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1 Corinthians 11:14 | Hair, what is it? Why is hair there? | Commentary

Source: https://www.abarim-publications.com/Bible_Commentary/Hair.html

1 Corinthians 11:14

— Hair, what is it? Why is hair there?—

🔼What is Hair?

Hair is a product of the dermis and consists of dead keratinized tissue, and keratin denotes fibrous proteins cross-linked by disulphide bonds. Other keratin-based body parts are skin, nails, feathers and horns. Hair grows with a rate of 1/3 millimeter a day, during a period called anagen, which may take up to a few years in humans. When the anagen period stops, the hair follicle goes into some kind of brief stasis, after which it starts all over with making a new hair. The old one is pushed up and the hair falls out. The difference between hair patterns of men and women comes about by male androgen (sex hormones), which causes hair to grow in places other than on the scalp, and also causes the latter location to go bald.

Humans are the most hairless among the higher animals and apart from humans only lion males and horses have long hair. Except for the fly-squatting quality of the horse's tail there is no clear reason why nature produces long hair. In fact, since hair serves mainly as an insulator, it's a scientific mystery why humans hardly have any, and have to cover themselves with the hair of animals to stay warm.

🔼Naked Apes

The Bible does not explain why humans are largely hairless, and the Bible also does not support evolution theory; at least not in the top layer of the translated text (that means 'what it says'.) But the Bible also not decidedly rejects evolution theory although maybe that's because evolution theory didn't exist when the Bible was written. Evolution theory insists that all primates came from the same ancestral species, but that Homo sapiens branched off further than the other primates did from each other. That's why we're smart and that's why we're bald.

But evolution theory also predicts that evolution will go on, and that's where the Bible isn't so silent. In fact, the Bible predicts that modern Homo sapiens is the ancestral species of two kinds of new humans, divided into a smaller group of (probably symbolically) 144,000 elect members, and a 'great multitude that no one can count' (Revelation 14:1 and 7:9). Apparently, there'll be a New Jerusalem, in which the elect live together with God, and a New Earth that is peopled by 'the nations,' which will walk in Jerusalem's (that's God's) light, and whose kings will bring glory into Jerusalem (Revelation 21:23-24). Hence we may conclude that the naked ape that we are is an intermediate phase between the animal realm and the new or next realm; the realm in which people are like angels in the respect of communing with God. (And whether or not creation came to pass in such a fashion that at the start it seemed already half-way through a very dynamic process or not, does not negate the fact that evolution theory and the Bible agree on what's going to happen next.)

🔼X marks the spot

But why did either God or nature or God through nature decide to make humans naked, except for exceptionally long cranial hair, and tufts of animal-like fur under arms and on pubic regions? Is it perhaps a statement that the intermediate phase consists of super-animals that largely transcended the mechanisms of the animal world, but not where sexual reproduction (and all that entails) is concerned, and also not where our powers are directed to (the Hebrew word for hand also means power — hence the Biblical phrase 'to be in someone's hands')? If that is true, then our long cranial hair is nothing but a statement that, although we are a lot more clever than the animals, our thinking is still an expanded version of what any animal does (Ecclesiastes 3:18).

Other than that, human cranial hair seems void of practical function. It may supply some protection against the noon sun, but since a human has an entire body to protect, this insular coverage can hardly be there for that reason. Some suggest that cranial hair protects the brain while it is maturing, but that can't be right. Hair provides no support for structural integrity of the skull, and a large liquid-cooled or -heated organ that sits inside thick bone, which is again covered by a liquid cooled/heated skin, will hardly benefit from a relatively thin layer of hair (short hair is more voluminous and thus more insulative). Human hair grows far beyond any influence it may have on the temperature management of the brain. If cranial hair was meant to be an insulator, we would have had short wooly fur on our heads. And if it was meant for structural support, we would have been born with horns, or maybe a little helmet.

🔼Blondies

Blonde hair comes about by high levels of maternal estrogen during the fetal phase. This same hormone also lowers spatial skills, which then has to do with why blonde women are usually focused on local affairs, and thus become exceptional care givers and also keep backing the car into the neighbor's cast iron fence. Men like blondes because men generally like to be cared for, and blondes simultaneously make the man look incredible as he casually backs the car out of the yard with three feet clearance on either side. The phrase 'dumb blonde' is not correct, since blondness does not denote dumbness but a very valuable and sought-after cerebral specialization.

As a matter of fact, for this article the Abarim Publications Editorial Team hoped to find evidence that supported our hypothesis that women have better long term memory and men better short term. But what we found was extensive research that shows that the female brain is a highly sophisticated organ, which allows incredibly complex thought and sense of organization, whereas the male brain appears to be designed to have a man run after wildebeests and fart in bed.

Since typically male hair patterns are induced by male sex hormones, the sole function of beard and body hair is to state masculinity, and is right up there with moose antlers, peacock tail feathers and lion manes. And since mankind's final collective format is commonly depicted as a single human female, the human female reflects a body type that is higher up the evolutionary ladder than that of the male. Biblically spoken, this is completely logical because woman came from man, and is thus younger (Genesis 2:22, 1 Corinthians 11:9).