Abstract
1 Cor. 11:2-16 is, for many, one of the truly vexing passages in the New Testament. The stubborn persistence of a host of exegetical difficulties constitutes an intriguing puzzle that has yet to inspire despair of solution. This paper seeks to assemble the pieces of this Pauline puzzle within a cultural and discursive frame constructed out of various inter-texts and discourses. The approach includes 1. anthropological work on the honor-shame complex in the Mediterranean (indebted to Bruce Malina and anthropologist Carol Delaney); 2. Foucault’s work on discourse; and 3. “cultural dialectics” – a mode of analysis that compares related cultural formations by showing that they represent complementary, even competing “solutions” to given cultural problems. Beliefs about creation, procreation, and sexuality similar to those Delaney detects encoded in the Mediterranean honor-shame complex can be discerned in Paul's argument by means of an analysis of two of Paul's major puzzle pieces: 1. the meaning of the word kephalē in v. 3; and 2. the meaning of the peculiar phrase “have authority/exousia upon her head” in v. 10. The gender discourses that inform and shape Paul’s thought due to his reliance on Genesis 1-3 all negotiate a particular problematic: namely, the male dependency on women for procreation in agrarian patriarchy.