LNE

Sorry I’ve been gone so long.

I don’t know exactly how to understand the idea that Paul considered it a logical necessity for a woman to cut her hair if she didn’t wear a covering, unless he was trying to get women to understand that by having long hair, they were still wearing a head covering– just the natural one given by God. So, therefore, in order to truly uncover their heads they must also cut their long hair. I don’t see why Paul would be telling women to cut their hair as to not send mixed messages, but maybe that is what Paul is saying. I really just don’t know/don’t get it at the moment.

Regardless, I still think you are right. I’m convinced you are right in general on this because; (i) of the flow of the passage, especially the “if’s” used of a woman either covering or uncovering her head, (ii) Paul states that woman is man’s glory and because of this she should have authority over her head (also because of the angels), (iii) Paul tells the Corinthians to judge for themselves whether it is right for a woman to pray uncovered, (iv) (maybe) Paul telling the Corinthians that it is not a woman’s glory to have long hair, but her hair is a covering, and finally (v) Paul stating that if anyone desires to be contentious (presumable about the matter of head coverings), Paul and the Churches have no such custom.
All this, properly translated, leads me to believe that Paul is giving a woman options; that she can cover her head if it’s shameful for her to be uncovered, but she has the choice (the authority) to choose in the end, since there is no universal head covering custom in The Churches.

So I guess that about wraps it up on this one. Thanks for dialoguing with me.

Thanks Cheryl, that was very edifying. I kind of figured that imperatives could sometimes be used in the permissive sense, since I had noticed certain imperatives logically seem like they must be only permissive in certain passages, but I did not know this was an established rule of Greek grammar, so it was helpful that you posted those excerpts from Robertson’s Grammar.

However, something said in the excerpt you posted has me confused again. It seems to say that the hermeneutical considerations will not allow making the “imperative (into a) permissive” in 1 Cor 11:6. It then says, I think, that the verbs for “let her have her hair cut” and “let her be covered” imply logical necessity.
Is this excerpt saying that “let her have her hair cut” is therefore imperative, something a woman must do if she does not cover her head? It seems like the writer of Robertson’s Grammar is saying that both of these verbs are used imperatively, not permissively, even though imperative verbs can be used permissively in other places (but not here according to what I’m reading from the excerpt.). I may be reading this all wrong, hopefully you can straighten me out.

Cheryl said:”The permission to have her head “shaved” is because there is no imperative whatsoever for shaving her head. In the first part of 1 Corinthians 11:6, Paul says “let her have her hair cut off”, but he does not say that it is a logical necessity for her to have her head shaved. The Greek words translated as “hair cut” and “shaved” are two different Greek words.”

Sorry, I mistakenly used the term “shaved” forgetting that there were two distinct terms for “have her hair cut”, and “shaved”. I meant “shaved” to mean the exact same thing as “have her hair cut off”. So my question was, is Paul telling uncovered women they should or must (imperatively) cut off their hair (or simply have their hair cut in some way) if they don’t cover their head, or merely that they may do so (permissively) if they want to?

Also, are the verbs for “to have the hair cut off” (keiro) and “to be shaven” (xurao) nearly synonymous, as it seems from the lexicons I’m reading, or does one mean something significantly different than the other?

Cheryl said: In the second part Paul gives two conditions. If it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut or if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her head shaved, then she has permission to cover her head. (See Robertson’s grammar in the comment above regarding the permissive meaning).

I already asked this above, but it seems like Robertson’s grammar is saying the opposite, that both “let her cut her hair” and “let her be covered” are logical necessities, or imperatives, not permissive uses of the imperative in this case. Again, I’m no expert so I could be way off here, or maybe I’m just not understanding this excerpt properly.

Cheryl said: Notice that Paul does not say that if a woman’s husband is disgraced in verse 6. In verse 6, Paul is talking about the woman’s shame. It is her shame that is given permission to be covered in verse 6.

It is true that verse 6 is talking about the woman’s shame, but Paul does seem to be tying this to the shame of her “head” (her source, the man) from the previous verses, detailing that when a woman is uncovered, it is the same as being shaven, and she shames her head because of the “shaven head” for whatever reason.
It seems like if a woman shaves her head, she, as well as her husband at the same time, are shamed (in that cultural context).

Cheryl said: In this passage, Paul is not talking about punishing a woman by shaving her head. He is just giving her permission to cover her head during prayer or prophesying, if she experiences shame. The logical necessity is to withdraw from the cultural requirement in total by cutting the hair, not by shaving the head completely off.
We need to note that the woman who has made a vow to God and has complied with God’s requirements by shaving off her hair when the vow is complete, is an honorable thing, not a dishonorable thing. It was obedience to God that caused the shaving, not a sign of shame.

Are you then saying that Paul is telling women who don’t cover their heads to cut their hair, or merely recommending/permitting it?

God did tell those who took the Nazirite Vow to shave their heads. But Paul says the woman who is uncovered shames her head because she is as if shaven, and Paul equates the shaven head with shame. I don’t know why he does, but he does.
I’ve heard prostitutes of the era had shaven heads, and it was a punishment enacted toward adulterous women in Paul’s day, but I do not know what more to make of this. I’ve also heard that Jewish women were expected to cover their head, because it was seen as a private area. I believe Dr. Payne give references for the former two reasons being applicable during the time of Paul.
For whatever reason, Paul says the uncovered woman shames her head, because it was the same as being shaven. God tells women to cover their heads with something if a shaven head is shameful (perhaps He only permitted this, I don’t know yet), so God permitted women to shave their heads, but they should or may be covered while shaven if it is a shame to have an uncovered shaven head.

I see this as akin to what the previous chapter of 1 Corinthians ( 1 Cor 10) spoke about concerning not offending brothers and sisters unnecessarily, or anyone else if it can be avoided. I see this as something Paul either requires or permits because of mercy and the desire to avoid offense (and also his desire that man and woman submit to each other mutually for the others’ benefit, and honor each other above themselves, i.e. not shame each other if they can help it), not because a woman needs to show her submission by wearing a head covering as a symbol of the man’s authority over her (a Comp view).

Cheryl said: We also can know for certainty that “nature” does not teach a law regarding the length of hair on a man or a woman. Both are equally given hair that grows unless you cut it. This equal natural expression of hair was given to both by God Himself. God is not shamed by a woman without hair (as the rule of the Nazarite vow shows) and God is not shamed by a man with long hair (as the rule of the Nazarite vows shows). Paul was not forcing a veil on a woman so Paul was not upholding a man-made law.

I would like to agree with you here because it does seem that nature itself does not teach that a man’s long hair is a shame (since God commanded some men to have long hair, like Samson. Priests could not have long hair, nor shaven heads apparently, but we are not Levitical Priests.).

I have found that almost everywhere else in the NT where “oude” begins a sentence, as in 1 Cor 11:14, the sentence is declarative and not interrogative (a question). There are only three exceptions, all in The Gospels.
Paul never uses “oude” at the beginning of a sentence to introduce a question, from my study. Therefore, this supports the interpretation that verse 14 is not saying that long hair on men is a shame, nor that long hair is a woman’s glory. The only issue I have found with taking verse 14 as a declarative statement is that there is apparently a textual variant at the beginning of verse 14.
The variant is in the Textus Receptus and it is the little “n” or “or” particle, which often heads up interrogative rhetorical questions. I don’t know how many manuscripts, and which ones exactly, contain the “n” particle before the “oude” in verse 14, but if that particle is well attested then it does make verse 14 in all likelihood a question, supporting the idea that man’s long hair is a shame (which seems to be the traditional view). I have heard that the “n” particle that is part of the Textus Receptus here is not well attested and does not appear in any Greek critical text. Maybe you know more about this?

I’m hoping to have this cleared up, because your interpretation is the only one I think I have ever heard that remains faithful to the words in the passage and appears to me to be totally logical. I have always found Comp interpretations of this passage wanting, or based on mistranslations (1 Cor 11:10′s “a woman should have authority over her head”, made into the, in my opinion, utterly grammatically and syntactically improper ” a woman should have a [symbol of] authority on her head”, and the blatant mistranslation of verse 16, changing “no such custom” into “no other custom”, even though the word rendered “such” or “other” is from my research only known to mean “such”, never “other”. This subtle change of wording drastically changes the meaning of this verse.)

I thank you for sticking with me and answering these questions when I know you have other pressing business to attend to. I can only hope my apparent density will only be used by God to help those who read these comments to understand this passage even better.

Hi Cheryl,

I realize this is an old post and I’m dragging it back out, but I’m doing research for a study of 1 Cor 11:1-16 and I’m a little confused about something you said here. If you have time, since I know you are busy and are dealing with Calvinism on your other blog, it would be great to hear from you.

My conundrum is, that you say that 1 Cor 11:6 is Paul telling a woman that if she is not covering her head (present tense), she is also merely allowed to have her hair cut off. (aorist tense); but “[also] let her hair be cut off” is an imperative command, like “[also] she should/must have her hair cut off”.

How is it proper to render this imperative verb as merely permission to have her hair shaved, as if it said “If a woman is not covering her head, let her also be permitted [but not commanded] to have her hair cut off”, and not as a command to have her head shaved (seemingly as a punishment for shaming her head [man] by not covering her physical head)?

It seems like Paul is saying that if a woman does not cover herself and shames her head, then to show her disgrace further Paul commands her to have her head shaven; but if being shaved is a shame, then she should cover her head. So in essence he is demanding a woman cover her head, since not covered=shaven and an uncovered woman should also be shaven (because she is being rebellious against the command to cover), but if her shaven head was shameful, (it was according to Paul) then she must cover her head.

Slightly off-topic tangent:
I think that perhaps the “bitter water” ritual of Num 5:18, where an accused adulteress’ head was “uncovered” (Philo quoted this passage using the same Greek word used for “uncovered” in 1 Cor 11:5, 13) may be why an uncovered head was considered shameful to a woman’s husband (it was a symbol of possible adultery). In Dr. Payne’s book (Man and Woman, One in Christ), on pages 172-173, he says (quoting Wallace) that the imperatives of verse 6 are stronger than mere options, and place requirements on the individual.
Payne believes that “uncovered” means “with hair hanging loose, hair let down” based in part on the evidence of Lev 13:45 (in the LXX), the only other place where the word for “uncovered” used in 1 Cor 11:5 and 13 appears in the LXX. In the Hebrew text of Lev 13:45, the word translated as “uncovered” in the LXX is said to mean “hair let loose or unbound”, and is also the Hebrew word used of the accused adulteress of Num 5:18.

He believes, based on historical evidence about what was shameful in the culture of Paul’s day, that the “covered” head of the man is long effeminate hair which Paul says is disgraceful for a man to have “down from the head” (since Payne says there is insufficient evidence to say that a cloth covering was shameful to a man, and he takes 1 Cor 11:14 as a rhetorical question like most people seem to, rather than a statement negating the idea that a man’s long hair is a shame, and that a woman’s long hair is her glory, because it is her covering), and the uncovered head of the woman was her long hair let down or unrestrained by bands or something like that (Payne says she was to wear her long glorious hair “as/for a covering”, which means to put it up and cover the head with it as a wrap. He also says there is little evidence that a Greek or Roman woman would commonly wear a veil, or that it was a shame if she didn’t.
Payne does say that most of the artwork from the time of Paul shows respectable women with their hair “done up”, but not usually veiled.). In addition, in 1 Pet 3:3 and 1 Tim 2:9, women are told not to wear braided hair and gold (perhaps better rendered plaited hair with gold put in it) twice, once by Paul and once by Peter. It would be kind of strange to tell women not to wear certain hairstyles if their hair was entirely covered by a cloth veil.
Whether he is right or not, I have reservations, but regardless of what the “covering” is, my question is still whether a woman is permitted to go without it, or is expressly told she must go all the way and have her head shaved if she doesn’t wear it, if being without it shames her head.

Hey Cheryl, thanks for responding,

You don’t have to respond to my comment if you don’t want to, unless you want to correct me or something. It was a very long comment and I realize you may be busy. I’m not really disagreeing with you fundamentally anyway. I was just reading Payne’s book at the time and had the information fresh in my mind, and I wanted to defend some of his analysis, even though I don’t agree with him on everything either.

Thanks for the link to your other blog and the information about your next project, at least I know you’re still around and doing well.

By the way, if anyone is interested, I started a new blog about the same issues that this blog addresses, namely women in ministry and Christianity. It’s called “Ladies in The Lord” and I’ve got my first post up about 1 Tim 2:11-15; it’s ridiculously long and doesn’t stick entirely to the topic of 1 Tim 2 (also includes general information about women in the Bible, and men too), but it contains lots of helpful links and information I think, and answers several complementarian objections and arguments.

Ladies in The Lord: http://ladiesinthelord.blogspot.com/

Thanks and may God Bless everyone.

Pinklight,

I think people often keep and defend traditions that agree with their personal desires, like in this case, for male power and privilege in a world that is shifting from male-dominance to female-male equality.
Some people just like feeling better than others at an ontological level (despite the fact that they’ll say men and women are ontologically equal, some don’t really seem to believe that, even calling women easily deceived by God’s original design.), or they fear egal interpretations are liberal and will destroy the Church.

But some I think are truly deluded, they don’t know how badly their modern English translations have butchered the meaning of some of God’s words. They can’t imagine that flat-out interpretations are put into their Bibles as if they were in the text itself by trusted conservative translators (like “veil” or “symbol of authority” in 1 Cor 11, and changing “no such custom” to “no other custom”), or that the grammar in their NIV isn’t wholly faithful to God’s inspired text. Honestly, I think many don’t even understand that grammar is important.

Some comps, like myself in the past, truly fear God and wish to obey Him, even if He says hard things; they just think He’s saying what the English Bible says and they make doctrines from it. They don’t know the controversies surrounding words like authentein, they don’t even know they need to look for such things.
They think the words are all translated right, and its only the interpretation that is the issue, because they trust that scholars wouldn’t distort translations as much as they do. You can get a significantly different picture of manhood and womanhood from using the ESV than from using a Greek interlinear or a literal translation.

I was a strict comp until I stumbled upon the blogs and egal scholars that would make clearly known to me for the first time the distortions in the translations that most of the “good” conservative website like Carm didn’t mention and even perpetuated.
I was afraid to question the “good guys” of CBMW, the Grudems, the Pipers, the MacArthurs, the conservative heroes that I admired. Little did I realize how strange and unlikely some of their beliefs and interpretations were.

It was the “bad guys”, the egalitarians (aka “feminists” according to many complementarians), that seemed to have much of the truly convincing textual data on their side.

But it took me years before I realized this, because I trusted that Bible scholars wouldn’t lie, keep information hidden, and distort the text. I thought they feared God like me. Some do I’m sure, but they have blind spots, and they need God’s chastening.

There is a lot of ye olde worldliness in “good” “conservative” Christianity that isn’t good nor truly conservative.
I thought Jesus telling us NOT to Lord over or exercise authority over one another in His Churches like the heathen, but to be servants, and to mutually submit to each other, and to consider others before ourselves, would make any man fear to distort these things, but some are not deterred.

I have read Payne’s book and I think there are some misunderstanding about his arguments he[re.

1](logos4:///Bible/Re 1). Payne says that the present INDICATIVE form of “I am not permitting” is what makes him feel it is a time-bound situation, since he examines other uses by Paul of his use of “I” followed by an indicative verb and finds that most, if not all situations like this reveal a present non-universal desire of Paul’s (particularly throughout 1 Cor 7 and in Philippians once).
He stresses the importance of the “indicative” form, not that the present tense alone is what makes it limited.

2. The example from Rev 2:20-22 is not Pauline, but written by John, and does not use “oude” (but rather “kai” to connect the verbs in Rev 2:20) ” nor the “ouk, oude” construction that Payne argues is used in specific ways by Paul that is different than how other writers of the Scripture use the same construction. He analyzes every instance of the “not, nor” or “ouk, oude” constructions from Paul to make his argument that they are used in this instance, as well as the other similar instances, to make a single prohibition.
   His argument hinges on how Paul alone uses this vocabulary (which he maintains is different than even how Luke uses “oude” in Acts), and the “oude” word, so the Revelations passage is not precisely relevant to his argument since it is not Pauline and has no “oude”.

Also, I think you could make the “teach” and “lead astray” activities that Jezebel is doing into one activity, “leading astray by teaching”, though this is just my opinion and I don’t know if that is proper to do or not.

3. I think Payne believes Paul prohibited all women from assuming personal authority to teach in Ephesus for a limited time because he believes the false teachers were targeting and deceiving women moreso than any other group in 1 Tim, based on what the rest of the letter says about false teaching and how widows were going astray, and using evidence from similar texts in 2 Tim. I don’t think he sees authentein as “dominate” or as something utterly negative all the time, but rather taking authority into one’s own hands to do something without delegation. I think he might say there are times when this is okay, and that authentein is not always a bad thing, but it would be in this case because of the current false teaching problem.

4. I don’t think he would say that because women are not to do this (teach+assume authority) to men in this instance, that they can do it to women and children, but rather that Paul was explicitly speaking of women doing this to men because that’s what the problem was at the time. Just because “a woman” (or women in general in Payne’s view) is singled out as the one who is not to teach nor usurp authority (or assume authority) over a man, that doesn’t mean that all believers weren’t prohibited from it as well.
   In 1 Tim 2:8-9, men are told to pray without wrath and “reasoning” (referred to in English translations as wrangling/doubting/dissension, but the word itself can often just mean reasoning or thinking, oddly enough. Sometimes its not negative… like the word to “teach”. Hmm, so I guess men can’t reason or think when they pray, huh? No, but that’s similar to how comps interpret “teach”, that it must be positive teaching in 1 Tim 2:12.), and the women are told not to dress opulently and immodestly (which would almost certainly apply to men as well). Sometimes Paul just likes to emphasize things for one person or group without it applying only to that person or group because certain ones are causing the current problem.

That said, I really wish Payne would have addressed the grammar in a similar fashion as you do, specifically the abrupt switch from plural to singular to plural again at the end. There is no need for using singular language in order to compare all women to Eve, since in 2 Cor 11:3 Paul compares the whole Corinthian Church to Eve with the plural “you”.

Payne did briefly say he believed that the singulars in 1 Tim 2:11-14 are referring to each woman/all women as generics, but he did not explore this in any depth in my opinion, and he didn’t really defend his stance on this either.
He also didn’t talk about the ramifications of the perfect tense of “has become” from verse 14 much at all, or the future tense of “she will be saved” to my recollection.

I’d really like to have a Ph.D like Dr. Payne confirm that the perfect tense of the woman having “become” a transgressor really must rule out Eve as being “the woman” of verse 14, and that the “she” of verse 15 cannot refer to Eve because of the future tense of “she will be saved”. But I know Dr. Payne had to drastically cut the size of his book nearly in half in order to please Zondervan, so this may have been cut.
It really seems like no egal scholar ever brings this up nor desires to take a stab at the grammar in their books… why is that? You’d think some Greek scholar would have taken up this position by now.

Yet I know many Christian scholars are comps, so they probably don’t want these verses to be re-thought or changed in any way. Like many other poor choices by “scholars” in regards to women in the Bible and translations, they seem to just want to keep the traditions of the reformers instead of being painstakingly literal and “true” to the text and grammar.

My take on these verses is that I think God, through Paul, is prohibiting false teaching by a singular, unnamed, but definite woman, probably in conjunction with usurping authority over a man, but it could be two separate prohibitions as well.

As an aside, I think it’s false teaching being prohibited, despite the word being the generic word for “teach” (didasko) instead of “teach differently’ (heterodidaskaleo), because I have found that heterodidaskaleo is only used twice in the entire NT, and didasko, the generic verb for teaching used in 1 Tim 2:12, is used seven times in Scripture for what the speakers of the words in the verse believed was false teaching (eight if you count 1 Tim 2:12).
Examples: Rev 2:14, Rev 2:20, Titus 1:11, Acts 21:28 (the teaching in this case was actually right teaching, some may protest. But the Jews who were railing against Paul in this passage, used this word for his teaching, though they believed he was teaching falsehood. Yet they still used didasko to describe it.), Acts 5:25 (similarly with the last one, the teaching was actually true, but it was viewed as evil by the people who called it simply “didaskontes”.), Mark 7:7(Matt 15:9 parallel), Matt 5:19.

So clearly, the word “didasko” and it’s derivatives can be used for false teaching, even in Paul’s pastorals, and the verb heterodidaskaleo is not required, nor is it often used (never used outside of 1 Tim in fact). Whether “to teach” is a good thing or not is determined by context and other words around the verb “to teach”.

Back to my interpretation of 1 Tim 2:11-15: Because the context seems to demand that she (“the woman”, and “a woman” who may be anartherous) is a deceived woman as Eve was, and is in her transgression still, if Eve cannot be “the woman” from verse 14 because of the grammar, then it’s false teaching that is prohibited, and not true teaching. That would make “a woman”=”the woman”, instead of the traditional view that “a woman”= each/all women, “the woman”= Eve + each/all women, and “she”= Eve + each/all women being the ones who “will be saved through The Childbirth”, if “they”(which also = all women) stay in true faith.

The “they” that must remain in faith in order to save the “she” of verse 15 seems to have to be the man + woman of verse 12, not “all women” from verse 10 which is not directly connected to these verses, though I don’t know if it could be or not since I am not a Greek expert. I know there is no linking particle between verse 10 and 11, but the verses do seem to be linked by the topic of women/a woman. They could be at least.

I believe God used the passage about Priscilla and Aquila taking aside Apollos in Acts 18:26 to help me understand that a singular man and a singular woman together can become the plural “they”, like in this passage, and that this is the most natural reading of the 1 Tim 2 passage. I always thought importing verse 10’s “women”(plural) was the natural way to deal with verse 15’s “they”, not realizing man + woman seems to be the better option.

I’m still trying to understand the link between Adam’s prior formation and Eve’s latter formation and Adam’s not being deceived, since it just isn’t elaborated on in the passage. Is it because, as you say, Adam had more time to learn from God and therefore was not deceived, that his prior formation was important to mention?
It seems like a plausible suggestion, but it’s not really brought up by anyone one else I know, nor is there a similar comparison elsewhere in scripture that makes Adam “not deceived” because of his having more knowledge and experience with God than Eve, due to him having been made first. But then, there isn’t a whole lot on Adam and Eve compared to each other in the NT at all, and I certainly agree that Adam clearly has more experience than Eve when it comes to seeing God’s works and majesty because of what God did with him before Eve was made. That is true, at least, if we go by just what is told to us in Scripture (which we have to I think). I don’t see that as straining the text at all.

However, like Payne asserts, is Adam’s prior formation relevant because women should show respect for their “source” (male headship as “sourceship”) which requires a woman to honor man and not teach him with assumed authority, (as should man a woman, because she is his source now, similarly to the argument from 1 Cor 11 about mutual “sourceship”)?
And then there is the comp view, that Adam is given authority to rule over Eve simply because he was made first (not entirely because of the fall and Eve’s sin), which I see as a possible conclusion if firstborn=headship=ruling authority, though I don’t think “head” has been proven to mean “rulership” or “authority” definitively in the New Testament.
Also, I don’t think firstborn sons had “rulership” over their siblings simply because they were first born, they just got more inheritance. Didn’t many latter-born’s rule over their older siblings in religious, political, and social matters? Clearly. I assume this sentiment is shared by most of us here, that Adam’s possible primogeniture doesn’t equal eternal male authority over all females.

So there are still some questions I haven’t found convincing answers for, though I like how your view considers Adam’s prior creation having something to do with his non-deception, as it seems many do not connect these two things and take them as separate unrelated reasons for each of the prohibitions, which are also taken separately (or together sometimes).

I guess that’s all, just wanted to clear that up. I’m hoping you’ll post again soon Cheryl, haven’t seen you around in a while.