Actually, the English word modest appears only once in the King James Version of the Bible:
1 Timothy 2:9-10 In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; but (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works.
The Greek word for apparel in this text is Katastole, meaning a long dress. Kata meaning down - a garment flowing down; and Stole - a long garment, covering or wrapping.
The Greek word for modest is Kosmios, meaning orderly, well-arranged, decent, modest, harmonious arrangement, or adornment. Modesty is also Biblically applied to one's demeanor or behavior. This same Greek word is translated good behavior in 1 Timothy 3:2 in the qualifications of bishops.
Therefore, Oneness Pentecostal sisters are instructed to wear modest long dresses (Kosmios Katastole). They believe this Kosmios Katastole not only specifies that the article of clothing should be a dress, but also specifies that the dress should be of a suitably long length.
twise in the ESV
1Co 12:23 and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty,
I have a problem with the katastole argument. Here is the reason why. First of all the garment refers to a mantle worn by Kings. Kings were male duh. But even more, the translation seems to be saying "they should dress modestly" and not "they should wear a modest dress"...The definition might better be that whatever clothing they wear it should be modest. Now consider this...most of our women don't wear dresses. They wear skirts with "shirts" or whatever one wants to give as a name for the tops they wear. Can skirts be termed long lowerin garments?
Of course they were to wear a katastole..what other word did they use back then? What word would they use for men back then since men did not wear pants either.
Also the context might play here too, Anyways, here is the ESV
1Ti 2:8 I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling;
1Ti 2:9 likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire,
1Ti 2:10 but with what is proper for women who profess godliness--with good works.
1Ti 2:11 Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.
1Ti 2:12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.
Strongs
katastolē kat-as-tol-ay' From G2687; a deposit, that is, (specifically) costume: - apparel.
Thayers
katastolē Thayer Definition: 1) a lowering, letting down
2) a garment let down, dress, attire
I wish I were at home as I have more tools to look this stuff up
Vincents
Καταστολή N.T.o. Once in lxx, Isa_61:3. Opinions differ as to the meaning. Some apparel, others guise or deportment= κατάστημα demeanour, Tit_2:3. There seems, on the whole, to be no sufficient reason for departing from the rendering of A.V. and Rev. Κοσμίῳ modest, seemly, Pasto. Note the word - play, κοσμεῖν κοσμίῳ.
A.T Robertson In modest apparel (en katastolēi kosmiōi). Katastolē is a late word (a letting down, katastellō, of demeanour or dress, arrangement of dress). Only here in N.T. Kosmios is old adjective from kosmos and means well-arranged, becoming. W. H. have adverb in margin (kosmiōs).
John Gills that women adorn themselves in modest apparel: the word rendered "apparel" signifies a long robe, which reaches down to the feet; and the word translated "modest" signifies that which is clean, neat, and decent, yea, beautiful and ornamental; and the sense of the apostle is, that he would not have them to come to public worship in rags, and in dirty and filthy garments, but that their bodies should be covered with clean and decent raiment; so the Israelites washed their clothes that they might be ready to meet the Lord at Mount Sinai, Exo_19:14. The Jews always appeared in their best clothes on the sabbath day; this is one of their rules: (n).
"for the honour of the sabbath, every man must be clothed, כסות נקייה, "with clean or neat apparel" and clothing on the weekday must not be as clothing on the sabbath day; and if a man can make no change, he must let down his talith (or upper garment, his cloak); so that his clothing may not be as the clothing of the weekdays, when that was girt up about him.''
Barnes In modest apparel - The word here rendered "modest" (κόσμιοςkosmios), properly relates to ornament, or decoration, and means that which is "well-ordered, decorous, becoming." It does not, properly, mean modest in the sense of being opposed to that which is immodest, or which tends to excite improper passions and desires, but that which is becoming or appropriate. The apostle does not positively specify what this would be, but he mentions somethings which are to be excluded from it, and which, in his view, are inconsistent with the true adorning of Christian females - "broidered hair, gold, pearls, costly array." The sense here is, that the apparel of females should be such as becomes them, or is appropriate to them. The word here used (κόσμιοςkosmios), shows that there should be due attention that it may be truly neat, fit, decorous. There is no religion in a negligent mode of apparel, or in inattention to personal appearance - anymore than there is in wearing gold and pearls; and a female may as truly violate the precepts of her religion by neglecting her personal appearance as by excessive attention to it. The true idea here is, that her attention to her appearance should be such that she will be offensive to no class of persons; such as to show that her mind is supremely fixed on higher and more important things, and such as to interfere with no duty which she owes, and no good which she can do, either by spending her time needlessly in personal adorning, or by lavishing that money for dress which might do good to others, or by neglecting the proprieties of her station, and making herself offensive to others.
My question now is, given the context, can this word modest apply to the entire context?
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Thank you... this is the first time I have ever seen the 1 Timothy 2:9-10 reference used for women wearing dresses. If you are right, then I consider that a legitimate argument.
I personally believe cultural context should be taken into account, but can accept this as a valid argument for those who do not believe that.
I don't believe that the word has anything to do with dresses, considering that women didn't wear such attire for thousands of years after that verse was written, although I agree that it means 'flowing garments'.
Consider, however, that women in those days wore such attire (as did the men), so for Paul to write that using such particular language only makes sense, given the apparel worn at the time.
I don't believe that Paul wrote that verse meaning that women should wear that attire for all time, and I'm sure that if he wrote such a verse where men are mentioned that the argument against following that verse would go along the lines of their excuse as to why they don't kiss their brethren.
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I've gone and done it now! I'm on Facebook!!!
I posted this within another thread and didn't get a response, and I would honestly like to know the answer so I am posting it again here.
Why is it that the "cut" of a robe was enough to separate gender in biblical times, but the "cut" of trousers is not enough to separate gender in modern times... and if we go down the modesty path here, then neither men nor women should wear pants. Should not men and women be equally modest?
Some people are so funny with their answers. I guess I'm just not the funny type.
Women wore longer tunics and larger mantles than the men, and the outer garment included fringe around the bottom -- I suppose if the woman could afford it. The differences between men's and women's clothing in Biblical times was not in the SHAPE or FORM of the garments but in size, material, trim, etc. The Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia says:
"The dress of women was distinguished, not so much by kind, as by detail and quality of materials. They wore longer tunics and larger mantles than the men. The outer garment differed in elaboration, making it a distinctive robe."
Smith's Bible Dictionary says:
"The dress of the women differed from that of the men in regard to the outer garment, the inner garment being worn equally by both sexes. The garments of females were terminated by an ample border of fringe which concealed the feet."
The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament Era, by James S. Jeffers says:
"Men and women wore the same basic articles of clothing in Palestine. The distinction between the two was more in the color and other details. The tunic...similar to that of the Romans and Greeks, was the principal ordinary garment worn by men and women (Lk. 3:11; 6:29; 9:3; Acts 9:39)."
Pants were invented by the Medes & Persians in the 4th cen. B.C. They were invented for warmth and for riding horses. They were not invented for men; neither were men the first to wear them but were worn by BOTH sexes. Princesses of the royal court rode horses and wore pants and the princesses in the court of King Darius III were attended by women on horseback in pants. The Persians valued fine horses, and in that capacity pants spread to other nations. The Scythians, along with the Persians, were the first to wear pants. The Scythians were the first to ride into battle on horses. They invented cavalry.
By the NT era there were a slew of nations in the northern part of Europe that wore pants, and these people outside of Greece and Rome are referred to as the "barbarians of the north." You should know it was "barbarians" who sacked Rome and brought the Empire crumbling in the end. The Romans considered pants as indecent. Tight fitting pants exposing the shape of the legs were appalling to Romans. They called them "that sheath for the legs." In spite of their long held bias against pants, when the auxiliary soldiers began venturing further up north in pursuit of conquest they encountered the pants of the Britons and came back home with them. So, the mounted auxiliary soldiers wore them for wamth in the northern campaigns. Emperor Augustus wore them under his tunic to protect his sometimes fragile health, and Nero wore them under his tunic. But, as a whole, the Romans did not like pants, and the Greeks seem never to have worn them, except Alexander the Great when he formed his cavalry. The Romans were just not very "horsey-fied." Pants were just beneath their dignity. When Rome conquered a "barbarian" nation, they didn't wear their trousers anymore, but they wore the Roman "toga." Rome thought she "civilized" the nations.
Now, here is a good point, if I say so myself. The Apostle Paul was a well educated man and very much aware of the clothing of different nationalities. He did missionary work in some of the countries where people wore pants. But, Paul was a ROMAN CITIZEN and a citizen of Greek speaking Tarsus. He was at home in the Greco-Roman culture and would never have worn the "garb of the barbarian." Neither did he see pants as masculine attire. He mentions the Scythian along with "barbarian" in Col. 3:11. Paul would never have exposed the shape of his legs in pants nor drawn attention to his genital area with a modern day fly and zipper front!
Pants did not take on male association until after the "fall of Rome" and ONLY in European cultures. The tunic remained the basic garment until 1340. This is the date that clothing was separated into pants on men and dresses on women. Pants were made to symbolize "virility" and the dress to symbolize "fertility." Men began wearing TIGHTS, and the Catholic Church, which was the major influence over European culture, politics and society during the Dark and Middle Ages, required men's tights to have a "codpiece", which was a sheath that enclosed the male organ, and men began having the "codpiece" padded with a cotton called "bombast," and the "codpiece" was sometimes a metal shell or other wierd shape. Exposure of the shape of the legs and display of the male organ became the vogue. I will post 2 pictures of "codpieces", designed to make pants a symbol of "virility," a man's cruel and abusive power over women during the late Medieval period and onward, and male superiority. The long robe became associated with femininity with plunging necklines and styled like a maternity dress to make a woman look constantly pregnant, thus symbolizing "fertility." GOD HAD ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH PANTS BECOMING A MALE GARMENT AND THE DRESS A FEMALE GARMENT. It was a CULTURAL concept, backed up and enforced by the Catholic Church in the year of 1340!
If women dressed today the manner in which "modesty" was understood in the NT era of the Roman Empire they would cover completely from head to feet in the stola and the palla, for this was the epitome of "modesty" and the social convention of the day, the manner in which the class of respectable women, the matronae were dressed. Roman law defined "modest" and "immodest." Dress codes were legalized within the class system of the Empire. "Immodest" applied to prostitutes -- the meretrices. Matrons exposed no more of their body in public than does a Catholic Nun today. The meaning of "modesty" had its basis in social conventions and is changeable with culture and historical era. It was not a "holiness standard." The "separation" was not between Christian women and the "world" but between them and prostitutes. If we dress today conservatively or according to social convention, we are "modest."
twise in the ESV
1Co 12:23 and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty,
I have a problem with the katastole argument. Here is the reason why. First of all the garment refers to a mantle worn by Kings. Kings were male duh. But even more, the translation seems to be saying "they should dress modestly" and not "they should wear a modest dress"...The definition might better be that whatever clothing they wear it should be modest. Now consider this...most of our women don't wear dresses. They wear skirts with "shirts" or whatever one wants to give as a name for the tops they wear. Can skirts be termed long lowerin garments?
Of course they were to wear a katastole..what other word did they use back then? What word would they use for men back then since men did not wear pants either.
Also the context might play here too, Anyways, here is the ESV
1Ti 2:8 I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling;
1Ti 2:9 likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire,
1Ti 2:10 but with what is proper for women who profess godliness--with good works.
1Ti 2:11 Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.
1Ti 2:12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.
Strongs
katastolē kat-as-tol-ay' From G2687; a deposit, that is, (specifically) costume: - apparel.
Thayers
katastolē Thayer Definition: 1) a lowering, letting down
2) a garment let down, dress, attire
I wish I were at home as I have more tools to look this stuff up
Vincents
Καταστολή N.T.o. Once in lxx, Isa_61:3. Opinions differ as to the meaning. Some apparel, others guise or deportment= κατάστημα demeanour, Tit_2:3. There seems, on the whole, to be no sufficient reason for departing from the rendering of A.V. and Rev. Κοσμίῳ modest, seemly, Pasto. Note the word - play, κοσμεῖν κοσμίῳ.
A.T Robertson In modest apparel (en katastolēi kosmiōi). Katastolē is a late word (a letting down, katastellō, of demeanour or dress, arrangement of dress). Only here in N.T. Kosmios is old adjective from kosmos and means well-arranged, becoming. W. H. have adverb in margin (kosmiōs).
John Gills that women adorn themselves in modest apparel: the word rendered "apparel" signifies a long robe, which reaches down to the feet; and the word translated "modest" signifies that which is clean, neat, and decent, yea, beautiful and ornamental; and the sense of the apostle is, that he would not have them to come to public worship in rags, and in dirty and filthy garments, but that their bodies should be covered with clean and decent raiment; so the Israelites washed their clothes that they might be ready to meet the Lord at Mount Sinai, Exo_19:14. The Jews always appeared in their best clothes on the sabbath day; this is one of their rules: (n).
"for the honour of the sabbath, every man must be clothed, כסות נקייה, "with clean or neat apparel" and clothing on the weekday must not be as clothing on the sabbath day; and if a man can make no change, he must let down his talith (or upper garment, his cloak); so that his clothing may not be as the clothing of the weekdays, when that was girt up about him.''
Barnes In modest apparel - The word here rendered "modest" (κόσμιοςkosmios), properly relates to ornament, or decoration, and means that which is "well-ordered, decorous, becoming." It does not, properly, mean modest in the sense of being opposed to that which is immodest, or which tends to excite improper passions and desires, but that which is becoming or appropriate. The apostle does not positively specify what this would be, but he mentions somethings which are to be excluded from it, and which, in his view, are inconsistent with the true adorning of Christian females - "broidered hair, gold, pearls, costly array." The sense here is, that the apparel of females should be such as becomes them, or is appropriate to them. The word here used (κόσμιοςkosmios), shows that there should be due attention that it may be truly neat, fit, decorous. There is no religion in a negligent mode of apparel, or in inattention to personal appearance - anymore than there is in wearing gold and pearls; and a female may as truly violate the precepts of her religion by neglecting her personal appearance as by excessive attention to it. The true idea here is, that her attention to her appearance should be such that she will be offensive to no class of persons; such as to show that her mind is supremely fixed on higher and more important things, and such as to interfere with no duty which she owes, and no good which she can do, either by spending her time needlessly in personal adorning, or by lavishing that money for dress which might do good to others, or by neglecting the proprieties of her station, and making herself offensive to others.
My question now is, given the context, can this word modest apply to the entire context?
I wish I better understood how to use this forum to simply respond to a sentence or two. But, I'm not from the computer generation!
We cannot go backwards in time and dress ourselves in ancient Roman Empire or Biblical costume. It is so stupid of the Pentecostals and Apostolics to try to put themselves back into another historical era in their attempt to be "Apostolic." 1 Tim. 2:9 and 1 Peter 3:3-6 must be understood within the correct historical/cultural context.
The Early Church did not live in Heaven; they lived in the Roman Empire, and the Empire had a class system. We don't have a class system. Great Britian has a class system. People in the Roman Empire dressed their social class; you were what you wore, and Christian women were matrons, too, of the class of respectable, married wives. Conventionally speaking, women were of 2 extremes of the social scale: matrons or prostitutes -- meretrices. The prostitutes were in direct apposition to the matrons. Modesty in dress and adornment was NOT a "holiness standard" but the SOCIAL CONVENTION OF THE TIME. We do not have to dress like the ancient matronae to please God. We live in another historical era, and thank God, I don't live in the Roman Empire!
SUMPTUARY LAWS forbid any but harlots the adornment proscribed in 1 Tim. 2:9 and 1 Peter 3:3-6 Women were actually under legal limitations on the amount of money they could spend on personal adornment, and laws prohibited "ostentation." The amount of jewelry they could wear in public was restricted by weight. The two Scripture texts are referring to the OSTENTATION of the sacred prostitutes, or the hetarae. Prostitutes were exempt from all sumptuary laws, and the look of the sacred prostitutes, and Ephesus was full of them connected with Diana's temple -- Ephesus is where 1 Tim. was sent -- was "ostentation". In other words, their look was way, way overdone. They had jewelry hanging all over them, they reeked with perfume, they wore expensive, imported transparent dresses with nothing underneath. The fabric was like a gauze-type, and their makeup was exaggerated and overly applied. It was the class of sacred prostitutes that Peter pointed to in 1 Peter 3:3-6
girly man
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