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1 Corinthians 11:3
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
1 Corinthians 11:3
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
A. Women’s Headdresses[a]
Man and Woman. 3 But I want you to know that Christ is the head of every man, and a husband the head of his wife,[b] and God the head of Christ.(A)
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- 11:3–16 Women have been participating in worship at Corinth without the head-covering normal in Greek society of the period. Paul’s stated goal is to bring them back into conformity with contemporary practice and propriety. In his desire to convince, he reaches for arguments from a variety of sources, though he has space to develop them only sketchily and is perhaps aware that they differ greatly in persuasiveness.
- 11:3 A husband the head of his wife: the specific problem suggests to Paul the model of the head as a device for clarifying relations within a hierarchical structure. The model is similar to that developed later in greater detail and nuance in Eph 5:21–33. It is a hybrid model, for it grafts onto a strictly theological scale of existence (cf. 1 Cor 3:21–23) the hierarchy of sociosexual relations prevalent in the ancient world: men, dominant, reflect the active function of Christ in relation to his church; women, submissive, reflect the passive role of the church with respect to its savior. This gives us the functional scale: God, Christ, man, woman.
New American Bible (Revised Edition) (NABRE)
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