The Wandering Heretic

I have argued that being “grafted into Israel,” the believing Gentiles enter into the culture and the governmental structure of the nation of Israel. They have been adopted and fully joined into the People of the Israelite God. In this essay, I want to reflect not so much on what it means to be a part of the culture of Israel as much as just what it does not mean.

Jewish culture, even Baptized Jewish culture, is often pictured in much the same way as does the icon that starts off this picture. To be Jewish is to wear the kippah (yarmulke) and tallis (fringed prayer shawl) during worship. You celebrate the Passover and Sabbath with certain prescribed rituals, usually involving candles and wine. These are at least some of the most obvious ways that the Jews appear to be different from the Gentiles, even the believing ones. Some messianic congregations even appear to adopt most of these differences in dress and behavior in worship, as witness the Christian “Rabbi” pictured below.

Yet I must contend, as I have elsewhere, that much of what passes for specifically Jewish behavior has little to do with historic, first century practices. They are not founded on the Torah (the Pentateuch) nor even on the entire Tanahk (Old Testament). Instead they are developments from the Mishnah and the Talmuds. They are patterns of worship and behavior that were adopted long after what became modern Judaism hived off its historic roots. In other words, these specific rituals or behaviors did not even exist in the first century; much less back to the times of Moses.

The Kippah (or Yarmulke) is mandatory during Sabbath worship and other ceremonies performed in the Synagogue. When I attended a Jewish wedding, the groom generously provided them to all the men. For the Jews, the wearing of the head covering during worship is a sign of humility and respect before God. (Curiously, it is exactly the opposite of the Christian viewpoint that one should remove one’s hat during church services.) One website calls it “the most instantly identifiable mark of a Jew.” The same website gives the following reason for the wearing of the Kippah, not just during worship but at all times:

The Talmud says that the purpose of wearing a kippah is to remind us of God, who is the Higher Authority “above us” (Kiddushin 31a). External actions create internal awareness; wearing a symbolic, tangible “something above us” reinforces that idea that God is always watching. The kippah is a means to draw out one’s inner sense of respect for God.

Yet this same site notes that there is little evidence in the Bible for such behavior:

From a biblical standpoint, only the Kohanim serving in the Temple were required to cover their heads (see Exodus 28:4). Yet for many centuries, the obligatory custom has been for Jewish men to wear a kippah all the time, as the Code of Jewish Law says, “It is forbidden to walk four cubits without a head covering.”

The “Code of Jewish Law” noted above is not the 10 commandments, nor even the supposed 613 Laws extracted from the Bible by the Rabbis. Instead, is it a derivative of the Pharisaic process of applying the cleanliness laws applicable only to the priests in the Temple to the common Israelite outside of the Temple. Yet it certainly appears even the use of such a head-covering was unknown until long after the Temple’s destruction. Even the former Pharisee, Paul of Tarsus knew nothing of it. In fact, he specifically tells the Corinthian men not to wear a head covering during times of prayer (1 Cor. 11:4).

I don’t think Paul would have been as adamant with the Corinthians had wearing a kippah been a common, or even accepted practice among the Hebrews. Nor does this appear to Paul to have been a point of disparity between Jewish and Christian practice such as circumcision. Paul does not even mention it. His criticism is not that by doing this practice the Gentiles would be putting themselves under the Law. Instead, Paul says that covering their heads would dishonor God (1 Cor. 11:7) and be unnatural (1 Cor. 11:14).

It is actually hard to specify exactly what behavior Paul’s converts were emulating. According to Michael Marlowe, no group consistently covered their heads during prayer or while prophesying among either the Jews or the Gentiles:

It is known that Roman priests covered their heads in religious ceremonies. Some ancient statues of Caesar Augustus show him with a covered head because he was the Pontifex Maximus of Rome, and because he was interested in promoting the “traditional values” of the Romans, for political reasons…Presumably Roman citizens in Corinth would have observed their Roman customs when worshipping Roman gods. But it seems rather far-fetched to think that Greek Christians in Corinth would have imitated this custom of Roman priests. Even among the Romans, not all gods were worshipped with covered heads.

So Gentiles sometimes worshipped with their heads covered, but at other times did not. It apparently was not a matter of importance; at least not on the level Paul makes it. Regarding the use of a headcovering among the ancient Jews, Marlowe finds the same pattern (or lack therof).

Most scholars believe that the prayer shawl is a later custom which came into general use among Jews during the third century. In the first century a Jewish man would often wear something on his head, for practical reasons (protection from the hot sun or from cold wind), but there was apparently no cultural expectation that he should cover or uncover his head at specific times. If Paul’s rule regarding men covering their heads differs from Jewish custom, it would be in the direction of prohibiting something which was a matter of indifference among the Jews. (Emphasis added)

Even Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament (1930-33), makes the same observation:

It is not whether the Jews at this time use the tallith, “a four cornered shawl having fringes consisting of eight threads, each knotted five times” [to cover their heads] as they did later.

So it appears that Paul is not reacting against any previously set practice, either among the Jews or the Gentiles. What this instruction appears to be is a set tradition that he had instructed to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 11:2). Christian men were to pray with heads uncovered. In that practice the current church is more in line with its ancient ancestors than are the modern Jews of today. If modern Messianic Jews also continue the practice of the kippah, and pray with their head so covered, they also are as much an aberration from their “Hebrew roots” as are their unbaptized counterparts.

To be continued…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 at 11:44 pm and is filed under Biblical Studies, Culture, Liturgy, Rants, Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Or, if you wish, you can find all the posts Caine