Paul's Interpretation Of The Corinthians

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Paul begins his discourse on gender roles and what should be on our heads with a commendation to the way that the Corinthians have remembered Paul and maintained the traditions he established. The tradition that the Corinthians likely have kept is some construction of gender equality in their meetings and interactions with each other. However, this is clearly not the end of the story. Throughout the narrative of first Corinthians and through scholars’ attempts to reconstruct the situations into which Paul was writing, a common theme that Paul continues to address is members of the Corinthian Church taking their freedom in Christ too far and they have a heightened view of their spiritual state which puts them above the level of making mistakes…show more content…
He is commending them that in some ways they have kept what Paul instituted but when it comes to the topics addressed in these chapters the Corinthians have fallen short. This interpretation falls short for two reasons. The first is that the two following sections regarding The Lord’s Supper and spiritual gifts have similar introductory clauses, from these I believe that Paul is pulling on past conversations and letters he has had with the Corinthians. This then leads into the second reason for a refutation of this argument is Paul is not trying to be mysterious with the Corinthians. His heart is to correct them, but if our best scholars over the centuries have struggled on interpretation then it is reasonable to say that there is some other information and prior conversations that we do not have access to, this made sense to them in a way that does not make sense to…show more content…
In his book, What Paul Really Said About Women, John T Bristow discusses the ways married people were identified in both Jewish and Greek cultures. Jewish women needed to keep their hair tightly bound or to veil all of it whenever they chose to leave their home and largely in Greek culture long, unbound, hair was a sign of promiscuity. Bristow paints this image vividly by explaining how seeing a Jewish woman who all knew was married with her hair down and unveiled would have caused more turmoil in the people around her than we feel today when a married woman openly flaunts her hand without a wedding ring on it. When this situation occurs often the people around the women spend much mental energy and worry thinking about why it may not be on, what happened to the husband, or if the ring is getting cleaned, put these thoughts in the mind of someone at a church function and they will spend more time worrying than focusing on The Lord. Equally if a man came in wearing heavy makeup or a dress then just as many questions would be asked and it would be equally inappropriate for this in a church setting. Understanding that in First Corinthians 11:2-16 Paul is contending for the unity and sanctity of the church in Corinth, it
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