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Bible Dictionaries
Hair
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or By primitive and ancient peoples in general, the hair (θρίξ, τρίχες) is regarded as a special centre of vitality, and to this belief the various forms of the hair-offering are ultimately due. The only examples of this practice in the literature under review are afforded by St. Paul’s vow, according to which he cut off his hair at Cenchreae (Acts 18:18), and by the similar vows of the four men at Jerusalem, whose expenses St. Paul paid as an evidence of his Jewish piety (Acts 21:24). These are to be explained from the Nazirite vow of the OT (Numbers 6). Josephus writes of his own times that ‘it is usual with those who had been afflicted either with a distemper, or with any other distresses, to make vows; and for thirty days before, they are to offer their sacrifices, to abstain from wine, and to shave the hair off their head’ (Bellum Judaicum (Josephus) ii. xv. 1). St. Paul would accordingly offer at Jerusalem the hair that had grown during the month since the vow began at Cenchreae. The same belief in the peculiar vitality of the hair may underlie the proverbial reference to it; ‘there shall not a hair perish from the head of any of you’ (Acts 27:34; cf. 1 Samuel 14:45, 2 Samuel 14:11, 1 Kings 1:52, Matthew 10:30, Luke 21:18), though the number and minuteness of the separate hairs are also implied.
The elaborate arrangement and adornment of the hair are found in primitive as well as in advanced civilizations (e.g. see the illustrations of male Fijians in Lubbock’s Origin of Civilization5, 1902, pl. [Note: plural.] ii. p. 68). The art was highly developed amongst Greek and Roman women, as may be seen from coins, etc., belonging to this period (reproductions in Seyffert, Dict. of Classical Antiquities9, 1906, pp. 266, 267; J. E. Sandys, A Companion to Latin Studies, 1910, p. 198), Ovid, in his instructions to Roman ladies on the art of winning lovers, emphasizes the effect of an artistic and appropriate arrangement of the hair (de art. Am. iii. 136f.; cf. Bigg, St. Peter and St. Jude, 1901, p. 152). Judith ‘braided the hair of her head’ when she set out to fascinate Holofernes (Judith 10:3), and there are Talmudic references to the art (Buxtorf’s Lexicon, 1639, col. 389; Cheyne, Encyclopaedia Biblica ii. col. 1941). Against such elaborate adornment and all that it might imply, the apostolic warnings (1 Peter 3:3, 1 Timothy 2:9; see article Adorning) are directed.
The greater abundance of hair possessed by woman as compared with man is mentioned by St. Paul in an argument against the practice of unveiled women praying and prophesying (1 Corinthians 11:14-15, κόμη), Nature’s covering, he says, shows that the veil should be employed; to be unveiled is no better than to be shorn (vv. 5, 6). The same sexual difference is in view in the description of the Apocalyptic locusts: ‘they had hair as the hair of women’ (Revelation 9:8). In the Apocalyptic vision of Christ, His hair is said to be ‘while as white wool, as snow’ (Revelation 1:14), a detail of dignity borrowed from the OT picture of Jahweh, as ‘ancient of days’ (Daniel 7:9).
H. Wheeler Robinson.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Hair'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/h/hair.html. 1906-1918.
