on 1 Timothy, John Chrysostom says the overseer need not be married, then reads “husband of one wife” as prohibiting more than one. He explicitly notes that Jews could have two wives at the same time.

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  • “This he does not lay down as a rule, as if he must not be without one, but as prohibiting his having more than one. For even the Jews were allowed to contract second marriages, and even to have two wives at one time.”

    John Chrysostom, Homily 10 on First Timothy · on 1 Timothy 3:1–4 (NPNF translation)

    The older translation uses “second marriages” broadly in the first clause and then removes ambiguity by naming two wives at one time.

Put it in context

Other early sources use the verse in arguments against remarriage after widowhood, and later canons codify that concern. Chrysostom matters because he is a Greek-speaking counterexample to any claim that early Greek reception was unanimously anti-digamy and never anti-polygyny.

Reception history can show which readings existed. It cannot, by itself, decide which reading best fits Paul's grammar and context.

What is disputed

The homily's wording is clear about more than one wife, but interpreters still disagree about whether Chrysostom is describing Paul's intended meaning, an office rule fitted to his own setting, or both.

How I read this record

This is my conclusion from the source, not part of the quotation.

A prominent Greek-speaking Christian reader explicitly took the phrase in the concurrent-wife direction. The site's preferred character reading must therefore stand on grammar and context rather than on a claim of unanimous early Greek reception.

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