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From: kimshi@wpi.WPI.EDU (Erik Currin)
Subject: Homosexuality and the Bible (hmmm...)
Message-ID: <1992Apr23.025949.18530@wpi.WPI.EDU>
Summary: It's not outright prohibited.
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1992 02:59:49 GMT
Lines: 279
Quote: "This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout
the entire civilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds
if not thousands of dollars to send everywhere. Please be sure you
know what you are doing."
Anyway, ask and you shall receive someone religiously famous once
said. I asked for specific references to homosexuality in the Bible,
and here is what I got:
(Semi-long)
There are no homosexuals in the Bible.
Ruth and Naomi were no lesbians. David and Jonathan weren't gay.
Neither were Jesus and John, the men of Sodom, cult prostitutes,
slave boys and their masters, nor call boys and their customers.
THE BIBLE IS AN EMPTY CLOSET
"The issues about Homosexuality are very complex and are not
understood by most members of the Christian Church," according to
Bernard Ramm of The American Baptist Seminary of the West. This
evangelical authority on biblical interpretation says that, "To them,
it is a vile form of sexual perversion condemned in both the Old and
New Testaments." But as Calvin Theological Seminary Old Testament
scholar Marten H. Woudstra says: "There is nothing in the Old
Testament that corresponds to Homosexuality as we understand it today"
and as SMU New Testament scholar Victor Paul Fumish says: "There is no
text on homosexual orientation in the Bible." Says Robin Scroggs of
Union Seminary: "Biblical judgments against Homosexuality are not
relevant to today's debate. They should no longer be used . . . not
because the Bible is not authoritative, but simply because it does not
address the issues involved. . . . No single New Testament author
considers [Homosexuality] important enough to write his own sentence
about it." Evangelical theologian Helmut Thielicke states:
"Homosexuality . . . can be discussed at all only in the framework of
that freedom which is given to us by the insight that even the New
Testament does not provide us with an evident, normative dictum with
regard to this question. Even the kind of question which we have
arrived at . . . must for purely historical reasons be alien to the
New Testament."
Ideas and understandings of sexuality have changed greatly over
the centuries. People in biblical times did not share our knowledge of
customs of sexuality; we do not share their experience. In those days
there was no romantic dating as we know it today; marriages were
arranged by fathers. The ancients, as MlT's David Halperin notes:
"conceived of 'sexuality' in non-sexual terms: What was fundamental to
their experience of sex was not anything _we_ would regard as
essentially sexual: rather, it was something essentially social ---
namely, the modality of power relations that informed and structured
the sexual act." In the ancient world, sex was "not intrinsically
relational or collaborative in character; it is, further, a deeply
polarizing experience: It serves to divide, to classify, and to
distribute its participants into distinct and radically dissimilar
categories. Sex possesses this valence, apparently because it is
conceived to center essentially on, and to define itself around, an
asymmetrical gesture, that of the penetration of the body of one
person by the body, and, specifically, by the phallus of another. The
proper targets of [a citizen's] sexual desire include, specifically,
women, boys, foreigners, and slaves --- all of them persons who do not
enjoy the same legal and political rights and privileges that he
does." In studies of sex in history, Stanford classics professor John
Winkler warns against "reading contemporary concerns and politics into
texts and artifacts removed from their social context." This, of
course, is a basic principle of biblical hermeneutics. In spite of
all of this, some preachers continue to use certain Bible verses to
clobber lesbians and gay men today. Let's take a closer look at these
texts.
GENESIS 1:27
"God created people in His own image. In the image of God he created
them; He created male and female."
This text celebrates God's deliberate and equal creation of persons
who are male and persons who are female. Such a sense of equal
creation was not typical in the ancient world. According to Eastern
Baptist Seminary professor Douglas J. Miller: "Crude natural law ideas
are . . . read into . . . the early chapters of Genesis....This view
[supports] the 'physicalist' ethical model upon which heterosexism is
built....This view of creation is based upon the obvious anachronism
of reading 13th century definitions of nature into ancient Hebrew
texts." Those who use Genesis 1:27 against homosexuals should note
Paul's statement in Galatians 3:28 in which he is emphatic that there
is now no theological significance to the heterosexual pair "male and
female." According to evangelical Pauline scholar F. F. Bruce: "Paul
states the basic principle here; if restrictions on it are found
elsewhere . . . they are to be understood in relation to Galatians
3:28, and not vice versa."
GENESIS 19 (cf. 18:20)
The story of Sodom and Lot's duty of hospitality to his guests.
According to evangelical Bible scholar William Brownlee: "'sodomy'
(so-called) in Genesis is basically oppression of the weak and
helpless; and the oppression of the stranger is the basic element of
Genesis 19:1-9." Yale's John Boswell notes that "Sodom is used as a
symbol of evil in dozens of places [in the Bible] but not in a single
instance is the sin of the Sodomites specified as Homo- sexuality."
Listen to the prophet Ezekiel (16:48-49) on the sin of Sodom: "As I
live, says the Lord God, . . . This was the sin of your sister city of
Sodom: she and her suburbs had pride, excess of food, and prosperous
ease, but did not help or encourage the poor and needy. They were
arrogant and this was abominable in my eyes." (Cf. Matthew 10:15) The
men of Sodom tried to dominate the strangers at Lot's house by
subjecting them to sexual abuse. Such attempted gang-rape is about
humiliation and violence, not same-sex affection.
DEUTERONOMY 23:17-18
"You shall not lie with men as with woman: it is abomination."
"Abomination" (TO'EBAH) is a technical cultic term for what is
ritually unclean, such as mixed cloth, pork, and intercourse with
menstruating women. It's not about a moral or ethical issue. This
Holiness Code (chapters 17 - 26) proscribes men "lying the lyings of
women." Such mixing of sex roles was thought to be polluting. But both
Jesus and Paul rejected all such ritual distinctions (cf. Mark
7:17-23; Romans 14:14,20). The Fundamentalist Journal admits that this
Code condemns "idolatrous practices" and "ceremonial uncleaness" and
concludes: "We are not bound by these commands today."
LEVITICUS 18:22 (20:13)
"There shall be no female cult prostitute of the daughters of Israel nor
a male cult prostitute of the sons of Israel."
These terms, KEDESHA and KADESH, literally mean "holy" or "sacred."
There is no Hebrew derivative of the word "Sodom" in this passage; the
King James Bible supplied it erroneously. The Hebrew words here are
references to the "holy" female and eunuch priest-prostitutes of the
Canaanite fertility cults, of which Israel was to have no part.
Moreover, Louisville Presbyterian Seminary Bible scholar George R.
Edwards notes that "No prophet uses the noun for male cult prostitute
or discusses the activity such a person pursued. The prophets, in
fact, are as silent on the subject of homosexual acts as is the whole
tradition of the New Testament teaching of Jesus. This is," he says,
"a very significant silence."
ROMANS 1:26-27
Pagan "women exchange natural use for unnatural and also the [pagan]
men, leaving the natural use of women, lust in their desire for each
other, males working shame with males, and receiving within themselves
the penalty of their error."
Furnish gives us perspective in turning to the writings of Paul.
"Since Paul offered no direct teaching to his own churches on the
subject of homosexual conduct," says Furnish, "his letters certainly
cannot yield any specific answers to the questions being faced in the
modern church.... For Paul neither homosexual practice nor
heterosexual promiscuity nor any other specific vice is identified as
such with 'sin.' In his view the fundamental sin from which all
particular evils derive is idolatry, worshiping what is created rather
than the Creator, be that a wooden idol, an ideology, a religious
system, or some particular moral code." In Romans 1, Paul is
ridiculing pagan religious rebellion, saying that the pagans knew God
but worshiped idols instead of God. To build his case, which he'll
turn against judgmental Jews in chapter 2 --- he refers to typical
practices of the fertility cults involving sex among priestesses and
between men and eunuch prostitutes such as served Aphrodite at
Corinth, from where he was writing this letter to the Romans. Their
self-castration rites resulted in a bodily "penalty." Catherine
Krueger comments in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
that "Men wore veils and long hair as signs of their dedication to the
god, while women used the unveiling and shorn hair to indicate their
devotion. Men masqueraded as women, and in a rare vase painting from
Corinth a woman is dressed in satyr pants equipped with the male
organ. Thus she dances before Dionysus, a deity who had been raised
as a girl and was himself called male-female and 'sham man.'" Krueger
continues: "The sex exchange that characterized the cults of such
great goddesses as Cybele [Aphrodite, Ishtar, etc.] the Syrian
goddess, and Artemis of Ephesus was more grisly. Males voluntarily
castrated themselves and assumed women's garments. A relief from Rome
shows a high priest of Cybele. The castrated priest wears veil,
necklaces, earrings and feminine dress. He is considered to have
exchanged his sexual identity and to have become a she-priest." As
such, these religious prostitutes would engage in same-sex orgies in
the pagan temples all along the coasts of Paul's missionary journeys.
"Paul's conception of Homosexuality," as Thielicke points out, "was
one which was affected by the intellectual atmosphere surrounding the
struggle with Greek paganism." Says Scroggs: "The illustrations are
secondary to [Paul's] basic theological structure" (Cf 3:22b-23,
Paul's own summary), and Furnish adds: "homosexual practice as such is
not the topic under discussion." Doesn't what Paul says in the
beginning of Romans better describe these pagan orgies he meant to
ridicule than it does the mutual love and support in the domestic life
of lesbian and gay male couples today?
I CORINTHIANS 6:9 & TIMOTHY 1:10
Paul's reference to malakoi and arsenokoitai.
Evangelical New Testament scholar Gordon D. Fee of Regent College says
that these two terms are "difficult." The Fundamentalist journal
admits: "These words are difficult to translate." Of arsenokoitai, Fee
says: "This is its first appearance in preserved literature, and
subsequent authors are reluctant to use it, especially when describing
homosexual activity." Scroggs explains that "Paul is thinking only
about pederasty, . . . There was no other form of male Homosexuality
in the Greco-Roman world which could come to mind." Ancient sources
indicate that the malakoi were "effeminate call boys." Though Paul
seems to have coined arsenokoitai, it refers, perhaps, to the call
boys' customers, although nobody knows for sure. Paul's main point,
however, is clear: Christians who slander and sue each other in pagan
courts are just as shameful as robbers, drunkards, the greedy, and the
malakoi and arsenokoitai (whatever they were). The other kind of
pederasty in Paul's day was that of the slave "pet boys" who were
sexually exploited by adult male owners. The desired boys were
prepubescent or at least without beards so that they seemed like
females. These men had wives for dowries, procreation and the rearing
of heirs. They had "pet boys" for sex - hardly the picture of gay
relationships today.
The Bible is an empty closet. It has nothing specific to say about
Homosexuality as such. But the Bible has plenty to say about God's
grace to all people and God's call to justice and mercy. Jesus
summarized God's law in these words of scripture: "You shall love the
Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all
your mind . . . [and] you shall love your neighbor as yourself."
(Matthew 22:37-39).
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY:
John Boswell "Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality"
(University of Chicago, 1980);
George R. Edwards "Gay/Lesbian Liberation : A Biblical Perspective"
(Pilgrim, 1984);
Victor Paul "Furnish The Moral Teaching of Paul"
(Rev. ed. Abingdon, 1985);
David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, Froma I. Zeitlin (Eds.) "Before Sexuality:
The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World"
(Princeton, 1989);
David M. Halperin "One Hundred Years of Homosexuality and Other Essays on
Greek Love" (Routledge, 1990);
Donald J. Miller and Robert E. Romanelli, "Heterosexism and the Golden Rule,"
Journal of Gay & Lesbian Psychotherapy, 1 (4) 1991;
Robin Scroggs "The New Testament and Homosexuality"
(Fortress, 1983);
John J. Winkler "The Constraints of Desire. The Anthropology of Sex and Gender
in Ancient Greece" (Routledge, 1990).
If you would like to learn more, write to Dr. Ralph Blair, 311 E. 72 Street,
New York, NY 10021. He is the founder of Evangelicals Concerned, a national
organization dedicated to assisting lesbian and gay men and churches better
understand Homosexuality and the good news of God's grace and peace. Dr. Blair
is the editor of a quarterly literature review on religion and Homosexuality
which will be sent to you free upon request.
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And kimshi said wow, and was awed.
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Username: Kimshi the Storyteller
Address: Erik Currin
W.P.I Box 817
100 Institute Rd.
Worcester, MA 01609-2280
Email: kimshi@wpi.wpi.edu
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