This Page Last Updated December 2nd, 2008 (new style reckoning)
Rules for Hair and Beards
Leviticus
Leviticus 21:5 And ye shall not shave your head
for the dead with a baldness on the top; and they shall not shave their beard
(LXX)
Deuteronomy 22:5 The apparel of a man shall
not be on a woman, neither shall a man put on a woman’s dress; for every
one that does these things is an abomination to the Lord thy God (LXX) –
shaving is making oneself effeminate.
Kings II 10:4-5 And Annon took the
servants of David, and shaved their beards, and cut off their garments in the
midst as far as their haunches, and sent them away. And they brought David word
concerning the men; and he sent to meet them, for the men were greatly
dishonored: and the king said, “Remain in
Matt.
Matt.
Apostolic Constitutions Book I Sec II (from
That
beauty which God and nature has bestowed on thee, do not further
beautify… It is not lawful for thee, a believer and a man of God, to
permit the hair of thy head to grow long, and to brush it up together, nor to
suffer it to spread abroad, nor to puff it up, nor by nice combing and platting
to make it curl and shine; since that is contrary to the law, which says thus,
in its additional precepts: “You shall not make to yourselves curls and
round rasures.” Nor may men destroy the hair of their beards, and
unnaturally change the form of a man. For the law says: “Ye shall not mar
your beards.” For God the Creator has made this decent for women, but has
determined that it is unsuitable for men. But if thou do these things to please
men, in contradiction to the law, thou wilt be abominable with God, who created
thee after His own image. If, therefore, thou wilt be acceptable to God,
abstain from all those things which He hates, and do none of those things that
are unpleasing to Him.
Sec VI
continues: Propose to thyself to distinguish what rules were from the law of
nature, and what were added afterwards, the additional rules were introduced
and given in the wilderness to the Israelites after the making of the calf; for
the law contains those precepts which were spoken by the Lord God before
the people fell into idolatry, and made a calf – that is, the ten
commandments. But as to those bonds which were further laid upon them after
they had sinned, do not thou draw them upon thyself: for our Saviour came for
no other reason but that He might deliver from wrath that which was reserved
for them, that He might fulfill the Law and the Prophets, and that He might
abrogate or change those secondary bonds which were superadded to the rest of the
law.
[notation – it is important to recognize that the term
“natural law” can have several meanings such as laws of nature that
control the universe and also the instinct of all creatures for survival. I
would use the term “natural law” on this page in a strictly ethical
meaning, as in the code of conduct given by God to us moral creatures. Even
Rudder interpretation of Apostolic Canon 85 - Michael, too, the patriarch of Constantinople, sirnamed Cerularius, together with the synod attending him, living A.D. 1053, adopted testimony against the cutting off of the beard which is found in Book I of the Apostolical Injunctions, ch. 3, reading as follows: “Ye shall not depilate your beards: for God the Creator made this becoming in women, but unsuited to men.”
St. Clement of
“How womanly it is for one who is a man to comb himself and shave himself for the sake of fine effect, and to arrange his hair at a mirror, shave his cheeks, pluck hairs out of them, and smooth them! For God wished women to be smooth and to rejoice in their locks alone, growing spontaneously, as a horse in his mane. But He has adorned man, like the lions, with a beard, a sign of strength and rule. For it is not lawful to pluck out the beard, man’s natural and noble ornament. A youth with his first beard: for with this, youth is most graceful. By and by he is anointed, delighting in the beard ‘on which descended’ the prophetic, ‘ointment’ with which Aaron was honored. And it becomes him who is rightly trained, on whom peace has pitched its tent, to preserve peace also with his hair…For God wished women to be smooth, and rejoice in their locks alone growing spontaneously, as a horse in his mane; but has adorned man, like the lions, with a beard...
”
More from St. Clement of
St. Clement, in another work, The Stromata, under the
subsection entitled Elucidations, describes the
various stages, consisting of seven years each, in a
mans life, as he progresses from infancy to death, and
says that during the third stage, when a man is from
15 to 21 years of age, is when the beard begins to
grow, which is a sign of a man’s passing from
childhood to adulthood:
“And in the third, the beard on growing cheek, with
down o’erspreads the bloom of changing skin.
”
Lactantius (appr. 250-320 A.D.), tutor of Emperor St.
Constantine’s son Crispus, writes in his work The
Workmanship of God, ch. VII:
“Then the nature of the beard contributes in an
incredible degree to distinguish the maturity of
bodies, or to the distinction of sex, or to the beauty
of manliness and strength.
”
St. Cyprian of Carthage also plainly reaffirms, in Treatise XII,
in his Three Books of Testimonies Against the Jews, in
which he compiles a list of 120 things that
God-pleasers should be doing, states from 250 AD:
“84. The beard must not be plucked. ‘You will not deface
the figure of your beard’.”
Again, in his Treatise on The Lapsed, St. Cyprian
notes that one of the practices of those fallen away
from sound faith is the disfiguring of the beard:
“Among the priests there was no devotedness of
religion; among the ministers there was no sound
faith: in their works there was no mercy; in their
manners there was no discipline. In men, their beards
were defaced; in women, their complexion was dyed: the
eyes were falsified from what God’s hand had made
them; their hair was stained with a falsehood.”
As early in Christian history as the year 250 AD, during the reign
of Emperor Decius, we learn in A Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the
Sixth Century A.D. that “by the confessions of the great Christian
teachers, who owned that the church deserved its sufferings, the lives of its
members did not then present a very lovely aspect. Christian men were
effeminate and self-indulgent, trimming their beard and dyeing their hair;
Christian women painted their faces, and brightened their eyes with
cosmetics.”
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From http://www.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/Lubok/lubok.html |
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Above on the right side the barber is saying, “Let me cut
your beard” The Old Believer on the left side says, “Barber, respect
that I do not want my beard shaved or cut otherwise you will be in
trouble.” |
Old Believer men see their beards as “a mark of humility”. p.127, Solovki, by Roy Robson, 2004.
Little Russian Philokalia, Vol. 3, St.
Herman. Pages 71-72 Metropolitan Gabriel (Petrov) of
The
QUES.25. Concerning those who shave their heads and beards:
Through our sins, weakness and indifference and negligence have come into the
world. At the present time men who call themselves Christians and are thirty
years of age and older shave their heads, beards, and whiskers, and wear
clothing and costumes taken from lands of dissident faith; how then can a
Christian be recognized? . . .
CHAP.40. Concerning the sacred rules on the shaving of beards: The
sacred rules likewise forbid all Orthodox Christians to shave their beards and
to cut their whiskers. For such is not an Orthodox but a
Latin and heretical tradition . . . and the rules of the apostles and church
fathers strictly forbid and denounce this . . .
The Orthodox Church of England would tonsure a youth’s new fully
grown beard and the service recites Psalm 133:1-2 (LXX) See now! what is so good, or what so pleasant, as for brethren to
dwell together? It is as ointment on the head,
that ran down to the beard, even the beard of Aaron; that ran down to
the fringe of his clothing. – With the Antiphons: Blessed art thou in the city and blessed
in the field and blessed are thy remains. Blessed shalt thou be entering in and
going out. Glory to... Blessed art thou... Also Glory and
majesty shalt Thou lay upon him, O Lord.
1 Corinthians
It says in a document titled, The
The Greeks were shocked to find out “that Latin priests shave off their beards...”.
(from the Book; The Pillars of Orthodoxy by the Holy Apostels Convent). Shaving the beard was a pagan custom. One of the reasons of the Anathema from the Pope on
N. N. Voekov,
The Church,
Up to a point even the Latin’s had beards and Jerome is a good testimony against their current practice of cutting the beard. The western church father Jerome is today called a saint by the Latin church. His tendencies toward the antichrist Masoretic text are more than problematic, but he did mention the beard in a Christian manner. His writing Against
Jovinianus, attests to the great purpose of why man was given the
beard: “Why are you distinguished from the female sex by a beard, hair, and other peculiarities of person? How is it that you have not swelling bosoms, and are not broad at the hips, narrow at the chest? Your voice is rugged, your speech rough, your eyebrows more shaggy. To no purpose you have all these manly qualities...” Also Jerome exlains the wrong teachings about the resurrection in his To Pammachius Against John of Jerusalem, “...if there is to be the same flesh and if our bodies are to be the same, there will again be males and females, there will again be marriage; men will have the shaggy eyebrow and the flowing beard.”
A Greek saying: “There are two kinds of people in this world that go
around beardless - boys and women, and I am neither one.”
We do not see a prophet, apostle, priest or any man of God that
did not have a beard, with the exception of Joseph; he was forced to shave,
being a prisoner and seeing the Pharaoh (according to Egyptian law). The only
other time a godly man was without facial hair was during purification rituals.
Shaving is not natural, needing constant attention. Cut throat razors are just
that. As with the ways of this world that are contrary to the ways of God, they
have a high price. God made the hair of a woman and beard of a man as a
differentiation – to delineate between us. Men…grow a natural beard
as God intended, it is a disgrace to cut it. As with all things, let’s be
conforming ourselves to the everlasting ways of the Creator, not going right or
left, then we shall have the blessings that are for those who obey God. Seeing the evidence it is shameful for a man to
shave, therefore, let us rejoice in the ways of the Lord. For men to have a
beard is to all the more to be imitating Christ. To do otherwise is contrary to
the Lord, antichrist, devilish, evil and wicked. We are simply not allowed to
shave. As God made man in His image we, in a round about way, mutilate God if
we cut beards. It is mockery of God for a man to have his beard removed, and so
it is that this was one of the sufferings the Lord Himself encountered. The
holy prophet Isaiah foretold of the trial of Christ just before His
crucifixion, of how the guards plucked out His beard to mock His good practice
of keeping one. “I gave My back to the smiters, and My cheeks to them that plucked out My beard: I
did hide my face from shame and spitting.” Isaiah 50:6 If it be the will of God may we likewise suffer in
more ways than He did. The beard is a sign of beauty particular to man and to not have a beard would, conversely, mar the beauty and make a man ugly in the sense that one is trying to improve on what God has done. Growing a beard is an obligation on men. Men who cut or trimmed their beard have been compared to a eunuch.
The Romanov, Peter the Great, that Russian snake, was so western minded that he forced men to shave, or else face a “luxury” beard tax. The tax collectors at the gates of each city took 100 rubles from those above the lower class and a kopec from all the rest. In 1705, after having paid to have a beard, a man would be given a Beard-tax coin to show he had already fulfilled the law. If the coin was lost it would be required to pay again. Clergy may have been an exception to this law and could be where the false notion that only clergy were required to have beards came from. Here is a page showing both sides of a gilded round Beard License Tokens and here below you can see a square one.
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Peter’s new westernized Slavonic alphabet reads: “The Beard is an Unnecessary Burden” This also illustrates Russia’s bad change of practice in calendar dating to the more modern Latin idea of Anno Domini in dating from Christ, as opposed to the Apostolic way of dating from the Creation of Adam. New Year recognition was changed to the new style Gregorian 1st of January, as opposed to the old Julian calendar Christians had used from the their start. Peter the [not so] Great is also the Russian Tsar who is responible for first allowing the building of Roman Catholic churches in Russia. |
In the book titled Peter the Great,
by Robert Massie we will see on page 244: For most Orthodox Russians, the beard
was a fundamental symbol of religious belief and self-respect. It was an
ornament given by God, worn by the prophets, the apostles and by Jesus himself.
Ivan the Terrible expressed the traditional Muscovite feeling when he declared,
“To shave the beard is a sin that the blood of all the martyrs cannot
cleanse. It is to deface the image of man created by God.” Priests
generally refused to bless men without beards; they were considered shameful
and beyond the pale of Christendom. Patriarch
The Pomorsky Old Believers from Pennsylvania caught the eye of the National Geographic Magazine in the July, 1935 issue. They noted that the Old Believers keep the rules from Scripture that men may not cut their beards and women may not bob their hair. Here is an image of the color plates.
From the Service of the Ordination: 3) In the questioning period of the candidate before the ordination, the candidate to the priesthood, in the presence of his spiritual father makes the following promise: “I promise to wear the clothing appropriate to my priestly rank, not to cut my hair nor my beard... for through such unseemly behavior I risk belittling my rank and tempting believers” (Promise #5). It is important to note here that, in confirmation of his promise the candidate kisses the Gospel and the Cross and signs his name.
In Antioch, the place where the followers of Christ were first called Christians, a clean shaven man is believed to have been abandoned by his wife, which brings him to act in this unbecoming manner.
In Byzantium and Rhodes the shaving of the beard was prohibited by law - Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898)
Hair is closely connected with many of the brain functions - for instance memory. Samson wore his hair long, and the biblical allegory shows that health and strength and the very life are connected with the length of the hair. If a cat is shaved it will die in nine cases out of ten. A dog whose coat is not interfered with lives longer and is more intelligent than one whose coat is shaven. To see where the information in this paragraph is from click this link The Spirituality of Hair.
Here is another thought, about
goatee’s. As the Lord will separate the sheep from the goats (Matt.
25:23) it is not at all a good idea to be thinking that we should have such a
thing as a goatee. The devil is often represented by westerners as having a
goatee. There just is no good reason for the sinful habit of trimming or
shaving the beard or mustache, no matter who it is that
says otherwise. It is a real shame to see the mandates to shave. The world is
quickly coming to its end. If a man practiced shaving or trimming his beard he
would be temporarily excommunicated from worship until he had stopped for a
good amount of time. Such a man would not be allowed Christian burial unless he
began to practice correctly the way of God.
I have worked to show the distinct Christian perspective about beards but believe it important to show other views, such as Jewish. Everyone gets at least one thing right. This means there is no excuse for not getting everything right. Half-truth is no truth at all. So here are futher references about beards.
According to the Zohar, the beard is considered to be a channel of holiness and blessing and therefore is not to be shaven or trimmed by any method.
Rebbe Yisroel Newman, known as the Tzemach Tzedek, said that any means of removing hair from a man’s face is forbidden. Period.
Responsa 93, a commentary on the Yoreh De’ah legal code, ruled that shaving a beard is against Halacha, or Jewish law.
Negative Mizvah #44 states that one should not shave.
In the kabbalah [mysticism], the beard is said to represent on earth the “beard of the Holy Ancient One” on high, that is, the stage in the unfolding of the sefirot [divine emanations] at which the divine grace, symbolized by the strands of the beard, begins to flow throughout all creation. In kabbalistic circles the beard becomes a sacred object and some kabbalists would not even remove a single hair from their beard. The statement that, according to the kabbalah, there is no need to wear a beard outside the Holy Land, is unwarranted. Hasidism follows the kabbalah and all Hasidim wear long beards and sidelocks.
The Talmud describes the beard as an “adornment of the face” and implies that a beardless man cannot be said to be handsome.
The 11th-century North African sage Maimonides understands the beard as a protest against idolatry, conjecturing that the heathen priests shaved their beards.
In the UK the compulsory rule to shave in their military is lifted for all Sikh on religious grounds. Guruka Singh explains the purpose of the beard for men in this YouTube video saying that it protects.
The heretic Thomas More was beheaded in 1535 when he refused to sign the Act of Supremacy which declared the heretic Henry VIII Supreme Head of the Church in England. A comment he is believed to have made to the executioner is that his beard was completely innocent of any crime, and did not deserve the axe; he then positioned his beard so that it would not be harmed. This is gleaned from Henry Hyde, US Congressman (9 September 1988). United States Congressional Record, Conference Report on H.R. 4783, Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriation Act,
Proceedings of the 100th Congress, Second Volume 134, Page H7333 (noting that when Thomas More was beheaded by Henry VIII, More gave notoriety to his beard with his famous line. He said to the axeman, “Be careful of my beard, it hath committed no treason”).
[1] The
Rudder, trans. D. Cummings, p.403