Does the Bible Command Women to Wear Veils?

Thumbnail art by @hotcyder
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00:00 Intro + Text Overview
3:38 Head-coverings in the Roman World
7:07 The Social Significance of the Head-covering
11:11 Paul and Roman Religion
14:56 Ritual Impropriety and Angels
17:35 Hair as Sex Organs...yeah you read that right
18:51 The Hair-Style Theory
22:09 Theory and Method: People Selectively Interpret Sacred Texts
24:43 Nebula is awesome, truly honored to be a Nebula creator

[drhall]

Does the Bible command women to wear veils?
-Me before the video: I'm not sure.
-Me after the video: I'm still not sure, but in a more informed way.

[danielmanwiller]

“Now to be clear, Paul is not being clear” 👌😂

[EricGoebelbecker]

"Hair style theorists base their arguments on a few strands of evidence." I see what you did there.

[MogalyBogal]

Paul would be gutted to find out everyone pictures Jesus with long hair now

[TJ-vhps]

"Because of the Angels" is my new favorite answer to any question

[aiocafea]

as an orthodox christian, i am not surprised, but thank you so much for the explanation!
i actually thought the rules were similar to islam but we just started ignoring them, i didn't know it was so tied to praying and prophesising
thank you!

[ryanmunro]

A couple interesting side points:
•Many liturgical traditions (Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran etc.) still believe angels are present in worship.
•Paul furthers his argument saying that if anyone wants to argue about veiling, they shouldn’t because all churches had this practice at the time
•Many women in churches only stopped wearing veils (or hats in some Protestant churches) in the 1960s, around the time the National Organization for Women organized a veil burning.

[yrobtsvt]

I'm a religious scholar specializing in another time and place and this video really gives so much food for thought. There is so much cultural context that goes unspoken when we read religious texts. Veiling might be hard for Paul to articulate but it would have been very visible and meaningful inside an early Christian church, and we have to look to gentile Roman culture to understand it.

[duncanluciak]

Protect yourself from the sun, folks.

[DrVictorVasconcelos]

People will generally not understand why scholars find passages to be incomprehensible when given in their language because the process of translation "fixes" the most grievous grammatical and structural problems based on the translator's opinion.

[wompa]

Whatever he was actually saying, I bet the Corinthians knew what he meant. You even see this with Shakespeare. Some of the meaning behind his writings are completely lost on modern audiences. References to color or people being like certain animals means something totally different today.

[LiShuBen]

In African American churches, it’s very common for older women to wear hats or head coverings.

[Inabin]

When I was a kid, I went to church with a girl who believed that she was supposed to have her head covered, but was nervous about expressing that belief to the rest if the youth group, so she just wore a ball cap all the time.

[MrARock]

Interviewer: "So, what would you say is a woman's sexiest feature?"

First Century Roman Man: "Oh, top-of-head for sure. Some go for ankles, or wrists, all of which are obviously obscene, but for me, it's gotta be that top-of-head. Nothing gets my chariot charging like seeing where a woman's hair meets her scalp."

[rachelefiore]

Head covering while praying was common in Italy, especially in rural areas, my grandmother used to do it and many still do

[mefistopheles]

Has anyone else noticed the higher quality editing of this video?
Love the new format for citing sources, the animation of the character cutout and the overall smoothness of the video! Good on you, Sir!❤

[mattandkim]

Evangelicals: “We must not conform to cultural norms!”
Also evangelicals: “This difficult Bible passage can easily be explained by appealing to ancient cultural norms.”

[Czaroslaw]

I'm Roman Catholic.
I was taught that men were obliged to not have any headwear on when in temple, but for women this rule does not exist and instead it is up to them if they want to cover their heads.

[demos]

It was standard here in N. Ireland in the 70s and some of the Protestant groups still do it with hats instead.
edit: this is in churches.

[danielmalinen]

In Finland, it has traditionally been interpreted that Paul meant long hair by the veil because hair is a human's natural veil. I don't know when or how this interpretation was arrived at, but it is certain that part of the cultural and historical context was lost when Christianity arrived in Finland and eventually the hair interpretation also became part of Finnish folk poetry. This interpretation became a matter of dispute during the 20th century, when short hairstyles were allowed for women and long hair for men, but the dispute ended with the fact that the length of hair can be decided according to each individual's discretion. However, this information is not something important and significant, but a fun piece of history nonetheless.