I have been thinking of revising this post for some time, because I have learned more since I last wrote. I could have simply replaced the old post with the new, but I thought it might be better to admit I am dissatisfied with what I published previously by posting a fresh revision.
In my earlier post, I relied too heavily on an online resource which did not sufficiently consider the existing archeological data. The writer reviewed various artistic renditions of women – veiled, unveiled, semi-veiled – and was not definite about what those images conveyed about the dress code for women across the Roman world at the time of Paul’s writing of 1 Corinthians 11. I concluded from the variety of depictions that there was no agreed-upon dress code for women. Therefore, when I came to making contemporary applications, I believed from that variety that we might observe the principle of Paul’s teaching on headship to be applied in a variety of styles of visible clothing, hair and jewelry, depending on our place in the many cultures of the world. I still believe in that application to some extent, but have come to a more confident place of understanding the evidence from the past. It is interesting to me to arrive at nearly the same conclusions and applications, but to have more clarity about how I arrive at those conclusions. I have changed my view on whether this applies only to wives or to all women. I now believe it applies to wives. It is also interesting to consider how archeological discoveries affect our interpretations of biblical passages over the course of Christian history.
Since writing the post in 2019, I have read Roman Wives, Roman Widows: The Appearance of New Women and the Pauline Communities by Bruce Winter*. From ancient historical sources, including inscriptions, statues, etc., Winter makes a strong case that the underlying dispute which Paul is addressing in 1 Corinthians 11 relates to a feminist movement of sorts in the Roman world. Roman wives enjoyed limited freedom. Their husbands had freedom to have additional sexual partners, but they did not. Husbands took possession of the wife’s dowry upon marriage and she lost possession of her own wealth. This meant women would be greatly impoverished if they chose to divorce. Husbands socialized in settings to which their wives had little access. At the same time, there were women who were high class prostitutes, or heterai (in Greek), who controlled their own wealth, wore beautiful clothing, attended social events and enjoyed sexual freedom. They were also free of burdensome responsibilities for children and households, which wives were expected to fulfill. (Please understand that I say “enjoyed sexual freedom” and “burdensome responsibilities for children and households” not as a reflection of my opinions but as opinions of some women in that time and culture.) In the late Roman republic and early period of the empire (1st C BCE), there were legal changes which restored to wives at least part of the wealth they brought into the marriage, so that women began to feel freedom to divorce their husbands to extricate themselves from an unhappy marriage. That freedom enabled the pursuit of equalities in other areas, including addressing the double standard of sexual freedoms accorded to husbands as compared to wives. As wives pressed for these rights they began to shed their marriage veils, which traditionally symbolized modesty, submission, and sexual fidelity to their husbands. Evidently, incidents of wives committing adultery were significant enough that Augustus saw them as a threat to the stability and future strength of the empire. Augustus issued two decrees in response to these various perceived threats to stable marriages (which he hoped would produce children for the empire). The decrees took effect in approximately 17 BCE. Winter writes,
“The lex Julia de maritandis ordinibus dealt with the regulation of marriage, incentives for having children and penalties for refusing to do so. The lex Julia de adulteriis coercendis legislated on promiscuity, . . . these reforms applied both to adulterium, illicit intercourse by and with a respectable married woman, and to stuprum, fornication with a widow or unmarried free woman who was not a prostitute” (Winter, 40-41).
One of the benefits of the first decree was that it removed from the husband the power to judge and execute his own wife for adultery (patria potestas). He now was required to report her adultery for government prosecution. However, both decrees did not completely address the sexual double standard. For my purposes today, they provide some of the data to understand the cultural setting surrounding Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.
Winter asserts that in the time of Paul’s writing, clothing was government-regulated to clearly indicate one’s station in Roman life. Winter cites T. A. J. McGinn as saying, “In classical antiquity, you were what you wore” (Winter, 4-5). With regard to women, married women wore a long simple dress with a long mantle over it. That mantle would be pulled over the head as a veil. As a respectable woman, her clothing also was not to be ostentatious. Unmarried virgins wore similar clothing, but did not pull the mantle over the head. Prostitutes, or hetarai, dressed in more expensive, eye-catching, revealing clothing. The fabrics were often transparent, they wore jewelry, and they did not veil their heads. A married woman who committed adultery was forced by law to wear a toga, be unveiled (“They were no longer eligible to wear the marriage veil” Winter, 42.), and to have her hair cut off. It is because of these authors that I feel more confident now in the ESV translation of these verses, rendering the Greek word gune as ”wives” rather than “women” in verses 3-10. The head covering does not apply to unmarried women, although single women aspiring to marriage would have dressed modestly.
Winter writes that “new women” began to appear in the early empire period. These women, though they were widows and wives, rejected the marriage veil, claimed sexual freedoms previously only enjoyed by men and prostitutes, and sought greater access to educational and social opportunities. Augustus was particularly concerned to crack down on wives committing adultery. The legislation of Augustus required husbands to report the adultery of their wives and to bring them to court for trial and penalty if found guilty. The husbands were not legally authorized to simply forgive their wives’ adultery. This means that if the wives Paul was addressing in 1 Corinthians 11 had actually committed adultery, it would not have been easy to just tell them to get their heads covered again. But in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, Paul is urging wives to cover their heads, to honor the husband who was their head, which, according to Winter and the authors he cites, affirmed their propriety and sexual faithfulness to him. Paul says if they won’t cover their heads, they might as well go the whole way and cut off their hair. But since they clearly know that would be a disgrace, they should cover their heads. This suggests to me that these wives may have seen the gesture of removing their veils mainly as a declaration of their rejection of submission to their husbands, rather than a statement of their sexual freedom. Further, in verse 3, Paul leads off his argument with an affirmation that the husband is the head of a wife, not with a discussion of sexual fidelity. Other passages of Paul’s letters and other books of the Bible speak to God’s sexual ethics.
The Bible never condones adultery, either for husbands or wives. Proverbs opens with multiple chapters in which the writer urges his son not to be enticed by those who are not following the LORD, and in Proverbs 5, he specifically warns against being enticed by a woman who is not his wife to have illicit intercourse with her. We get the strong instruction to be a one-woman-man in verse 15 and following:
Drink water from your own cistern,
flowing water from your own well.
Should your springs be scattered abroad,
streams of water in the streets?
Let them be for yourself alone,
and not for strangers with you.
Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;
be intoxicated always in her love.
Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman
and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?
In Paul’s writing, he specifies that the men who are qualified to become elders are those who have been married to one woman (1 Timothy 3, Titus 1). In 1 Corinthians 6, he condemns joining oneself with a prostitute, citing that it is antithetical to God’s original intention for the one-flesh union of marriage. It may have been legal in the Roman Empire, but it was not honoring to Christ, whether the man was married or unmarried. On one point, Paul agrees with the “new women.” Like them, he does not support the sexual double standard of his culture. But whereas the” new women” asserted their right to be equally promiscuous as men, Paul (following Jesus and the Old Testament Law) denies this kind of sexual conduct to both men and women. (I don’t know why God did not clearly denounce polygamy in the Old Testament, but there are no instances of polygamy in the Bible which are presented as happy families, and by the time of the New Testament, the practice seems to have largely faded away among Jewish people.)
The backdrop then of 1 Corinthians 11 is Roman law which prescribes appropriate clothing and behavior for wives and other women. There was clarity about what each woman conveyed with her clothing, jewelry and hair. The Roman laws were aimed at family stability, but without the underlying biblical theology of our created purpose. The Scriptures show definite concern for the preservation of family stability, but the Spirit moved Paul to write this teaching about men and women for deeper reasons, some of which I brought up in my post about Ephesians 5. In this passage, Paul wants men and women both to wear the clothing which brings honor to their respective heads. Winter discusses the admonition in verse 4 that men ought not to cover their heads when they pray and prophecy and he asserts that this was dishonoring to their head (Christ) because it was a known practice of pagan priests in the worship of idols to cover their heads. But the known practice to honor husbands was for wives to cover their heads. We might be tempted to think Paul is simply acquiescing to the culture, but he writes some reasons here for urging wives to cover their heads which are not identical to the priorities of Augustus. We also might be tempted by such a good explanation as Winter gives to think this situation no longer exists in our present culture and therefore the passage is not normative for us in any way. But underneath the specifics of head coverings is the teaching on headship in verse 3. Paul’s reasons for a manifestation of headship in verses 8-9 are rooted in the creation story – that Eve was created out of Adam’s body and that she was made to be his helper. That history signaled God’s design for the marriage relationship. The husband was designated to be the head of his wife, a headship which is also present in the relationship of God the Father and God the Son. It is incumbent on the wife to bring honor to her husband, just as it is for men to honor Christ their head, and for Jesus to honor and obey his Father.
Additionally, Paul is diverging from cultural thinking when he affirms the equality of women in the Christian setting to pray and prophesy, provided they cover their heads to convey to their husbands the honor which God ordains in the marriage relationship. Their participation in the gathered worship of the church is more revolutionary than we realize. Similarly, his reminders to men that they, like the women all come from God, that they had their birth through a woman, and that men and women are interdependent in relation to one another are all correctives to male hubris. (I discussed all of this and other ideas in my previous posts which I tagged “1 Corinthians 11.”)
In verse 10, Paul makes an enigmatic reference to the angels. I wrote about some of the speculations which commentators have proposed about that reference in my post “Different Roles for Men and Women in the Church.” Winter observes that the word which is translated “angels” here literally means “messengers.” He cites archeological evidence for the existence of government employees – gunaikonomos – whose job it was to police women’s clothing and behavior. Winter proposes that the “messengers” Paul refers to are these government agents sent to spy on Christian gatherings to report back to the government what problematic things were taking place in this new faith community. It seems quite plausible that Paul, after giving the theological reasons for wives to cover their heads, would finish by appealing to them also for the sake of the reputation of the church with the Roman government. Paul was prepared for Christians to be persecuted for the gospel or for substantive, considered civil disobedience, but elsewhere he urges women to submit to their husbands so “that the word of God may not be reviled” (in Titus 2:3-5). The reputation of the church is not the main reason for their submission, but it is an added reason. If the church is going to undergo persecution and suffering, let it be for obedience to Christ, not for disobedience. Peter concurs in 1 Peter 4:14-15: “If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler.”
At this point Paul also appeals to “nature” (vs 14-15). Doesn’t nature teach them that men should keep their hair short and women should have long hair? My students often object to this assertion, observing that men are able to grow their hair long just as women. I don’t think Paul is commenting on the ability to grow long hair, but on the general sensibilities and intuitions common in the surrounding culture. I see Paul adding this argument as an appeal to the intuitions of his audience. Again, it is not his main reason for why women should cover their heads. But it is as if he is saying, “Don’t you all know that when a woman uncovers her head or wears her hair short, she is making some kind of statement, probably against the headship of husbands with respect to wives?” I might turn to my students then and ask them about a symbolic gesture of the second wave of feminism – the burning of bras. Or I might ask them if they see a correlation between a woman shaving her head and a message she desires to send. Each gesture pushes against a societal norm to say something. Or I might ask them what they would think of me coming into church dressed in an eye-catching, immodest way. Perhaps I mean nothing by it! But it is likely to confuse people about my fidelity to my husband. Perhaps there are not universally understood signals from how long men and women grow their hair, but in the time and place of Paul’s writing, hair length would have had this commonly agreed-upon meaning and practice. Most of us will agree there are still in our time signals we understand intuitively.
In the previous post, which I am revising here, I mentioned that I found an interesting online article by Dan Wallace (“What is the Head Covering of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 and Does it Apply to Us Today?”) in which he mentions the practice of head covering for women in church until approximately fifty years ago. He views the symbol as not only outdated today, but also says it would be humiliating to women in our context, which it would NOT have been in the 1st century. There are two reasons I can think of to explain why this might be humiliating today. First, the contemporary practice of head covering is not typically coupled with a church culture which allows me to pray and prophesy alongside my brothers. Second, to cover my head now would not “blend” with mainstream culture. I personally look for ways to dress and behave that bring my husband honor and that indicate adherence to the normative principle of a husband’s headship with respect to his wife. Some (but definitely not all) of those ways may go undiscerned by others around me, unless they question me. But perhaps the same was true in Paul’s day: it might only be discerned that a woman was signaling something with her hair or clothing if she deviated from the norm, rather than adhering to the norm and “blending” in. But because verses 14-15 are in the Scriptures, suggesting that the hair of men and women signals something, I continue to have longish hair which I pull it back with a clip so that it is not alluring. (You can laugh about this!)
One of my seminary professors pointed out the assertion in verse 15, that a woman’s long hair is “her glory” at the same time that her hair is her covering. That suggested conflicting ideas to me. Her long hair/covering indicates her submission to her husband which brings glory to him, and it is also “her glory.” Similarly, in verse 14, if a man has long hair/covering, it is a disgrace to him; and from verse 4, I deduce that it would also dishonor his head, which is Christ. (I may be reading this wrongly. And in a couple of years, I will revise this post yet again!) Both are to dress in a way that simultaneously honors their own heads, and that also signifies their submission to their head. As I ponder this, I wonder if it means that we bring fitting glory to ourselves when we submit to our rightful heads. We seek glory by elevating ourselves and not submitting to God (Romans 2:6-10), but we will only actually attain glory when we place ourselves in rightful submission to God. So dressing myself in obedience to God to signify my submission to my husband, whom God appointed to be my head, is actually to bring glory to myself as well in the end.
As I said at the beginning, my applications have not changed considerably. Perhaps the biggest difference in my thinking has been to understand now that these verses apply to the clothing of wives, not to the clothing of women in general. I also think I should rename one of my posts, because this passage is NOT really about the different roles of men and women in the church. That will come into view three chapters later in 1 Corinthians 14:33-36 and in 1 Timothy 2:8-15. In this passage we see men and women participating alike in praying and prophesying, but dressed to indicate their adherence to their marital roles.
The ongoing discoveries of archeology greatly add to our understanding of the ancient world, and this in turn aids our interpretation of Scripture. But I am reassured to find that reading this passage without the benefit of these discoveries was not a hopelessly flawed endeavor, such that the basic meaning could not be understood for centuries, leaving the church to abide by misguided teachings. The created relational order, unity, and roles of husbands and wives persists throughout earthly history as a demonstration of a deeper eternal order, and that order should be visibly obeyed and manifested in God’s church in ways which speak coherently to each culture and generation. I continue to believe that here and now, in Princeton, New Jersey in the 21st century, covering my head in public is not the practice which conveys that message accurately. For now, I wear culturally modest women’s clothing, fasten my hair and I took my husband’s name in marriage. But I am open to hearing an argument in favor of head coverings if you would like to make one!
*Winter, Bruce W. Romans Wives, Roman Widows: The Appearance of New Women and the Pauline Communities. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003.