[Marg]

Some thoughts:

I don't think that long hair on a man was always bad.  I think it is rarely bad.   

1 Corinthians was written to Christians in Corinth.  Long hair on men was a problem in the Corinthian church because of what it signified to that culture. 

Long hair was not a problem for Jewish men, especially those who belonged to churches in Israel.  Paul was in Jerusalem when he made the vow and went through the purification rites (Acts 21:17ff).

Culture is an important key to understanding the Bible, especially, I think, the New Testament letters.

And because of our western culture, women do not have to wear a head covering or wear their hair up when praying or prophecying.

[Don]

The believers at Corinth were both Jews and gentiles (Greeks) according to Acts 18, so the Nazir argument would apply to the Jews there.  One can also see that some of the arguments in 1 Cor are targeted to one group or the other.  And for a Greek, philosophers tended to wear their hair long and it was not seen as a bad thing, just a typical mark of their profession.   Another aspect is that what is "natural" for hair is just to grow until it falls out (this is an argument to a Greek), it is a mark of being civilized to cut it shorter than that; that is, the "natural" length of anyone's hair is longish, so when Paul uses a "natural" argument, I do not see how he can be arguing against it being long.

1 Cor 11 is to all type of believers at Corinth, men are not to do something with their head that women are allowed to decide to do (or not do) when in a congregational setting.   The Greek in 1 Cor 11: 7 which says what the men should not do is "katakaluptesthai ten kephalen" which is literally "that which comes down from the head" or "that which covers the head" which is ambiguous to me and others, as there are various things that might qualify.

This is why I back up and decline to tie down exactly what is being prohibited to men (yet allowed for women), because I cannot be sure with all the options that are possible due to the different cultures.  It might be a head covering, or it might be a veil or it might be a hair length or a hair do, it has something to do with one's head and for some reason that is not clear today the cultural meanings can possibly conflict with a Christian witness.  So there is a principle that we can extract, but we still do not know the details for sure.

Not knowing the details can be less than satisfying, but I think when we are not sure, then that is the best we can do.  In other words, when we are ignorant about something, the truth is to admit our ignorance.  This is one of the challenges of translations, because the expectation is that a translation needs to make a "best guess".

P.S. All of my assertions should always be read as being prefaced with "I think".  I am still learning also.

[Marg]

P.S. All of my assertions should always be read as being prefaced with "I think".  I am still learning also.

Me too!!!       

Payne suggests that some Corinthian men may have been braiding their hair in an effeminate way.

http://www.pbpayne.com/?p=450

[Don]

The short answer is that Payne is an excellent Greek scholar, but he is not a Torah scholar.  Paul was both and so both are needed to understand him, as I see it.

I think Payne's book and website are essential, but I do not agree with everything he says.   I think some of what he says is the best teaching on the subject.  On the other hand, he says 1 Cor 14:34-35 is an interpolation, I think it is a quote from Corinth (which is what he thought previously, but no longer does).  But he thinks that IF it is a quote, it wrecks the chiasm, which is simply not true, the chiasm is still there.  I have modified my teaching to express both options, as the important thing is to show that v.34-35 do not express a Christian teaching and I admit I might be wrong about it being a quote, but I think the odds are at least 90/10 in favor of it being a quote.

On 1 Cor 11, Payne must know that the Greek about men's hair can be translated as either a question or a statement.  He favors translating it as a question and I favor as a statement.  See ISV for it being translated as a statement, for example.

1Co 11:13  Decide for yourselves: Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered?
1Co 11:14  Nature itself teaches you neither that it is disgraceful for a man to have long hair
1Co 11:15  nor that hair is a woman's glory, since hair is given as a substitute for coverings.

I do agree with Payne in that URL you posted that a woman at Corinth would keep her hair close to her head, to let her locks flow freely was seen as a sexual come on and so sent a message that was not appropriate.  But it does not mean that today and in fact we would think such restrictions are bogus.

So, IMO, Payne, does not take into account all the data.

[Don]

Just to be clear, here is what I see happening with 1 Cor 11.  Various people assign various possible meanings to some of the ambiguous words, in an attempt to have the passage make sense to them.  They display a version that makes some kind of sense and then try to argue why this is the right want to translate it.  This is what CBMW does and what Payne does and what Ken Bailey does.

My take is such a process is flawed, since it seeks certainty about things which are uncertain.   So I just admit some of the terms are ambiguous and go from there, letting them remain ambiguous, altho within a range of possibilities.  Since whatever the head thing was and more importantly whatever its meaning was was a cultural thing that does not apply any more, this "fuzzy" way of looking at the text works fine for me to be able to extract the principles that apply today.  I wish I could be more certain, but I cannot in this case.

[TL]

P.S. All of my assertions should always be read as being prefaced with "I think".  I am still learning also.

Me too!!!       

Payne suggests that some Corinthian men may have been braiding their hair in an effeminate way.

http://www.pbpayne.com/?p=450

He has a point in that.  When I was doing some intricate research in the meaning of some of the words used in 1 Cor. 11, I came to that suspicion myself. 

[UsagiTsukino]

I have heard akatalyptos mean  loosen hair. Could that be the problem?

[TL]

possibly part of it.