hairstyles veils images symbols of body & spirit

"The man
is the head of
the woman"

~*~
~*~


The crucial text
for strengthening this interpretation,
or at least for rendering it plausible,
is arguably 1 Corinthians 11:1-6
~ in the same letter he raged on and on
about hairstyles in the assembly.


In this passage,
on my reading, Paul makes practically explicit
the ratio between the politics of the spirit
and the politics
of the body.


The crucial verses are 3, 7-9, and 11-12:


I would have you know,
however, that every man's head is Christ,
but a woman's head is the man,
and Christ's head
is G D.

[11:3]


For a man must not veil his head,
since he is the image and reflection of G D
but a woman is the reflection of man.
For man did not originate from woman,
but woman from man.
Neither was man created for woman's sake,
but woman for man's.

[11:7-9]


Of course,
in the Lord there is neither woman without man
nor man without woman.
For just as woman originated from man,
so, too, man exists through woman.
But everything comes
from G D.

[11:11-12]


These verses
have been much discussed
from many points
of view.


It is far
beyond the scope
of this present myDi-story to analyze either
the theological or hermeneutic issues involved in the text,
but however we interpret them,
it is clear that Paul explicitly thematizes
two [partially opposed] forms of conceptualizing
gender,
one in which there is an explicit hierarchy
and one in which there is
none.


Paul himself marks this difference
[the gap between the hierarchy of verses 7-9 and the "there is neither woman without man nor man without woman" of verse 11]
as the situation of "in the Lord."


I do not think
it is going too far -
nor is it unprecedented in Pauline interpretation -
to connect this "in the Lord" with the "in Christ" of Galatians 3:28
and read both passages as a representation of an androgyny
that exists on the level of the spirit,
however much hierarchy subsists and needs to subsist in the flesh,
in the life of society even in Christian
communities.



These two level might well correspond,
indeed, to the two myths of the origins of the sexes as found in Genesis 1 and 2.


The no-male-or-female,
which is "in the Lord,"
or "in Christ,"
would represent the androgyne of chapter 1,
understood, as in Philo, as neither male nor female,
while the "since he is the image and reflection of G D, but a woman is the reflexion of man. For man did not originate from woman, but woman
from man," which Paul cites here, would be a reference to
the mydistory as found
in chapter 2!


"In the Lord"
might even be seen then as an allusion to "in the image of G D,"
and the latter human of chapter 2 would be "in the flesh"
in contrast.


THIS
perhaps speculative interpretation
is dramatically strengthened of J.K.'s suggestion is accepted
that verse 11 means,
"In the Lord woman is NOT different from man
nor man from woman."


ULTIMATELY,
as Karen King suggests,
the two myths of gender "are quite compatible in that BOTH imagine the ideal to be a unitary self, whether male or androgynous,
whose nature is grounded in an ontology of
transcendence and an epistemology
of origins."


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engel
12 aug 2005 - bewerkt op 19 mrt 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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