The authority that became a veil. Paul wrote that a woman ought to have authority on her head. The translators made it mean she should wear the sign of someone else's authority over her. The same word, inverted.
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THE TEXT
1 Corinthians 11:10 in Greek: διὰ τοῦτο ὀφείλει ἡ γυνὴ ἐξουσίαν ἔχειν ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς διὰ τοὺς ἀγγέλους.
Word for word: for this reason the woman ought to have authority on the head, because of the angels.
Five words carry the disputed clause: ἐξουσίαν ἔχειν ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς, authority to-have upon the head. What is present is exousia: authority, power, right. What is absent is any word meaning sign, or symbol, or veil.
[See KATHARINE BUSHNELL · PAUL OF TARSUS · THE LEXICAL TRESPASS]
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THE TRANSLATION VIOLENCE
The King James of 1611 renders it the woman ought to have power on her head, which is accurate, though power softens exousia slightly.
The New American Standard renders it a symbol of authority on her head, and italicizes a symbol of because those words are not in the Greek.
The New International Version of 2011 renders it authority over her own head, which is accurate, and note the direction: over her own.
The New Living Translation renders it a covering on her head to show she is under authority, which is a complete inversion: her authority has become her subjection to someone else's.
The Good News Translation goes further, to show that she is under her husband's authority, adding a husband who appears nowhere in the Greek of that verse.
The operation runs in three moves. Add symbol of, which was not there. Make the symbol a covering or a veil, which is a further insertion. Then reverse the direction, so that her authority becomes authority over her.
[See TRANSLATION CORRUPTIONS · VOCABULARY FORENSICS · HUPOTASSO]
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WHAT EXOUSIA MEANS
Exousia appears more than a hundred times in the New Testament, and the lexicons give it as privilege, force, capacity, competency, freedom, mastery, delegated influence, authority, jurisdiction, liberty, power, right, strength.
Paul uses it ten times in 1 Corinthians alone. All things are lawful for me. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Take care that this liberty of yours. Do we not have the right to eat and drink. If others share this authority over you. Not making full use of my authority in the gospel.
In every other instance in the letter, exousia is the right or power that the subject of the sentence exercises. Not a sign of someone else's authority. Her own.
[See KEPHALĒ · AUTHENTEIN · EZER K'NEGDO]
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THE GRAMMATICAL IMPOSSIBILITY
Craig Blomberg examined every New Testament phrase containing ἐξουσίαν ἔχειν ἐπί, to have authority over. Jesus gives the disciples authority over demons. Authority over the nations. Authority over a fourth of the earth. Authority over the waters. Authority over every tribe. Authority over fire. Authority over these plagues.
In every case the subject exercises their own authority over something. The idiom never means to be under someone else's authority.
Gordon Fee states it plainly: there is no known evidence either that exousia is ever taken in this passive sense, or that the idiom to have authority over ever refers to an external authority different from the subject of the sentence. Alan Johnson: exousia epi occurs a number of times in the New Testament, never with the passive sense, always active. William Ramsay called the passive interpretation a preposterous idea which a Greek scholar would laugh at anywhere except in the New Testament.
The passive reading is not merely wrong. It is not available in the Greek.
[See DISQUALIFIED TESTIMONY · THE UNMARKED ASSERTION · THE FORGED WARRANT]
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WHAT PAUL SAID
If Paul had wanted to say that women should be under authority, he had the words. ὑποτάσσω, to be subject to. ὑπό with exousia, under authority. He used neither. He wrote ἐξουσίαν ἔχειν ἐπί, to have authority upon.
The woman is the subject of the sentence. The authority is hers. She exercises it over her own head.
In context, the point is about the assembly. When a woman prays or prophesies there, and Paul assumes she does, she has authority over how she presents herself. Whatever the head covering meant in Corinth, it represented her own exercise of authority in worship and not her subjection to a man's.
[See MARGARET FELL · GREAT HOST · THE QUAKER SILENCE]
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THE ANGELS
Because of the angels has generated endless speculation, and the connection is simpler than the speculation.
In Jewish tradition angels are present at worship, and the Dead Sea Scrolls place them attending the assembly. Angels observe. What would they observe about a woman exercising authority in prayer and prophecy?
Not subjection. Legitimacy. The authority on her head signals to the watching angels that she is exercising her proper function in the assembly, an active participant with her own commission to pray and prophesy. The angels, who themselves hold exousia, recognize the thing they hold.
[See TESTIMONY · CONVINCEMENT · CHORDSHIP]
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WHAT THE PASSAGE ASSUMES
Five verses earlier Paul writes that every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head.
He is not debating whether women speak. He is debating how they present themselves while speaking, which means the entire passage presumes their active vocal participation in worship.
This is not a passage about silence and submission. It is a passage about how to exercise authority properly while praying and prophesying in public.
[See THE SILENT WITNESS · THE ORIGINAL COVER-UP · ANNE HUTCHINSON]
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INVERSION AS METHOD
Unlike Junia, which is erasure, and unlike teshuqah, which is corruption, exousia was not changed and was not hidden. It was inverted. The same letters, the same word, made to mean its opposite.
This is the most sophisticated form of the operation because it leaves no visible wound. The word is there. It can be looked up. It means authority.
But whose. The Greek supplies no possessor, so the woman's authority is the default reading: she has it, she exercises it, on her own head. The inversion requires inserting what is not there, symbol of and under and husband's, while claiming to translate what is.
The insertions confess themselves. They appear in italics or in brackets, which is the text reporting what it lacks.
[See JUNIA · ORIGIN CAPTURE · THE NACHASH]
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THE LITURGICAL WOUND
For centuries the verse has been used to require women to cover their heads as a sign of subjection, to exclude women from speaking roles in the very passage that assumes they speak, and to establish hierarchy in marriage and church using a word that names the woman's own authority.
The verse that establishes women's authority to pray and prophesy became the proof-text for denying it.
The instrument encountered a verse that granted women power. It could not delete the verse. So it inverted the meaning. Same word, opposite function.
And the reason it had to be inverted is legible in what follows if it is not. Paul assumes women pray and prophesy. Paul grants them exousia in worship. The covering represents hers and not his. Women hold sanctioned power to speak. So exousia had to mean something else, just here, just when applied to women. The same word that means power when applied to Christ, to the apostles, and to believers, means subjection when applied to her.
[See THE PERSECUTION RITE · PRESUMED INCOMPETENT · HETEROPATHY]
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THE RECOVERY
The 2011 New International Version reads a woman ought to have authority over her own head, because of the angels. The word means what it means.
Note what had to change for that rendering to arrive: women biblical scholars gaining voice, lexical studies demonstrating that the passive reading is not available in Greek, and a willingness to let the text say what it says. The resistance was not to a difficult reading. It was to an accurate one. The New Living Translation still says under authority.
[See SARAH GRIMKÉ · THE CALIBRATION · THE OLD PATHS]
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Paul wrote to a church where women prayed and prophesied. He assumed their vocal participation. He validated their authority.
The word is still there. ἐξουσίαν ἔχειν ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς. She ought to have authority on her head. Not a sign of authority. Not under authority. Authority.
The same word used for the power of Christ, the right of the apostles, the freedom of believers. It means what it means everywhere and every time, including when she has it.
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