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Bible Dictionaries
Head
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or The importance attributed to the head in ancient psychology must not be supposed to spring from scientific knowledge of the function of the brain and nervous system. ‘The psychical importance of the head would be an early result of observation of the phenomena and source of the senses of sight, hearing, taste, and smell, and of such facts as the pulsation of the fontanel in infants and the fatal effect of wounds in this complex centre of the organism’ (A. E. Crawley, The Idea of the Soul, 1909, p. 239). Plato assigned reason to the brain, ‘the topographically higher region being Correlated with the reason’s higher worth’ (Aristotle, Psychology, translation W. A. Hammond, 1902, Introd. p. xxvi); but, to Aristotle, ‘the brain is merely a regulator for the temperature of the heart’ (ib. p. xxiv). By the time of Galen (2nd cent. a.d.), sensation was located in the brain, acting in conjunction with the nerves; but there is no evidence that such technical Greek knowledge is implied in the literature of apostolic Christianity.* [Note: Even if it were, Galen’s ascription of psychical attributes to organs other than the brain would show the wide gulf between ancient and modern psychology.] We are there concerned in general with an extension of Hebrew psychology, for which the brain was of no psychical importance. In fact, there is no Hebrew word for ‘brain,’ and we must suppose that it would simply be called, as it actually is in Syriac, the ‘marrow of the head.’ Certain (Aramaic) references to ‘the visions of the head’ in the Book of Daniel (Daniel 2:28 etc.) merely refer to the position of the organ of sight, and the phrase is actually contrasted with ‘the thoughts of the heart’ (Daniel 4:5; cf. Daniel 2:30).
The head (κεφαλή) is named as a representative part of the whole personality in St. Paul’s words to blaspheming Jews at Corinth: ‘Your blood be upon your own heads’ (Acts 18:6; cf. Joshua 2:19, 2 Samuel 1:16, etc.), and in the proverb that kindness to an enemy heaps coals of fire on his head (Romans 12:20; cf. Proverbs 25:22). The mourning custom of casting dust on the head (Revelation 18:19; cf. Ezekiel 27:30) may spring from the desire to link the dead with the living, if the dust was originally taken from the grave itself, as W. R. Smith and Schwally have supposed. (As to cutting off the hair of the head, because of a vow, see article Hair.) St. Paul argues against the Corinthian practice of allowing women publicly to pray or prophesy with unveiled heads, on three grounds (1 Corinthians 11:3 f.): (1) there is an upward gradation of rank to be observed-woman, man, Christ, God; (2) woman was created from and for man, and so she must show by her covered head that she is in the presence of her superior-man (cf. the covering of the bride in presence of her future husband, Genesis 24:65);† [Note: The original motive of this wide-spread practice is probably, as Crawley suggests (ERE v. 54), ‘the impulse for concealment before on object of fear.’] (3) the long hair of woman shows that the covering of the veil is natural to her. If she unveils her head, therefore, she dishonours it by making a false claim for the personality it represents, as well as by outraging decency, which should be the more carefully observed because of the presence of the angels in public worship. (No satisfactory explanation of the phrase ‘authority [ἐξουσία] on her head’ [1 Corinthians 11:10] seems yet to have been given, but the context seems to imply that the veil expresses the authority of man over woman, in accordance with which the Revised Version inserts the words ‘a sign of’ before ‘authority.’ See article Authority.) It should be noted that it is the whole head, and not simply the face, that is covered in the East: ‘The women of Egypt deem it more incumbent upon them to cover the upper and back part of the head than the face, and more requisite to conceal the face than most other parts of the person’ (Lane, Modern Egyptians, 1895, p. 67).
The Custom of anointing the head is mentioned (figuratively) in I Clem. lvi. 5; Ign. Eph. xvii. 1; It is crowned in token of honour (Revelation 4:4; Revelation 9:7; Revelation 12:1; Revelation 19:12; cf. Revelation 10:1). The frequent references in the Odes of Solomon to a crown on the Christian’s head are best explained from the Eastern practice of placing a garland on the head of candidates for baptism (i. 1, ix. 8, xx. 7, 8, and J. H. Bernard’s notes in Texts and Studies viii. 3 [1912] ad locc.). The seven heads of the Apocalyptic red dragon (i.e. Satan [Revelation 12:3]) apparently denote the abundance of his power; the seven heads of his agent, the Beast 13:1; 17:9), are explicitly referred both to the seven hills of Rome and to seven Emperors. The head smitten to death, but healed (13:3), appears to be Nero, who was widely believed not to have died in a.d. 68 (see Swete, ad loc.). The lion-heads and snake-headed tails of Revelation 9:17; Revelation 9:19 merely heighten the horror of the scene.
The most remarkable use of the term ‘head’ in apostolic literature is its application to Christ, the ‘body’ being the Church. This analogy is more than illustration; it forms an argument, like the psychological analogies of Augustine in regard to the Trinity. Just as the lower level of primitive thought represented by symbolic magic often finds a real connexion in acts, because they are similar, so ancient theology (cf. the ‘Recapitulation’ doctrine of Irenaeus) often finds positive argument in mere parallelism. In the Pauline use of the analogy between the human body and the Church, Christ is sometimes identified with the whole body, and sometimes with the head alone; this will occasion no difficulty to those who remember St. Paul’s doctrine of the believer’s mystical union with Christ, so that his life is Christ’s. In the most detailed application of the analogy (1 Corinthians 12:12 f; cf. Romans 12:4-5), the head is simply contrasted with the feet, without special reference to Christ, the whole Church-body being identified with Him. NT commentators,* [Note: g. J. Armitage Robinson (Ephesians, 1903, p. 103), who bases the Pauline thought of Christ as Head of the body on the fact that ‘that in the seat of the brain which controls arid unifies the organism,’ and goes on to speak of ‘the complete system of nerves and muscles by which the limbs are knit together and are connected with the head’ (p. 104).] whilst often crediting St. Paul with the knowledge of modern physiology, usually overlook the contribution of Hebrew psychology to the elucidation of this analogy. In the OT the body is regarded as a co-operative group of quasi-independent sense-organs, each possessed of psychical and ethical, as well as physical, life (see articles Eye, Ear, Hand, and cf. Matthew 5:29-30). This gives new point to the comparison with the quasi-independent life of the members of the Church; in the social as in the individual body, health depends on the (voluntary) subordination of this quasi-independence to the common good. This unity of purpose St. Paul elsewhere traces to the Headship of Christ. The Apostle can identify the head with Christ, without at all thinking of the brain, because the head is the most dignified part of the psychophysical personality. As a centre of life (cf. Matthew 5:36), not specially of thought or volition (which St. Paul located in the heart), the head dominates the body, the separate organs of which each contribute to the whole personality ‘according to the working in due measure of each several part’ (Ephesians 4:16; cf. Colossians 2:19). Christ is ‘the saviour of the body’ (Ephesians 5:23), as it is the head on which the safety of the whole body defends, because of the special sense-organs located in it. On the other hand, the body is necessary to the completion and fullness of the life of the head, as is the Church to Christ (Ephesians 1:22-23). Elsewhere, this Headship of Christ over the body denotes simply His priority of rank (Colossians 1:18), and this is extended to His dominion over the ‘principalities and powers’ of the unseen world (Colossians 2:10).
The bodily union of the members with Christ the Head is conceived in close relation with the initial act of baptism: ‘in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body’ (1 Corinthians 12:13). St. Paul’s doctrine of the Spirit of God (or of Christ) as creating the spiritual unity and efficiency of the body through which it circulates from the head has an interesting parallel in the Pneuma doctrine of contemporary physiology. According to this, ‘spirit’ was conveyed by the arteries to the different sense-organs (H. Siebeck, Gesch. der Psychologie, 1884, ii. p. 130f.; G. S. Brett, A History of Psychology, 1912, p. 286f.). Something of this popular doctrine may, of course, have reached St. Paul through the physician Luke. It would certainly have appealed to him as an example of ‘spiritual’ law in the ‘natural’ world, confirming and enforcing his own moral and spiritual conception of the Hebrew doctrine of the Spirit.* [Note: From this ‘biological’ Headship at Christ most be distinguished the purely architectural figure of Him as ‘the Head of the corner’ (Acts 4:11; 1 Peter 2:7).]
The Pauline analogy of ‘body’ and ‘Church’ is employed by Clement of Rome, though without explicit reference to the Headship of Christ, the head being named here simply as a higher member: ‘The head without the feet is nothing; so likewise the feet without the head are nothing: even the smallest limbs of our body are necessary and useful for the whole body: but all the members conspire and unite in subjection, that the whole body may be saved’ (1 Clem. xxxvii. 5). The same analogy re-appears in several of the Odes of Solomon. Thus Christ says, ‘I sowed my fruit in hearts, and transformed them into myself; and they received my blessing and lived; and they were gathered to me, and were saved; because they were to me as my own members, and I was their Head’ (17:13, 14; cf. xxii. 16). Similarly, Christ speaks of His descent into Hades, where He gathers His saints and delivers them: ‘the feet and the head he [Death] let go, for they were not able to endure my face’ (xlii. 18). These passages continue the mystic realism of Pauline and Johannine thought, and throw an interesting light on the earlier ideas of the relation of the believer to Christ, even though they belong to the 2nd century.
H. Wheeler Robinson.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Head'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/h/head.html. 1906-1918.
