What Does “Head” (Kephalē) Mean in Paul’s Letters? Part 2: The Septuagint 

Introduction

As we begin studying what kephalē means in 1 Corinthians 11:3 and Ephesians 5:23, one of the most important sources to consult is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, or what’s often called the Septuagint (hereafter LXX). How is kephalē used in the LXX? Does it mean “leader, authority over,” “source, beginning, origin,” or “prominent, preeminent, foremost?” (For simplicity sake, I’ll refer to these three interpretive options as “leader,” “source,” and “prominent” respectively.) How often is it used in these senses? And what possible influence does this have on our two Pauline passages noted above? 

Before we look at the relevant texts, it’s important to note three things. First, there is no such thing as “the” Septuagint, or “the” LXX, as some kind of standardized, singular Greek translations of the Old Testament that was around at the time of the New Testament. There was a Greek translation known as the LXX that was around at the time of Origen (AD 185-254), along with other Greek translations of the OT. But during the New Testament era, there was no single Greek translation of the OT that every Christian would have been drawing upon. (It’s similar to how we might refer to “the” English Bible, when there are many different English Bibles.)¹See Jobes and Silva, Invitation to the Septuagint, 30. Instead, there were different Greek translations of the Hebrew Old Testament that were in circulation when Paul was writing. If this all sounds complicated, confusing, and messy, then yes—it is all of those things. There are scholars today, in fact, who dedicate their entire lives to “Septuagint Studies,” which should alert us to the fact that establishing which Greek translation of the OT Paul or other NT writers would have been drawing upon is quite complicated. So, I’ll still say “the LXX” for convenience sake but with the understanding that it’ll be tough to know for sure which Greek translation Paul might have been drawing upon for his understanding and use of kephalē. 

Second, the LXX was a source of much thought and influence on the apostle Paul and Greek-speaking converts to Christianity. The LXX is not just an interesting body of ancient texts to consult; it’s an influential source for early Christian thought. However it uses and understands kephalē will be important for our own understanding of how Paul uses the term.

Third, and most relevantly, when it comes to the use of kephalē in the LXX, modern scholars come to some very different conclusions. Of the 180 or so uses of kephalē metaphorically in the LXX, some say that there is only one time where it means “ruler, authority over.”²Payne, The Bible Vs. Biblical Womanhood, 54. Other scholars say there are at least 16 times where it occurs with this meaning.³Grudem, “The Meaning of Kephalē (‘Head’),” 453. Some of these differences are due to modern scholarly interpretation; others have to do with which Greek manuscript of the LXX we’re looking at. For what it’s worth, according to all the scholars I’ve read, kephalē never means “source” in the LXX.

Fourth, as we stated in the last post, words like kephalē can be polysemous—capable of more than one meaning at the same time. Or it may have one primary meaning but also convey other senses, depending on the context. To say “the king is the head of his family” might primarily mean that the king is the ruler over his family. But it may also convey some sense of prominence or even source. For our purposes, it will be important not only to establish the primarily meaning and senses of the term, but also whether this excludes other possible senses. If, for instance, “prominence” is the best meaning for kephalē in a particular context, we also should ask whether this would exclude all notions of leadership and authority. 

What I want to do is list out all of the relevant passages where kephalē occurs where it’s not referring to a literal head of a person and tease out what it seems like the word means and doesn’t mean in each passage. Again, our three interpretive options for kephalē are: 

1. “Authority over, ruler” (hereafter “ruler”)
2. “Source, beginning, origin” (hereafter “source”)
3. “Prominent, preeminent foremost” (hereafter “prominent”)

Kephalē in the LXX

The one passage where few dispute that kephalē is used metaphorically to mean “ruler” is in David’s prayer recorded in 2 Samuel and Psalm 17:

2 Sam. (LXX 2 Kingdoms) 22:44 – You have delivered me from the attacks of the peoples; you have preserved me as the head (kephalē) of nations. People I did not know now serve me, foreigners cower before me; as soon as they hear of me, they obey me. 

Ps. 17:44 (LXX Ps. 18:43) – You have delivered me from the attacks of the people; you have made me the head(kephalē) of nations. People I did not know now serve me.

It does seem quite clear here that kephalē carries a primary sense of “leader,” and most scholars agree.⁴Richard Cervin lists this as one of 4 clear cases where there’s no variant readings and where the notion of authority is “reasonably understood” (Cervin, “On the Significance,” 14,”). The four are: 2 Sam 2:44; Ps 17:44; Jer 28:7 and Lam 1:5. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor says this is the “single exception” to the otherwise non-existent mean of kephalē as “authority” (“Sex and Logic,” 492). Andrew Perriman is the one scholar I’ve found that isn’t completely convinced that kephalē means “authority over, leader” here. He sees “the idea of leadership and rule” as “not entirely inappropriate, but it is by no means required. A distinction should still be maintained between the idea of prominence or primacy and that of leadership. Nothing in the psalm suggests that David expected to exercise authority over the nations” (Perriman, “The Head of a Woman,” 605). Such an interpretation is reinforced by the following phrase: “People I did not know now serve me, foreigners…obey me.”⁵Fitzmyer rightly says that “the last half of the verse makes it clear that kephalē is here used with the connotation of ‘authority’ or ‘supremacy’” (“Another Look,” 508). Perriman (“The Head of a Woman,” 605) argues that the succeeding words (“a people whom I knew not served me”) should not be used to support an interpretation of “leader” for kephalēhere. One could argue that the primary meaning here is “prominence.” But I think it would be difficult to say kephalē means “prominence” while excluding all notions of authority or leadership.   

In Judges, kephalē is used several times to refer to Jephthah and his relationship to the people of Gilead. There are some different readings among Greek manuscripts here; some contain kephalē while others don’t. (“A” refers to the 5^th century LXX mss Codex Alexandrinus, while “B” refers to the 4^th century LXX mss Codex Vaticanus.) 

Judges 10:18 – “The leaders of the people of Gilead said to each other, “Whoever will take the lead in attacking the Ammonites will be head (A: eis kephalēn; B: eis archonta) over all who live in Gilead.”

Judges 11:8-11 – “⁸The elders of Gilead said to him, “Nevertheless, we are turning to you now; come with us to fight the Ammonites, and you will be head (A: eis kephalēn; B: eis archonta) over all of us who live in Gilead.” ⁹ Jephthah answered, “Suppose you take me back to fight the Ammonites and the Lord gives them to me—will I really be your head (A: eis kephalēn; B: eis archonta)?” ¹⁰ The elders of Gilead replied, “The Lord is our witness; we will certainly do as you say.” ¹¹ So Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people made him head and commander (A: eis kephalēn eis hegoumenon; B: eis kephalēn kai eis archēgon) over them. And he repeated all his words before the Lord in Mizpah.”

According to manuscript “A,” kephalē occurs 4x, while according to “B,” it only occurs once (Judges 11:11). As far as the one undisputed reading in Judges 11:11, some sense of leadership does seem present in the use of kephalē, especially since it’s joined with “commander” (eis archēgon) and both terms describe Jephthah’s relationship to the people (“head and commander over them”). It would be difficult to say that kephalē here conveys no sense of authority or leadership.

What about interpreting kephalē as “prominent?” Andrew Perriman, for instance, 

doesn’t see much evidence in favor of “leader” but rather sees kephalē as “prominence or precedence rather than the exercise of authority” (emphasis mine).⁶Perriman, “The Head of a Woman,” 603.

I think it’s valid to include some sense of “prominence” here. Jephthah would certainly be viewed as a “prominent” figure. But I don’t find it convincing to say that kephalē means “prominent” and not “ruler.” The entire context of Judges 10-12 highlights Jephthah becoming a military leader over the people of Gilead in their battle against the Ammonites: “come and be our leader (eis archēgon), that we might fight against the Ammonites” (Judges 11:6). Jephthah indeed leads them into a victorious battle over the Ammonites (Judges 11:32-33). When the Ephraimites were upset that they weren’t invited to join in the battle, they came and complained to Jephthah (Judges 12:1), who in turn functioned as a leader when he “gathered all the men of Gilead and fought with Ephraim” (Judges 12:4). In the end, “Jephthah judgedIsrael six years” (Judges 10:7)—another description of leadership. 

In short, both the near and far context of Judges 11:11 suggests that when Jephthah was described as a “head and commander” over Gilead, that “head” includes some kind of authoritative leadership role.⁷Philip Payne argues that the construction eis kephalen is significant; the eis indicates that the author means “‘as head’ (cf. acts 7:21) rather than as a metaphor ‘is head’. For people unfamiliar with ‘head’ as a metaphor for ‘leader’, ‘as head’ was far less jarring. This explains why the best-attested LXX text translates only 1 of these 180 places kephalē without an eisclearly a metaphor for ‘leader’” (Payne, The Bible, 76 n. 12). Payne expands on this point in a later work (“Forthcoming,” 29-31). As will be explained below, his main point is that eis, when interpreted as “as,” means that kephalē  is not a metaphor (“is head”) but rather should be interpreted “as head.” While I agree that eis can mean “as” (though it also can me “for” or “unto”), this doesn’t seem as significant as Payne makes it out to me. Unless I’m missing something—which is perfectly possible—however we interpret eis, the word kephalē in Judges 10 and 11 (and elsewhere) conveys some sense of authority or leadership in the context.

To state the obvious, there’s no sense of “source” here for kephalē. Jephthah never became the “source” of Gilead. 

The other three references to kephalē in Codex Alexandrinus (“A”) of Judges 10:8 and 11:8-9 would almost certainly carry the same sense as Judges 11:11. Determining whether Codex “A” or “B” preserves a reading that would have been known to Paul is quite complicated and the experts I’ve consulted on this question don’t all agree.⁸Peter Williams (personal communication) says that “Codex A is much more relevant than Codex B to answer any question about the NT, since the NT citations (as a whole) are closer to Codex A. Even if the type of text in Codex B is (generally) earlier, that’s quite irrelevant to the question of what was in most circulation at the time of the NT.” Renown Septuagint scholar Henry Swete seems to support this view, when he says that “there is a considerable weight of evidence in favour of the belief that the Evangelists [the 4 Gospels] employed a recension of the LXX which came nearer to the text of cod. A then to that of our oldest uncial B.” But what about the rest of the New Testament? Swete continues: “This point has been recently handled in Hilgenfeld’s Zeitschrift f. Wissenschaftliche Theologie, by Dr W. Staerk, who shews that the witness of the N. T. almost invariably goes with codd. אAF and Lucian against the Vatican MS., and that its agreement with cod. A is especially close” (Swete, Introduction, 370). The Vatican MS he’s referring to is Codex B. The references to “codd. אAF” includes Codex Alexandrinus (“A”). Unfortunately, Codex Sinaiticus (א) is missing large portions of the OT, including the portion of Judges, which includes 4 references to kephalē, which occur in Codex A but not B. Philip Payne disagrees, saying that Codex B is a much more reliable manuscript when it differs from Codex A, especially in the book of Judges (personal communication). Septuagint scholar Alexander Sperber wrote a hundred-page article on “The New Testament and Septuagint” (JBL [1940], 193-293), which is extremely technical. Unfortunately, I’m still not clear where he would land on the question at hand. On the one hand, he says that the “vast majority” of OT quotes in the NT “fully agree with Codex B” (pg. 279). But elsewhere, he argues quite extensively that “the ‘Bible of the Apostles’ is identical with the asterisk type of the Hexaplaric LXX, which thus antedates by centuries the days of Origen” (pg. 283). And he says that the asterisk type corresponds to Codex A.  As it appears, “A” preserved one manuscript tradition while “B” preserved another (and in LXX Judges, they are particularly different). Which one Paul would have been reading from is difficult to say for sure. But one thing is clear: the ancient translator who was responsible for the Greek translation now preserved in Codex “A” believed kephalē was a perfectly fine metaphor for “leader” in Judges 10-11.

The next reference comes in 1 Kings and also has some text-critical issues: 

1 Kings (LXX 3 Kingdoms) 8:1 – “Twenty years later, when Solomon finished building the house of the Lord and his own house, King Solomon assembled all the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes in Zion, to bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord from the city of David, which is Zion”

As far as I can tell, this translation is based on Origen’s editions made to the LXX; he added the phrase “and all the heads of the tribes” here. Codex Vaticanus (“B”) does not contain this phrase. (I don’t have the available sources to determine if “A” also contained this reading.) The significance of Origen’s editions is quite complex, and sorting out whether he was relying on some earlier Greek translation of the OT would take us down a deep rabbit hole that few of us would know how to navigate.⁹On Origen and his critical work on the LXX, see Jobes and Silva, Invitation, 48-56. For a much more technical and thorough discussion, see Sperber, “The New Testament,” 205-248.

There’s another translation issue here: kephalē could be referring to the literal top of staff, as Richard Cervin and others have argued.¹⁰Cervin, “On the Significance,” 13. On the one hand, the Greek word rhabdos (translated “tribe” above) does usually mean a literal “rod” or “staff” and not a “tribe.” (As far as I can tell, it never means “tribe,” but I would love to be corrected if I’m wrong here.) On the other hand, this literal rendering would produce a rather strange reading: “King Solomon assembled all the elders of Israel and all the tops of their staffs in Zion.” In the words of Grudem: “Did the Septuagint translators really think that Solomon had called together all the elders and all the tops of their staffs?”¹¹Grudem, “The Meaning of Kephalē (‘Head’),” 441.

In light of these complexities, I don’t think we can include this reference as clear evidence for any meaning of kephalē.

There is a cluster of occurrences of kephalē in Isaiah 7:8-9:

Isaiah 7:8 – “for the head (hē kephalē) of Aram is Damascus,
    [and the head (hē kephalē) of Damascus is only Rezin]. 
Within sixty-five years
    Ephraim will be too shattered to be a people.

Isaiah 7:9 – ⁹ The head (hē kephalē) of Ephraim is Samaria,
    and the head (hē kephalē) of Samaria is only Remaliah’s son.
If you do not stand firm in your faith,
    you will not stand at all.’”¹²Grudem says that A contains the second occurrence of kephalē in 7:8b (“Appendix 1,” 451). Richard Cervin says that the section in square brackets is not included in Rahlfs’s edition of the LXX but it is in “the apparatus with unnamed manuscripts either deleting or including the phrase” (“On the Significance,” 13). Payne says that “Origen (ca. 185-254) added [kephalē], as the asterisk symbols (*) in Q and 48 show” (“Forthcoming,” 32, citing the Gottingen LXX).

Kephalē occurs 4 times in these 2 verses. (The second of which is a variant reading.) Scholars widely disagree, and boldly so, on how to interpret kephalē here. “There is nothing in the context of Isa. 7:8,” writes Andrew Perriman, “to indicate that ‘head’ means ‘leader’ in the statement ‘the head of Aram is Damascus, and the head of Damascus Rasim’…the point seems rather to be one of representation by virtue of primacy or prominence: Aram is summed up in Damascus, Damascus in Rasim.”¹³Perriman, “The Head of a Woman,” 604. Similarly, Richard Cervin points out that kephalē refers to capital cities here and not to people—which is mostly correct;¹⁴Cervin, “Does Kephalē Mean ‘Source’ or ‘Authority’,” 97. the final reference in Isaiah 7:9b does refer to a person. Wayne Grudem, on the other hand, says: “these examples seem to be very strong and carry an unquestionable nuance of authority connected with the word kephalē.”¹⁵Grudem, “The Meaning of Kephalē (‘Head’),” 438. Cf. Joseph Fitzmyer: “this Old Testament passage is not an exact parallel to Paul’s words in 1 Cor 11.3, but no one can fail to miss the similarity in the use of kephalē in both passages or the bearing that this LXX text has on the meaning of the Pauline verse” (“Another Look,” 507). And Philip Payne, a relentless advocate for interpreting kephalē as “source,” says that the last reference in Isaiah 7:9 is the only instance in the LXX where kephalē means “leader.”¹⁶“Forthcoming,” 28. Payne goes on to say that “this one exception is best accounted for as a ‘Hebraism’, an idiomatic Hebrew meaning not native to its translation, kephalē” (Ibid., 29). In other words, even in this case, Payne doesn’t believe that the meaning “leader” is not natural to the Greek term kephalē.

I agree that kephalē refers to capital cites (Damascus, Samaria) in 2 of the 4 occurrences. But the final occurrence of the term does refer to a person, “Remaliah’s son.” Remaliah’s son was Pekah, the king who ruled over the northern kingdom of Israel for 20 years. The fact that a king is called “head” certainly includes some sense of “prominence,” as kings are always going to be prominent. But doesn’t it also suggest some sense of “rulership?” I just don’t see how this sense could be dismissed, unless there’s a desperate need to ensure that kephalē cannot mean “ruler.” Exegetically, it appears to be a very valid reading given the context. 

And since Isaiah 7:9 uses kephalē to describe the capital city (Samaria) and its king (Remaliah’s son), it’s likely that the variant in 7:8 does reflect an early manuscript tradition, since this would complete the parallel: kephalē would refer to the capital city (Damascus) and its king (Rezin), just as it does in the very next verse when it refers to a capital city (Samaria) and its king (Remaliah’s son).¹⁷As far as I can tell, the second kephalē in Isa. 7:8 is in Codex A, which Jennifer Dines says is actually more reliable than Codex B when it comes to Isaiah (The Septuagint, 7). Jobes and Silva likewise says that “A” is “our best witness” when it comes to Isaiah (Invitation, 59). However, Payne, “Forthcoming,” 32 says that Origen added kephalē here “as the asterisk symbols (*) in Q and 48 show.” I have not been able to confirm whether the second kephalē is in A or was added by Origen or both. Jobes and Silva say that when Origen inserted Greek words into his version of the LXX he did so “by referring to the other existing Greek versions.” If one of these versions contained a reading that better corresponded to the original Hebrew, that’s when he “inserted that reading into the Greek text” and marked it with an asterisk (*) (Invitation, 53). Sperber argues that the text type represented by Codex A reflects the editions that Origen marked with an asterisk (“The New Testament,” 259-265). Therefore, I do think that the fourfold use of kephalē here at the very least includes some sense of authority.

Jeremiah also includes one non-literal use of kephalē, the meaning of which, as you might have guessed, has been debated among scholars.

Jer 31:7 (LXX 38:7) –  This is what the Lord says: “Sing with joy for Jacob; shout for the head (kephalēn) of the nations. Make your praises heard, and say, ‘Lord, save your people, the remnant of Israel.’”

Joseph Fitzmyer says that the “notion of supremacy or authority is surely present” here and Richard Cervin says “I do not necessarily disagree.”¹⁸Fitzmyer, “Another Look,” 508; Cervin, “Does Kephalē Mean ‘Source’ or ‘Authority’,” 108. Cervin, in fact, lists this as one of 4 clear cases where there’s no variant readings and where the notion of authority is “reasonably understood” (Cervin’s other three are 2 Sam 22:44, Ps 17:44, and Lam 1:5).¹⁹Cervin, “On the Significance,” 14. And Wayne Grudem, of course, agrees that “leader” is the best meaning for kephalē. Andrew Perriman, however, disagrees:

…under the circumstances ideas of authority and leadership are hardly appropriate: the sense must again be something like “foremost” or “pre-eminent nation” in that Israel was God’s chosen people…It is the special redemption and blessing of Israel that is proclaimed to the nations and islands (vv. 10-14), not Israel’s authority over them.²⁰Perriman, “The Head of a Woman,” 605.

I tend to agree with Perriman here. I think that “preeminent” is probably the best meaning of kephalē. It’s possible that some sense of “authority over” other nations is also present, but the context does not seem to demand this. Put differently, Jeremiah’s words would still ring true, even if Israel is not literally ruling over other nations. One can enjoy prominence as a nation that stands out among others without necessarily ruling over other nations. Switzerland may be a prominent nation, but they don’t rule over any other nation. 

Lamentations contains an occurrence of kephalē that almost certainly means “ruler.” 

Lam 1:5 – “Her oppressors have become the head (eis kephalēn), and her enemies prosper; for the Lord humbled her because of the greatness of her ungodliness.”

This is another one of Richard Cervin’s four texts that convey some sense of “ruler,” and I agree. The context of Lamentations 1 confirms this. It’s unlikely that “her oppressors (Babylon)” who “have become the head” simply means that Babylon is more prominent than Israel. Still less possible is the reading that Babylon has become Israel’s “source.” To my mind, the best meaning of kephalē here is that Babylon is now ruling over Israel.

There are several places where the LXX uses kephalē in “head/tail” metaphors, and naturally, their interpretation is disputed.

Deut. 28:12-13 – ¹² The Lord will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. ¹³ The Lord will make you the head (kephalēn), not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the Lord your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom.

Deut. 28:43-44 – ^43 “The foreigners who reside among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower. ⁴⁴ They will lend to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head (kephalē), but you will be the tail.” 

Isa. 9:14-16 (LXX 9:13-14) – So the LORD cut off from Israel head (kephalē) and tail, palm branch and reed in one day—the elder and honored man is the head (archē), and the prophets who teaches lies is the tail; for those who lead this people lead them astray, and those who are led by them are swallowed up (RSV).

Isa. 19:15 – And there will be no work for Egypt, which will make them head and tail, beginning and end (kephalēn kai ouran, archēn kai telos).²¹The editions of the LXX that I consulted give different readings (one has: “There is nothing Egypt can do— head or tail, palm branch or reed”) and I don’t have access to a critical edition that sorts through all the variants, to I cannot be sure at this point which reading is the oldest.

Joseph Fitzmyer lists all four as examples of kephalē meaning “leader, ruler, person in authority.”²²“1 Corinthians 11:3,” 54. I think a case could be made that the broader context of Isaiah 19 suggests some sense of leadership or authority implied in kephalē, especially if it’s implied in the same head/tail metaphor in Isaiah 9. Richard Cervin disagrees with this, arguing that “[p]rominence is surely a valid issue here. If Israel obeys, they will be a prominent nation in the world; if they disobey, they will be humiliated…[N]owhere in the text of Deut 28 does it expressly say that Israel will ‘rule’ other nations.²³Cervin, “On the Significance,” 14. Andrew Perriman agrees with Cervin: “…the significance of the metaphor lies in the contrast between two extremes, between prominence and prosperity on the one hand and subjection and humiliation on the other.”²⁴“The Head of a Woman,”, 606.

I tend to agree with Cervin and Perriman’s interpretation of kephalē in Deuteronomy 28 and Isaiah 19. The idea of prominence rather than leadership does appear to be the point. But the use of kephalē in Isaiah 9 seems to include some notion of authority. Not only is kephalē set alongside archē which suggests authority in this context, but the extension of the head/tail metaphor includes activities that can rightly be described as leadership. For instance, those considered the “tail” exercise bad leadership: “those who lead this people lead them astray, and those who are led by them are swallowed up” (Isa. 9:16 RSV). If the tail refers to bad leadership, wouldn’t this imply that the head exercises good leadership? Cervin does not actually disagree, but I find his reasoning to be a bit strange: “In this particular passage, the word kephalē is used only once, yet the notion of authority is clearly stated by the use of the Greek word arkhe…Authority is thus derived from the context and the additional use of the word arkhe, and not merely from the word kephalē itself” (emphasis mine).²⁵“On the Significance,” 14. But isn’t it sound exegesis say that context helps determine the meaning of words? It seems odd to downplay the fact that the context helps us understand kephalē to mean authority.

I’m inclined, then, to add Isaiah 9:14-16 to the list of instances where kephalē means “authority over, leader.” Once again, no scholar argues that kephalē means “source” in the above head/tail metaphors. 

There are also several metaphorical uses of kephalē in a second century A.D. Greek translation that was made by a scholar named Aquila, who refers to “The heads of the tribes” (Deut. 5:23; 29:9) and refers to Gog as the “ruling head of Meshech” (Ezek. 38:2). Aquila’s translation, however, is of limited value for our purposes, since it was made a century after Paul and it’s a woodenly literal translation of the Hebrew that makes it not the best representation of how Greek speakers would have naturally understood Greek words.²⁶“In the area of vocabulary, undoubtedly, Aquila’s’ policy was to represent every detail in the most consistent fashion, even at the cost of acceptable Greek” (Invitation, 38). I’m inclined, then, not to use Aquila’s text as representative for the kind of Greek—let alone the Greek translation of the OT—that positions us to better understand Paul. (I would, however, love to hear from any Aquila scholars out there to correct my ignorance.) 

Summary 

To sum it up, I see some sense of “authority” or “leader” to be present in 13 occurrences of kephalē in following passages: 

2 Sam. (LXX 2 Kingdoms) 22:44 
Ps. 17:44 (LXX Ps. 18:43) 
Judges 10:18 
Judges 11:8-11 (3x)
Isaiah 7:8 (2x)
Isaiah 7:9 (2x)
Isaiah 9:14-16
Lam 1:5 
Isa. 9:14-16 (LXX 9:13-14) 

In some of these passages, kephalē occurs in one LXX manuscript (or as a variant) but not all (Judges 10:18; 11:8-9; Isa. 7:8b). While I don’t think these references can be easily dismissed, for reasons stated above, more text-critical work needs to be done to determine whether these readings would have been available to Paul, or whether they contribute to our understanding of Paul’s linguistic world. 

The idea of “prominence” with no clear sense of “authority over, ruler” does appear to be best interpretation one passage (e.g. Jer 31:7 [LXX 38:7]), but in a few other occurrences where the sense of “prominence” is present, this doesn’t seem to exclude, to my mind, some sense of “authority over, ruler” (e.g. Isa. 7:8-9; 9:14-16). I’m happy to be persuaded otherwise, but I currently don’t find it convincing when scholars suggest that that it was “foreign…for Greek to use kephalē as a metaphor for ‘leader’.”²⁷Payne, The Bible, 54. But we still have several ancient texts to look at, and my next blog post will continue to look at more references.  

The Problem of the Septuagint 

Evidence from the LXX can cut both ways, however. Even if kephalē does mean “authority over, leader” 13 times, that’s actually a small percentage of times that it translates the Hebrew word for “head” (rōsh) when the Hebrew term is used metaphorically to mean “leader.” It’s quite common, in fact, for the Hebrew term rōsh to mean “leader” in the Old Testament. Most scholars have identified around 180 uses of rōsh in this manner. Why is it, then, that the LXX translates rōsh with kephalē to mean “leader” only 13 times (or in some estimations, as few as 1)? Payne sees this as “compelling evidence that the majority of LXX translators did not regard kephalē as appropriate to convey the metaphorical meaning ‘leader’” and that it “would probably never occur to Paul’s typical Greek readers that ‘head’ (kephalē) might mean ‘leader’ or ‘authority over’.”²⁸Payne, Man and Woman in Christ, 121. Now, Payne only sees one instance where kephalē means “leader,” whereas I see thirteen. But even if I’m right, that’s still only 13 out of 180 times where the Greek translators thought that kephalē is the best word to use to translate rōsh when they wanted to convey the idea of “leader.”

Scholars such as Payne who argue that kephalē means “source” not “ruler” in Paul often use this argument as evidence for their view. But Grudem is quick to point out that kephalē never means “source” in the LXX. So even if it’s used 13 or even only 8 times to mean “leader,” that’s still an 8-0 ballgame.²⁹Andrew Perriman, who does not think kephalē should be translated “authority over, ruler” says: “The argument that, when used metaphorically in Paul, kephalē means ‘source’ is greatly weakened by the lack of support in the LXX. It is weakened still further if we recognize that the evidence adduced from extra-biblical sources is less persuasive than some have claimed” (Perrimann, “The Head of a Woman,” 617).

Now, Payne responds to this by pointing out that the Hebrew term rōsh never means “source,” so of course we wouldn’t expect to see kephalē as a translation of rōsh to mean “source.” I think this is a good response, but I do have two things to note. First, the Hebrew term rōsh is used in Genesis 2:10 to refer to the “source” of the rivers, and yet the LXX doesn’t use kephalē to translate rōsh here—an odd decision if “source” was a natural meaning for kephalē among Greek speakers. (Payne argues that even here, rōsh doesn’t mean “source.”) Second, the point still stands that whatever the reason, a body of Greek literature (viz. the LXX) that exerted a high degree of influence on NT language and thought never used kephalēto mean source and did, on occasion, use kephalē to mean “authority over, ruler.” 

One final, and quite technical issue, has to do with the significance of the constructions eis kephalēn which is used in several of our passages above (specifically: Deut 28:13; Judges 10:18; 11:8-9, 11; 2 Sam 22:44; Ps 18:44; Lam 1:5). Philip Payne says the translator used the eis kephalēn (“as head”) construction to convey the idea of “leader” since Greek readers wouldn’t have understood kephalē by itself to mean “leader.” Payne writes:

In context, eis kephalēn could convey “leader” even though in normal Greek kephalē did not mean “leader.” Particularly in contexts where eis kephalēn is paired with “as ruler,” thoughtful readers could understand that being “like a head” was equivalent to being “as ruler.” But even if readers did not associate “head” as conveying “ruler,” the LXX translators recognized that Greek readers would accept “as head” as far more natural Greek than “is head.”³⁰This and the following quotes are from a delightful email exchange I had with Phil. 

“Greek readers,” Payne continues, “could have understood these few references to eis kephalēn to mean as head rather than metaphors (is head).” In other words, eis kephalēn is used as a simile not a metaphor. “Understood as a simile,” says Payne, “Jephthah ‘was made to be like a head’, which is not nearly as jarring. Greek readers would probably think of this as a reference to Jephthah being in some sense ‘top’, since that was a common metaphorical use of kephalē, whereas ‘leader’ was not.”

In short, kephalē does not mean leader, but the simile “as head” (eis kephalēn) is “a reference to Jephthah” in Judges 10-11 “being in some sense ‘top’.”

The reader is encouraged to evaluate the strength of this argument for themselves. Personally, I still don’t find it to be a more compelling understanding of kephalē than the interpretations I offered above. First, “as, like” is a possible meaning of eis but it’s not the most common, especially when the Hebrew correspondent is a lamed prefixed to rōsh. (I’ll let the Greek and Hebrew readers do their own lexical analysis here.) It seems more natural to conclude that the translator used eis kephalēn simply because that was the best way to translate l’rōsh, which means “for a leader” (as rōsh often means). Second, I don’t see a huge significance between simile and metaphor here. As Aristotle says: “A simile is also a metaphor; for there is little difference…(Similes) should be brought in like metaphors, for they are metaphors, differing in the form of expressions” (Rhet. 3.4.1). In any case, whether it’s a simile or a metaphor, the point is: kephalē does not mean a literal head, but conveys some sense of authority or leadership in several passages, especially Judges 10-11, as argued above. If someone were to argue that it actually means “top” or “as a head” (not is a head), I’d still want to know: what does “top” or “head” trying to convey when it’s clearly used to describe Jephthah’s relationship to Gilead—whom he’s clearly exercising leadership over. Therefore, rendering kephalē as “top” in an attempt to exclude all notions of leadership or authority seems interpretively unpersuasive in light of the context. 

To sum it all up, kephalē rarely means “authority over, leader” in the LXX, but there are in my estimation 13 times when it does. In some of these passages, kephalē also conveys the idea of “prominence” but rarely to the exclusion of some sense of leadership. 

We still have a lot of ground to cover before we can understand Paul’s use of kephalē in 1 Corinthians 11 and Ephesians 5. In the next post, I’ll examine some uses of kephalē secular Greek. 

• 1
  See Jobes and Silva, Invitation to the Septuagint, 30.
• 2
  Payne, The Bible Vs. Biblical Womanhood, 54.
• 3
  Grudem, “The Meaning of Kephalē (‘Head’),” 453.
• 4
  Richard Cervin lists this as one of 4 clear cases where there’s no variant readings and where the notion of authority is “reasonably understood” (Cervin, “On the Significance,” 14,”). The four are: 2 Sam 2:44; Ps 17:44; Jer 28:7 and Lam 1:5. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor says this is the “single exception” to the otherwise non-existent mean of kephalē as “authority” (“Sex and Logic,” 492). Andrew Perriman is the one scholar I’ve found that isn’t completely convinced that kephalē means “authority over, leader” here. He sees “the idea of leadership and rule” as “not entirely inappropriate, but it is by no means required. A distinction should still be maintained between the idea of prominence or primacy and that of leadership. Nothing in the psalm suggests that David expected to exercise authority over the nations” (Perriman, “The Head of a Woman,” 605).
• 5
  Fitzmyer rightly says that “the last half of the verse makes it clear that kephalē is here used with the connotation of ‘authority’ or ‘supremacy’” (“Another Look,” 508). Perriman (“The Head of a Woman,” 605) argues that the succeeding words (“a people whom I knew not served me”) should not be used to support an interpretation of “leader” for kephalēhere.
• 6
  Perriman, “The Head of a Woman,” 603.
• 7
  Philip Payne argues that the construction eis kephalen is significant; the eis indicates that the author means “‘as head’ (cf. acts 7:21) rather than as a metaphor ‘is head’. For people unfamiliar with ‘head’ as a metaphor for ‘leader’, ‘as head’ was far less jarring. This explains why the best-attested LXX text translates only 1 of these 180 places kephalē without an eisclearly a metaphor for ‘leader’” (Payne, The Bible, 76 n. 12). Payne expands on this point in a later work (“Forthcoming,” 29-31). As will be explained below, his main point is that eis, when interpreted as “as,” means that kephalē  is not a metaphor (“is head”) but rather should be interpreted “as head.” While I agree that eis can mean “as” (though it also can me “for” or “unto”), this doesn’t seem as significant as Payne makes it out to me. Unless I’m missing something—which is perfectly possible—however we interpret eis, the word kephalē in Judges 10 and 11 (and elsewhere) conveys some sense of authority or leadership in the context.
• 8
  Peter Williams (personal communication) says that “Codex A is much more relevant than Codex B to answer any question about the NT, since the NT citations (as a whole) are closer to Codex A. Even if the type of text in Codex B is (generally) earlier, that’s quite irrelevant to the question of what was in most circulation at the time of the NT.” Renown Septuagint scholar Henry Swete seems to support this view, when he says that “there is a considerable weight of evidence in favour of the belief that the Evangelists [the 4 Gospels] employed a recension of the LXX which came nearer to the text of cod. A then to that of our oldest uncial B.” But what about the rest of the New Testament? Swete continues: “This point has been recently handled in Hilgenfeld’s Zeitschrift f. Wissenschaftliche Theologie, by Dr W. Staerk, who shews that the witness of the N. T. almost invariably goes with codd. אAF and Lucian against the Vatican MS., and that its agreement with cod. A is especially close” (Swete, Introduction, 370). The Vatican MS he’s referring to is Codex B. The references to “codd. אAF” includes Codex Alexandrinus (“A”). Unfortunately, Codex Sinaiticus (א) is missing large portions of the OT, including the portion of Judges, which includes 4 references to kephalē, which occur in Codex A but not B. Philip Payne disagrees, saying that Codex B is a much more reliable manuscript when it differs from Codex A, especially in the book of Judges (personal communication). Septuagint scholar Alexander Sperber wrote a hundred-page article on “The New Testament and Septuagint” (JBL [1940], 193-293), which is extremely technical. Unfortunately, I’m still not clear where he would land on the question at hand. On the one hand, he says that the “vast majority” of OT quotes in the NT “fully agree with Codex B” (pg. 279). But elsewhere, he argues quite extensively that “the ‘Bible of the Apostles’ is identical with the asterisk type of the Hexaplaric LXX, which thus antedates by centuries the days of Origen” (pg. 283). And he says that the asterisk type corresponds to Codex A. 
• 9
  On Origen and his critical work on the LXX, see Jobes and Silva, Invitation, 48-56. For a much more technical and thorough discussion, see Sperber, “The New Testament,” 205-248.
• 10
  Cervin, “On the Significance,” 13.
• 11
  Grudem, “The Meaning of Kephalē (‘Head’),” 441.
• 12
  Grudem says that A contains the second occurrence of kephalē in 7:8b (“Appendix 1,” 451). Richard Cervin says that the section in square brackets is not included in Rahlfs’s edition of the LXX but it is in “the apparatus with unnamed manuscripts either deleting or including the phrase” (“On the Significance,” 13). Payne says that “Origen (ca. 185-254) added [kephalē], as the asterisk symbols (*) in Q and 48 show” (“Forthcoming,” 32, citing the Gottingen LXX).
• 13
  Perriman, “The Head of a Woman,” 604.
• 14
  Cervin, “Does Kephalē Mean ‘Source’ or ‘Authority’,” 97.
• 15
  Grudem, “The Meaning of Kephalē (‘Head’),” 438. Cf. Joseph Fitzmyer: “this Old Testament passage is not an exact parallel to Paul’s words in 1 Cor 11.3, but no one can fail to miss the similarity in the use of kephalē in both passages or the bearing that this LXX text has on the meaning of the Pauline verse” (“Another Look,” 507).
• 16
  “Forthcoming,” 28. Payne goes on to say that “this one exception is best accounted for as a ‘Hebraism’, an idiomatic Hebrew meaning not native to its translation, kephalē” (Ibid., 29). In other words, even in this case, Payne doesn’t believe that the meaning “leader” is not natural to the Greek term kephalē.
• 17
  As far as I can tell, the second kephalē in Isa. 7:8 is in Codex A, which Jennifer Dines says is actually more reliable than Codex B when it comes to Isaiah (The Septuagint, 7). Jobes and Silva likewise says that “A” is “our best witness” when it comes to Isaiah (Invitation, 59). However, Payne, “Forthcoming,” 32 says that Origen added kephalē here “as the asterisk symbols (*) in Q and 48 show.” I have not been able to confirm whether the second kephalē is in A or was added by Origen or both. Jobes and Silva say that when Origen inserted Greek words into his version of the LXX he did so “by referring to the other existing Greek versions.” If one of these versions contained a reading that better corresponded to the original Hebrew, that’s when he “inserted that reading into the Greek text” and marked it with an asterisk (*) (Invitation, 53). Sperber argues that the text type represented by Codex A reflects the editions that Origen marked with an asterisk (“The New Testament,” 259-265).
• 18
  Fitzmyer, “Another Look,” 508; Cervin, “Does Kephalē Mean ‘Source’ or ‘Authority’,” 108.
• 19
  Cervin, “On the Significance,” 14.
• 20
  Perriman, “The Head of a Woman,” 605.
• 21
  The editions of the LXX that I consulted give different readings (one has: “There is nothing Egypt can do— head or tail, palm branch or reed”) and I don’t have access to a critical edition that sorts through all the variants, to I cannot be sure at this point which reading is the oldest.
• 22
  “1 Corinthians 11:3,” 54. I think a case could be made that the broader context of Isaiah 19 suggests some sense of leadership or authority implied in kephalē, especially if it’s implied in the same head/tail metaphor in Isaiah 9.
• 23
  Cervin, “On the Significance,” 14.
• 24
  “The Head of a Woman,”, 606.
• 25
  “On the Significance,” 14.
• 26
  “In the area of vocabulary, undoubtedly, Aquila’s’ policy was to represent every detail in the most consistent fashion, even at the cost of acceptable Greek” (Invitation, 38).
• 27
  Payne, The Bible, 54.
• 28
  Payne, Man and Woman in Christ, 121. Now, Payne only sees one instance where kephalē means “leader,” whereas I see thirteen. But even if I’m right, that’s still only 13 out of 180 times where the Greek translators thought that kephalē is the best word to use to translate rōsh when they wanted to convey the idea of “leader.”
• 29
  Andrew Perriman, who does not think kephalē should be translated “authority over, ruler” says: “The argument that, when used metaphorically in Paul, kephalē means ‘source’ is greatly weakened by the lack of support in the LXX. It is weakened still further if we recognize that the evidence adduced from extra-biblical sources is less persuasive than some have claimed” (Perrimann, “The Head of a Woman,” 617).
• 30
  This and the following quotes are from a delightful email exchange I had with Phil.