How to Baptize the Bible So That It’s Not a Dangerous Book, Part 5
Rules without Reasons, for starters
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Short hair and conflicting creation accounts—your first interpretive exercises
Exercise One
My “solution” will appear in my next lecture.
One sizable Christian denomination, there could be others, takes literally the Apostle Paul’s directive to women regarding no haircuts, no buzz cuts, no shaved heads. From 1 Corinthians 11 (New American Standard translation):
4 Every man who has something on his head while praying or prophesying disgraces his head. 5 But every woman who has her head uncovered while praying or prophesying disgraces her head, for it is one and the same as the woman whose head is shaved. 6For if a woman does not cover her head, have her also cut her hair off; however, if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, have her cover her head.
How did Paul feel about these women’s hair options in worship as well as possibly away from church and why? Did he have a preference?
Long flowing hair
Long hair but worn up in public
Short hair
Buzzed hair
Bald head
One hint. It is a fact that many Roman women who had been discovered to be adulteresses were required to have their heads shaved. Thus there have been interpreters across the years who have tried to interpret the material you’re now working on who concluded that Paul was telling the Christian women in the church at Corinth that if they had short hair, they would be mistaken as adulteresses or prostitutes. He was advising, then, say these interpreters, that women who did not want to be mistaken for prostitutes avoid short hair or buzzed hair or a bald head.
Long hint continues. If you pay attention to the matter of establishing recipients of this Corinthian correspondence, you discover what I already reminded you of in the above paragraph. Paul was not writing to Romans; he was writing to Jews who had become Christians. Their Jewish heritage and their experience as Jews had taught, and continued to do so in Jesus’ and Paul’s time, that both men and women adulterers should be stoned to death. Forget the embarrassment having to present oneself in public in a manner that proclaimed your shame!
Exercise Two
Again, my “solution” will appear in my next lecture.
Compare and contrast the accounts of creation in these two places: Genesis 1:1-2:4a and Genesis 2:4b-25. Do we have two separate accounts of creation here? If so, describe the order in which various parts of creation were created. If not, how do you count for the differences between the two? Your mission should you decide to accept it (and thus pass the course) is to answer both of my questions and complete the compare and contrast analysis.