Commenting on an older post, Christopher writes:
“I just came across this essay years after its initial posting. Thanks for the thoughtful exposition.
I would encourage you to look into the head covering material a little more. I thought
it patently ridiculous until I read the following paper. I'm now fairly persuaded by it:
Troy W. Martin, ‘Paul’s Argument from Nature for the Veil in 1 Cor. 11:13-15: A Testicle instead of a Head Covering,’ Journal of Biblical Literature 123:1 (2004): 75-84.”
Thanks, Christopher. I can certainly do that.
In an otherwise positive post about the writings of the late Michael Heiser, which I find useful and genuinely illuminating in many respects, I made passing reference to his headcovering theory, which I called “patently ridiculous” and “painful to read”. I still feel that way, though I thank Christopher for inspiring me to examine the scholarship on which Heiser’s position depends (readers who have not seen Troy Martin’s essay can find it here) and to set out comprehensively my reasons for categorically rejecting his position.
So let’s do that.
Problems with Understanding Paul
Martin starts by declaring the apostle Paul’s argument in favor of wives covering their heads in church meetings from 1 Corinthians 11 “notorious”, quoting a pair of modern critics who call it “convoluted” and “obscure”.
Okay then. There is no doubt some of Paul’s writings can be difficult. His own apostolic contemporary admitted he wrote some things in his letters that were “hard to understand”. Compounding the problem, modern English readers are 2,000 years downstream from the apostle, reading him in another language without the benefit of familiarity with the cultural and historical context in which he wrote. His original readers did not have all our issues.
Nevertheless, they demonstrably had some. We should note that Peter does not tell us to ignore anything about Paul’s letters that we can’t immediately follow or make sense of. Rather, he upholds his fellow apostle and calls Paul’s critics “ignorant” and “unstable”. We can learn from that.
So let’s acknowledge the questions that arise from an English reading of 1 Corinthians 11 without walking away from the passage entirely, as some do. There are some difficulties in it, to be sure, but finding something difficult is not the same as comprehensively undermining it.
Five Solid Reasons
Having carefully examined what Mr. Martin has to say on this subject, I’d like to offer our readers five solid reasons to reject his argument for abandoning headcoverings lock, stock and barrel:
- Both Martin and the commentators he cites are compromised on the doctrine of inspiration, which makes them open to possibilities orthodox Christians would not entertain.
- Martin’s argument makes Paul less incomprehensible than merely ignorant.
- Martin at least twice quotes sources that undermine his own argument.
- Martin overlooks a scripture-based interpretation of περιβολαίου (peribolaion) in favor of an argument based on extra-scriptural sources.
- Substituting “testicle” for “covering” as Paul’s intended meaning of περιβολαίου doesn’t resolve the problem or make sense of his argument in 1 Corinthians 11.
Let’s develop each of these a bit.
1/ The Inspiration Problem
Both Martin and the commentators he cites are compromised on the doctrine of inspiration, which makes them open to possibilities orthodox Christians would not entertain.
Martin writes, “the scholarly assessment is that neither the Corinthians nor possibly even Paul himself completely comprehended this argument for the veiling of women”. He quotes Victor Paul Furnish to the effect that that the theological basis for Paul’s instructions to women “may well have seemed unsatisfactory even to the apostle himself”. Both quotes strongly imply a low view of New Testament scripture, not to mention a low view of the intelligence of both the apostle and the Corinthians.
There’s no doubt that the OT prophets on occasion did not know how to apply the predictions God made about Messiah through them. They said obscure things they didn’t understand, then diligently searched the scriptures to find answers. However, there is no basis whatsoever for the idea that the arguments apostles made in writing confused them, or that they found their own reasoning unsatisfactory or difficult to comprehend. Rather, these men commanded consistent obedience from the churches on the basis of the cases they made, as Paul does in this passage, even for those readers who were not completely capable of following his reasoning and were inclined to be contentious about the matter.
When a writer entertains the possibility that Paul was writing his own questionable opinions rather than the commands of the Lord, as Martin does here, I don’t tend to take his arguments terribly seriously. They are coming from a place of instability. I can’t say whether Martin is personally soft on inspiration but he’s certainly scarily untroubled about using dodgy theology to bolster his case for a new understanding of Paul’s intentions.
2/ The Ignorance Problem
Martin’s argument makes Paul less incomprehensible than merely ignorant, a position that seems like a move from frying pan to fire. He’s arguing that Paul misunderstood human physiology, buying into then-current theories advanced by Hippocrates and others about hair being a sex organ, and that his argument for women covering their heads in church originated in that misunderstanding. To his credit, Martin doesn’t call Paul incoherent. He concedes Paul made an argument that would have held weight in his day, but which he based on beliefs about human anatomy that science has since disproved. Since the physiological conceptions of the body have changed, Martin says in conclusion, no physiological reason remains for continuing the practice of covering women’s heads in public worship.
Frankly, I have no idea what Paul believed about human physiology. He may have been all wet. Being a theologian and a prophet does not make one a scientist or medical expert. However, we do not know the basis for Paul’s argument from propriety. He certainly does not set it out in this passage. Guessing about his thought processes does not permit us to dismiss his conclusions summarily.
3/ The Self-Undermining Problem
Martin at least twice quotes sources that undermine his own arguments.
Firstly, he declares, “The rationale for the natural shame of a man with long hair is obscure”, as if men in every ancient culture wore their hair like Conan the Barbarian. Not so. The Law of Moses made long hair for males the rare exception, strongly implying the vast majority of Israelite males wore their hair short for the better part of a millennium and a half. Furthermore, Martin quotes Plutarch about a Delphic custom in which Greek male youths cut their hair at puberty. It seems there was some documented preference in ancient times for men to wear their hair short, not just in Jewish culture but in others. Short hair would certainly have been safer and more convenient in pitched battle than waist-length locks. Perhaps nature taught them. It certainly taught Absalom.
Secondly, Martin argues that displaying a woman’s hair in church was indecent because Paul’s Greek contemporaries believed hair to be an extension of the sex organs. He writes:
“Hippocratic authors hold that hair is hollow and grows primarily from either male or female reproductive fluid or semen flowing into it and congealing.”
He goes on to say Hippocrates and others thought semen was stored in the human brain and hair of both men and women, and men had more semen than women. But if female hair was thus considered part of the female genitalia, so too was male hair, and even more so. If the Hippocratic conception of human physiology was the basis for Paul’s argument, why then does he require men to uncover their heads in church? The indecency issue would apply to men as much or more than women.
4/ The Better Alternative Problem
Martin overlooks a scripture-based interpretation of περιβολαίου in favor of an argument based on extra-scriptural sources.
Martin bypasses the scriptures that help us understand what Paul meant when he called a woman’s hair her περιβολαίου in verse 15, the only time that word appears in the entire passage. Instead, Martin jumps directly to Hippocrates and other Greek authors to make περιβολαίου the female equivalent of testicular endowment. But why should Christians prefer an extra-scriptural hypothesis about Paul’s intended meaning to a scriptural one? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
I make the case here that peribolaion is better translated as “adornment” than “covering” in this context. The latter is redundant English vocabulary that only confuses readers and fails to reflect the diversity of Paul’s word choices in Greek. Translating peribolaion as “adornment” makes perfect sense of Paul’s statement that a woman’s hair is her glory. It is something that makes her more attractive. She ought to cover it out of humility, not out of shame.
Moreover, it’s evident from the secular sources Martin cites that the Greek writers are using περιβολαίου figuratively. Not even a hint of such euphemistic usage occurs anywhere else in scripture where peribolaion or its relatives appear. Why would we look for one here?
When there exists an alternative, thoroughly biblical understanding of περιβολαίου that makes complete sense of Paul’s argument, why would we look to Greek history to interpret it for us?
5/ The ‘No Solution’ Problem
Finally, substituting “testicle” for “covering” as Paul’s intended meaning doesn’t resolve the problems with the text or make sense of Paul’s argument. It entirely fails to address the issue of a woman’s head covering being a “symbol of authority”, which Paul plainly states, and the fact that the hair is her “glory”. Instead, Martin’s theory makes her hair shameful.
“Since female hair is part of the female genitalia, Paul asks the Corinthians to judge for themselves whether it is proper for a woman to display her genitalia when praying to God (1 Cor 11:13).”
I have already pointed out that if Greeks believed semen was stored in hollow hair, then it would have been just as improper to display men’s hair in church as to display women’s hair. The same sexual association would have been present and obvious to all. Rather, Paul plainly states that a woman’s hair is her glory, not her shame. It is shaving a wife’s head that is shameful, and therefore another covering is necessary.
In Summary
To be fair to him, Martin documents the Hippocratic theory about human hair comprehensively and effectively. Having read his essay, I have no doubt the ancients believed it, as distasteful and hilarious as the idea seems to us today. The problem with translating περιβολαίου as something like “testicular equivalent” is that Paul does not argue for headcoverings exclusively from propriety. He argues headcoverings are a symbol of authority, a witness to angels, and the covering of a natural glory. Further, the impropriety Paul has in view is not the shame of sexual exposure but the shame of dishonoring an authority.
Even if we don’t fully understand Paul’s reasons, none of them go away when we substitute “testicle” for “covering”, and we end up creating other logical and textual problems in the process.
Moreover, “testicle” is only one (extremely rare) possible interpretation of a word that Martin himself confesses has a broad semantic range. “Arrayed” or “adorned” is another, and it’s a much better one. The Greek periballō, from which we get peribolaion, appears 24 times in the New Testament. Several of these references show the “adornment” interpretation is legit. Not one has anything whatsoever to do with male sex organs. This being the case, I’ll happily stick with a woman’s hair as her adornment, and leave the testicles to the men.
Yes, there remain several issues in 1 Corinthians 11 that could use some thoughtful clarification. None of these are helped by substituting “testicle” for “covering”.
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