Head Coverings Predated Christianity

[votivesoul]

Originally Posted by Costeon

I was reading 1 Cor 11 recently and was thinking about the issue of head coverings, and something came to mind: head coverings predated the arrival of Christianity in Corinth (and everywhere else in the Greco-Roman world).

This is true, but see Evangelist Benincasa's post above to see where there were distinct purposes and uses of head coverings or veils, for both men and women.

It was not a new teaching that Paul brought to Corinth.

Correct. Paul called his teaching a tradition he had passed down to them.

1 Corinthians 11:2-3 (ESV),

2 Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you...

the traditions: παραδόσεις (paradoseis)

HELP Word Studies:

3862 parádosis (from 3844 /pará, "from close-beside" and 1325 /dídōmi, "give over") – properly, give (hand over) from close-beside, referring to tradition as passed on from one generation to the next.

NAS Exhaustive Concordance:

Word Origin: from paradidómi

Definition: a handing down or over, a tradition

Thayer's Lexicon:

a giving over which is done by word of mouth or in writing, i. e. tradition by instruction, narrative, precept, etc. (see παραδίδωμι, 4); hence, equivalent to instruction, Epictetus diss. 2, 23, 40; joined with διδασκαλία, Plato, legg. 7, p. 803 a. objectively, what is delivered, the substance of the teaching: so of Paul's teaching, 2 Thessalonians 3:6; in plural of the particular injunctions of Paul's instruction, 1 Corinthians 11:2; 2 Thessalonians 2:15.

See: https://biblehub.com/greek/3862.htm

So, we see Paul has handed down to the Corinthians a traditional teaching which he himself had handed down to him through a previous source (perhaps Gamaliel?).

BUT, and this is key, as you've already mentioned, the Corinthians were already well versed in Greco-Roman life and culture. Corinth was well known as being a highly metropolitan city. So, Paul didn't hand down or transmit to them a Greco-Roman tradition they were already familiar with, one they would have already been practicing.

If Christianity had never existed, there would have still been an expectation—a requirement—in the Greco-Roman world that modest women would wear head coverings in public.

While true, this doesn't have sufficient explanational force for why Paul commended the Corinthians for maintaining the traditions he passed down to them, as I showed above, since veiling the head was something the Corinthians would have inherited from the cultural milieu of the time, and not from Paul.

Therefore, something else must be in view. Again, as shown by Evangelist Benincasa, the Greco-Roman practice of veiling is not at all identical to the Christian practice Paul gives us in 1 Corinthians 11. Something else is at play. Thematically similar, perhaps, but vastly different in actual application.

Some would argue that this fact shows that Paul's teaching on this matter is culturally bound and not required in all cultures. For proponents of head coverings in all cultures, how would you respond to that argument?

Yes, veiling the hair IS a culturally bound requirement. However, the requirement isn't bound to either the cultures of the 1st century Greco-Roman society in general, or the 1st century Corinthian society in particular.

Rather, the cultural requirement is that of the Kingdom of God. It is a part of the Church, and Her culture, as fundamental to the spiritual realities and understandings of the larger context of both Old and New Covenant Israel, i.e. the Church.

The question, then, is why? Why was this inherited tradition a part of the Church and the Kingdom of God? In my estimation, it's because of the long standing understanding, based in the Torah, of a married woman covering her hair.

Rebekah veiled herself upon meeting Isaac (Genesis 24:65). She had been betrothed to him prior, when Abraham's servant Eliezer negotiated the marriage contract with Laban and her family. But, upon meeting Isaac, as the story goes, she immediately veiled herself, then went into the tent and consummated the marriage.

Later, in Numbers 5:18, we have the Sotah Ritual, when a wife was accused of adultery by her husband, he brought her to a priest, who unveiled her hair as part of the ceremony.

Later still, in Isaiah 47:1-3, as a judgment against the virgin daughter, i.e. the people, of Babylon, a symbolic description is given of the specifics of how badly God is going to bring destruction upon them. One aspect of the description is given thusly:

"...put off your veil..."

But note the fuller context of the judgment:

2 ...put off your veil,
strip off your robe, uncover your legs,
pass through the rivers.
3 Your nakedness shall be uncovered,
and your disgrace shall be seen.

Removing the veil was part and parcel of stripping oneself in public, i.e. the shame and disgrace of being naked before others. Note specifically, the word for disgrace, in Hebrew is חֶרְפָּתֵ֑ךְ (ḥerpāṯêḵ), which often refers to the pudenda, or external genitalia of a woman.

See: https://biblehub.com/hebrew/2781.htm

So, what do we have going here with all of this data?

We have a living example from the time of the Patriarchs of at least one woman veiling herself as part of her marriage ceremony. We have a law in the Torah about married women being forcibly unveiled in the Sotah Ritual, which specifically deals with sexual sin and indiscretion, which was punishable by death (Leviticus 20:10), and we have a prophet telling us in poetic language that the unveiling of a woman's hair is tantamount to her being stripped bare and forced to go out publicly naked, forced, as it were, to have to show the world her pudenda or external genitalia, i.e. her vulva.

This is the understanding Paul had transmitted to him. A near contemporary of Paul, a Jewish Rabbi named Rav Sheshet, is quoted in the Talmud (Berakhot 24a) as saying:

Rav Sheshet stated: Even a woman’s hair is considered nakedness, for it too is praised, as it is written: “Your hair is like a flock of goats, trailing down from Mount Gilead” (Song of Songs 4:1).

See: https://www.sefaria.org/Berakhot.24a...h=all&lang2=en

What then is the conclusion?

In 1 Corinthians 11:15, we read this:

15 but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering. (ESV)

Please note, however, that this word translated "covering" is not the same as all the other instances when it is used in this chapter. In previous instances, Paul uses some derivation of the Greek word κατακαλύπτω (katakaluptó), meaning to cover with a veil.

See: https://biblehub.com/greek/2619.htm

But, in verse 15, it's an entirely different word. There, the term in question is: περιβόλαιον (peribolaion). This is significant. This word is only used one other time, in Hebrews 1:12, quoting the LXX of Psalm 102:26.

Psalm 102:26 reads:

26 They will perish, but you will remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away...

"Change them like a robe" is interesting in the original Hebrew, because the word for robe: לְבוּשׁ (lebush) is used euphemistically to refer to a wife.

See: https://biblehub.com/hebrew/3830.htm

The reference is from Malachi 2:16, vis a vis, putting away a wife, i.e. removing a wife from the home as if throwing away an old, worn out garment.

We see then, that περιβόλαιον (peribolaion) can refer euphemistically to a veil that a (married) woman wears, and even to the wife herself (i.e. the wife and the veil become synonymous with each other). But it goes further than that.

As Troy Martin has shown, περιβόλαιον (peribolaion) was used in pre-Pauline Koine Greek poetic and medical literature to refer to a man's testicle, i.e. a man's external genitalia.

See: https://nakedbiblepodcast.com/wp-con...covering-1.pdf

These things all being the case, what is Paul conveying to the Corinthian Church, and by extension, to the Christian world at large, all the way up to today?

Effectively, a (married) woman's hair is understood to be regarded as part of her external genitalia and being able to see it unveiled constitutes something akin to being guilty of adultery, in the sense that a man and a woman become one flesh in marriage, and so, her hair, as understood to be a part of her external genitalia, becomes her husband's external genitalia, and the Torah forbids the uncovering or either's nakedness as a sin (See Leviticus 18).

This is the tradition the Corinthians had passed to them by Paul, that he himself inherited, which we now today, have codified to us in the 11th chapter of his epistle to them.

A (married) woman who prays or prophesies in church during public worship, but whose hair isn't veiled is doing so as if both she and her husband were naked.

So, for her to be veiled in every instance except in her home during private life is the cultural expectation of the Kingdom of God. It goes far beyond the Greco-Roman milieu of the 1st century. It harkens all the way back to the Patriarchs, is upheld through the Torah into the Prophets all the way to the time of Christ and the New Covenant Church, even being recognized by other Jewish rabbis near the same time, forward to 2026 and beyond.

1 Corinthians 11:16 (ESV)

16 If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God.