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Neither Gold nor Braided Hair (1 Timothy 2.9; 1 Peter 3.3): Adornment, Gender and Honour in Antiquity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 August 2009

Alicia J. Batten
Alicia J. Batten
Affiliation:
University of Sudbury, 935 Ramsey Lake Road, Sudbury, Ontario P3E 2C6, Canada. email: abatten@usudbury.ca
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Abstract

This article examines the relationships between adornment, gender and honour in the Graeco-Roman world in order to provide a broad context for understanding the attempts to curtail women's adornment in 1 Tim 2.9 and 1 Pet 3.3. It argues that while many male writers criticize women who adorn themselves, often accusing such women of luxuria, not all women shared such a perspective. Rather, women may well have valued jewellery, fine clothes and elaborate hair as means of conveying status and honour, and as important forms of economic power. These factors require consideration when attempting to understand why the authors of 1 Timothy and 1 Peter counsel women to avoid gold, pearls, braided hair and fine clothing.

Keywords

adornmenthonourshamegender1 Timothy1 Peter
Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , October 2009 , pp. 484 - 501
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1 For a translation, see Meyer, Marvin W., The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook (San Francisco: Harper, 1987) 51–9Google Scholar. Meyer translates the Greek text based on the version preserved in Dittenberger (Syll 3 736), but the inscription is also found in IG V/1 1390 and LSCG 65. In addition, the Hellenistic Texts Seminar (Toronto) translated it in the 1990s. It is not clear when these mysteries first began, but the Rule indicates that they were reinstated in 92/1 BCE. The geographer Pausanias (second century CE) also describes the cult in the fourth book of his Description of Greece.

2 The women officers are called ἱɛραὶ γυναȋκɛς. Meyer translates it as ‘sacred women’ while the Hellenistic Texts Seminar chose ‘women officers’.

3 Borders, trim and stripes were significant signs of status. The Roman equestrian tunic, for example, had a thin stripe while that of the senatorial tunic was much thicker. Sebesta, Judith Lyn (‘Women's Costume and Feminine Civic Morality in Augustan Rome’, Gender and the Body in the Ancient Mediterranean [ed. Wyke, Marie; Oxford: Blackwell, 1998] 108)Google Scholar points out that in Rome, borders (praetexta) on togas symbolized the inviolability of the wearer. Male and female children of a certain status could wear bordered (in purple) togas, as could those who presided over sacrifices and a son in mourning over a dead parent, while the Vestal Virgins would wear them on their veils. For Sebesta, the praetexta on a garment ‘signified prohibition and precaution; the wearer was inviolable (sacer), and those nearby were not to pollute his/her inviolability by word or deed, particularly not by sexual language, acts, or gestures’.

4 For a study of the significance of ‘eye service’ as part of the context for the instructions to slaves in Col 3.22 and Eph 6.5–6, see Martin, Clarice J., ‘The Eyes Have It: Slaves in the Communities of Christ Believers’, Christian Origins (ed. Horsley, Richard A.; A People's History of Christianity 1; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005) 221–39Google Scholar.

5 Stout, Ann M., ‘Jewelry as a Symbol of Status in the Roman Empire’, The World of Roman Costume (ed. Sebesta, Judith Lynn and Bonfante, Larissa; Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1994) 77Google Scholar.

6 As Ortner, (‘The Virgin and the State’, Feminist Studies 4 [1978] 23) pointed out, ‘this sort of concern with the purity of women was part of, and somehow structurally, functionally, and symbolically bound up with, the historical emergence of systematically stratified state-type structures, in the evolution of human society’.

7 See Wikan, Unni, Behind the Veil in Arabia: Women in Oman (Chicago and London: University of Chicago, 1982) 147–67Google Scholar.

8 Wikan, Behind the Veil, 106.

9 It is important to underline the complexity of the issue. I am not claiming that adornment was always advantageous for women or that men discredited adornment universally. Rather, in certain cases women may likely have valued their jewellery, clothes and hairstyles in a manner quite different from their male contemporaries. As D'Ambra, Eve (Roman Women [Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2007] 112)Google Scholar helpfully points out: ‘To discount the feminine arts as repressive ideological tools or to celebrate them as means of empowerment does not adequately describe their effects, in fact, their appeal may lie in between the two extremes in practices that both established and erased social differences (e.g. between freedwomen and matrons) in ingenious and creative forms of self-expression’.

10 See Verboven, Koenraad, ‘The Associative Order: Status and Ethos Among Roman Businessmen in Late Republic and Early Empire’, Athenaeum 95 (2007) 3Google Scholar (postprint).

11 For example, Aristotle Eth. Nic. 8.1.1; Cicero Off. 2.52–64. These examples are cited by Verboven, ‘The Associative Order’, 5 n. 23.

12 Aristophanes Plut. 559 (LCL; Rogers).

13 Bruce Malina's work on poverty and wealth has been central for biblical scholars in identifying the moral and status dimensions of poverty and wealth in antiquity. See his ‘Wealth and Poverty in the New Testament and its World’, Int 41 (1986): 354–67.

14 For more analysis of the social meanings of poverty and wealth in James, see Batten, Alicia, ‘The Degraded Poor and the Greedy Rich: Exploring the Language of Poverty and Wealth in James’, The Social Sciences and Biblical Translation (ed. Neufeld, Dietmar; Symposium 41; Atlanta: SBL, 2008) 65–77Google Scholar.

15 For a summary of anthropological debates about whether honour and shame were ‘Mediterraneanist’ values, see Horden, Peregrine and Purcell, Nicholas, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000) 489–523Google Scholar, who argue that they were.

16 For some contemporary examples of how the honour, shame, gender mix can vary among Mediterranean cultures, see the collection of essays edited by Magrini, Tullia, Music and Gender: Perspectives from the Mediterranean (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2003)Google Scholar.

17 Lendon, J. E. (Empire of Honour [New York: Oxford, 1997] 95–103)Google Scholar discusses the various communities of honour (a group of household slaves, various guild associations) that existed beneath the aristocracy. He refers to Dio Chrysostom, for example, who comments that slaves competed for glory (34.51). Regarding women, Greek inscriptions honour individual benefactors, both male and female, for the ϕιλοτιμία that they have displayed to the association. See Batten, Alicia, ‘The Moral World of Greco-Roman Associations’, SR 36 (2007) 135–51Google Scholar.

18 As Lendon (Empire of Honour, 51) points out, ‘the status or identity of the critic did not matter: the shouted abuse of the base, anonymous lampoons and verses, anonymous gossip, anonymous slander, all excited acute concern’. In addition, Barton, Carlin (Roman Honor: The Fire in the Bones [Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California, 2001] 13)Google Scholar states that ‘the humblest could hiss you at the games or piss on your statue. They could kill you’.

19 Tacitus Ann. 3.36.

20 Carlin Barton, ‘Being in the Eyes: Shame and Sight in Ancient Rome’, The Roman Gaze: Vision, Power, and the Body (ed. David Fredrick; Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University) 217.

21 On Greek and Roman male invective against make-up in general, see Richlin, Amy, ‘Making Up a Woman: The Face of Roman Gender’, Off with Her Head! The Denial of Women's Identity in Myth, Religion and Culture (ed. Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard and Doniger, Wendy; Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California, 1995) 185–213Google Scholar.

22 Barton, Carlin, ‘The Roman Blush: The Delicate Matter of Self-Control’, Constructions of the Classical Body (ed. Porter, James L.; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1999) 217Google Scholar.

23 Horace indicates that one sees only the face of respectable women (Sat. 1.2; 2.80–108).

24 On ancient Greece, see Cairns, Douglas L., Aidōs: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993) 120–6Google Scholar; on the Mediterranean in general, see Pitt-Rivers, Julian, ‘Honour and Social Status’, Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society (ed. Peristiany, J. G.; London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1965) 19–78Google Scholar.

25 See Carolyn Bithell, ‘A Man's Game? Engendered Song and the Changing Dynamics of Musical Activity in Corsica’, Music and Gender [ed. Magrini] 42–3) who points out that in Corsica, women will sing lament vendettas after a violent death that goads the male family members to avenge the death. The women emerge as those concerned with honour and the men become vulnerable to being shamed if they do not seek vengeance.

26 As exemplified by the Peristiany volume, Honour and Shame.

27 As Magrini (‘Introduction: Studying Gender in Mediterranean Musical Cultures’, Music and Gender [ed. Magrini] 18) writes, ‘the stereotyped figures of the Mediterranean man and woman proposed by the Oxford school fade out and make room for a more realistic representation of human groups who live femininity and masculinity according to a more nuanced—and ever changing—range of models’.

28 See Berg, Ria, ‘Wearing Wealth: Mundus Muliebris and Ornatus as Status Markers for Women in Imperial Rome’, Women, Wealth and Power in the Roman Empire (ed. Setälä, Pävi et al. ; Acta Instituti Romani Finlandiae 25; Rome: Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, 2002) 47Google Scholar.

29 D'Ambra, Eve, ‘Nudity and Adornment in Female Portrait Sculpture of the Second Century AD’, I Claudia II: Women in Roman Art and Society (ed. Kleiner, Diana E.E. and Matheson, Susan B.; Austin: University of Texas, 2000) 111Google Scholar.

30 As Berg says (‘Wearing Wealth’, 15), objects of adornment ‘have a long tradition of being considered “attributes” of the female gender, visually symbolizing and defining femininity’.

31 See Bartman, Elizabeth, ‘Hair and the Artifice of Roman Female Adornment’, AJA 105 (2001) 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Bartman, ‘Hair and Artifice’, 3.

33 As D'Ambra (Roman Women, 74) points out, luxurious hair indicated a ‘vigorous female sexuality’.

34 Juvenal Sat. 6.501–3.

35 I say ‘in general’ because there were exceptions, such as those described by Plutarch throughout his Mulierum virtutes.

36 See the discussion by Osiek, Carolyn and MacDonald, Margaret in their book, A Woman's Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006) 199–209Google Scholar.

37 Treggiari, Susan, ‘Women in Roman Society’, I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (ed. Kleiner, Diana E.E. and Matheson, Susan B.; New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1996) 119Google Scholar.

38 Treggiari, ‘Women’, 118. Treggiari also makes the noteworthy observation that ancient sources attest to who ancient women were, what they did, their relationships etc., while modern scholarship tends to focus on their restrictions and how they were excluded from activities (116).

39 Treggiari, ‘Women’, 119 here refers to the Elder Cato. Other writers, such as Polybius (31.21–28), respect women's rights to property. On Polybius, see Dixon, Suzanne, ‘Polybius on Roman Women and Property’, AJP 106 (1985) 147–70Google Scholar.

40 For an analysis of this issue and discussion of the primary sources (primarily Ulpian) see Berg, ‘Wearing Wealth’, 54–5.

41 Berg, ‘Wearing Wealth’, 53–4.

42 See Berg, ‘Wearing Wealth’, 57–8.

43 Berg, ‘Wearing Wealth’, 62.

44 Berg (‘Wearing Wealth’, 23) indicates that adornment was both unnecessary and necessary. This was its paradox.

45 Livy 34.2–3 (LCL; Sage)

46 Livy 34.5.

47 Livy 34.7.

48 Wyke, Maria, ‘Woman in the Mirror: The Rhetoric of Adornment in the Roman World’, Woman in Ancient Societies: An Illusion in the Night (ed. Archer, Léonie J., Fischler, Susan and Wyke, Maria; London: Macmillan, 1994) 140Google Scholar.

49 Richlin, ‘Making Up a Woman’, 136.

50 Barton (‘Being in the Eyes’, 216) uses the philosopher Max Scheler's notion of Entseelung or ‘desouling’ which occurs when one gazes directly at another at an inappropriate moment. This has the effect of shaming as opposed to Beseelung or ‘ensouling’ when one averts one's eyes out of respect for the honour of another.

51 Seneca Contr. 1.8–9.

52 Juvenal Sat. 2.95.

53 Cassius Dio 43.43.1–4.

54 Suetonius Jul. 45.

55 Plutarch (Caes. 4.4), referring to comments made by Cicero about Caesar's manner of scratching his head and combing his hair.

56 See Cicero Cat. 2.22.

57 See Cicero Har. resp. 43–4. See the discussion of Cicero's attitudes towards clothing in Julia Heskel, ‘Cicero as Evidence for Attitudes to Dress in the Late Republic’, The World of Roman Costume (ed. Sebesta and Bonfante) 133–45.

58 Edwards, Catherine, The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1993) 88CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Such a pattern of males fearing association with femininity shows up in a variety of contexts. See, for example, Brandes, Stanley, ‘Like Wounded Stags: Male Sexual Ideology in an Andalusian Town’, Sexual Meanings: The Cultural Construction of Gender and Sexuality (ed. Ortner, Sherry B. and Whitehead, Harriet; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1981) 216–39Google Scholar.

59 See Kloppenborg, John S., ‘Patronage Avoidance in James’, HTS 55 (1999) 765Google Scholar, who points out the parallel with Lucian Nigr. 21.

60 Lucian Nigr. 13 (LCL; Harmon).

61 Juvenal Sat. 6.136.

62 Edwards, Politics, 54.

63 See Treggiari, Susan, Roman Marriage (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991) 184Google Scholar, who is referred to by Edwards, Politics, 54 n. 72.

64 Eve D'Ambra, ‘Nudity and Adornment’, 110.

65 On the criticism of the rich buying rare foods and constructing large building projects that are perceived to be trying to overcome nature, see Kaster, Robert A., Emotion, Restraint, and Community in Ancient Rome (Classical Culture and Society; Oxford: Oxford University, 2005) 127–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 Kaster, Emotion, 127.

67 Pliny Nat. 33.95. Ria Berg (‘Wearing Wealth’, 25–6) provides these references to Pliny's discussion of luxuria.

68 Pliny Nat. 9.105.

69 As Wyke (‘Woman in the Mirror’, 137) observes, ‘[t]he woman who remains unadorned is permitted, in this moralising male discourse, to transcend the boundaries of her gender. If she cannot become an honorary man, she is at least raised about the massed ranks of women’. Like many contexts in which honour and shame are significant values, women are acknowledged as honourable when they are more like men (but within male-defined limits). For comparisons, see Stewart, Frank Henderson, Honor (Chicago and London: University of Chicago, 1994) 107–10Google Scholar.

70 See the discussion by Berg, ‘Wearing Wealth’, 70–1.

71 See Berg, ‘Wearing Wealth’, 71.

72 For example, D'Angelo, Mary Rose (‘Roman Imperial Family Values and the Sexual Politics of 4 Maccabees and the Pastorals’, BibInt 11 [2003] 160)Google Scholar points out how the instructions conform to the overall Roman emphasis upon pietas or ɛὐσέβɛια that included strictures upon women's adornment and focus upon female virtue in the domestic realm. On 1 Timothy, see also Kidd, Reggie M., Wealth and Beneficence in the Pastoral Epistles (SBLDS 122; Atlanta: Scholars, 1990) 85Google Scholar. Elliott, John H. (I Peter [AB 37B; New York: Doubleday, 2000] 550–99)Google Scholar provides a thorough discussion of the background and intent of these instructions, providing a variety of parallels in Graeco-Roman literature and reflecting upon larger hermeneutical issues. He points out that the author ‘presumes’ the views about women's dress in this passage, and does not argue them (584–5).

73 I do not think, for example, that one need to posit a ‘new woman’ behind the text of 1 Tim 2.9–15, as Winter, Bruce does (Roman Wives, Roman Widows: The Appearance of New Women and the Pauline Communities [Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2003] 97–122)Google Scholar. Winter argues that a ‘new woman’ had arisen in the first century BCE, who neglected her household duties and engaged in illicit liaisons (4–5) and that 1 Timothy as well as several other texts from Pauline communities were reacting to her activities. It seems to me, rather, that 1 Timothy is simply echoing the longstanding male emphasis upon female modesty and place in the domestic realm, in which children are supposed to be women's true adornment (see Berg, ‘Wearing Wealth’, 36).

74 On this issue in 1 Timothy, see Bassler, Jouette M., ‘Limits and Differentiation: The Calculus of Widows in 1 Timothy 5.3–16’, A Feminist Companion to the Deutero-Pauline Epistles (ed. Levine, Amy-Jill, with Marianne Blickenstaff; Cleveland: Pilgrim, 2003) 137Google Scholar.

75 Elliott, I Peter, 562.

76 Ortner, ‘The Virgin’, 32. For a discussion of how Ortner's ideas apply to the perception of Julia, daughter of Augustus, see Richlin, Amy, ‘Julia's Jokes, Galla Placidia, and the Roman Use of Women as Political Icons’, Stereotypes of Women in Power: Historical Perspectives and Revisionist Views (ed. Garlick, Barbara, Dixon, Suzanne and Allen, Pauline; New York: Westport; London: Greenwood, 1992) 65–91Google Scholar.

77 See Plutarch Conj. praec. 141.

78 See, for example, MacDonald, Dennis Ronald, The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983)Google Scholar; Wagener, Ulrike, Die Ordnung des ‘Hauses Gottes’: Der Ort von Frauen in de Ekklesiologie und Ethik der Pastoralbriefe (WUNT 2/65; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Siebeck], 1994)Google Scholar.

79 See Verner, David C., The Household of God: The Social World of the Pastoral Epistles (SBLDS 71; Chico, CA: Scholars, 1983) 169Google Scholar.

80 Elliott (I Peter, 564) also makes the point that the cultivation of modest dress and subordination to one's husband dispels any idea that the Christian wife married to a non-believer is in any way a threat to the family and its honour.

81 Ortner, ‘The Virgin’, 32.

82 Elliott (I Peter, 573) makes this point.

83 Elliott (I Peter, 565) points out, for example, how ‘the Church Fathers show more interest in this text in 1 Peter than in other passages that might be expected to draw attention, such as the letter's Christological statements or other soteriological functions’. See, for example, Clement of Alexandria Paed. 2.12.118–19; 2.12.121, 129; 3.2.4–6; Tertullian Or. 20; De cultu feminarum.

84 Based upon her experiences with the Sohari, Wikan (Behind the Veil, 160) finds that ‘there are real differences in priorities between men and women, reflecting their different worlds’. There is no reason to believe that such differences did not exist, in different ways, for men and women in Mediterranean antiquity.

85 For a discussion of the continuing power of honour and shame in the early church, and its connections to gender and the renunciation of riches, see Clark, Elizabeth A., ‘Sex, Shame and Rhetoric: En-gendering Early Christian Ethics’, JAAR 59 (1991) 221–45Google Scholar.