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Vesper Stamper's avatar

This was lovely and respectful, and I was glad it also took into account people who disagree. I do veil in church (I'm Orthodox) or wear a simple beret. I do it not for others, but as an expression of my intimate relationship with Jesus—especially because as a very strong woman, it helps me to remember that I'm not the ultimately authority in my life, He is.

Interestingly, I also recall hearing (it might have been Michael Heiser who wrote it, but here's Jonathan Pageau's version, too) that St. Paul's words in Corinthians have to do with the ancient belief that a woman's hair is actually and literally a sexual organ, and therefore tempting not to *men* but to the same beings ("sons of God") who slept with the "daughters of men" and produced the "giants".

The ancient world had a far more developed cosmology than we realize, and certainly went beyond mere notions of modesty or the lesser dignity of women. We ignore these things in our modern hubris. The ancients were not stupid. *We* are the ones who have cast off everything it took thousands of years to conceptualize and actualize.

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Me's avatar

It’s definitely the second thing, for Orthodox Jews, for example, a woman’s hair is only for her husband. Paul may have gotten it from that.

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