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Old 03-30-2008, 05:50 PM
Connie
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OK, you're right, it's always better to moderate one's language about such things, but of everything I personally checked, all the commentaries I could find online at various Bible websites, also using search engines, also my own few commentaries, not one of them before the 20th century interpreted Paul as saying long hair was the covering. Not Calvin, not Matthew Henry, Not Jamieson Faussett and Brown.

I also researched whatever I could find online of customs throughout history and found others discussing it who showed picture after picture of women with their heads covered. I did my own independent investigation too and found women in Greece and Rome in the centuries about the time of Paul NOT covering their heads, but after the church was established you find women in Europe covering their heads. I can't remember an exception but that doesn't mean there weren't some. ALL OF THEM HAVE LONG HAIR, IN ALL THE PICTURES. The only one that didn't was the Greek character Electra, who cut her hair in mourning for her father. Otherwise there are no women with short hair. Greek women are usually shown with it piled up on their heads and held with a band.

Most current commentaries don't interpret the covering as hair either. I read or listened to all the high profile evangelicals on this I could find, John MacArthur and Alistair Begg and Chuck Smith and Ray Stedman and many lesser known names and the only one I found who said it was long hair was David Cloud. I appreciate David Cloud on most of his Biblical preaching but I disagree with him completely on this.

A footnote in the NIV and entries in the popular Zodhiates' word dictionary claim that it is hair, but both are highly suspect sources of anything whatever. Otherwise there is David Cloud and with all due respect, and I DO respect him greatly, he got this one wrong.

I don't agree with the big name evangelicals either except in their judgment that long hair isn't what Paul meant as the covering. These and most other commentaries I found, including Matthew Henry, understand Paul to have been asking for a covering over the head and hair but they see that requirement as a cultural expression of femininity or female submissiveness in Paul's day, for which today they say we can substitute whatever is the equivalent in our own culture. In effect this cultural interpretation has nullified the scripture altogether so that now it is mostly ignored, because there is no clear cultural substitute today. Women dress mostly according to female fashion and consider that as sufficient.

Does it make sense that Paul would argue as strenuously as he does in that passage from universals, from God's creation order, from nature, not knowing he's only talking about a mere custom? He was a cosmopolitan man; his travels took him to many cultures, and Corinth was in fact a large cosmopolitan city in which many different cultures were in evidence with their various customs and styles, Jews, Greeks, Romans, even Germans and possibly Arabs, and no doubt in the church as well. No, that is not a mistake Paul would have made. I also can't see Paul caring one fig for any cultural custom anyway; all Paul cares about is what honors Christ and cultures are not a reliable standard for that. .

Also, why would Paul spend so much time focusing on the HEAD, the man's head, the woman's head, if the appropriate symbol of male headship could be reduced to any old kind of feminine attire?

P.S. You are right that I'm writing in broad generalities, and on some specific points you may find me in error. But I believe the generalities hold up overall. I did a lot of studying to understand this passage and this was my overall conclusion. I personally found NO one interpreting the covering as hair until recently.

Last edited by Connie; 03-30-2008 at 06:00 PM.