1 Corinthians 11:2-16 Line by Line (1)

INTRODUCTION

Over three days this past August, I spoke at a retreat for Anglican clergy. I spoke on three passages in Paul’s letters that have been the cause of grief for countless women. Each of these passages contains genuine challenges in how we interpret them, and I think they’ve been largely misunderstood and woefully misapplied.[1] Without ignoring what others have written, l mostly presented how I read and understand these three passages.

My approach to these passages focuses on:
1. Paul’s choice of words in the original language, Greek, and his use of rhetorical devices;
2. Understanding the social backdrop of the individual letters;
3. Identifying Paul’s main aim in each passage.[2]

Paul’s letters were written to specific people in response to specific issues. It helps to know who these people were and what the issues were that motivated Paul to respond with expensive letters.[3] Identifying the main aim in each passage is not easy though, because apart from a few quotations from the Corinthians, we only hear Paul’s side of the conversation.

In this article, I provide my notes, slightly edited, of my talk on 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. It’s been observed that no one has come up with a cohesive interpretation of this passage that makes good sense of all the elements in each of the verses, but I will do my best to make sense of it.

KEYS TO UNDERSTANDING 1 CORINTHIANS 11:2-16

I’ll be looking at the passage line by line, but first I want to point out a few keys to reading it.

The Main Idea: First, we need to recognise and keep in mind Paul’s overall topic. This passage is not about gender roles, as such, because the Corinthian men and women were doing the same thing: they were praying and prophesying. And this passage is not, strictly speaking, about marriage either. Paul’s main concern is the appearance of the heads or the hairstyles of the men and women who were praying and prophesying. We mustn’t lose sight of his main concern when getting into the details.

Adam and Eve: Second, the story of Adam and Eve is behind some of the ideas in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. If we don’t pick up on the allusions to Genesis 2, we might miss what Paul is saying.

The Structure: Third, to keep track of Paul’s argument, it helps if we recognise that he structured this passage as a chiasm. A chiasm is a literary form where certain points are made until a main point is reached, and then the previous points are repeated and elaborated on in reverse order. If we don’t recognise the chiasm, Paul’s statements can seem choppy and all over the place, because they are not written in a linear form.

Also, in a chiasm, the point highlighted the most is at the centre, and the statement at the centre of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 is this:

“For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels” (1 Cor. 11:10 KJV).

This enigmatic verse has generated a lot of discussion and much speculation. My aim in this article is to explain this statement within the context of the passage.

Also, even though the passage is structured as a chiasm, I propose that Paul is speaking about one social concern in the first half (respectable reputations in broader society) and a different social concern in the second half (mutual relationships within the body of Christ). It’s difficult to reconcile the two halves of the passage. Paul’s discussion in the first half seems different from his discussion in the second half, even contradictory in some points.[4]

But for now, let’s begin looking at the passage.

1 CORINTHIANS 11:2: A COMPLIMENT

Thankfully, verse 2 starts fairly simply.

“Now I praise you because you remember me in everything and hold fast to the traditions[5] just as I delivered them to you” (1 Cor. 11:2).

Honestly, I think Paul was just saying something nice and complimentary before he begins criticising the Corinthians. And because there are difficult verses to discuss, let’s move on quickly.

1 CORINTHIANS 11:3: “HEAD” AND “FIRSTNESS”

The Greek Word Kephalē (“Head”)

Verse 3 is not simple or straightforward.

“But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God.”
(This translation follows the word order in the Greek text as much as possible.)

Most Christians today understand these verses as speaking about a hierarchy of authority. In English, the word “head” can mean “the person in charge” or “a person in authority over others.” But this was not a usual meaning for the Greek word kephalē in ancient texts.

Richard Cervin notes that lexicons of the works of ancient Greek authors such as Xenophon, Herodotus, Plato, Thucydides, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Polybius, Diodorus Siculus and others, do not include any definitions for kephalē that approximate “leader.”[6]

In the entry on kephalē in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament―this dictionary has a dozen volumes and it takes up the whole bottom row of one of my bookshelves; it’s a serious dictionary―it states that “In secular Greek usage, kephalē is not employed for the head of a society.”[7]

Al Wolters, a linguist who identifies as complementarian (which means he thinks God has designed men, and not women, to be leaders), states that kephalē with a meaning of “leader” is “virtually unattested in pagan Greek literature until about the fourth century AD.”[8]

So, the idea the kephalē doesn’t mean “a leader in authority over others” shouldn’t be controversial.

Kephalē (Greek) as a translation of Rosh (Hebrew) in the Old Testament

Where a meaning of “leader” is attested is in a handful of verses in the Septuagint, the ancient Greek version of the Old Testament. In Hebrew, the word for “head,” ro’sh, can mean “leader, the person in charge.” The Hebrew word ro’sh is used 171 times with this meaning of “leader” in the Old Testament.

However, as Gordon D. Fee has observed,

“even though the Hebrew word roʾsh sometimes carried this sense [of leader], the Greek translators of the LXX [Septuagint], who ordinarily used kephalē to translate roʾsh when the physical “head” was intended, almost never did so when “ruler” was intended …”

In a footnote, Fee adds that ro’sh is translated as kephalē, “In only 6 of 171 instances [where the meaning is “leader”], and half of these are variants in a single MS [manuscript] or were required to preserve a head/tail contrast.[9] It seems that most of the translators of the Septuagint knew that kephalē does not usually mean “leader,” “ruler,” or “the person in charge.”[10]

Church Fathers on Kephalē in 1 Corinthians 11:3

Furthermore, several Greek-speaking early church fathers did not understand 1 Corinthians 11:3 as being about a hierarchy of authority. They understood this verse as being about origins. (I quote half a dozen of these men in one of my articles, here, if you want to find out what they say.)

These church fathers understood kephalē as meaning “beginning” or “being first.” Accordingly, the second phrase in 1 Corinthians 11:3 can be understood as meaning,

“… the head (the starting point) of woman (Eve) is the man (Adam)” (cf. 1 Cor. 11:8).

It’s not just ancient scholars who hold this view. Several modern scholars, such as Kenneth Bailey, also understand that the woman and the man in 1 Corinthians 11:3 is Eve and Adam and that this verse is about who came first. I think David de Silva hit the nail on the head when he wrote, “However, one chooses to translate kephalē (“head”) here, the firstness indicated by the term is difficult to avoid.”[11]

The Honour of Being First

Being first can lead to honour and status, but being first is not necessarily tied to authority or leadership. For example, when he was in kindergarten, my oldest grandson used to love being first in line, and he would make an effort at the beginning of the day to “bags” that first spot. Being at the head of the line made him feel special, but he didn’t have authority over his classmates who were behind him in line.

A more recent example: the athletes who came first in their contests at the Olympics have more honour or glory than those who came second or third, and they are on the highest position on the dais when they receive their medal. But the first-place getters don’t usually have authority over the other athletes.

I’ve observed that in all of Paul’s use of kephalē in his letters, and also in usage in non-biblical ancient Greek texts, there is a sense or at least a nuance of “higher status” or a “higher level of honour” when “head” refers to a person.[12]

I want to keep this idea of status and honour in mind as we read 1 Corinthians 11.

In Part 2, I look at 1 Corinthians 11:4-6 and men’s and women’s heads/ hair, and at what Paul meant by “nature” in the corresponding verses, 1 Corinthians 11:14-15.

Footnotes

[1] As well as 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 which contains the phrase “the head of woman is the man,” I spoke about Ephesians 5:22-33 which contains the phrase, “wives are to submit to their husbands in everything,” and 1 Timothy 2:11-15 which contains the phrase, “I do not allow a woman to teach …”
My talk on Ephesians 5 was based on my “Submission and Saviour” article, posted here. I posted an article based on my 1 Timothy 2 talk on Patreon here. (The 1 Timothy 2 article is accessible only to some Patreons.)

[2] There is a broad consensus among New Testament scholars that Paul was the author of First Corinthians. However, a number of NT scholars don’t think Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians, and even more don’t believe he wrote the letter we know as 1 Timothy. For the sake of simplicity, if nothing else, I will be referring to the author of 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, and 1 Timothy as “Paul” (cf. 1 Cor. 1:1; Eph. 1:1; 1 Tim. 1:1). At the very least, Paul’s heart is in these letters whether they were written by him or by one of his disciples. I lean towards these three letters as having each been written by Paul, but the letter to the Ephesians was written later than 1 Corinthians, and 1 Timothy was written later still.

[3] Letter writing was a costly and time-consuming exercise in the ancient world. I’ve written about ancient letter writing in the early church here.

[4] Regarding the idea that the first part of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 contains the words or teachings of the Corinthians and not Paul’s own words, an idea proposed and adopted by some, consider the following observations.

These various Corinthian slogans [in 1 Cor. 6:12; 6:13; 7:1; 8:1; 10:23] share several common features: they are short and concisely worded (as slogans typically are); they reflect views with which Paul can agree in part but which prove significantly misleading if interpreted without qualification; and they represent a common perspective found in the form of ancient Greek philosophy that eventually developed into Gnosticism. Recognition of these common features may enable interpreters to evaluate other proposals for slogans in 1 Corinthians.
Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, 3rd Edition, edited by William W. Klein, Craig L. Blomberg, Robert L. Hubbard Jr. (HarperCollins, 2017), 553–554. (Google Books)

None of the statements in the first half of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 seem to have these features, at least, not that I can tell.

[5] Fee writes that the Greek word for “tradition” (paradosis) used in 1 Corinthians 11:2 “is a technical term in Judaism for the oral transmission of religious instruction. In this case it almost certainly does not refer to ‘teachings’ (as it does in 15:3), but to some ‘traditions’ that have to do with worship (as in 11:23).”
Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT, Revised Edition; Eerdmans, 2014), 551.

[6] Richard Cervin, “Does kephalē (‘head’) Mean ‘Source’ or ‘Authority Over’ in Greek Literature: A Rebuttal,” Trinity Journal 10 (Spring, 1989): 85–112, 86–87.
I’ve checked some of these lexicons, and several others, for myself, and my observations match his findings apart from two older Greek-German lexicons.

[7] H. Schlier, “κεφαλή …”, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Gerhard Kittle (ed.) (Eerdmans, 1965), 3:673–681.

[8] Al Wolters, “Head as Metaphor,” Koers 76.1 (2011): 137–153, 142 & 143.

[9] Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 555. Fee further notes, “The only clear instances of rosh = κεφαλή = leader/ chief are Judg. 11:11; 2 Sam. 22:44; Ps. 18:43; Isa. 7:8, 9; Lam. 1:5.”

[10] In the Septuagint, when rosh (“head”) means leader, it is usually translated as archōn, not kephalē (“head”). It’s plausible that in the few verses where rosh means leader and was translated as kephalē, the translator was influenced by the source text. BrillDAG gives “leader” as a possible meaning for kephalē but specifies that this meaning occurs in the Vetus Testamentum (i.e. the Septuagint) and it cites 2 Samuel 22:44 as an example.

[11] David A. deSilva, Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture (InterVarsity Press, 2000), 231.
ANLEX combines the senses of firstness and status in its entry on kephalē and cites 1 Cor. 11:3: “of persons, designating first or superior rank, head (1C 11.3),”
Timothy Friberg, Barbara Friberg, and Neva F. Miller, Analytical Lexicon of the Greek New Testament (ANLEX) (Baker: 2000), 229.
Bauer and Danker (BDAG) give two main definitions for the Greek word kephalē: “1. the part of the body that contains the brain,” and “2. a being of high status.”
Walter Bauer, “κεφαλή”, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd Edition, by Walter Bauer, revised and edited by F.W Danker (University of Chicago Press, 2000), 541–542.

[12] I give an overview of Paul’s use of kephalē (“head”) in all his New Testament letters, here.

© Margaret Mowczko 2024
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Image Credit

The ruins of the temple of Apollo in Corinth. Photo by Alex Presa on Unsplash

An Interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, Line by Line:
Respectable Reputations Outside the Church, Mutual Relationships Within the Church

Part 2: Head Coverings or Hairstyles? Respectability and Sexual Renunciation (1 Cor. 11:4-6)
Part 3: Genesis, Glory, and Reputations (1 Cor. 11:7-9)
Part 4: A Woman’s Authority and the Angels (1 Cor. 11:10-16)

Explore More

All my articles on kephalē (“head”) are here.
1 Corinthians 11:2–16, in a Nutshell
4 reasons “head” does not mean “leader” in 1 Cor. 11:3
An Overview of Paul’s Use of Kephalē (“Head”)
Kephalē (“head”) as Metaphor in First-Century Texts