1 Corinthians

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NASB	1 Corinthians 11:6 For if a woman does not cover her head, let her also have her hair cut off; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, let her cover her head.
AMPLIFIED 2015	1 Corinthians 11:6 If a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut off; and if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, she should cover her head.

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Bible Question: Why are women no longer encouraged to have long hair? Is that not a directive from the Bible (1 Corinthians 11:6, 14)?

Bible Answer: Should women have long hair? And if so why?
I grew us in an "anti" congregation of the church of Christ. This is an ultra conservative, legalistic, fundamentalist, splinter group of the church of Christ. In my late teens my whole family went through considerable trauma, both emotional and spiritual, which led us to re-evaluate some of our beliefs. One of the most sacred of these was the doctrine of the head covering. At our assembly hall we even had a rack at the entrance with several scarves or veils for visiting women to wear should they come without their own. We were almost offencive about it some times to the extent of pushing the covering into the hands of the offending women. That's background.

What finally convinced me to change my mind? I attended Southern Africa Bible School, in Benoni, Gauteng, South Africa where students before me had done an in-depth exegesis of the passage in question. Without going into all the intricacies of that study it was interesting to note that the only place in the entire passage that an artificial covering was actually mentioned (in the original Greek this is) was in the very last verse -- 1 Cor 11:15 "but if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her? For her hair is given to her for a covering." NASB. The covering in this verse is a veil but in all the other verses it is a generic 'covering'. The word 'for' in this verse is the Greek word for 'instead of'. So what this says is that a womans hair is given to her instead of a veil. The rest of the passage shows a distinction between long and short hair so this leads to the final conclusion that a woman who has long hair is effectively veiled and covered. Women must have long hair, men must have short hair. How long long is and how short short is is a matter of discernment perhaps but that, in a nutshell is my view.

In Christ
Tim Sheasby