Hair & Dress in Imperial Russia

Fri Oct 17 06:06:50 UTC 2008

Dear Moshe Taube,

Irony aside, let me reply: Nope, not joking.  First, I do disapprove  
of sexism.  Second, the evidence for sexism is there.  Despite the  
egalitarian stance ("There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no  
longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female..." -  
Galatians 3:28), Paul also indicates a preference for the  
subordination of women to men, e.g.,
". . . the husband is the head of his wife" (1 Corinthians 11:3).
"Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the  
Lord" (Colossians 3:18).
"Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord.  For the  
husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the  
church, the body of which he is the Savior" (Ephesians 5:22-23).
And so on (I ignore the issue of whether Paul wrote these and various  
other relevant passages, for there are many textological problems  
concerning "Pauline" and "deutero-Pauline" texts).
The Oxford edition of the NRSV comments on the passage in Colossians:  
"This passage idealizes the first-century patriarchial family as  
appropriate for a community dedicated to Christ as Lord. . . ."  So,  
to answer your question - "As opposed to whom?" - I reply: as opposed  
to a (non-ironic) 21st-century enlightened feminist.  In other words,  
Paul was a normal sexist in his own sexist culture, and from our  
perspective many centuries later we can perceive that sexism.  If,  
furthermore, we adopt an evolutionary/Darwinian stance which takes  
sexual selection and other selective pressures into consideration, it  
becomes possible to understand why sexism has been the norm in late  
Hominid development generally (about which I published a book, SIGNS  
OF THE FLESH, 1985/1992).

On "doksa andros": I was comparing the Synodal Russian with Paul's  
Greek original (sorry, I do not read Hebrew).  I think you very well  
may be right about a subtext in Proverbs 12:4 ("A good wife is the  
crown of her husband. . . " - NRSV).  You have to get from "stefanos"  
in the Septuagint to "doksa" in Paul, and "stefanos" has clear  
overtones of glory (as when it refers to laurels won or a crown  
conferred as a public honor - Liddell and Scott dictionary).

With regards to the list,
Daniel Rancour-Laferriere

On Oct 16, 2008, at 12:04 PM, Moshe Taube wrote:

> Paul a sexist? As opposed to whom? You must be joking. We're talking  
> about a Jew who 2000 years ago founded Christianity as an organized  
> religion in the Eastern Mediterranean. Surely he was as progressive  
> and enlightened as any other guy at that time and in that area.
> Just a small remark on "doksa andros". Let's not forget that if  
> we're looking for sources of inspiration for Paul's phraseology, we  
> have to look at his Scripture, i.e. the Old Testament, and there I  
> would say the closest expression is in Proverbs 12.4, which Paul  
> surely knew in the original (for our evangelical friends: I do not  
> mean KJV) אֵשֶׁת־חַיִל עֲטֶרֶת בַּעְלָהּ  
> - 'A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband.' , LXX: γυνὴ  
> ἀνδρεία στέφανος τῷ ἀνδρὶ αὐτῆς. Now  
> 'atereth lit. 'crown', but figuratively also 'ornament, honour,  
> glory'  appears several times in the OT in conjunction with and  
> sometimes as synonym of תִּפְאָרֶת tif'ereth, which is  
> glossed  as 'ornamentum, decus, gloria', and is very readily  
> rendered by doksa. Cf,  Exodus 28:2 לְכָבֹוד  
> וּלְתִפְאָרֶת εἰς τιμὴν καὶ δόξαν.  
> Could this have been the source of inspiration?
>
> Moshe Taube
>
> On Oct 16, 2008, at 8:26 AM, Daniel Rancour-Laferriere wrote:
>
>> Dear colleagues,
>> Slavianskie drevnosti is indeed an important and rich source, and  
>> does have the limitations mentioned by Will Ryan.  The reference to  
>> Corinthians is quite interesting, and adds some historical and  
>> cross-cultural perspective.  Paul is thoroughly sexist: a man is  
>> but the image and glory of God ("obraz i slava Bozhiia" in the  
>> Synodal trans of texts going back to "eikon kai doksa Theou"),  
>> while a woman is but the glory of a man ("slava muzha" rendering  
>> "doksa andros").  Probably "doksa" is better rendered  
>> "reflection" (Oxford NRSV).  So a woman is but the reflection of a  
>> reflection.  What a woman has, however, in addition to her  
>> "glory"/"reflection" is her "authority on her head" ("znak vlasti  
>> nad neiu," rendering the "eksousian" she should have on her head) -  
>> i.e., her hair.  NRSV gives "a woman ought to have a symbol of  
>> authority on her head" (I Cor. 11:10), meaning roughly, she ought  
>> to have the freedom of choice regarding her head.  So Paul seems to  
>> want to have it both ways: women should be subordinate to men, but  
>> they are equal too.  The passage is obscure, and fascinating.  The  
>> OXFORD BIBLE COMMENTARY (2001, pp. 1125-1126) provides some  
>> insights, as well as the relevant historical literature on head- 
>> covering in the Graeco-Roman world.  Apparently worship in Corinth  
>> was, shall we say, pretty free and easy, and this provoked Paul.   
>> Later Tertullian chimed in with a piece on the veiling of virgins.
>>
>> The reason for going into this is that the biblical text has (for  
>> me) the same ambivalent feel about the hair on a woman's head which  
>> is expressed in those sad Russian peasant prenuptial bath songs.   
>> In the "bania" the bride-to-be laments the loss of her  
>> "krasota" (stress on first syllable) and her "volia."  These are  
>> not merely "beauty" and "freedom," but items of headgear which will  
>> be lost when the girl effectively enters into a relationship of  
>> "nevolia" with the husband who will have the right to abuse her for  
>> the rest of her life.  See my SLAVE SOUL OF RUSSIA (1995, 193-201).
>>
>> Regards to the list,
>>
>> Daniel Rancour-Laferriere
>> UC Davis
>>
>> http://Rancour-Laferriere.com
>>
>>

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