Women,
Hair Coverings, and Sexuality
Paul makes comments regarding women in the community in
Corinth that are often misinterpreted through a modern lens. Specifically, he
speaks about women remaining silent during the gatherings and later addressing
any questions to their husbands. It must be remembered that in the broader
pagan context, women were not taken as disciples by any of the philosophical
schools or by major Jewish teachers. They were considered to be unable to learn
beyond a rudimentary level. Husbands and fathers made decisions for the family without
consultation. Paul is arguing that women need to practice silence and listen. They
too need to come to understand the gospel and live faithfully to the Messiah. If
they have questions, they need to have them answered. Paul is continuing what
Jesus began when He took women as disciples.
Saint Paul’s comments on head coverings and women’s hair
have long caused confusion and, in recent years, debate (1 Cor. 11:2-16).
Within this section, St. Paul moves back and forth between discussing the Eucharist,
as opposed to pagan sacrifice, and the dangers of sexual immorality. These two
ideas were intimately intertwined for Corinthian pagans. Sexuality in Greek and
Roman pagan circles was a means of worship—in particular, of enacting fertility
rites. In contrast, Paul wants to distinguish between these two things clearly.
No form of sexual display is appropriate for Christian worship.
The direct connection between a woman’s hair and overt
sexuality is less obvious to us in the modern world. For Paul and the Corinthians,
however, it was clear. He gives a series of reasons why this is inappropriate.
The first of these is that any display of a woman’s sexuality should be
directed toward her husband within her marriage—not publicly and not in the
context of the worship of God. Paul points to the pagan sexual ritual activity
that produced the Nephilim, the giants of Genesis 6:1-4, in alluding to the
presence of the angels. Finally, he points to the Greek medical science of that
time.
Within the Hippocratic corpus, the standard medical texts
of the time, hair was seen as serving a function in fertility and procreation,
in tandem with male gonads. The latter emits seminal fluid, and a woman’s hair
was believed to draw that fluid up into the body to allow for conception. Women
who cut their hair short or women who grew theirs long generally did so, in
line with this thinking, to present themselves as prostitutes. Paul therefore
says that a woman’s hair was given to her in place of a testicle. Just as
genitals must be covered in worship, so also must a woman’s hair. Paul is not
here endorsing this now quite strange anatomical understanding as correct. He
merely uses the Corinthians’ knowledge of it as one more argument to explain
his case for Christian worship to be and to remain desexualized. (Stephen De
Young, Saint Paul the Pharisee: Jewish Apostle to All Nations [Chesterton,
Ind.: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2024], 132-33)
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