Is 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 a Prohibition of Homosexuality?

By Kirk R. MacGregor

[Kirk R. MacGregor is Assistant Professor of Religion, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia.]

Throughout church history 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 has been one of the least understood and therefore most controversial passages in all of Scripture. Here Paul commanded women to cover their heads and men not to cover their heads during, at least, church assemblies. Since the sixteenth century three main responses to this text have emerged, all based on the presupposition that the text means that women are to don a head garment of some kind. First, some groups have insisted that women wear a bonnetlike “prayer covering,” veil, or hat in church and often in all settings outside the home. Second, others, who seek to discover and reapply the principle of the temporal directive for female head garments that was exclusively applicable in late antique Mediterranean society, consider that the passage has been properly applied when certain ministerial offices, usually pastor and elder, are limited to men.[1] Third, the most common approach simply ignores or glosses over the text in an attempt to avoid ecclesiastical controversy. However, if the presupposition underlying these approaches is false, then all of them fail to grasp the central issue confronting Paul.

This study contends that the reasons marshaled in favor of the view that by κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων (“having something down from the head”)[2] Paul referred to some form of headgear evince fatal hermeneutical and historical flaws. Rather, the principles of grammatical-historical exegesis render it highly probable that κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων refers to long hair, as seen in verses 14-15. Consequently Paul forbade men from wearing long hair and women from wearing short hair. Drawing on contemporaneous Jewish, Greek, and Roman sources, this article indentifies the purpose of Paul’s injunction as the prohibition of both homosexuality in the church at large and the particular practices of men and women appearing and behaving in ways characteristic of the opposite sex which were indicative of homosexuality.[3] Such a solution harmonizes with the known problem of homosexuality at Corinth as well as with Paul’s graphic admonition against the full range of homosexual behavior (6:9) distinctive to this epistle.[4]

Determining the Meaning of κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων

Two lines of evidence are proposed in suggesting that κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων denotes some kind of veil. They are extra-Pauline linguistic evidence and historical-cultural evidence. Noting the occurrence of κατακαλύπτω (“to cover”) and its cognates in 1 Corinthians 11:5-7 and 13, the linguistic contention appeals to the Septuagint usage of this same verb in Genesis 38:15, where Tamar pretended to be a prostitute by covering her face before Judah, and in 2 Chronicles 18:29, where the king of Israel planned to disguise himself before battle. Since the contexts of these passages suggest Tamar and the king covered themselves with clothing, it is inferred that κατακαλύπτω generally implies a garment as its indirect object, thereby making a garment the most probable antecedent of κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων.[5]

However, this reasoning suffers from several defects. Standard hermeneutical procedure dictates that the meaning of any equivocal item should first be sought from the pericope itself and subsequently tested for consistency against its semantic range. The veil view seeks to determine the meaning of κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων, not from its own connotation in outside sources (which may itself be questionable), but by extrapolating from a noncognate verb in outside sources. Hence any inference reached by this method would at best be inconclusive. But even granting, for the sake of argument, the efficacy of this procedure, its present application is still suspect because it overlooks the many counterexamples in the Septuagint where κατακαλύπτω portrays covering with something other than a garment.[6] Examples include Exodus 29:22, which mentions the fat that covers a ram’s entrails, and Isaiah 6:2, where each seraph before the divine throne covered its face with two wings and covered its feet with two wings.[7] Taking the full scope of grammatical evidence into account, κατακαλύπτω is found to be an elastic verb spanning all manner of covering; by itself the verb conveys no information about the covering agent. However, the most devastating criticism of the extra-Pauline linguistic argument is its disregard for the covering explicitly supplied in the pericope itself: “Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is a dishonor to him, but if a woman wears long hair, it is a glory to her? For her hair has been given to her as [ἀντὶ] a covering [περιβολαίου]” (vv. 14-15). Αντί conveys the notion of equivalence (“as, for”) rather than substitution (“instead of, in place of”).[8] Accordingly κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων ought to be viewed as a reference to long hair, in the absence of compelling contextual or linguistic grounds to the contrary.

On the other hand the historical-cultural contention appeals to archaeological evidence that the wearing of “liturgical head coverings” by men and women during the late Republic and early Empire served as a common feature of Roman piety. The historical-cultural approach appeals to the point that respectable Palestinian Jewish women publicly veiled their bound hair for the sake of modesty, because in public unbound hair designated a prostitute. Since Corinth was a Roman colony with a Jewish synagogue, the Corinthian congregation is said to have naturally integrated the respective cultural practices into Christian worship, which Paul then aimed to control.[9]

This claim too is marred by shortcomings. Hermeneutically it violates the legitimate use of historical background for checking or testing the plausibility of exegetical conclusions initially derived from the pericope. Putting the cart before the horse, this contention employs historical factors to determine the interpretation of κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων in a way that overturns the meaning suggested by the passage.[10] Even worse, this contention cannot stand on its own merits because its inference is based on partial archaeological and textual data. The full spectrum of archaeological findings paints a portrait of first-century Corinth as a cosmopolitan city with an eclectic amalgamation of Greek, Roman, and Jewish cultural elements. Consequently specific evidence from Corinth itself is needed to posit the adoption of any particular Roman or Jewish custom. But such Corinthian evidence points to the opposite conclusion. Pre-Roman Corinthian culture displayed an absence of head coverings for men and women alike, as indicated by ancient Greek pottery.[11] Moreover, as Thompson points out, archaeological finds from Corinth in the Roman period show the first-century preservation of this local custom. These discoveries include sculptures of Greek women and portraits of Roman women with uncovered heads as well as vase paintings of both genders praying and engaging in ecstatic speech without headgear, thereby effectively ruling out the infiltration of foreign tradition.[12] By the same token, no textual evidence exists that the Palestinian stigma toward unbound female hair ever found its way into Hellenistic Jewish synagogues.[13]

A final irony of the extra-Pauline linguistic contention and the historical-cultural contention is that they both overlook Paul’s first stated concern in 11:2-16, namely, the problem of men praying or prophesying κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων. On this score Murphy-O’Connor rightly observes, “The major commentaries and translations attest the widespread conviction that the point at issue concerned women alone. Acceptance of this consensus invariably colors the exegesis of this passage, to the point where some commentators refuse to take seriously the reference to men. In fact, men figure equally prominently in this section, and neither grammar nor language distinguishes this reference from those concerned with women.”[14] Hence any interpretation of κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων which, in its preoccupation with the garb of women, fails to explain how men dishonor their heads is not an adequate explanation. But a constant stream of documentation illustrates that from preexilic Israel to the destruction of the second temple Jewish priests prayed with turbans on their heads (e.g., Exod. 28:4, 37-38; 39:28; Ezek. 44:18; m. Yoma 7:5). So it is absurd to suppose that Paul, a former Pharisee and self-confessed “Hebrew of Hebrews” (Phil. 3:5), was distressed to the degree evinced by the emotional tenor of 1 Corinthians 11:4, 7 over men praying with a covering on their heads.

Further, if Paul’s disquiet concerned a covering, then it is inexplicable why he neither specified the nature of the garment nor wrote κατὰ κεφαλῆν (κατά plus the accusative), which would here convey precisely the desired meaning of “resting or hanging upon/on his head.” Instead Paul employed κατά plus the genitive, which is adversative and so conveys the nuance of emerging and moving away from a source, yielding the translation “out of,” “from,” or “coming out of.”[15] Hair is clearly something that flows out of the head, its source, unlike headgear that rests or hangs on the head and obviously does not feature the head as its source.[16]

Notably this factor led John Chrysostom to insert κομῆν (“hair”) as the necessary object of ἔχων.[17]

Given the identification of περιβολαίου (“covering”) as long hair (v. 15), it follows that having one’s head uncovered is equivalent to having short hair. Substituting “with long hair” for κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων, the antithesis of verses 4-5 coheres both internally and with the surrounding context: “Every man praying or prophesying with long hair [κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων] disgraces his head, but every woman praying or prophesying with short hair [= with her head uncovered] disgraces her head, for it is one and the same as having been shaved [ἐξυρημένῃ].” While a natural comparison exists between having short hair and having been shaved, that is, having the shortest possible hair, no such connection can be plausibly drawn between lacking headgear and having been shaved. The unique ability of the proposed reference to long hair to unify the text is reinforced in verse 6, where κατακαλύπτω is portrayed as conveying the opposite meaning as two unequivocally hair-cutting terms: “For if a woman has short hair [= is not covered; οὐ κατακαλύπτεται], let her also be shorn [κειράσθω]; but since it is disgraceful for a woman to be shorn [κειράσθαι] or to be shaved [ξυρᾶσθαι], let her be covered [κατακαλύπτέσθω].” Only if the woman is covered with long hair does the contrast with having very short hair (being shorn) and having the shortest possible hair (being shaved) make sense.

The notion that hair is the issue discloses the simple logical flow between verses 7-12 (typically regarded as an aside incongruous with its surrounding context)[18] and the preceding and succeeding verses of the pericope. In verse 7 man is said to be the image (εἰκὼν), or the finite reflection and imperfect shadow, of the infinite and perfect God (cf. Gen. 1:27). Man is also portrayed as the glory (δόξα) of God, just as woman is portrayed as the glory (δόξα) of man (1 Cor. 11:7). Paul did not say woman is the εἰκὼν of man, since she is not ontologically inferior to man as man is inferior to God; instead she is the same species of being as man (Gen. 1:26-27). The ontological equality of the sexes and ontological inferiority of both to God are reinforced in 1 Corinthians 11:11-12: “However, in the Lord neither is woman independent of man nor man independent of woman; for just as woman came from man, so man comes through woman, but all things come from God.” For Paul, therefore, δόξα has nothing to do with ontological status. Rather, as Fee explains, x being the δόξα of y means here that x is both similar to y and differs from y in some respect.[19] Further, the consecutive sequence (“man is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man,” v. 7) implies that while God is similar to man and man to woman, God, man, and woman comparatively differ from each other in the same respect. Obvious from the chronology of Genesis is the fact that God and man are similar by virtue of man’s creation in the imago Dei and that man and woman are similar by virtue of their common species. But in what single aspect do all three comparatively differ? Since Genesis 1-3 does not address this question, the answer must be implied by Paul himself if his reasoning is to be valid.

In view of Paul’s stated rationale behind the consecutive sequence, “For indeed a man ought not to have his head covered” (v. 7), the proposed indirect object “with long hair” shall be assessed for its ability to elucidate the text. At this juncture it should be noted that, contrary to popular artistic depictions, Jewish men of late antiquity typically wore their hair short, a fact indirectly proved by m. Nazir 1:2-3. This passage, which tradition criticism has shown reflects norms in the first century A.D., characterizes the long hair of a Nazirite as the visible sign of his consecration, where the minimum period for which such a vow could be made was thirty days (Num. 6:7). However, thirty days of hair growth would pass entirely unnoticed if Jewish men typically wore their hair long. Thus they must have worn their hair rather short, in conformity with Ezekiel 44:20. “Also they shall not shave their heads, yet they shall not let their locks grow long; they shall only trim the hair of their heads.”

Moreover, archaeological and textual research since the 1860s has decisively established that in both Greek and Roman society, men normally wore short hair and women long hair.[20] Accordingly the degree of hair length constituted a single aspect of comparative difference between God, man, and woman. God, as an immaterial being, has no hair; man, being like God but different from Him in respect to hair length, has short hair; woman, being like man but different from man in respect to hair length, has long hair. Therefore the differing lengths of hair not only comprise the necessary thread linking God to men to women but also illustrate the necessity of verses 7-12 in the logic of the pericope. Verses 2-6 dictate various hair lengths for men and women, a command substantiated by three independent lines of evidence: (a) verses 7-12 argue for these hair lengths based on the Old Testament; (b) verses 13-15 argue for these hair lengths based on nature; and (c) verse 16 argues for these hair lengths based on widespread Christian practice.

Besides displaying the broad function of verses 7-12, the hair-length hypothesis illustrates the logical contribution of two particular claims of this section to Paul’s case. Paul’s allusion to the sequence of creation, “For man was not made from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created because of woman, but woman was created because of man” (vv. 8-9), amplifies the theological statement of verse 3, “But I want you to know that the head [κεφαλὴ] of every man is Christ, and man is the head [κεφαλὴ] of woman, and God is the head [κεφαλὴ] of Christ.” Whatever the precise meaning of κεφαλὴ is here, Paul clearly used the term metaphorically rather than literally to convey that Christ owes respect to God the Father, men owe respect to Christ, and women owe respect to men by virtue of the divine order established in time and space through creation and redemption. Since, as verse 7 indicates, man and woman are the glory of (i.e., similar to but differing in some respect from) each other, man and woman must avoid shaming their figurative “heads” by preserving these differences. As Gundry-Volf underscores, Paul showed men and women “their obligation to bring glory—each to the particular one whose glory they are by creation—which they do through distinctive masculine and feminine hairstyles.”[21]

That women should wear long hair provides the missing piece of the puzzling verse 10, “A woman ought to have authority over her head because of the angels.” Despite the fact that most translations insert the words “a symbol of” before “authority,” the grammatical evidence inveighs strongly against this gloss, since the expression ἐξουσίαν ἔχειν (“to have authority”; cf. Rev. 11:6; 14:18; 20:6) always means to exercise authority rather than to submit to it. The verse thus signals that the woman should take charge of her hair and keep it under control by wearing it long rather than short.[22] This interpretation coincides nicely with the reference to angels, for several passages from the Dead Sea Scrolls indicate the presence of angels in the assembly (4QDe 10:11; 1QM 7:4-6; 1QSa 2:3-11; 4QMa). These texts affirm that angels symbolize and monitor the observance of the order of creation during worship, and they warn that these guardians of order are offended by ceremonially impure persons who take part in the assembly.[23] Consequently women must wear long hair in worship to respect the order of creation upheld by the angels who are indeed present and watching its observance, an idea foreshadowed by Paul’s earlier suggestion that angels observe what happens in the world (1 Cor. 4:9).[24]

The Significance of Hair Lengths for Sexual Differentiation

The query immediately rises, What made Paul concerned with hair lengths of different genders? In particular why did he find it disgraceful for men to wear long hair and for women to wear short hair? Fortunately a wide range of contemporary sources, both Jewish and Greco-Roman, help answer that question. Late antique Mediterranean social custom regarded the natural order (φύσις) as dictating that the natural hair lengths for men and women were respectively short and long. Therefore inversion of this order amounted to a form of cross-dressing whereby dissidents abdicated their given gender identity in favor of the opposite gender and presented themselves as homosexual. Writing between 30 b.c. and A.D. 40, the Hellenistic Jewish thinker Pseudo-Phocylides admonished parents, “If a child is a boy, do not let locks grow on his head. Braid not his crown nor make cross-knots on the top of his head. Long hair [κόμαν] is not fit for men, but for voluptuous women. Guard the youthful beauty of a comely boy, because many rage for intercourse with a man.”[25] Here long hair in men and boys is portrayed as effeminate. And the transition from the hairstyle of boys to their protection demands for Pseudo-Phocylides the equation of long male hair with homosexuality.

About A.D. 35 the Jewish philosopher Philo condemned male homosexuals for “the provocative way they curl and dress their hair. . . . In fact the transformation of the male nature to the female is practiced by them as an art and does not raise a blush. Such people merit that one should burn with zeal to spill their blood in obedience to the Law which commands that one should kill with impunity the pervert who falsifies the stamp of nature, not permitting him to live a day or even an hour, since he is a disgrace to himself, to his family, to his country, and to the whole human race.”[26] Because some men have naturally curly hair, Philo’s conjunction “curl and dress their hair” must indicate that homosexual men let their hair grow longer than normal, thereby appearing to be female.

This invective displays three striking parallels to Paul’s argument. First, Philo maintained that homosexual men violate the pattern of nature, the same charge Paul levied against men wearing long hair (1 Cor. 11:14). That long male hair carried homosexual overtones sheds new light on Paul’s otherwise inexplicable reference to nature (φύσις), for the only other Pauline instance of such an appeal, characteristic of the Greek philosophical tradition, occurs in a denunciation of homosexuality in Romans 1:26-27. “God gave them over to passions of dishonor [ἀτιμίας, the same term used in 1 Cor. 11:14]; for even their women exchanged the natural [φυσικὴν] function for that which is contrary to nature [φύσιν], and likewise also the men abandoned the natural [φυσικὴν] function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving the retribution which was their due.”

Second, in identical language Philo and Paul (1 Cor. 11:14; cf. v. 4) condemned homosexual men and men with long hair for disgracing themselves. Third, Philo noted the deviance of homosexual men from the human race at large, just as Paul emphasized the departure of men and women with improper hair lengths from the universal practice of God’s churches (v. 16).

The equation of long male hair with effeminacy and homosexuality was common in pagan authors as well. The Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus devoted an entire treatise to the cutting of hair (ca. A.D. 65), portions of which read like a commentary on 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. Musonius alleged that “since hair is given as a covering by nature [ἐν φύσεως], the hair should be cut only to take away what is useless.” He strenuously objected to men “cutting the hair on the front of the head differently from that on the back of the head,” that is, cutting the bangs short while letting the back grow long. He wrote, “That which seems to them good-looking is quite the opposite and does not differ from the efforts of women to make themselves beautiful. . . . Such men can endure appearing as women and being seen as womanish, something that real men should avoid at all costs.”[27] Similarly Musonius’s disciple Epictetus, in his discourse to young men on beauty (A.D. 108), condemned the actions of men who wore their hair for the purpose of looking like women.

Young man, whom do you wish to make beautiful? First, learn who you are. . . . Your reason is the element of superiority which you possess; adorn and beautify that, but leave your hair to God who fashioned it as He willed. Come, what other designations apply to you? Are you a man or a woman? A man. Very well then, adorn a man, not a woman. Woman is born smooth and dainty by nature, and if she has much hair she is a sensation and is seen in Rome among the beauties. But for a man not to have much hair is the same thing. . . . But what of a man who wishes to be a woman rather than a man? What a dreadful spectacle! All will be scandalized. . . . Man, what reason do you have to reproach your nature? Because it brought you into the world as a man? What then? Ought it to have brought all persons into the world as women? . . . Transform yourself entirely into a woman so that we cannot deceive ourselves. Do not be half-man and half-woman. . . . Shall we make a man like you a citizen of Corinth or a warden of the city?[28]

Epictetus wrote particularly about actions taking place in Corinth; from this testimony it is clear that Corinthian men wore their hair long for the express purpose of portraying themselves as female and conveying a homosexual lifestyle. If, as Epictetus suggested, such men should not be granted citizenship in Corinth, how much less, for Paul, should their scandalous dress be tolerated in the church. Hence Paul stipulated that the prohibition of such dress is such an obvious moral principle that it constitutes the only custom held by the otherwise quite diverse churches of God (v. 16).

By the same token classical authors pointed out that women who wished to convey male sexual overtones cut their hair short so that they would look like men. Thus Apuleius observed (ca. A.D. 155), “Short hair was normal for a man, and therefore a woman who wanted to disguise herself as a man cut her hair short.”[29] Likewise Lucian of Samosata, in various works dating between A.D. 160 and 170, emphasized that short hair was the sole distinguishing trait that physically marked a woman as a lesbian. He accordingly noted that a lesbian could easily be recognized as “a woman with her hair closely clipped in the Spartan manner, boyish-looking and wholly masculine.”[30] While describing the lesbian Megilla, Lucian called attention to “her head shaved close, just like the manliest of athletes.”[31] In light of the foregoing evidence one can see why Paul could appeal directly to the Corinthians’ sensibilities regarding short-haired women praying or prophesying, for in approaching God or speaking as His representatives (vv. 13-14) they were in open defiance of their God-given gender roles and in apparent homosexuality. For Paul, therefore, when men with long hair and women with short hair performed religious duties, they committed the monstrous blasphemy of violating the sexual purpose for which they were naturally designed while standing in the immediate presence of their Designer.

Conclusion: From Ancient Context to Contemporary Application

Paul’s exhortation that men pray and prophesy with their heads uncovered and that women pray and prophesy with their heads covered meant that men must perform their religious duties with short hair and women their religious duties with long hair. This would ensure that men looked like men and women looked like women, thereby precluding the cross-gender identification and obvious homosexual overtones conveyed by men looking like women and women looking like men.[32] That Paul’s remarks concerning head coverings were aimed at the prohibition of male effeminacy, female masculinity, and their implied homosexuality fits like a hand in a glove of the Sitz im Leben disclosed by the remainder of the Corinthian correspondence. For in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 Paul had already condemned the full scope of homosexual behavior in uncharacteristically graphic language: “neither μαλακοὶ or ἀρσενοκοῖται . . . will inherit the kingdom of God.” Although dismissed on theological grounds by contemporary advocates of homosexuality in the church, the linguistic and historical evidence overwhelmingly indicates that the conjunction of μαλακοὶ and ἀρσενοκοῖται functions as a merism. Μαλακοὶ signifies the passive partner in homosexual intercourse and ἀρσενοκοῖται signifies the active partner in homosexual intercourse, a fact recognized by the majority of New Testament critics across the liberal-conservative spectrum.[33] This explicit denunciation coupled with the aforementioned extrabiblical evidence proves that homosexuality was a major problem in the Corinthian church. This problem along with its associated cross-gender appearance and behavior resulted from what Thiselton styles an “over-realized eschatology.”[34] In other words a certain number of the believers regarded themselves as belonging completely to the new age and so possessing a “wisdom” (2:6) that rendered the moral values of the present world irrelevant and transformed these members of the new age into τελείοι (2:6), πνευματικοί (2:15), and σοφοί (3:18). Hence the community took pride in the incestuous relationship of one of its members, which vividly depicted their freedom from outmoded standards (5:1-2). Similarly, if Jesus’ kingdom inauguration healed the rift between male and female, the Corinthians felt entitled to blur the distinction between the sexes, a feat that homosexuality accomplished par excellence. Since male effeminacy, female masculinity, and homosexual practice violated Jewish standards in exactly the same way as the Corinthians’ approval of incest, O’Connor rightly remarks that “scandal was the symbol of their new spiritual freedom; the more people they shocked, the more right they felt themselves to be.”[35] With unease and irritation predominating his tone, Paul sharply upbraided the Corinthians for their spiritual underdevelopment, explaining that Christian freedom from the Mosaic Law in no way absolved believers from the eternal principles embodied therein, which principles comprise God’s unchanging law (6:12-20; 9:21; 10:1-13).

Moreover, the exegesis of this passage further illuminates several of Paul’s concerns in 1 Corinthians. The power of the gospel both affirms the goodness of the created order and transfigures it, rather than abandoning the physical world for a spiritual realm accessible only to the illuminated (1:17, 19-22, 27; 2:4-7; 3:18-19). When the gospel is applied to gender relationships, the Holy Spirit works through it to transform those relationships to exactly what they would have been had humankind not fallen into sin, thus illustrating that the gospel accomplishes the redemption of the physical and spiritual aspects of life as an inseparable unity (11:3, 7-9, 11-12). In short, the gospel consummates the natural order, as accomplished through the resurrection (15:21-28, 35-57); it does not destroy or overturn it.

Such an understanding ran contrary to the Corinthians’ philosophical preference, endemic to Greek thought of the time, for a salvation of the soul that ultimately laid aside the prisonhouse of the body at death (15:12-19); in the meantime, the Corinthians felt they could exploit their bodies as they saw fit (6:12-20; 15:32-34). This exploitation, evinced in homosexual appearance and behavior, disregarded the centrality of Christ, who stands as the κεφαλή of every man (11:3). His bodily resurrection, as the firstfruits of those who sleep (15:20), guarantees that all facets of the natural order will be perfected in the new heavens and new earth; how then can alleged followers of Christ undermine the very order that Christ died and rose to redeem (6:14-15)? In condemning homosexuality in the church Paul reinforced his larger theme of Christ’s preeminence (1:4-8, 17; 2:2; 3:11; 5:7; 7:35; 8:6; 16:22) and strove to convince the Corinthians that, as members of Christ’s body (12:12-27), they could not work at cross purposes to each other. Some could not invest themselves in the work of the Lord while others destroyed what God had created; some could not approach God in worship as those who through their good works increasingly prepare the world for Christ’s second coming (3:10-15; 15:58) while others approached God in violation of all that the Second Coming represents. Instead, all believers must be unified in the work of the Lord, knowing that their labors for Him, like good seeds, will ultimately be brought to fruition at the Last Day.

The exegetical findings presented here hold major ramifications for the wider question of how texts speaking to highly contentious socio-cultural matters are to be assessed within the canon of Scripture. All too often, a form of theological double-talk prevails in pulpits where the “meaning” of any such text is defined as what the Holy Spirit supposedly discloses to the pastor concerning the passage and not what objective criteria of grammatical-historical method prove to be the content most probably intended by the original author and understood by the original audience.[36] Veracity dictates that pastors first allow the text to speak on its own behalf before applying the text to contemporary situations. In the present case the historical evidence demonstrates that 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 forbade long male and short female hairstyles because they connoted feminine appearance and behavior on the part of men, masculine appearance and behavior on the part of women, and homosexuality implied by such gender deviance. Proponents of inerrancy should proceed to a straightforward application of this text which forbids homosexual practice, male effeminate and female masculine behavior, and dress indicative of the opposite sex.[37]

Notes

1. Considerable debate exists on this score between complementarians and egalitarians, revolving around the meaning of κεφαλὴ (“head”) in 1 Corinthians 11:3. However, its resolution is irrelevant to the argument presented in this article, which concerns only the passage’s primary message and is equally compatible with both secondary positions. For representative defenses of these positions see, on the one hand, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “Kephalē in 1 Corinthians 11:3,” Interpretation 47 (1993): 32-59; and Wayne Grudem, “The Meaning of kephalē (‘Head’): An Analysis of New Evidence, Real and Alleged,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 44 (2001): 25-65. On the other hand see Berkeley Mickelsen and Alvera Mickelsen, “What Does Kephalē Mean in the New Testament?” in Women, Authority, and the Bible, ed. Alvera Mickelsen (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1986), 97-110; and Catherine Clark Kroeger, “The Classical Concept of Head as ‘Source,’ ” Appendix III in Equal to Serve: Women and Men in the Church and Home, ed. Gretchen Gaebelein Hull (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, 1987), 267-83.
2. Unless indicated otherwise, translations of Scripture and other primary sources are those of the author.
3. By “homosexuality” this article refers to same-sex erotic behavior (and not to the modern concept of psychological orientation toward such behavior, with which the ancients would have been unacquainted). Thus persons who, either by genetics or upbringing, have a psychological proclivity toward same-sex erotic behavior yet never act out such behavior are not the subject of the Pauline denunciation; for Paul, these persons should be commended for faithfully resisting temptation (1 Cor. 10:13). Although ancient Jews classified homosexual behavior within the larger category of sexual immorality, it was practiced among Greeks from the classical period onward, and by the first century A.D. it had become particularly widespread among upper-class Romans (e.g., Nero and Tiberius), who had absorbed considerable Greek culture. Thus such thinkers as Plato (Symposium 222C), Plutarch (Dialogue on Love 5), and Achilles Tatius (Leucippe and Clitophon 2.35.2-3) debated whether homosexual or heterosexual love was superior, and homosexual affection frequently appeared both in biographies (e.g., Arrian, Anabasis 4.14.3, 7; Cornelius Nepos, Pausanias 4.1; Alcibiades 2.2-3) and in fiction (e.g., Virgil, Eclogues 2.17, 45; 8.80-84; Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.353-55; Longus, Daphnis and Chloe 4.12, 16; and Petronius, Satyricon 9, 11, 85-86, 92), sometimes even as the focus of the romance (e.g., Parthenius, Love Romances 7.1-3, 24). Notwithstanding its cultural acceptance, homosexuality lay outside the confines of Greco-Roman marriage and family; hence homoerotic trysts were permitted (for humans and deities alike; e.g., Homer, Iliad 20.232-35; Virgil, Aeneid 1.28; Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.155.61, 162-219; Euripides, Cyclops 583-87; Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 1.23) while homosexual marriage, such as Nero’s marriage to boys (Martial, Epigrams 11.6; Suetonius, Nero 28-29; Tacitus, Annals 15.37), was considered unnatural. For further discussion see Craig S. Keener, “Adultery, Divorce,” in Dictionary of New Testament Background, ed. Craig A. Evans and Stanley E. Porter (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000), 6-16.
4. While 1 Corinthians is the only epistle in which Paul explicitly charged his readers to avoid homosexual activity, the apostle elsewhere denounces homosexuality in general as sinful (Rom. 1:26-27; 1 Tim. 1:9-11).
5. Thomas R. Schreiner, “Head Coverings, Prophecy, and the Trinity: 1 Corinthians 11:2-16,” in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, ed. John Piper and Wayne Grudem (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1991), 126; and Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 506-12.
6. Κατακαλύπτω appears in the New Testament only in 1 Corinthians 11.
7. Additional examples from the Septuagint are Exodus 26:34; Leviticus 3:3, 14; 4:8; 7:3; 9:19; Numbers 22:5; Isaiah 11:9; Jeremiah 26:8 (Eng., 46:8) 28:42, 51 (Eng., 51:42, 51); Ezekiel 26:10, 19; 32:7; 38:9; Daniel 12:9; and Habakkuk 2:14, none of which features a garment as the covering agent. Numbers 4:5 involves a tabernacle curtain.
8. Walter Bauer, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., rev. and ed. Frederick W. Danker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 73-74; Charles K. Barrett, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, Black’s New Testament Commentary (London: Black, 1968), 250-52; Hans Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 181-82; and Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 153. Like κατακαλύπτω, περιβόλαιον is an elastic term that spans the broad concept of covering, so that the specific covering agent can be determined only from the immediate context.
9. Richard E. Oster, “Use, Misuse and Neglect of Archaeological Evidence in Some Modern Works on 1 Corinthians,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 83 (1992): 67-69; and Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 823-25.
10. As William W. Klein, Craig L. Blomberg, and Robert L. Hubbard Jr. perceptively advise, “A final word of counsel for historical-cultural exegesis is: Keep historical-cultural background details auxiliary to content. Sometimes interpreters become so preoccupied with the historical-cultural insights that they identify the main point of a passage as something that is inconsistent with the textual wording” (Introduction to Biblical Interpretation [Dallas: Word, 1993], 178; italics theirs).
11. James B. Hurley, “Did Paul Require Veils or the Silence of Women? A Consideration of 1 Cor. 11:2-16 and 1 Cor. 14:33b–36,” Westminster Theological Journal 35 (1973): 194.
12. Cynthia L. Thompson, “Hairstyles, Head-Coverings, and St. Paul: Portraits from Roman Corinth,” Biblical Archaeologist 51 (1988): 99-115; cf. Brunilde S. Ridgway, “Sculpture from Corinth,” Hesperia 50 (1981): 432-33; and Charles H. Cosgrove, “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 (2005): 678-86. In addition, Thompson observes that if Paul were referring to some appropriation of headgear from Roman religion, such as the capite velato wherein the priest would pull part of his toga overhead during sacrifices, he would have based his argument on the pagan nature of the headgear and its correlation with sacrificing to idols, themes that Paul addressed elsewhere (10:18-22, 28-33) but that appear nowhere in the pericope under investigation.
13. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 823.
14. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, “Sex and Logic in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 42 (1980): 483.
15. Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 376, 743; Félix-Marie Abel, Grammaire du grec biblique suivie d’un choix de papyrus (Paris: Gabalda, 1927), 221; and James H. Moulton, Syntax, vol. 3 of A Grammar of New Testament Greek (Edinburgh: Clark, 1963), 268.
16. This point undermines Linda L. Belleville’s hypothesis that κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων refers to the Roman religious capite velato (“Κηφαλὴ and the Thorny Issue of Headcovering in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16,” in Paul and the Corinthians: Studies on a Community in Conflict, Essays in Honor of Margaret Thrall, ed. Trevor J. Burke and J. Keith Elliott [Leiden: Brill, 2003], 215-31). Weaknesses in this hypothesis include (a) its failure to address Paul’s explicit preoccupation with hair (vv. 5-6, 14-15) and (b) given Paul’s equation of περιβολαίου with hair (v. 15), its gratuitous speculation as to some other type of covering, not to mention one based on a non-Christian religious custom.
17. John Chrysostom, In Epistolam Primam ad Corinthios 26.1, in Patrologia graeco-latina, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1857-1864), 61:213. Likewise the object “hair” is given in the marginal readings of the New International Version and Today’s New International Version. Exegetes who concur that κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων refers to “long hair” include Richard A. Horsley, 1 Corinthians, Abingdon New Testament Commentaries (Nashville: Abingdon, 1998), 152-57; Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians, Interpretation (Atlanta: John Knox, 1997), 185-86; Victor Paul Furnish, The Moral Teaching of Paul:Selected Issues, rev. ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1985), 94-101; and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction ofChristian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 227.
18. For example Robin Scroggs claims that “the logic is obscure at best and contradictory at worst” between verses 7-12 and the rest of the passage (“Paul and the Eschatological Woman,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 40 [1972]: 297). Raymond F. Collins deems verses 7-12 a “convoluted toying with the Scriptures” (First Corinthians, Sacra Pagina [Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1999], 403).
19. Fee, TheFirst Epistle to the Corinthians, 514.
20. Horsley, 1 Corinthians, 154.
21. Judith M. Gundry-Volf, “Gender and Creation in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16: A Study in Paul’s Theological Method,” in Evangelium, Schriftauslegung, Kirche: Festschrift für Peter Stuhlmacher, ed. Jostein Adna, Scott J. Hafemann, and Otfried Hofius (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997), 157.
22. Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians, Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox, 1997), 187-88.
23. Joël Delobel, “1 Cor 11, 2-16: Towards a Coherent Interpretation,” in L’Apôtre Paul: Personalité, style et conception du ministère, ed. Albert Vanhoye (Louvain: Louvain University Press, 1986), 386.
24. On the same score Philo remarked that angels functioned as “the eyes and ears of the Great King” who “watch and hear all” (De Somniis 1:140).
25. P. W. van der Horst, The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides with Introduction and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 81-83 (vv. 210-14).
26. Philo, De Specialibus Legibus 3:36-38.
27. Musonius Rufus, Discourse 21 (’Εκ τοῦ περί κούπας).
28. Epictetus, Discourses 3.1.24-36 (italics added).
29. Apuleius, Metamorphoses 7.6.
30. Lucian of Samosata, Fugitive 27.
31. Lucian of Samosata, Dialogi meretrici 5.3.
32. While differing in secondary details, this conclusion is foreshadowed by the work of O’Connor, “Sex and Logic in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16,” 485-90; and Philip B. Payne, “Wild Hair and Gender Equality in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16,” Priscilla Papers 20 (2006): 11-15.
33. Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, eds., Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1989), 1:772; Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 135, 613; Robert A. J. Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001), 306-32; Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 449; Craig S. Keener, 1-2 Corinthians, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 54-55; Hays, First Corinthians, 97; Fee, TheFirst Epistle to the Corinthians, 243-44; Bruce W. Winter, After Paul Left Corinth: The Influence of Secular Ethics and Social Change (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 118-20; D. F. Wright, “Homosexuals or Prostitutes? The Meaning of Arsenokoitai (1 Cor. 6:9, 1 Tim. 1:10),” Vigiliae Christianae 38 (1984): 125-53; David E. Garland, 1 Corinthians, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 212-15; Ben Witherington III, Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 166; Wolfgang Stegemann, “Paul and the Sexual Mentality of His World,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 23 (1993): 164-65; and David F. Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 212-14.
34. Anthony C. Thiselton, “Realized Eschatology at Corinth,” New Testament Studies 24 (1978): 510-26.
35. O’Connor, “Sex and Logic in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16,” 490.
36. Sadly this approach was advocated recently by Douglas F. Ottati and criticized by the present author at the 2008 AAR Reformed History and Theology Group (see Douglas F. Ottati, Theology for Liberal Presbyterians and Other Endangered Species [Louisville: Geneva, 2006], 69-70).
37. To the extent that hair lengths still imply homosexuality or cross-dressing, they should be suitably altered, but no valid application can be drawn from this pericope for hair lengths per se, much less the wearing of head garments.