I Corinthians 11:10

Abstract

THE text of 1 Corinthians 11:10 in the Authorized Version reads, ‘For this cause ought the woman to have || power on her head, because of the Angels’, and the marginal note, ‘|| That is, a covering, in signe that she is under the power of her husband.’ It is generally not realized how strange that marginal note is. First, the note is unexpected because it breaks the sixth of the rules drawn up for the translators by the anti-Puritan Bishop Bancroft, who is described in the preface to the AV, The Translators to the Reader, as ‘the chief overseer and ergodiōktes (taskmaster)’: Noe marginal notes att all to be affixed, but only for the explanation of the Hebrew or Greeke Words, which cannot without some circumlocution soe briefly and fitly be expressed in the text. That ‘att all’ allows no exceptions, but here is an exception. Secondly, this marginal note is unique because it is the only interpretive note in the whole of the AV New Testament. Other types of notes (alternative translations, occasional textual notes, more literal translations of the Greek, so marked) are permitted. So in this chapter there is one cross-reference (v.24) and ten alternative translations (vv. 2, 15, 18, 19, 20, 22, 24, 26, 29, and 34). For example, at v.2 the note to ‘ordinances’ reads ‘Or, traditions’, and v.22 ‘them that have not’ has the marginal note ‘Or, them that are poore’.