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THE BIBLE and the HOMOSEXUAL
© 1992 by Dean Worbois
The Bible does not speak of gays. Nor does it speak of the earth orbiting the sun. Sexual identity was not a concept of biblical times.
It speaks of homosexual acts only when they are part of sacred prostitution, idolatry, promiscuity, seducing children, rape, or violating hospitality. It condemns all such acts, whether heterosexual, homosexual, or having nothing to do with sex.
Of the thousands and hundreds of words, pages, stories, laws, and commandments in the Bible, very few deal with homosexual acts. A little study of history reveals these references are fewer than we have come to believe.
The Sodom Story:
Probably no story in the Bible has been used more to persecute homosexuals than the story of Sodom. By the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas had come to see all disasters of any kind as God's wrath at homosexual sin. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, collapsing buildings, runaway horses, women falling into ditches - all these and more were understood to be expressions of God's displeasure at "the wickedness of Sodom."
Yet in Old Testament times we never find references to the destruction of Sodom being equated with homosexual acts. For these references we must look to the last centuries before Christ.
In the two centuries before Christ, the Hebrews became better acquainted with the Hellenistic world as they traveled, traded, and settled in Asia Minor, Greece and Rome. Heterosexual and homosexual acts were traditional expressions of fertility worship in the Hellenistic world. Having been raised under the Holiness Laws, the Hebrews found these practices offensive. Among the Hebrew's reaction to these worship practices we find the first texts equating homosexual acts with Sodom. There are also references to the iniquity of sexual acts between Hebrews and Gentiles ("your union shall be like unto Sodom and Gomorrah")
By 50 AD we find the first time the sin of Sodom is associated with homosexual acts in general. In the Quaest. et Salut. in Genesis IV.31-37, Philo interpreted the Genesis word yãdhà as "servile, lawless and unseemly pederasty." Around 96 AD, Josephus first used the term sodomy to mean homosexual acts. From Antiquities: "They hated strangers, and abused themselves with Sodomitical practices."
Since Old Testament times did not equate the Sodom story with homosexual acts, what was the crime of Sodom - a crime worth the destruction of five thriving, wealthy cities on the fertile plains?
The crime was pride. And it was inhospitality.
We have to remember the Hebrews were a nomad people in a dry, hostile environment. Weather and suspicious neighbors made hospitality a matter of survival. Being welcomed in a stranger's home or tent could mean the difference between life and death.
Throughout the Old Testament, Sodom is held up as a lesson in wickedness that deserves utter destruction for reasons other than homosexual acts. Examples: Ezekiel 16:49 - 50, "Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good." Isaiah tells of lack of justice. Jeremiah emphasizes moral and ethical laxity. The Deuterocanonical books identify the sin as pride and inhospitality; in Wisdom 19:13-14, we read "...whereas the men of Sodom received not the strangers when they came among them." In Ecclesiasticus 16:8 the sin is recognized as pride: "He did not spare the people among whom Lot was living, whom he detested for their pride." In the New Testament, too, there is reference to Sodom and inhospitality: In Luke 10:10-13, Christ talks about cities that are inhospitable to his disciples. He warns: "...it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that city." It's not until the very late books of 2 Peter (2:4) and Jude (6), that sex is considered a sin of Sodom. These books were written several generations after the deaths of the apostles and were talking about the transgression of the natural order of life when angelic and human beings have heterosexual relations - a major concern to the popular Stoic philosophy of the time.
Not only are there no references to homosexual acts when Scripture refers to Sodom, there are no references to Sodom when the Scriptures refer to homosexuality. There are several biblical passages we've come to understand as condemning homosexual acts. Not one of these gives Sodom as an example of the result of homosexual behavior. Considering how often Sodom was used as an example of the result of wicked behavior, it's apparent that biblical times did not see homosexual acts as the important lesson of the destruction of Sodom.
How did the lesson of Sodom become so identified with homosexual acts that the very word for one of those acts became Sodomy? The answer is in the Hebrew word: yãdhà.
Yãdhà has two meanings: "to know" and "engage in coitus." Of 943 times yãdhà is used in the Old Testament, only ten times is it used to mean sexual intercourse, and all of these are heterosexual coitus. The Old Testament uses the word shãkhabh to mean homosexual acts and bestiality.
Lot was a resident alien in Sodom. When Lot invited strangers into his home, the townspeople approached Lot and demanded "Bring them out unto us, that we may know them (yãdhà)." Judging from the biblical references we've just discussed, it seems the townspeople were asking to get to know the credentials and intentions of strangers in their city.
The absolute sacredness of a guest was a principle well known to Lot. Lot also understood the way crowds give in to hostile acts against outsiders (see Judges 19:1- 21:25 for a similar tale of hostility to strangers.) So he protected his guests and refused to hand them over to the crowd. When the crowd insisted, he offered his two daughters as the most expedient diversion for a hostile situation.
The Letters of Paul:
The New Testament has three main references to homosexual acts. These references are not found in the disciples' accounts of Christ's teachings. Rather they are found in the letters of an early convert. Paul sent these letters to early Christian communities: the Romans, the Corinthians, and to Timothy. Paul's philosophy, his reaction to foreign culture, and his understanding of Jewish history all influenced these letters.
The disciples were mostly simple fishermen. But Paul was highly educated, especially in philosophy. Stoicism was a popular philosophy in the first century AD and Paul was one of its avid teachers.
"Reason" was the soul of the Stoic world. God was seen as logos (reason) spread through the heavens. Nature was not instinct, but reason expressed in biology. To "live according to nature" (meaning reason) was to become united with the divine. Whatever distracted from living the reasonable life was evil: the passions of pleasure, pity, sorrow, desire, and love were irrational and, therefore, unnatural. Affectionate and sexual relationships were "unnatural" because they bred passions.
Some results of Christian Stoicism were: Monks separated themselves from society to achieve the ideal state of emotional indifference. The male became the soul (natural reason) of heterosexual relationships while the female became the body (unnatural passion). The Eve story became symbolic of temptation and lust. Females were seen as mutilated males, this "accident" often caused by warm winds blowing at the time of planting the seed. Christian philosophers declared that Christians entered marriage only for the reason of having children. St. Augustine came to identify any sexual pleasure or attraction as sinful passion, saying the "normal exercise of the will" would have the husband lie calmly on his wife and procreation would occur without disturbing the hymen; the semen would enter through it the same way menstrual blood flows from a virgin .
This is the same Stoicism Paul was teaching when he wrote letters to early Christian communities. Culturally, Paul was raised a conservative Jew in Palestine. The society he had been raised in was shaped by the Holiness Laws and he did not understand much of the worship of the Hellenists. When he traveled to Asia Minor, Greece and Rome as a Christian, he reacted to the foreign cultures with shock and contempt.
Paul's understanding of Jewish history was shaped by the teachings of Hebrews who themselves were reacting to Hellenistic society. As we've seen when considering the Sodom story, about 300 years before Paul's letters the Hebrews were giving new meaning to traditional stories. Paul took these new meanings as tradition.
Paul's letters consider homosexual acts to be the result of idolatry, reasoning that only when abandoning the true god for idol worship could a person abandon what Paul considered sexual "nature." His main concern was idolatry, not the sexual acts.
Considering Paul's Stoic philosophy, his shock at Gentile worship practices, and his understanding of idolatry, it's surprising he condemned homosexual acts in so few of his many letters to Christian communities - and only in brief passages.
Even then, Paul's use of Greek makes his messages very confusing. In fact, one test of whether a passage was truly written by Paul is whether the Greek is used in confusing ways.
In 1 Corinthians 6:9, he used malakoi, which literally means "soft" and was used in moral contexts for "loose" and "lacking self control." In 1 Corinthians 6:9 and in 1 Timothy 1:10, he used arsenokoitai, which was the first time the plural noun had been used.
In Romans 1:26, Paul called homosexual activity para phusin. The English translation is usually: "against nature." But Paul's understanding of "nature" was based on Stoic philosophy, and is not the understanding we have today. To Stoics, "nature" was reason. Paul always associated the word "nature" with cultural heritage and religious teachings. In Galatians, Romans, and Ephesians he refers to Jews being Jews by nature, Gentiles being uncircumcised by nature, and all of us being children of wrath by nature. Paul saw nature as a condition of social training in 1 Corinthians, 11:14: "Does not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?" When he uses para phusin, Paul seems to use a Stoic term based on "nature" in the place of the Old Testament word toevah. Toevah was the concept of what is not proper according to Jewish law and custom.
At the time of Paul's letters there were names for people who did homosexual acts (arrenomanes, kinaidos, paiderastes, paidophthoro, pallakos and others). Paul never used these words in his letters.
Scripture and Homosexuality:
Considering these cultural and historical facts, it's surprising Scripture has so few references to homosexual acts. What's not surprising is that these references always condemn homosexual behavior.
But Scripture never condemns homosexual behavior by itself. It is condemned when practicing idolatry or sacred prostitution. It is condemned when promoting promiscuity. It is condemned when forcing violent rape or seducing children. And it is condemned when violating a guests' right to dignity as a male.
Also, Scriptural references only speak of homosexual acts - not homosexual people. Not until the Revised Standard Version of the Bible (revised from the King James version in 1885) do we find references to homosexuals themselves. These occur in translating the Greek words "malakoi" and "arsenokoitai" in Paul's letters. Never is the issue of homosexual behavior between loving, homosexual partners addressed in Scripture. The reason is simple: biblical cultures did not have knowledge of homosexuality as a psychological identity. In biblical times homosexuality was known only by the acts people committed, not as a sexual personality. A person born heterosexual assumed homosexual acts to be something people did for dominance or in perversion of their inner identity.
Back to the Subject at Hand
THE BIBLE and the HOMOSEXUAL
© 1992 by Dean Worbois
The Bible does not speak of gays. Nor does it speak of the earth orbiting the sun. Sexual identity was not a concept of biblical times.
It speaks of homosexual acts only when they are part of sacred prostitution, idolatry, promiscuity, seducing children, rape, or violating hospitality. It condemns all such acts, whether heterosexual, homosexual, or having nothing to do with sex.
Of the thousands and hundreds of words, pages, stories, laws, and commandments in the Bible, very few deal with homosexual acts. A little study of history reveals these references are fewer than we have come to believe.
The Sodom Story:
Probably no story in the Bible has been used more to persecute homosexuals than the story of Sodom. By the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas had come to see all disasters of any kind as God's wrath at homosexual sin. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, collapsing buildings, runaway horses, women falling into ditches - all these and more were understood to be expressions of God's displeasure at "the wickedness of Sodom."
Yet in Old Testament times we never find references to the destruction of Sodom being equated with homosexual acts. For these references we must look to the last centuries before Christ.
In the two centuries before Christ, the Hebrews became better acquainted with the Hellenistic world as they traveled, traded, and settled in Asia Minor, Greece and Rome. Heterosexual and homosexual acts were traditional expressions of fertility worship in the Hellenistic world. Having been raised under the Holiness Laws, the Hebrews found these practices offensive. Among the Hebrew's reaction to these worship practices we find the first texts equating homosexual acts with Sodom. There are also references to the iniquity of sexual acts between Hebrews and Gentiles ("your union shall be like unto Sodom and Gomorrah")
By 50 AD we find the first time the sin of Sodom is associated with homosexual acts in general. In the Quaest. et Salut. in Genesis IV.31-37, Philo interpreted the Genesis word yãdhà as "servile, lawless and unseemly pederasty." Around 96 AD, Josephus first used the term sodomy to mean homosexual acts. From Antiquities: "They hated strangers, and abused themselves with Sodomitical practices."
Since Old Testament times did not equate the Sodom story with homosexual acts, what was the crime of Sodom - a crime worth the destruction of five thriving, wealthy cities on the fertile plains?
The crime was pride. And it was inhospitality.
We have to remember the Hebrews were a nomad people in a dry, hostile environment. Weather and suspicious neighbors made hospitality a matter of survival. Being welcomed in a stranger's home or tent could mean the difference between life and death.
Throughout the Old Testament, Sodom is held up as a lesson in wickedness that deserves utter destruction for reasons other than homosexual acts. Examples: Ezekiel 16:49 - 50, "Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good." Isaiah tells of lack of justice. Jeremiah emphasizes moral and ethical laxity. The Deuterocanonical books identify the sin as pride and inhospitality; in Wisdom 19:13-14, we read "...whereas the men of Sodom received not the strangers when they came among them." In Ecclesiasticus 16:8 the sin is recognized as pride: "He did not spare the people among whom Lot was living, whom he detested for their pride." In the New Testament, too, there is reference to Sodom and inhospitality: In Luke 10:10-13, Christ talks about cities that are inhospitable to his disciples. He warns: "...it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that city." It's not until the very late books of 2 Peter (2:4) and Jude (6), that sex is considered a sin of Sodom. These books were written several generations after the deaths of the apostles and were talking about the transgression of the natural order of life when angelic and human beings have heterosexual relations - a major concern to the popular Stoic philosophy of the time.
Not only are there no references to homosexual acts when Scripture refers to Sodom, there are no references to Sodom when the Scriptures refer to homosexuality. There are several biblical passages we've come to understand as condemning homosexual acts. Not one of these gives Sodom as an example of the result of homosexual behavior. Considering how often Sodom was used as an example of the result of wicked behavior, it's apparent that biblical times did not see homosexual acts as the important lesson of the destruction of Sodom.
How did the lesson of Sodom become so identified with homosexual acts that the very word for one of those acts became Sodomy? The answer is in the Hebrew word: yãdhà.
Yãdhà has two meanings: "to know" and "engage in coitus." Of 943 times yãdhà is used in the Old Testament, only ten times is it used to mean sexual intercourse, and all of these are heterosexual coitus. The Old Testament uses the word shãkhabh to mean homosexual acts and bestiality.
Lot was a resident alien in Sodom. When Lot invited strangers into his home, the townspeople approached Lot and demanded "Bring them out unto us, that we may know them (yãdhà)." Judging from the biblical references we've just discussed, it seems the townspeople were asking to get to know the credentials and intentions of strangers in their city.
The absolute sacredness of a guest was a principle well known to Lot. Lot also understood the way crowds give in to hostile acts against outsiders (see Judges 19:1- 21:25 for a similar tale of hostility to strangers.) So he protected his guests and refused to hand them over to the crowd. When the crowd insisted, he offered his two daughters as the most expedient diversion for a hostile situation.
The Letters of Paul:
The New Testament has three main references to homosexual acts. These references are not found in the disciples' accounts of Christ's teachings. Rather they are found in the letters of an early convert. Paul sent these letters to early Christian communities: the Romans, the Corinthians, and to Timothy. Paul's philosophy, his reaction to foreign culture, and his understanding of Jewish history all influenced these letters.
The disciples were mostly simple fishermen. But Paul was highly educated, especially in philosophy. Stoicism was a popular philosophy in the first century AD and Paul was one of its avid teachers.
"Reason" was the soul of the Stoic world. God was seen as logos (reason) spread through the heavens. Nature was not instinct, but reason expressed in biology. To "live according to nature" (meaning reason) was to become united with the divine. Whatever distracted from living the reasonable life was evil: the passions of pleasure, pity, sorrow, desire, and love were irrational and, therefore, unnatural. Affectionate and sexual relationships were "unnatural" because they bred passions.
Some results of Christian Stoicism were: Monks separated themselves from society to achieve the ideal state of emotional indifference. The male became the soul (natural reason) of heterosexual relationships while the female became the body (unnatural passion). The Eve story became symbolic of temptation and lust. Females were seen as mutilated males, this "accident" often caused by warm winds blowing at the time of planting the seed. Christian philosophers declared that Christians entered marriage only for the reason of having children. St. Augustine came to identify any sexual pleasure or attraction as sinful passion, saying the "normal exercise of the will" would have the husband lie calmly on his wife and procreation would occur without disturbing the hymen; the semen would enter through it the same way menstrual blood flows from a virgin .
This is the same Stoicism Paul was teaching when he wrote letters to early Christian communities. Culturally, Paul was raised a conservative Jew in Palestine. The society he had been raised in was shaped by the Holiness Laws and he did not understand much of the worship of the Hellenists. When he traveled to Asia Minor, Greece and Rome as a Christian, he reacted to the foreign cultures with shock and contempt.
Paul's understanding of Jewish history was shaped by the teachings of Hebrews who themselves were reacting to Hellenistic society. As we've seen when considering the Sodom story, about 300 years before Paul's letters the Hebrews were giving new meaning to traditional stories. Paul took these new meanings as tradition.
Paul's letters consider homosexual acts to be the result of idolatry, reasoning that only when abandoning the true god for idol worship could a person abandon what Paul considered sexual "nature." His main concern was idolatry, not the sexual acts.
Considering Paul's Stoic philosophy, his shock at Gentile worship practices, and his understanding of idolatry, it's surprising he condemned homosexual acts in so few of his many letters to Christian communities - and only in brief passages.
Even then, Paul's use of Greek makes his messages very confusing. In fact, one test of whether a passage was truly written by Paul is whether the Greek is used in confusing ways.
In 1 Corinthians 6:9, he used malakoi, which literally means "soft" and was used in moral contexts for "loose" and "lacking self control." In 1 Corinthians 6:9 and in 1 Timothy 1:10, he used arsenokoitai, which was the first time the plural noun had been used.
In Romans 1:26, Paul called homosexual activity para phusin. The English translation is usually: "against nature." But Paul's understanding of "nature" was based on Stoic philosophy, and is not the understanding we have today. To Stoics, "nature" was reason. Paul always associated the word "nature" with cultural heritage and religious teachings. In Galatians, Romans, and Ephesians he refers to Jews being Jews by nature, Gentiles being uncircumcised by nature, and all of us being children of wrath by nature. Paul saw nature as a condition of social training in 1 Corinthians, 11:14: "Does not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?" When he uses para phusin, Paul seems to use a Stoic term based on "nature" in the place of the Old Testament word toevah. Toevah was the concept of what is not proper according to Jewish law and custom.
At the time of Paul's letters there were names for people who did homosexual acts (arrenomanes, kinaidos, paiderastes, paidophthoro, pallakos and others). Paul never used these words in his letters.
Scripture and Homosexuality:
Considering these cultural and historical facts, it's surprising Scripture has so few references to homosexual acts. What's not surprising is that these references always condemn homosexual behavior.
But Scripture never condemns homosexual behavior by itself. It is condemned when practicing idolatry or sacred prostitution. It is condemned when promoting promiscuity. It is condemned when forcing violent rape or seducing children. And it is condemned when violating a guests' right to dignity as a male.
Also, Scriptural references only speak of homosexual acts - not homosexual people. Not until the Revised Standard Version of the Bible (revised from the King James version in 1885) do we find references to homosexuals themselves. These occur in translating the Greek words "malakoi" and "arsenokoitai" in Paul's letters. Never is the issue of homosexual behavior between loving, homosexual partners addressed in Scripture. The reason is simple: biblical cultures did not have knowledge of homosexuality as a psychological identity. In biblical times homosexuality was known only by the acts people committed, not as a sexual personality. A person born heterosexual assumed homosexual acts to be something people did for dominance or in perversion of their inner identity.
