My research on the head covering, Part 2: Is Paul saying a woman's covering is her long hair?

PART 2:

THE INTERPRETATION THAT HAIR IS THE REQUIRED HEADCOVERING

A very popular interpretation these days is that a woman should have long hair as the head covering required. Paul does in fact refer to the long hair of women as a “covering” in verse 15:

but if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her, for her hair is given to her for a covering.

Most commentators understand this as simply part of his argument in favor of an added covering, even those who consider the head covering to be merely a local custom, but some do conclude that Paul means that hair is the covering he’s calling for.

I haven’t been able to find out who popularized this interpretation and when, but its general acceptance appears to be quite recent. We can infer from Calvin’s answer to it, however, that it was at least considered in his day:

“Should any one now object, that her hair is enough, as being a natural covering, Paul says that it is not, for it is such a covering as requires another thing to be made use of for covering it.”

Two proponents of the hair as the covering are James B. Hurley, in his Man and Woman in Biblical Perspective, 254-71; and David E. Blattenberger III in Rethinking 1 Corinthians 11:2 through Archaeological and Moral-Rhetorical Analysis (Lewiston NT, Mellen 1997). I don’t have access to either book although I did find a few reviews of both of them. From what I can gather, they both take the position that Paul is interested in enforcing the cultural status quo, and since women’s having long hair was universal in the cultures of the day, while a head covering was not universally worn (although it was not uncommon either), they conclude that Paul’s real intention was to enforce the wearing of long hair. Hurley sees this as wearing the hair pinned up; I’m not sure if Blattenberger does. Here’s
one reviewer’s statement of Hurley’s position:

The wearing of the hair "up" was a sign of honoring one's husband. For a woman to let her hair flow down her back was a sign of repudiation and such a woman should shave her hair off which would dishonor her.36 This is important because it demonstrates truly what is cultural here, the prevailing hairstyles and their significance, versus that which is timeless—the honoring of the husband.

As far as I've been able to find, no documentation of this assertion has been offered.

The following argument that the covering is long hair is apparently typical of an older line of reasoning, according to one commentator who mocks the “bobbed hair” thought:

…it is not necessary to interpret verse 6 as speaking of a separate covering or veil. I believe the verse means this: If a woman refuses to wear her hair long for a proper covering and token of authority, if she wants to bob it like a man’s, let her go ahead and shave it all off. By saying this, the apostle is emphasizing the seriousness of this matter.
David Cloud

Perhaps the most influential sources of the hair-as-covering interpretation are footnotes in the NIV and the Living Bible that give an alternative translation identifying the covering as hair. The note in the NIV reads:

11:4-7 Or 4 Every man who prays or prophesies with long hair dishonors his head. 5 And every woman who prays or prophesies with no covering of hair on her head dishonors her head–she is just like one of the “shorn women.” 6 If a woman has no covering, let her be for now with short hair, but since it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair shorn or shaved, she should grow it again. A man ought not to have long hair.

The note in the Living Bible has:

11:6 Or then she should have long hair. This would make it read: Yes, if she refuses to wear her hair long, she should cut off all her hair. And since it is shameful for a woman to have her hair cut or her head shaved, then she should have long hair.

Spiros Zodhiates’ Word Study Dictionary of the New Testament has entries which make the same equation between the covering and the hair:

2619. katakalupto … to cover. To cover with a veil or something which hangs down, hence, to veil; in the pass., katakaluptomai, to be covered, veiled, to wear a veil (1 Cor. 11:6, 7). The covering here involves either the hair of a woman hanging down or, in case that may not be possible, the veil.

4018. peribolaion {this is the Greek word translated “covering” in verse 15, “her hair is given to her for a covering (peribolaion)}…a covering, cloak, wrap,
cape, outer garment, or mantle. By implication, a covering for the head, a headdress, or perhaps a veil (1 Cor. 11:15).

This equivalence between the covering and hair is merely asserted without evidence or explanation, as if it were an authoritative translation, although other sources give no hint of such an equivalence.

Eventually the NIV retracted it.In an article about a new (2002) translation of the NIV , Craig L. Blomberg mentions (p. 16) that the footnote in the earlier edition is not in the new edition:

The long footnote to an alternate translation of vv. 4-7, in which the head covering in question is simply “hair,” has been dropped. While I follow a minority that think this may have been the correct interpretation, it is true that it was not as obvious a translation.

Zodhiates’ reference book and the Bible footnotes mentioned must have influenced countless Christians to believe that the headcovering is a woman’s hair, although there is really no evidence given for this view and other authoritative sources do not agree with it.

I also found this vehement declaration that hair is the covering at this website. Scroll down a little past halfway to “Hair is the Covering.” It has the virtue at least of spelling out the reasoning from that point of view, if a little loudly.

Some answers to the interpretation that hair is the covering:

This interpretation appears to be based on the one line in verse 15 where Paul calls a woman’s long hair a covering that nature gave her, and those who take this to be his meaning then go back and substitute “hair” for “covering” in the rest of the passage, although it really doesn’t fit logically. Here are some arguments against the idea:

1. Paul would not have argued at such length using the general term “covering” if what he meant to do was tell women specifically that they must wear their hair long. He would have said so quite directly.

2. Verse 6 becomes logically absurd or at least awkward if you substitute “hair” for “covering,” making it read, “If she cuts her hair short, then let her cut it short” or even “If she refuses to have hair, then let her cut it off.” Some advocates for hair as the covering counter this by saying it means that if she insists on having her hair “bobbed” as one put it (as the meaning of not being covered), then she should just go ahead and cut or shave it all off since she’s already violated the natural principle of long hair on women by cutting it at all.

3. Verses 5 and 6 are really saying the opposite, however, that if she will not cover her head, then she might as well cut off all her hair too, as that is exactly the same thing. That is, with or without hair, even hair that has never been cut, she is without a covering of the sort Paul is requiring. In other words, her hair doesn’t suffice for a covering at all, it’s the same thing as being completely bald as far as the function of a headship covering goes.

4. It is extremely unlikely that any women in those days cut their hair short.

In verses 14 and 15 Paul is appealing to the Corinthian church to recognize that by “nature” women DO wear their hair long (“Does not even nature teach …that if a woman has long hair it is her glory?”), and he wouldn’t be exhorting them to do something they already recognize as the natural thing to do, which there doesn’t seem to be any logical reason they would stop doing on becoming Christians.

It is all the more certain that they already wore their hair long because in verse 6 he clearly assumes that they will recognize it as a disgrace to cut it off.

Studies of the customs of the time verify that all women of all the cultures represented in the Corinthian church wore their hair long in those days. In fact, if the reviews are correct, both Hurley and Blattenberger make this the main part of their argument that Paul intended hair – or pinned-up hair -- as the covering, but it’s a better argument against it, since as I just noted, Paul would have no reason to exhort them to do what was universally practiced. You would have to assume that some women in the church were cutting it off in order to make sense of Paul’s exhorting them to have it long, but in such a culture, in which Paul could count on their recognizing a shaved or shorn female head to be disgraceful, and that a woman’s long hair is given by nature, that just doesn’t seem like a possibility. The only example of a woman with short hair I’ve come across is Electra, from a time before Paul, who cut off her hair in mourning for her father. Otherwise women would not have chosen to have their hair short, though it might have been imposed on them for various reasons – for instance, in the case of adultery it was a punishment exacted by various cultures. Usually the hair is worn up in pictures from that era, but occasionally a woman will be shown with it down. Overall, until the 20th century, women everywhere customarily wore their hair long, exceptions to this being rare enough to prove the rule. So Paul could count on that universal practice of women to be recognized by all in the church.

5. Paul is not exhorting them to have long hair anyway.

1) Simply following the development of Paul’s argument logically, in verses 13 to 15 he takes women’s long hair as the universal standard, and is referring to it as an example from nature to show the need for an additional covering.

It may be hard to grasp Paul’s reasoning here, because in the English translations it can sound like he’s advocating covering a covering with a covering, or veiling a veil with a veil. But from the context that is exactly what he means: he means that the natural covering of hair is an indication that the women should wear another covering on top of it. He appeals to the long hair as evidence for the need for the additional covering he’s been talking about, not as the covering itself.

The logic here would be a lot clearer if the way hair is a covering were meaningfully different from the added covering Paul is requiring, and there are some reasons to think that is the case. The resolution of this otherwise odd construction is possibly to be found in the connotations of the Greek words. The Pocket Interlinear New Testament (Jay P. Green, Sr., Editor, 1988) renders verses 14 and 15: “Or does not nature herself teach you that if a man indeed adorns the hair, it is a dishonor to him. But if a woman should adorn the hair, it is a glory to her; because the long hair has been given to her instead of a veil.” Here the Greek word “komao” that in most other translations is rendered “has long hair,” is translated “adorns the hair.” The first two places “hair” occurs in in these two verses are translations of the Greek word “komao,” but the third, where it says her hair was given to her for a covering or veil, is the form “kome” which according to Strong’s carries the meaning of “locks, as ornamental” while “komao” refers more to long hair as such, “tresses or long hair.” That reverses the emphasis in Green’s translation but that’s par for the course with this section of scripture, as we are hardly ever without differences of opinion on almost every word of the passage. In either case this gives us some reason to think more in terms of arranged or adorned hair in these verses than simply length of hair. Zodhiates’ Word Study Dictionary agrees that “kome” refers more to the way hair is styled. (He reads these verses as Paul’s teaching that a woman’s hair should be different from a man’s in length as well as adornment, but in context Paul is not teaching that at all; he’s saying it is that way by nature, and appealing to it as evidence from nature for a separate head covering). The point here is that if the word is to be understood more of long hair in the sense of an ornament or adornment, rather than as merely a covering, then the requirement to cover it makes more sense, because verse 7 shows that Paul is concerned that the glory of Christ and not the glory of man be displayed in worship.

2) A second support for this view is that Paul uses a different word for covering when describing women’s hair than he does when exhorting women to cover their heads. The Greek word “peribolaion,” which is the word used for the “covering” or “veil” that the long hair is said to be at this point, is a different word than the one used elsewhere in the passage for the covering Paul wants women to wear, “katakalupto.” “Katakalupto” means a complete covering-up, “kata” being an intensifier implying a thorough or complete covering, or a down-hanging covering, while “peribolaion” means a wrap or mantle that is thrown around (peri = around, bolla = throw). Some argue that this is a distinction without a difference, and that may be a valid objection, but this different choice of words at least seems to imply that Paul himself had a difference in mind. Unfortunately it is hard for us to appreciate what difference he intended because of our English translations, since the KJV uses “covering” for both terms, and other words such as “veil” that are used elsewhere are not much of a difference from that. “Mantle” and “vesture” are sometimes used to translate “peribolaion” in other contexts, however, and these suggest more of the quality of adornment than the mere covering-up implied by “katakalupto.” The related English terms “vestment” and “investiture,” for instance, imply more than just a garment, but an emblem of office, a mantle of glory. The ermine robe or cape worn by a king as an emblem of his kingliness comes to mind. These terms are too weighty for the context but they do suggest something other than a mere utilitarian covering. I’m reaching for this a bit, I admit, but there’s something very satisfying about how this way of understanding it resolves the problem.

3) There is a third and stronger supporting factor, however: the context itself of verse 15 directly makes the meaning of the long hair more of an ornament than merely a concealing covering: But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for [her] hair is given her for a covering. What he is saying is that her hair is a glory to her because it is given to her for a “peribolaion,” which clearly implies the sense of a covering that is more of an adornment than a mere concealment, even apart from the connotations of the Greek. So the fact alone that Paul does directly call the woman’s hair her “glory” is a reason he’d want her to cover it, as he has already said in verse 7 that it is the glory of Christ that must be on display in worship, which is why the glory of man (or woman) is to be covered up.

So in summary, with the connotation of “komao” or “kome” as dressed or adorned hair, as much as merely long hair, and the possible connotation of “peribolaion” as an adornment as much as a mere cover-up, and the context itself that defines a woman’s hair as her glory, the overall meaning becomes more of the supporting argument Paul clearly intends it to be. That is, since nature has given the woman her hair as an ornament, a garment of glory, as well perhaps as giving the woman her inclination to adorn and display her hair as her glory, in the overall context of the whole passage it suggests a clear reason why Paul wants her to cover it in worship, his concern being that only Christ’s glory be displayed.

Calvin also sees adornment in this verse, though he doesn’t go into the meanings of the Greek words, saying that a woman’s beautiful hair may be an object of lust, making it unseemly to uncover it, and he adds that the woman herself is an “ornament” to her husband, implying again that the hair which is her natural covering is a glory which needs additional covering. In his view of the woman’s hair as an object of lust he comes closer to the Jewish and Muslim reasons for covering it.

Even if this argument about the reason for the additional covering is rejected, however, most commentators do recognize that simply in the logic of the passage the long hair is given as evidence in favor of an added cloth covering, including those who believe that the headcovering was merely a cultural symbol in Paul’s time that can be replaced by other symbols in other cultural contexts. So if the connotations of adornment are recognized, it makes the case logically neater, but even without them it is clear from the context that Paul does mean to say that the natural covering of the hair is an indication that it should have another covering over it, because he clearly appeals to it as a supporting argument rather than as the point of the argument itself.

Mary Kassian, whose book Women, Creation and the Fall is available online at the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood website, says in Chapter 9 simply:

One view is that 1 Corinthians 11 refers to hair length and/or hair style. Verse 15 is often cited. In this verse, Paul states that “long hair is given to her [woman] as a covering.” Thus, casual readers assert that if a woman has long hair, she needn’t cover her head in the assembly meeting.

A more accurate position is that Paul intended a veil or shawl or garment to be worn upon the head.

TO BE CONTINUED.