Five Texts in Context: The Bible on Homosexuality
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| The cult of Isis |
Two verses in Leviticus prohibit lying with a man as with women (18:22; 20:13), but this is framed as a purity rule required of Hebrews in the Promised Land (18:24) and appears as a transgression nowhere else in the Old Testament. Homosexual practice itself is apparently not egregious enough to mention elsewhere.
Prophets such as Amos condemn Israel for its transgressions, but focus on neglect of the poor and personal luxury. The only sexual sin Amos mentions is a father and son sharing a girl (2:7). Homosexuality doesn't merit comment in the Ten Commandments, which condemn forms of heterosexuality: adultery and coveting a neighbor's wife. Both are offenses against the rights of patriarchs, against wives as family property. Stories such as that of Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38) and Abraham and Hagar (Genesis 16) show that Hebrew men had sex outside of marriage with prostitutes and slaves. The inequity of this seems particularly egregious by modern standards when Judah threatens to kill Tamar, a widow in his household, in an "honor killing" for a transgression that he himself committed. Unless we equally condemn shellfish, pork, and blended fabrics, the Levitical prohibitions are weak cases.
Male-supremacist cultures of the ancient Mediterranean accepted same-sex coupling but devalued a feminized partner, so that the Leviticus prohibition against using a male as a female forbids humiliating a man. The receptive male partner in Mediterranean culture was typically a boy or slave, a social inferior, while the active partner remained a respectable patriarch. Bisexuality was assumed.
The myth of the contending of Seth and Horus from nearby Egypt, written at about the time of David, assumes this dynamic. Seth has killed his brother Osiris and expects to succeed him as king, but these plans are disrupted when their sister Isis impregnates herself on Osiris' reanimated body and gives birth to Horus. Osiris retires to rule the dead, while Seth and Horus argue for eighty years before a council of the gods over who should be king. In one episode, the gods send the uncle and nephew home to eat, drink, and stop arguing, and they end up sleeping together. Seth ejaculates between Horus' loins, but the boy intercepts the semen in his hand and runs to his mother, Isis, who cuts off his hand (god parts grow back) and throws it away. Then she uses "sweet ointment" to make her son's penis stiffen and ejaculate into a pot, which she secretly empties on lettuce in Seth's garden. Seth eats it. Back before the gods, Seth declares that Horus isn't a suitable king because, in effect, "I've screwed him."* The disgusted gods belch and spit on Horus, but Thoth, the god of truth, settles the matter with a charm that causes both men's semen to talk. Horus's, of course, speaks from inside the body of Seth (Gardner pp. 21-22). Note that neither man denies homosexual activity. The masculine sex act, even performed with a man, is no problem. Dominance is the issue. A man who screws a man is honored. A man who is screwed by a man is shamed.
There are three potential references to same-sex coupling in the New Testament (ignoring references to Sodom because gang raping guest-angels would be depraved even if they had vaginas). All three are in Pauline letters and condemn the activity they refer to, but recent commentators have concluded that, because of a combination of incompatible historic contexts and untranslatable terms, "Biblical judgments against homosexuality are not relevant to today's debate" (Robin Scroggs, quoted in De Young, p. 98). Of course, conservative commentators disagree. It's fair to say that a shifts in the burden of proof could vindicate either side, but advocates for a revisionist view of Biblical homosexuality do succeed in casting doubt on the relevance of Paul's remarks about a culture two thousand years ago. Situated within their context, what practices and spiritual or moral conditions does Paul condemn?
Paul's least ambiguous mention of same-sex activity, is in Romans 1:26-27, the only relevant passage mentioning women. The context is condemnation of an unnamed form of pagan worship. In verse 20, Paul asserts a theory of natural religion: "Since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen." This appeal to Neoplatonism as an early sort of Deism deprived pagans of any excuse when "their foolish hearts were darkened" and they became idolaters and "worshiped and served created things rather than the creator" (21-35). Because they worshipped gods shaped like birds and animals, "God gave them over to shameful lusts" and unnatural sex.
If we pluck verses 26-27 out of context, they may seem to condemn ordinary homosexuality, but, in full context, this interpretation makes no sense. Paul describes a cause-effect relationship: idol worship leads to unnatural sex. In this reading, the pagans in question misbehave because they worship idols, so the only sex condemned (in this passage anyway) is a specific form practiced by idolaters. The immediate cause is strong lust somehow visited by God in idolaters, but not in monotheists. Apparently, monotheists (according to the traditional reading) feel gay urges but their passions are mild enough to control. This would mean that today, in the absence of animal-worshipping pagans, homosexuality shouldn't be happening.
Finally, Paul lists character flaws to be found in the animal-worshippers he condemns. The list is horrific: they are "full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. . . . they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy." They even disobey parents! (Romans 1:29-32) The list is so over-the-top as to be comical. Whoever these irredeemable reprobates worshipping beast-gods are, homosexuality ranks among their lesser vices. Whoever Paul condemns, it can't be the nice lesbian couple next door or the honestly gay assistant minister at my church. There's a riddle here.
In a recent article, Robert Gnuse solves the riddle with research into cultic practices of Paul's day, which is a warning about reading scripture outside of its historical context. In the Hellenistic landscape of Paul's day, animal-headed gods were markers of Egyptian cults, the dominant one being that of Isis. The reference to women "exchanging natural intercourse for unnatural" (Romans 1:26) thus refers, not to lesbianism, but the technical virginity of priestesses in the temples of Isis, which were suppressed (and then revived under Caligula's patronage) shortly before Paul wrote due to the "loose morality" associated with them (Gnuse, p. 36). Goddess cults in competition with Christianity employed dildo-wearing priestesses and male priests who ecstatically castrated themselves and submitted to anal sex. Church fathers writing when pagan worship was still flourishing recognized these cults as the target of Paul's invective, which "should not be called forth in condemnation of gay and lesbian people in our society today" (Gnuse, p. 40). As a first-century Jew, Paul may well have disapproved of all non-reproductive sex, but that is not the point of his invective in Romans 1:26-27; it is, at most, a by-blow in his angry attack on the competing cult of Isis in Rome that practiced orgiastic rituals.
The final two texts are lists of mortal sins in two of Paul's letters (1 Corinthians 6:9-10; 1 Timothy 1:10). Most English translations of the first letter to the Corinthians (Here I quote the NIV) seem to unambiguously condemn gay sex: "Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men, nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God." But, of course, Paul did not write in English, and the English translation is questionable at several points. To begin with, "the sexually immoral" translates Greek pornois which originally meant prostitute. Commentators point out that the term acquired wider sexual application, so it probably should be translated whores.
The passage awkwardly translated "men who have sex with men" is actually malakoi oute arsenokoitai, literally 'soft (one) or man-bedder.' Whether the second term means one who beds men or simply a man who beds is debated. A traditional interpretation is that these refer to the passive and active members in homosexual sodomy, typically a boy and a man in Hellenic culture. But soft appears nowhere else in a sexual sense and refers three times in the Bible to luxurious clothing, so it might target people who are given to luxurious dress. Soft is soft, not clear. Arsenokoitai is an obscure Pauline coinage, a compound of male and beds, more obviously sexual, but the idea that it forms a doublet with malakoi and represents one of two expressions of homosexual orientation is questionable. One reading of the compound means a man with many beds, a promiscuous man, with no reference to the gender of his sex partners (Johnson). Logically, it could even mean a slothful man, an over-sleeper, but that seems unlikely. The grouping of arsenokoitai with criminal and malicious habits suggests that it condemns male prostitutes or seducers. In any case, the popular translation forces anti-gay sentiment where it may be absent, and at best is speculative, in the text.
In another verse read as anti-gay, Timothy 1:10, Paul simply repeats arsenokoitai in a vice list with patricides, matricides, murderers, and enslavers. Is the sweet gay kid in your office an arsenokoitai? Paul seems to have coined the term, so without going back and asking him, we can't be sure, but given the felonious company that his arsenokoitai keep, it seems unlikely. Again, it may refer to prostitution.
It is not just a matter of unclear wording but shifting cultural institutions. Gnuse agrees with Robert Gagnon that Paul, as a 1st-century Jew, would have opposed the homoerotic behavior of his day as a marker of pagan culture--especially the common Greek man-boy couplings--but institutions and practices evolve along with their spiritual implications. Paul may have had no concept of exclusive same-sex orientation, certainly not of same-sex marriage as conceived today. In our culture, would his attitude be different? Gnuse asks, "Would we ask Paul or extrapolate from his culturally conditioned beliefs what he felt about using medicine, flying in airplanes, or how the universe was constructed?" (p. 39) Where there is doubt, especially when ancient customs and common courtesy clash, Christians should risk erring on the side of love.
Dale Martin, a distinguished New Testament scholar, expresses it better than I could:
"Any interpretation of scripture that hurts people, oppresses people, or destroys people cannot be the right interpretation, no matter how traditional, historical, or exegetically respectable. There can be no debate about the fact that the church's stand on homosexuality has caused oppression, loneliness, self-hatred, violence, sickness, and suicide for millions of people. If the church wishes to continue with its traditional interpretation, it must demonstrate, not just claim, that it is more loving to condemn homosexuality than to affirm homosexuals. Can the church show that same-sex loving relationships damage those involved in them? Can the church give compelling reasons to believe that it really would be better for all lesbian and gay Christians to live alone, without the joy of intimate touch, without hearing a lover's voice when they go to sleep or awake? Is it really better for lesbian and gay teenagers to despise themselves and endlessly pray that their very personalities be reconstructed so they may experience romance like their straight friends?" (quoted in Via, pp. 37-38).
*Seth's actual wording is, "I have performed the deeds of war against him," a phrasing that Thoth and the other gods understand to involve emission of semen. Alan H. Gardner, translator of the Chester Beatty Papyri, No. 1, in which the story appears, connects this to "the supposed custom of violating defeated enemies." References to this in documents of the period are ambiguous, but Gardner cites incidents "generally talked about" in the "recent" Balkan war, "the active party being deemed a very fine fellow, whereas the sufferer was regarded as utterly dishonored" ( p. 22). Sexual humiliation of prisoners of war is not only an ancient custom, but is an ongoing practice often ignored by war tribunals (Feron). In this light, the threatened rape of angels in Sodom (Genesis 19) has almost nothing to do with homosexuality in the sense of orientation--the tendency to fall in love with persons of one's own gender--but is about sexual humiliation, the torture of strangers by a mob of men who remain nominally heterosexual, or at least normative.
References
De Young, James. "The Source and NT Meaning of Arsenokoitai, with Implications of Chisrian Ethics and Ministry." The Master's Seminary Journal 3(2), Fall 1992, 191-215.
Feron, Elise. "Wartime Sexual Violence Against Men: The Hidden Face of Warfare." https://www.rowmaninternational.com/blog/wartime-sexual-violence-against-men-the-hidden-face-of-warfare
Gardner, Alan H. The Library of A. Chester Beatty: Description of a Hieratic Papyrus with with a Mythological Story, Love-Songs, and Other Miscellaneous Text. Oxford U. P., 1931.
Gnuse, Robert. "Romans 1:26-27 Condemns the Cult of Isis, not Homosexuality." International Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Studies, 8(3), 2021, pp. 33-41.
Johnson, Paul R. "A New Look ar Arsenokoitais. Second Stone, January/February 1994.
Via, Dan A., and Robert A. J. Gagnon. Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views. Fortress, 2003.
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