Men with long hair
Andrew McFarland
I've been meaning to publish it on my blog for a while, but I'm not
100% happy with it. I thought I'd post it here to see what you all
think of it.
Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair,
it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to
her (1 Corinthians 11: 14-15, KJV)
I am a man and I have long hair. What does the Bible say about this?
The response a lot of conservative Christians give will be to quote 1st
Corinthians 11:14-15 (above) and tell me that it is wrong for a man to
have long hair. Obviously, I don't agree with this. Understanding this
verse is interesting, and by studying it we can learn a lot more about
the Bible and how to apply the teachings of the New Testament to our
everyday lives.
There are two things that 1st Corinthians 11:14 could mean: either
(1) It is always wrong for a man to have long hair; or
(2) It is sometimes wrong for a man to have long hair.
Lets look at the first option. Can it be that it is always wrong for a
man to have long hair? The answer is obviously no. Consider the
Nazarite vow in Numbers 6:
Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When either man
or woman shall separate themselves to vow a vow of a Nazarite, to
separate themselves unto the LORD: ... All the days of the vow of his
separation there shall no razor come upon his head: until the days be
fulfilled, in the which he separateth himself unto the LORD, he shall
be holy, and shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow. (Numbers
6: 2, 5.)
Nazarites were holy men. There was nothing shameful about their long
hair. Although most people who took the Nazarite vow took it for a
fixed, and fairly short, period of time, such as 100 days, there were
men who were lifelong Nazarites, such as Samson (Judges 13:5) and
Samuel (1 Samuel 1:11). The Nazarite vow shows that it is not always
wrong for a man to have long hair. There is no universal "law of
nature" that dictates that men ought to have short hair. We can safely
conclude that 1st Corinthians 11:14 means it is only sometimes wrong
for a man to have long hair.
We can come to the same conclusion just looking at 1 Corinthians 11:14
itself. The verse itself uses cultural specific phrases - not something
we would expect to find in a verse telling us about a universal law.
Consider the phrase "long hair". Long is a culturally relative term.
Most of the men of my age in my office have very short hair - a
fraction of an inch long at most. Long hair for the twenty- and
thirtysomethings in my workplace would be two or three inches. In the
1970s men with four-inch-long hair would have been considered
short-haired.
The most interesting culture-specific phrase in 1 Corinthians 11:14 is
"nature itself". It is tempting to read this as implying there is a
universal law of nature that prohibits long hair on men, but the
Nazarite vow shows that this is not true. It is also tempting to read
this as pointing to the animal kingdom - no male animal has long hair,
so human males shouldn't. Again, this can't be the case. Even ignoring
the lion's mane, there is no animal that cuts its hair, so cutting hair
is far "unnatural" than long hair.
The anthropologist John J. Winkler has this to say about "nature":
'Indeed, what "natural" means in many such contexts is precisely
"conventional and proper". The word "unnatural" in contexts of human
behaviour quite regularly means "seriously unconventional".' ( John J.
Winkler, The Constraints of Desire, page 17)
When Paul writes "Doth not even nature itself teach you..." he seems to
be using "nature" in the way that Winkler describes. Paul's meaning is
close to "Does not even social convention teach you..."
1 Corinthians 11:14 could only mean that it is sometimes wrong for a
man to have long hair. But when is it wrong? In verse 13, Paul tells us
to "Judge for yourselves". 1 Corinthians 11:14 gives us all the
information we need to judge for ourselves: "Doth not even nature
itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto
him?" When is it wrong? It is wrong when nature - "social convention" -
tells you it is shameful. It is wrong when the culture you are living
in tells you it is wrong. In the Western world, long hair in men is
perfectly acceptable - so Christian men in the West may of course have
long hair. (I don't know enough about non-Western cultures to make any
comments there, but the rule still applies: if society says long hair
is OK, then it is OK for Christian men.)
Why was Paul concerned about the Corinthians adhering to hair-length
standards in the surrounding culture? When Paul wrote the first letter
to the Corinthians he was writing to a church that was disrespectful to
God and disorderly in the eyes of the surrounding people. This was not
what the church was supposed to be. It was supposed to be an ordered
and respectful organisation. "If therefore the whole church be come
together into one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in
those that are unlearned, or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are
mad?" Paul was concerned about how the church appeared to unbelievers.
"Let all things," writes Paul, "be done decently and in order." (1 Co
14:23,40). Paul was concerned about men's hair length, not because of
some violation of a universal law of nature, but because the first
century Christians had to behave in a way that the other Corinthians
found respectable.
The epistles in the New Testament were written, first and foremost, to
groups of Christians in the first century. The instructions and advice
that they contain were not always applicable to other groups of first
century Christians, and they are not always applicable to us, living in
the 21st century. We can't pluck one verse out of context - that is out
of its literary context or out of its cultural context - and generalise
to get a hard and fast rule to live by today.
Gordon Hudson
news:1139780465.6...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> This is something I've had kicking around on my hard drive for a while.
> I've been meaning to publish it on my blog for a while, but I'm not
> 100% happy with it. I thought I'd post it here to see what you all
> think of it.
>
> Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair,
> it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to
> her (1 Corinthians 11: 14-15, KJV)
>
Did Jesus have long hair?
I thought long hair would have been normal in the first century in Israel?
Marcus Maxwell
news:43f18c38$0$1172$5a6a...@news.aaisp.net.uk:
<snip>
>
> Did Jesus have long hair?
>
> I thought long hair would have been normal in the first century in
> Israel?
>
It might have been, but there are very few images from there, and so I
don't think anyone can be sure. IIRC the earliest representation of Jesus
has short hair, but it's coptic or something, and so doesn't really tell us
anything.
--
Marcus Maxwell
Quasin
> Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair,
> it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to
> her (1 Corinthians 11: 14-15, KJV)
>
If it is true, as I read somewhere, that the ancient Greek
has no change of word order for a question and no
punctuation equivalent to a question mark (and rare
punctuation equivalent to a full stop), the passage might
equally well be translated "nature does not teach that if a
man have long hair it is a shame unto him but if a woman
have long hair it is a glory to her."
Mike Williams
>
>If it is true, as I read somewhere, that the ancient Greek
>has no change of word order for a question and no
>punctuation equivalent to a question mark
I've never heard of that. If that were the case, then you could make
almost any NT scripture fit your personal preferences by adding or
removing question marks at appropriate points.
--
Mike Williams
Gentleman of Leisure
Kendall K. Down
Marcus Maxwell <marcus.max...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> It might have been, but there are very few images from there, and so I
> don't think anyone can be sure. IIRC the earliest representation of Jesus
> has short hair, but it's coptic or something, and so doesn't really tell us
> anything.
However the fact that only Nazarites grew their hair long is indication that
the rest of the populace cut it to some extent - whether a "short back and
sides" or a John Lennon short I don't know.
God bless,
Kendall K. Down
--
================ ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIGGINGS ===============
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Sam Wilson
<webm...@diggingsonline.com> wrote:
> In message <Xns976AE85925B11m...@140.99.99.130>
> Marcus Maxwell <marcus.max...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> > It might have been, but there are very few images from there, and so I
> > don't think anyone can be sure. IIRC the earliest representation of Jesus
> > has short hair, but it's coptic or something, and so doesn't really tell us
> > anything.
>
> However the fact that only Nazarites grew their hair long is indication that
> the rest of the populace cut it to some extent - whether a "short back and
> sides" or a John Lennon short I don't know.
Do you have reason to think that only Nazirites grew their hair long?
It might be true that only Nazirites refrained from cutting their hair
(though that's an assumption in itself) but I don't know of any OT
injunction insisting that hair be cut.
Sam
Kendall K. Down
Sam Wilson <Sam.W...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> Do you have reason to think that only Nazirites grew their hair long?
> It might be true that only Nazirites refrained from cutting their hair
> (though that's an assumption in itself) but I don't know of any OT
> injunction insisting that hair be cut.
No, there is no injunction insisting that hair be cut, but the fact that
long hair was the distinguishing mark of the Nazirite pretty much demands
that everyone else did cut their hair.
Q. How can you tell an Englishman?
A. He has two eyes.
I think you will agree that such a stipulation is somewhat lacking in
exclusivity.
Marcus Maxwell
It is true, but interpretating it as a question would make nonsense of the
passage as a whole. The context generally sorts out the punctuation.
--
Marcus Maxwell
Marcus Maxwell
news:81e17cfa4...@diggingsonline.com:
> In message <160220061723265383%Sam.W...@ed.ac.uk>
> Sam Wilson <Sam.W...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> Do you have reason to think that only Nazirites grew their hair long?
>> It might be true that only Nazirites refrained from cutting their hair
>> (though that's an assumption in itself) but I don't know of any OT
>> injunction insisting that hair be cut.
>
> No, there is no injunction insisting that hair be cut, but the fact that
> long hair was the distinguishing mark of the Nazirite pretty much demands
> that everyone else did cut their hair.
>
But it's a long way from "everyone else cut their hair" to "everyone else
had short hair". Look at Absalom for instance. (Which examples cast
little light on the length of Jesus' hair, of course.)
--
Marcus Maxwel.
Prai Jei
<43F2C13B...@yahoo.com>:
J.B.Philips suggests that the two sayings in the parable of the Unjust
Steward (Luke 16) might have originally been questions. "Did the lord
commend the unjust steward because he had done wisely? ... Did I say unto
you, make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness?" - with
the implied answer "No" to both. But JBP then respects that there is no
manuscript evidence for this reading, and although he provides this
alternative version in an appendix he does not incorporate it into his main
text.
--
Terms and conditions apply. Contains permitted artificial sweetener and
colours. Batteries not included. Always read the label.
Interchange the alphabetic letter groups to reply
Kendall K. Down
Marcus Maxwell <marcus.max...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> But it's a long way from "everyone else cut their hair" to "everyone else
> had short hair". Look at Absalom for instance. (Which examples cast
> little light on the length of Jesus' hair, of course.)
Indeed - as I said in my original post, I couldn't say whether it was
"short" as in "short back and sides" or "short" as in "John Lennon".
Andrew McFarland
Thanks for all the comments on this. I've posted the original article
to www.mcfarland.co.uk:
http://www.mcfarland.co.uk/andrew/blog/2006-02-18
Andrew
Quasin
If question marks are someone's interpretation, not
translation, they should not be given the weight of
translation when a passage is analyzed.
I've been told there are lots of places where it is
uncertain whether a sentence should be considered ended or
continuing, sometimes affecting meaning.
Quasin
To the contrary; the passage makes little sense if it is not
a statement.
Does anyone really think "nature" teaches that men have
short hair and women long? Where do you see any evidence of
this in nature? Name an animal that the males have short
hair, fur, feathers, and the women long. Or just look at
humans, plenty of women are genetically incapable of growing
long hair while plenty of men can grow waist long pony tails.
The opening statement is clearly wrong about what nature
teaches, so it is probably a comment (one of many in the
letter) that Paul is quoting and reacting against.
Marcus Maxwell
> Marcus Maxwell wrote:
>
<snip>
>>
>> It is true, but interpretating it as a question would make nonsense
>> of the passage as a whole. The context generally sorts out the
>> punctuation.
>>
>
> To the contrary; the passage makes little sense if it is not
> a statement.
Eh? Paul is arguing that women should pray and prophesy with long (i.e.
normal) hairstyles. And that men should not. If he suddenly reverses
that, where does the argument go. I know his whole argument is shaky,
but he would surely not undermine it so pointlessly.
> Does anyone really think "nature" teaches that men have
> short hair and women long? Where do you see any evidence of
> this in nature? Name an animal that the males have short
> hair, fur, feathers, and the women long. Or just look at
> humans, plenty of women are genetically incapable of growing
> long hair while plenty of men can grow waist long pony tails.
This is the point made by the OP - that Paul is using "nature" to mean
what is culturally normal - again, it's a ropey argument, but I think
Paul is on very poor ground, and knows it. However that may be, even if
he seriously thought current fashion was the work of nature, he wouldn't
be the first. There are other debates currently going on in the church
where "natural" means "what I was always taught" rather than how things
actually are in nature.
>
> The opening statement is clearly wrong about what nature
> teaches, so it is probably a comment (one of many in the
> letter) that Paul is quoting and reacting against.
>
I don't think so. if only because it's not an opening statement - that's
in 11.2, and if it's a statement, it agrees with Paul (that long hair is
bad in men) and so he wouldn't want to refute it.
--
Marcus Maxwell
Quasin
> Quasin <qua...@yahoo.com> wrote in news:43F957E7...@yahoo.com:
>
>>
Opening statement is 11:2; verse 3 starts with a contrast
word - but. But what? Commonly interpreted to mean Paul is
contrasting the usual remembering his instructions with
failure to do on the hair/covering thing.
That interpretation leads to accepting a lot of obvious
nonsense - like that "man is the glory of God" - excuse me?
pull out the concordance and look up glory. Passages like
God's glory so filling the tabernacle no man could enter,
sure contradict the idea that mere human male is the glory
of God! God's willingness to wipe out most of humanity in
Noah's day also indicate man is a trouble, not a glory, to God.
Then there are the contradictions with Paul's own theology
stated elsewhere. Women's beauty is internal, not in
externals like braided hair - remember that passage? Yet
here Paul seems to say her hair is what counts, hair, not
heart, is her glory? What utter rubbish!
Then there's the issue of a supposedly blanket statement
against men with long hair - even though Paul took a
Nazarite vow and grew his hair. Or the blanket statement
that shaving hair is shameful, even though old testament
provides for ceremonies of shaving hair in situations not
the slightest shameful, like returning to the community
after a time of voluntary separation for God-oriented reasons.
The passage makes sense only if verse 3, after the "but," is
a statement by a Corinthian teacher, that "I" being that
false teacher, the one contradicting Paul's teaching. The
contrasting "but" is between their usually following Paul's
teachings, and their adopting someone else's false teachings
on the male-female issue.
If 3 through 10 is Corinthian nonsense that Paul rejects in
verse 11-16, then you eliminate a lot of conflicts with
other parts of the Bible including others of Paul's own
letters.
Verse 11 starts with a pivotal word - however - which
rejects all the preceding nonsense and states God's truth:
men and women are not independent of each other, each comes
from the other and both come from God. This statement of
Paul's is a flat out rejection of the hierarchy of creation
argument (verses 3 and 10) that is used to justify viewing
female as inferior in person or position to male based on
the un-Bibical idea that male is more God-like than female.
Verse 13 - rhetorical question, the obvious answer is yes,
it's beautiful to see people freed to worship God at all
times in all circumstances and not think they have to follow
specific external rituals to be accepted by God.
That makes 14-15 a statement, that nature does not teach
anything about hair length.
This way you get a Paul who is consistent with the old
testament, with his own behavior, and with his other
letters. The common way, you get a garbled passage that
directly contradicts many other parts of the Bible in order
to make the male appear to be a superior creation to the
female. That may be typical Greek thought, but it sure
isn't what the Bible - or Paul - teaches.
Kendall K. Down
Quasin <qua...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Does anyone really think "nature" teaches that men have
> short hair and women long?
Irrespective of the fact that lions have manes and lionesses don't, Paul's
statement referred to "men" and it is not clear to me that he meant "males"
of all sorts. Nor is it clear that by "nature" he meant exactly what we mean
by "nature" - ie. the whole of God's creation. He may well have considered
that because all civilised people (ie. Greeks and Romans) had short hair for
men and long hair for women, that was enough to demonstrate that that was
the "natural" thing to do.
Titus
<snip>
> Opening statement is 11:2; verse 3 starts with a contrast
> word - but. But what? Commonly interpreted to mean Paul is
> contrasting the usual remembering his instructions with
> failure to do on the hair/covering thing.
Paul is contrasting their present behaviour with his earlier teaching,
surely. It strikes me that it is highly unlikely that Paul gave
teaching about head coverings and hairstyles (nowhere seen as
fundamental in NT), so maybe the earlier teaching is not directly about
that - but that the issue, now raised, does bear on that teaching.
"I want you to understand" is hard to interpret as a quote from the
Corinthians.
> That interpretation leads to accepting a lot of obvious
> nonsense - like that "man is the glory of God" - excuse me?
It may be obvious nonsense - Paul may not have been immune that that.
Or it may be that careful exegesis might take us somewhere quite
sensible.
> pull out the concordance and look up glory. Passages like
> God's glory so filling the tabernacle no man could enter,
> sure contradict the idea that mere human male is the glory
> of God! God's willingness to wipe out most of humanity in
> Noah's day also indicate man is a trouble, not a glory, to God.
I think that you are confusing man = human being in these cases with man
= male in 1 Cor 11. More to the point, glory and image are closely
related in Jewish sources - the argument is about hierachy of image -
man is the image of God = his glory. Woman is also the image of God
(Genesis 1 - hence Paul doesn't use the word) but is so in relation to
man, given the order of creation in Genesis 2 (vv 8-9).
> Then there are the contradictions with Paul's own theology
> stated elsewhere. Women's beauty is internal, not in
> externals like braided hair - remember that passage?
Are you taking 1 Timothy 2 as genuinely Pauline? If so, you should have
no problem at all with the present passage :-) I don't think Paul wrote
the pastorals, so they pose a different problem.
> Yet
> here Paul seems to say her hair is what counts, hair, not
> heart, is her glory? What utter rubbish!
I don't think he's saying anything of the kind. I think what counts (in
a very positive way) is her sex, and hair style is an important cultural
indicator of that.
> Then there's the issue of a supposedly blanket statement
> against men with long hair
More a contrast - what Paul says of one sex (see ch 7) he says of the
other - or at least what is appropriate to the other. In the present
passage, I don't think he is really concerned with men, only women.
Although he makes general statements about both, in the interests of
even-handedness, he elaborates only on women. This suggests to me that
the issue at Corinth was the behaviour/appearance of women when leading
worship ("praying and prophesying" - which he is keen to encourage).
- even though Paul took a
> Nazarite vow and grew his hair.
I thought he shaved it?
Or the blanket statement
> that shaving hair is shameful,
For women, in the surrounding culture - it was done, e.g., by female
athletes who wanted to show their equality with men. And disapproved of
in general.
>even though old testament
> provides for ceremonies of shaving hair in situations not
> the slightest shameful, like returning to the community
> after a time of voluntary separation for God-oriented reasons.
Different culture.
>
> The passage makes sense only if verse 3, after the "but," is
> a statement by a Corinthian teacher, that "I" being that
> false teacher, the one contradicting Paul's teaching. The
> contrasting "but" is between their usually following Paul's
> teachings, and their adopting someone else's false teachings
> on the male-female issue.
>
> If 3 through 10 is Corinthian nonsense that Paul rejects in
> verse 11-16, then you eliminate a lot of conflicts with
> other parts of the Bible including others of Paul's own
> letters.
Obviously, I think you are wrong here - Paul is trying to assert a
created differentiation between the sexes, which he does by reference to
the "helper" bit of Gen 2, in the light of a shared image of God, which
image he sees as being reflected differently by men and women.
> Verse 11 starts with a pivotal word - however - which
> rejects all the preceding nonsense and states God's truth:
> men and women are not independent of each other, each comes
> from the other and both come from God. This statement of
> Paul's is a flat out rejection of the hierarchy of creation
> argument (verses 3 and 10) that is used to justify viewing
> female as inferior in person or position to male based on
> the un-Bibical idea that male is more God-like than female.
I think you're mostly right here, but not in the idea that Paul is
rejecting the differentiation of creation - only the hierachy aspect
which seems to go with it.
> Verse 13 - rhetorical question, the obvious answer is yes,
The obvious answer is no, which is clear from the statement that hair is
given as a covering (the word means a wrap, a throw-around garment,
which demands long hair).
> it's beautiful to see people freed to worship God at all
> times in all circumstances and not think they have to follow
> specific external rituals to be accepted by God.
>
> That makes 14-15 a statement, that nature does not teach
> anything about hair length.
In which case you have to make 15b into a question (!), presumably
rhetorical, which in position seems distinctly odd. It's better to go
with all the translations I've every seen, and keep the question marks
in their present places.
> This way you get a Paul who is consistent with the old
> testament,
Ecxept Genesis 2, a rather important passage.
> with his own behavior, and with his other
> letters. The common way, you get a garbled passage that
> directly contradicts many other parts of the Bible
Actually, there are some pretty misogynist texts in the Bible, and the
present passage (on both our interpretations) conflicts with these
rather strongly.
> in order
> to make the male appear to be a superior creation to the
> female. That may be typical Greek thought, but it sure
> isn't what the Bible - or Paul - teaches.
It certainly isn't, and here we are in full agreement. I think that
(some of) the women of Corinth were subscribing to the widespread view
that spiritual perfection = male. As a result they were praying etc in
public either with their hair unbound or with a masculine cut (I prefer
the latter view). Paul's argument tries (clumsily, mainly because of
the rather recalcitrant material and traditions he has to work with) to
reinforce sexual differentiation while affirming equality in ministry.
He is trying to get across the point that Christian women worship God
not as ersatz males but as women, proud of their own femalness (I'd
prefer to say femininity, but that has sort of sex object connotations).
He therefore stresses the traditional male/female difference but
undermines the hierachy aspect.
At least, that how it seems to me.
--
Marcus Maxwell