A. The veiling of women (11:2–16)
A. The veiling of women (11:2–16)
Evidently some ‘emancipated’ Corinthian women1 had dispensed with the veil in public worship, and Paul argues that they should not do this. Jewish women were always veiled in public in the first century, but it is difficult to be certain about what was done elsewhere. A. Oepke thinks that customs varied (TDNT, iii, p. 562), but Conzelmann can say, ‘It can be assumed that respectable Greek women wore a head covering in public.’ If so, the practice of the Corinthian Christian ladies outraged the proprieties. Paul rejected it with decision. It is no part of the life of the Christian needlessly to flout accepted conventions.
2. Paul begins with praise. Perhaps the Corinthians had said that they remembered what he had told them, and the apostle expresses his pleasure. The teachings (paradoseis) were the ‘traditions’, the oral teaching that formed such an important part of early Christian instruction. They were not Paul’s own, but teachings handed down to him and which he passed on. The term stresses the derivative nature of the teachings in question, and particularly of the gospel (15:1ff.). It did not originate in the fertile mind of the teacher (see further, TNTC on 2 Thess. 2:15).
3. It is easy to be too definite in interpreting head in this verse. We use the term often for a person in authority (cf. ‘Heads of State’), but this usage was unknown in antiquity (except for a few passages in LXX). LSJ note usages of kephalē for the whole person, for life, extremity, top (of wall or column), source, etc., but never for the leader of a group. S. Bedale reminds us that the functions of the central nervous system were not known to the ancients, who held that we think with the midriff, the phrēn (JTS, n.s., v, 1954, pp. 211–215). The head was thus not the controlling factor (as GNB takes it with the translation ‘supreme over’); we must seek its significance elsewhere. ‘Head’ was used of the ‘source’ (as ‘head’ of a river), and LSJ cite an appropriate passage which says, ‘Zeus is the head, Zeus is the middle, in Zeus all is completed’ (II.d; they note that archē, ‘beginning’, is a variant for kephalē in some MSS). It seems that it is this meaning ‘source’ that is required here (so Bedale, Barrett, Bruce, and others; H. Schlier says, ‘Paul could have used archē if there had not been a closer personal relationship in kephalē’, TDNT, iii, p. 679). Paul is saying that the woman derives her being from man (Gen. 2:21–22), as man does from Christ and Christ from God. But we must be cautious in pressing these words, for none of the relationships mentioned is exactly the same as either of the others. Some translations speak of the husband here (e.g. RSV, GNB), but it is surely the relation of men and women that is in mind, not husband and wife. Marriage is not mentioned. Paul has just used the same word in the expression every man, which plainly refers to mankind, not husbands (cf. 8:6). Further, to understand woman here as ‘wife’ raises the question of unmarried women. Are they to worship with uncovered heads? It seems clear that it is ‘man’, not ‘husband’, that Paul means.
4. The order of creation has consequences for worship, but Paul’s precise meaning is not easy to see. NIV, as many translations, sees the unusual Greek to mean with his head covered. But what Paul says is ‘having down from (his) head’ (kata kephalēs echōn), and not a few argue that this means ‘having long hair’ (which hangs down from the head). J. Murphy-O’Connor favours a reference to long hair, more precisely ‘an un-masculine hairdo’, with a possible reference to homosexuality (CBQ, 42, 1980, pp. 482–500). But, while long hair fits the Greek of v. 4, it runs into a problem with the use of ‘cover’ and ‘uncover’ in later verses. On the whole it seems that we should understand the apostle to refer to a covering on the head of the man. He will go on to speak of the man as ‘the image and glory of God’ (v. 7), and now he says that if he prays or prophesies with covered head he dishonours his head. The one who is God’s image and glory must not veil that glory in the act of worship. It is not unlikely that the dishonoured head is both the man’s physical head and also Christ, ‘the head of every man’ (v. 3). For prophesies see on 12:10.
5. This verse plainly indicates that some Corinthian women prayed or prophesied in public worship. That Paul does not criticize the practice, but on the contrary lays down the way women should be dressed when engaging in it, shows that he accepted it (which raises a problem with 14:34–35, where see notes). Here his point is that a woman must have a head-covering when engaging in prayer and prophecy. Otherwise she dishonours her head (which seems to mean her physical head). It is as bad for her to pray or prophesy in this way as it would be if she were shaved. Moffatt cites evidence for the shame of a shaven woman (including a comedy of Menander, set in Corinth).
6. Paul drives his point home. If a woman will not cover her head, then let that head be shorn. If she counts it a disgrace for her head to be shorn or shaven, let her understand that it is equally a shame to have her head uncovered at worship.
7. The reason a man should not cover his head is that he is the image and glory of God. In the creation story we read that God made man in his own image (Gen. 1:26–27). Genesis makes no distinction between the sexes at this point, but Paul understands it particularly of the male. Glory is not mentioned in the Genesis story (though cf. Ps. 8:5, and passages where ‘heart’ or ‘soul’ renders the Hebrew for ‘glory’, e.g. Pss. 16:9; 57:8). Man shows forth God’s glory as does nothing else; the expression may also be meant to direct attention to the state of man before the fall. When people worship, this high dignity must be recognized; the glory of God is not to be obscured in the presence of God (by covering the head of its bearer). The woman is not made in the image of man (it was Seth, not Eve, who was in the image of Adam, Gen. 5:3). Her relationship to man is not the same as that of man to God. She has a place of her own, but it is not the man’s place. She stands in such a relation to the man as does nothing else, and thus she is called the glory of man. And it is precisely the glory of man that should be veiled in the presence of God. In worship God alone must be glorified.
8–9. Man did not come from (ek denotes the source) woman; he was the result of the direct creation of God. But woman from man refers to Eve’s being made from a rib taken from Adam’s side (Gen. 2:21ff.). The same passage explains neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him’ (Gen. 2:18; D. Kidner comments, ‘the sexes are complementary: the true partnership is expounded by the terms that are used’, TOTC, Genesis, p. 70). Neither in her origin, nor in the purpose for which she was created, can the woman claim priority.
10. This verse is very difficult. What Paul says is something like ‘the woman ought to have authority on her head’, but most translations understand this of the subjection of the woman (JB, ‘covering their heads with a symbol of the authority over them’; GNB, ‘to show that she is under her husband’s authority’; RSV, ‘a veil on her head’, rewrites rather than translates). But exousia means ‘authority’, not ‘subjection’; when anyone is said ‘to have authority’ it does not mean that the person is set under someone. W. M. Ramsay poured scorn on the idea that the term can indicate woman’s subjection, seeing this as ‘a preposterous idea which a Greek scholar would laugh at anywhere except in the N.T.’ (cited in Robertson and Plummer). Paul appears to be saying that there is a new view of women in Christianity. They are not to be regarded as an inferior species, as was generally the case in the ancient world. Christ’s new creation makes everything new (2 Cor. 5:17), and distinctions that matter so highly to men, including that between male and female, no longer count (Gal. 3:27–28); Paul will insist on equality in v. 11. He has said that women pray and prophesy in worship (v. 5). For that they need authority and he is saying that their head-covering is their sign of authority. As M. D. Hooker puts it, ‘Far from being a symbol of the woman’s subjection to man, therefore, her head-covering is what Paul calls it—authority: in prayer and prophecy she, like the man, is under the authority of God’ (NTS, 10, 1963–64, p. 416).
In Judaism women had a very minor place; they were not even counted in the number required for a synagogue (ten males). Christianity gave them a new and significant place, and their head-covering is a mark of their new authority. The differences arising from creation remain; Paul is not trying to obliterate them. But he is clear that Christian women have authority. The idea that the covering of the woman’s head is a sign of subjection to her husband runs into another difficulty. In praying or prophesying she is acting in obedience to God; why should she demonstrate subordination to a man in such an activity? Her head-covering, her authority for praying or prophesying, is the veiling of ‘the glory of man’ (v. 7).
There is a further problem in the expression because of the angels. Paul probably means that there is more to worship than the people in the congregation see. Good angels are there. The angels observe, and the woman must not be unseemly before them.2 This is the more appropriate in that angels serve believers (Heb. 1:14) and do not rebel at the task. Some have thought that Paul has in mind bad angels who will lust against unveiled women (in the spirit of Gen. 6:2), but this seems unlikely. The angels without qualification would not be understood as evil spirits. Moreover there seems no reason why such angels should be tempted only during worship.
11. Paul makes it clear that what he has been saying is not meant as an undue subordination of women. There is a partnership between the sexes and in the Lord neither exists without the other (NEB, ‘in Christ’s fellowship woman is as essential to man as man to woman’). The man must not exaggerate the significance of his having been created first. There is a fundamental equality.
12. Paul repeats the point that woman came from man (v. 8). Now he supplements it by pointing out that man is born of woman, more literally, ‘the man is through (dia) the woman’. The reference is no longer to the Genesis story, but to the ordinary processes of birth (so NIV). In this sense every man is ‘through’ the woman. The addition everything comes from God is a typical Pauline reminder of the priority of the divine. From is ek, denoting origin; the source, the origin of all things and all people is God. Neither man nor woman is an independent being. The implications for conduct are plain.
13. Paul makes an appeal to the Corinthians’ own understanding of the fitness of things. Yourselves is emphatic both from its position and also because autois is added to hymin. They can surely work out for themselves what is proper. They need not rely on Paul to direct them.
14–15. Paul proceeds to appeal to nature. Nature gives women longer hair than it does men, a difference which has usually, though not universally, been reflected in hair-styles. Some of the ancient Greeks had long hair, for example the Spartans and some of the philosophers. But generally speaking men have reflected the distinctions made in nature by using shorter hair-styles than those of women. This certainly must have been the case in first-century Corinth and in the places known to those who lived there, else Paul could not have couched his appeal in these terms. By contrast long hair is a glory to a woman. The precise length is not specified and it is not important. Paul simply says that it is longer than that of the man and this is accepted as her glory. Nature is giving a hint at the need for a woman to have her head covered on appropriate occasions. Indeed her hair is given to her as a covering.
16. But Paul has no intention of arguing the matter with anyone given to wordy battles (contentious, philoneikos, means someone who loves strife). Such people are capable of prolonging an argument indefinitely. In the face of such an attitude Paul points to universal Christian custom; Christians have no other practice. Exactly who he means by we is not clear; it may mean Paul himself, or the apostles generally, or those with him when he wrote the letter. But the nor do the churches of God shows that what he has outlined is the common practice throughout the churches.
This section of the letter raises the perennial question of the relationship of current social customs to Christian morality and practice. Behind all that Paul says is the principle that Christians must always act in a seemly manner: ‘everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way’ (14:40). The application of this principle to first-century Corinth yields the direction that women must have their heads covered when they worship. The principle is of permanent validity, but we may well feel that its application to the contemporary scene need not yield the same result. In other words, in the light of our totally different social customs, we may well hold that the fullest acceptance of the principle underlying this chapter does not require that in Western lands in the twentieth century women must always wear hats when they pray. ‘We must remember that when Paul spoke about women as he did in the letters to the Corinthians, he was writing to the most licentious city in the ancient world, and that in such a place modesty had to be observed and more than observed; and that it is quite unfair to wrest a local ruling from the circumstances in which it was given, and to make it a universal principle’ (W. Barclay, Letters to the Seven Churches [SCM, 1957], p. 75).