Headdress or Hairstyle? A Study of 1 Corinthians 11 and the Use of the Veil in Worship

Authors

  • Christie Goulart Chadwick Adventist University of São Paulo UNASP, São Paulo, (Brazil)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.19141/1809-2454.kerygma.v17.n1.pe01592

Keywords:

Corinth, Veil, Worship, Gender, Modesty

Abstract

This article investigates whether Paul is recommending a veil for women in the context of worship, or whether he is discussing appropriate hairstyles for them. A closer look at the passage of 1 Corinthians 11:4–16 shows first of all that Paul is not discussing only women, but the appropriate attire for both men and women in light of what is proper and expected in the Greco-Roman society of his time. The absence of a word for “veil” in the original text points to the possibility of a discussion of hairstyles and not apparel for the head. Archaeological and textual evidence from this period supports this interpretation.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Christie Goulart Chadwick, Adventist University of São Paulo UNASP, São Paulo, (Brazil)

PhD in ancient Near Eastern and Biblical Archaeology, Andrews University, Michigan, (United State). Assistant Professor of Old Testament and Biblical Archaeology at the Adventist University of São Paulo UNASP, São Paulo, (Brazil). 

References

BASKIN, J. R. H. Women, covering of the. Encyclopaedia Judaica. Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007. v. 8.

BROWN, F. The New Brown, Driver and Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981.

CONZELMANN, H. A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975. (Hermeneia).

COSGROVE, C. H. A Woman's Unbound Hair in the Greco-Roman World, with Special Reference to the Story of the "Sinful Woman" in Luke 7:36-50. Journal of Biblical Literature 124, n. 4, p. 675–692, winter 2005.

GILL, D. W. J. The Importance of Roman Portraiture for Head Coverings in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. Tyndale Bulletin 41, n. 2, p. 245–260, 1990.

HODGE, C. An Exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965.

HURLEY, J. B. Did Paul Require Veils or the Silence of Women? A Consideration of I Cor. 11:2-16. Westminster Theological Journal 35, n. 2, p. 190–220, winter 1973.

MURPHY-O'CONNOR, J. Sex and Logic in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. Catholic Biblical Quarterly 42, n. 4, p. 482–500, oct. 1980.

MURPHY-O'CONNOR, J. St. Paul's Corinth - Texts and archaeology. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002.

OSTER, R. When Men Wore Veils to Worship: The Historical Context of 1 Corinthians 11.4. New Testament Studies n. 34, p. 481–505, October 1988.

OSTER, R. Use, Misuse and Neglect of Archaeological Evidence in Some Modern Works on 1 Corinthians. Zeitschrift Fur Die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, n. 83, p. 53–73, Band, 1992.

ROBERTSON, A.; Plummer, A. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1914. (The International Critical Commentary.)

ROUSSELLE, A. Body Politics in Ancient Rome. A History of Women in the West. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992.

THISELTON, A. C. The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.

THOMPSON, C. L. Hairstyles, Head-coverings, and St. Paul: Portraits from Roman Corinth. Biblical Archaeologist 51, n. 2, p. 99–115, 1988.

Downloads

Published

2022-10-13

How to Cite

CHADWICK, C. G. Headdress or Hairstyle? A Study of 1 Corinthians 11 and the Use of the Veil in Worship. Kerygma, Engenheiro coelho (SP), v. 17, n. 1, p. e01592, 2022. DOI: 10.19141/1809-2454.kerygma.v17.n1.pe01592. Disponível em: https://unasp.emnuvens.com.br/kerygma/article/view/1592. Acesso em: 22 nov. 2024.

Issue

Vol. 17 No. 1 (2022): Fluxo contínuo

Section

Artigos Livres

License

Copyright (c) 2022 Christie Goulart Chadwick

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish on Kerygma must agree to the following terms:

  1. Once accepted for publication, the copyright of articles is automatically transferred to Kerygma.
  2. All material used in the text that is copyrighted by third parties must be duly referenced.
  3. Authors must also retain the reproduction rights of images and tables in their material, if necessary.
  4. The authors guarantee that the submitted text is entirely their authorship and has not been submitted and/or published elsewhere.
  5. The opinions, ideas and concepts expressed in the texts are the sole responsibility of their authors and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Kerygma;
  6. The editors reserve the right to make textual adjustments and adapt to the publication's norms.
  7. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International, which allows sharing of the work with acknowledgment of authorship and initial publication in this journal. This license allows others to remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they give proper credit to you and their new works are not used for commercial purposes. However, users are not required to license those derivative works under the same terms.
  8. The authors agree with the free reproduction of their material by Kerygma, which may adapt, modify, condense, summarize, reduce, compile, expand, alter, mix with other content, include images, graphics, digital objects, infographics and hyperlinks, illustrate, diagram, divide, update, translate and carry out any other transformations, requiring the participation or express authorization of the authors.
  9. The authors agree that Kerygma can distribute the articles through cable, fiber optics, satellite, airwaves or any other system that allows access to the user at a specific time and place, either by free channels or by systems that import payment. Kerygma may also include work in a physical or virtual database, archiving in printed format, storing on a computer, in a cloud system, microfilming and other current forms of archiving or that may still be developed, with or without profit.
  10. Authors are permitted to enter into separate, additional agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the published version of the work in this journal (e.g., publishing it in an institutional repository or as a book chapter), with acknowledgment in the new publication of its initial publication in this journal.
  11. Kerygma owns the rights to all works published by it. The full reproduction of these texts in other publications, for any other purpose, by any means, requires written authorization from the publisher. The same goes for partial reproductions, such as summary, abstract, portions with more than 500 words of the text, tables, figures, illustrations, etc.
  12. Authors are granted permission and encouraged to publish and distribute their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their personal websites) at any point before or during the editorial process. This is because it can lead to productive alterations and increase the impact and citation of the published work. (See "The effect of open access and downloads ('hits') on citation impact: a bibliography of studies.")