The wearing of appropriate head covering (such as a hood) denoted respect and respectability. Within the semiotic clothing code of first-century Roman society (see above on Roland Barthes) “a veil or hood constituted a warning: it signified that the wearer was a respectable woman and that no man dare approach her,” i.e., as one potentially or actually sexually “available” (my italics).145
The problem with the above assertion, is that it is not true.
One example is the wearing of the mitra, which we know was worn by prostitutes:
"I cannot abide, Quirites, a Rome of Greeks; and yet what fraction of our dregs comes from Greece? The Syrian Orontes has long since poured into the Tiber, bringing with it its lingo and its manners, its flutes and its slanting harp-strings; bringing too the timbrels of the breed, and the trulls who are bidden ply their trade at the Circus. Out upon you, all ye that delight in foreign strumpets with painted headdresses!"
ite, quibus grata est picta lupa barbara mitra! (Juvenal Satire Book 3, verse 66).
"Mitra" is where we get the word "mitre," or "miter" which is the
head covering typical of bishops and such in the RCC an EO churches.
For what this is worth, none of the above is scholarly research, it is my own original research. Whenever I would follow up on quotations like yours and read their sources, I would find they never quoted primary sources, but rather secondary sources.
So, we have from a contemporary primary source that the head covering
was not always a reflection of respectability, but rather it commonly indicated a prostitute among the Greeks. From my own research, I have found that there were also respectable head coverings, one for example much like a wedding veil that was, just like today, worn during a wedding ceremony.
Now, the assertion from Christian scholars (but no secular scholars that actually do primary source research ironically) is that the wedding veil was worn all the time by "respectable" married Roman and Greek women.
The problem is, they don't have evidence of this. In fact, if you take a few minutes to look at
contemporary paintings of every day life such as those in Pompeii you would see, aside from all the pictures of couples having sex, that there are a plethora of unveiled women.
The same can be said of Greek paintings and pottery. It seems to me that the only people that take issue with this are post 1960s Christian apologists, not secular historians of any era or any Christians before that time.
So, answer me this: If at the very least there is
some doubt that within ancient Rome alone there was a uniform head covering practice connoting respectability, isn't it foolish to negate Scripture for something that is at present not conclusive in historical study?
Further, Paul says that the Church everywhere had no other practice, which existed throughout the Roman Empire (Greece, Libya, Egypt) and outside the pale of Rome at the time of Paul's writing (Ethiopia, Arabia, Parthia, Armenia, some claim India, etcetera.)
Are you arguing that all these areas had identical head covering practices in the wider culture, so that Paul was not advocating a Churchly custom but a cultural one instead?
It appears to me that the only reasonable historical conclusion we can draw is that the physical practice of wearing headcoverings among the ancient church ran
contrary to many of the societies the Church penetrated, rather than conforming to the wider societies of the time.
We postpone for the present whether ἀκατακαλύπτῳ may conceivably denote long hair that is “loosed” down the back, since this would generate the very same signal.
Yes, the "long hair as headcovering" argument. The problem is, that Paul uses distinctly different words in Greek and internally, the passage discounts the notion:
Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered (akatakalupton)? Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him, but if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her? For her hair is given to her for a covering (peribolaiou).
The word in the Greek is different for one and the injunction “if you don’t cover your head, then cut all your hair off” doesn’t make any sense unless Paul is only against medium-length hair.
In vv. 4 (men) and 5 (women) the principle remains the same: self-advertisement, especially if it relates to perceptions of the worship leader as an object of sexual attraction, diverts attention from God who should be the center of undivided attention.
You need to take your commentary from Thiselton and throw it in the garbage now. Nowhere does the passage refer to this at all, this is made up out of whole cloth.
Paul adds his own content to the meaning of head covering, but the choice of that specific symbol was cultural.
Do you have any evidence that is not second hand of this? I just provided two pieces of evidence to the contrary.
Paul says this himself. "Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is degrading to him."
Yes, but this was after Paul made an argument from creation. Paul makes two arguments in favor of head coverings in the passage, one from the divine order of things (1 Cor 11:3, 7-10) and the other from nature, which in effect is arguably a reflection of the divine order of things.
Just look at verse 7:
"For a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man."
Paul doesn't say a man ought not to be uncovered because of it being a no-no in wider society. He actually argues it is a creation ordinance.
...we shall find insoluble problems with such historical counterexamples as the custom of Spartan warriors of wearing shoulder-length hair.
This is hundreds of years before the time of Christ and not even relevant to the ancient Greeks of Paul's day.
Here's a fuller quotation from Calvin's commentary to show that this approach is not just some recent thing:
"Doth not even nature itself. He again sets forth nature as the mistress of decorum, and what was at that time in common use by universal consent and custom—even among the Greeks—he speaks of as being natural, for it was not always reckoned a disgrace for men to have long hair. Historical records bear, that in all countries in ancient times, that is, in the first ages, men wore long hair. Hence also the poets, in speaking of the ancients, are accustomed to apply to them the common epithet of unshorn.1 It was not until a late period that barbers began to be employed at Rome—about the time of Africanus the elder. And at the time when Paul wrote these things, the practice of having the hair shorn had not yet come into use in the provinces of Gaul or in Germany. Nay more, it would have been reckoned an unseemly thing for men, no less than for women, to be shorn or shaven; but as in Greece it was reckoned an unbecoming thing for a man to allow his hair to grow long, so that those who did so were remarked as effeminate, he reckons as nature a custom that had come to be confirmed.2"
To quote Calvin later:
"Let us therefore carefully mark this passage, that we may not allow ourselves to be carried away with needless disputations, provided at the same time we know how to distinguish contentious persons. For we must not always reckon as contentious the man who does not acquiesce in our decisions, or who ventures to contradict us; but when temper and obstinacy show themselves, let us then say with Paul, that contentions are at variance with the custom of the Church."
Or, in plain English, don't contradict the teachings of the passage and follow the custom of the Church.