<<It seems to me that there is a metaphor here, but it is one which (so far
as an admittedly quick perusal of) the discussion so far hasn't seemed to
entertain, namely, that the "head" a woman "dishonors" when she does not
wear a veil is not her own (or not *only* her own), but that of her husband?
How would this occur? Consider two possibilities.
(1) Not all women in the Corinthian congregation had husbands who were
believers. Some (all?) of the women Paul speaks of may be of this group.
(2) The kind of woman who went about Corinth without a head covering was,
I believe, a prostitute.
Combining these two ideas, we get a command to Corinthian women to keep
their heads covered so that they are not viewed by outsiders as
Prostitutes, and that they don't bring shame on their non believing
husband's for this identification, nor convey a misunderstanding to
them concerning what Christianity is all about.
Does this add anything to the discussion?
RH responds:
I am leery of extrapolating the prostitute argument simply because the Bible
does not make this argument. In addition, doing so would allow one to
conclude that these Scriptures do not apply today. I would rather assume
that there is a common interpretation of these verses that causes them to
apply in today's world in the same manner in which Paul meant them to apply
to the Corinthians (or even the world of that day).
As to the "head" dishonored, it would be the man since v3, "The head of woman
is man," One way to look at this is that the head of the woman is the father
for unmarried women and the husband for married women. I would speculate
that these verses applies only if the man (father or husband) is unsaved.
Then the question becomes, How does praying or prophesying by a women who is
saved dishonor her unbelieving father or husband? The real question is
probably whether I have proposed a sound argument in the first place.