Christianity and Homosexuality - The Truth
This website has been written for people experiencing a conflict between being both Christian and homosexual – either because of what they have been taught or what they have read in the Bible. It is also intended as a resource for anyone seeking to help Christians dealing with this dilemma.
The aim of this site is to share the historical and theological knowledge that I have gained over the past 40 years, in the hope that it will help others resolve their dilemma, just as it helped me.
Here I examine those passages from the Bible which are, or which appear to be, about homosexuality and/or homosexual acts.
Using the findings of various Biblical scholars linguists and historians, I describe what scholars now understood those passages to mean.
Mistranslations and misunderstandings
Firstly, it is important to realise that, ever since the books of the Bible were translated from their original languages, translators have encountered difficulties in interpreting what was meant in parts of the original texts. The use of unusual words, or words that have long gone out of use, often mean that translators have a lack of other contemporary written source texts that use those words. These factors make deducing those words’ meanings very difficult and, in some cases still, impossible. In such instances translators have had to make educated guesses, as to the meanings of unusual words, from the context of the rest of the passage. Whilst the rest of a passage may suggest possible meanings for the unknown words, in other cases, the context may give no clues, or even give misleading clues.
Over the last century, many more ancient documents have been discovered, providing translators with more comparative texts but there still remain gaps in their knowledge of the historical context. This is, partly, why various modern English translations of the Bible differ in how they translate many words and passages – even the most eminent language scholars sometimes disagree on how a word should be translated. For example, later in this website, I will discuss the meaning of one particularly problematic Greek word – arsenakoites – which, despite a great deal of research over the last few decades, the only thing that modern language scholars seem to agree on is that this word could mean one of several quite different things!
So, if anyone ever tells you that the Bible is the direct word of God you might want to ask them “Oh, really - which translation?”- because the fact is that all translations contain differences and, in some sections, offer significantly different accounts, depending on what the translators believed, or even guessed, to be most accurate.
There is another difficulty that faces translators of ancient texts – the gaps in our knowledge of the historical context in which those texts were written. For example, imagine a translator far into our future, say in the year 4021. Let us assume that our 4021 translator is a scholar of what is now known as Ancient English. Imagine also that all records about World War II have long been destroyed and that event has become largely forgotten. Then, one day, an historian finds a document that describes how, in the 1940s, Britain dropped thousands of bombs on Germany, destroying a city called Dresden. Knowing nothing of the historical context (i.e. that this happened as a result of a war started by Germany) our 4021 historian, having translated the document, might well conclude that the country called Britain in the 1940s must have been a barbaric, cruel nation that sought to destroy a country called Germany. That would only be partly correct, in that Britain was seeking to destroy not a country but the genocidal regime of its dictator.
Thus, if one is to translate the events described in an ancient document correctly, then knowing the historical and cultural context that applied when that document was written can be just as important as knowing the language.
Imagine then, the daunting task faced by theological historians who seek to make sense of ancient documents, some of which were written 1000s of year before Christ, by the leaders of a tribe called the Hebrews (now known as the Jews). Even more difficult are those texts that were not actually written down at the time but passed down generations by word of mouth. Those historians might have a lot of information (which might or might not be accurate!) about that race’s language and culture, but there would be also be much that the historians would not know, facts that researchers were yet to discover – assuming that the information had actually survived at all.
Over the last 50 years, historians and theologians have gradually discovered more about the cultural and historical circumstances in which certain passages of the Old Testament were written. This has enabled them to discover more about why those passages were written and what the authors’ original intentions might have been.
Predjudice against homosexuality
The Christian church has long been prejudiced against homosexuality. Changes have begun to take place as Christian begin to question the morality of treating unequally people who they perceive as being 'different. Changes are also being driven as theologians and historians have discovered more information relating to this subject and why certain apparently condemnatory passages were written. But the church still has a long way to go – people who hold old prejudices have to be willing to examine new evidence and, perhaps even more difficult, to examine that evidence with an open mind.
Most of the Christian church’s predjudice dates back to the writing of the Torah. So, in order to understand Christianity’s attitude to homosexuality, we need to examine:
What the Torah is;
Why the Torah was written;
Who it was meant for and, just as important, who it wasn’t meant for.
In our modern world, laws are mostly secular, separate from religious laws and most countries have few, if any, cultural or racial laws. In most of the western world, religious law is no longer an integral part of countries' laws, but is regarded as doctrinal law, that applies only to adherents of that religion.
For the Jews, civil, religious and cultural law were all set by their leaders – firstly by Moses and then by the rabbis. The differences between their cultural regulations, civil, and religious laws are not immediately obvious to us – although they would have been quite clear to the early Jews.
It is well known how the Jews fled Egypt, lead by Moses, and that Moses taught them that God had liberated them because He had chosen them to be his ‘special’ race , who He would lead into a ‘promised land’, which they were told was to be theirs forever. He also taught that, in order to retain their ‘chosen’ status with God and their ‘promised land’, they would have to obey all of God’s commandments and keep themselves pure from the potentially contaminating influences of surrounding tribes’ cultures and religious practices. For example, there were tribes/races whose religious ceremonies and rites included the use of homosexual prostitutes and/or homosexual acts. To help Jews to stay ‘special’, a comprehensive set of instructions evolved, which were eventually written in a document known as the Torah.
The Torah contains several different sets of instructions and rules. One section was what we now know was intended to be a ‘purity code’ – adherence to would enable the Jews to demonstrate that God’s chosen people were unique, different (and, so the Jews at that time believed) ‘superior’ to all other tribes.
Although that purity code was an important part of Jewish law – it wasn’t quite what we would think of as ‘Law’ today – it was a racial purity code – a set of Jewish cultural norms and instructions that Jews were obliged to follow. Breaking a part of that code was not regarded as a criminal offence. Instead, breaking the purity code would simply render the person as being ‘unclean’ - a state that would only apply for a specified short period of time. Being unclean usually meant only that the ‘offender’ would have to abstain from certain activities (such as attending the temple) for a few days, and/or they might have to undertake certain cleansing rites.
In other words, breaking the purity code would not result in a Jew being sent to prison or having to undergo the sort of punishments prescribed for violations of, for example, Jewish property law.
It is important for all homosexual Christians to realise that the Old Testament texts most often used to condemn homosexuals are contained in the Torah. They are neither part of civil nor criminal law. They are merely instructions on how to be a ‘wholesome’ Jew and what cleansing or abstaining actions one should take, as and when one failed in that endeavour.
Old Testament texts – such as the story of Sodom – pre-date the writing of the Torah. Some of these cautionary stories are also – mistakenly – often interpreted as containing prohibitions against homosexuality. To interpret the story of, for example, the city of Sodom in that way is to fundamentally misunderstand the true meaning of that story.
So, for clarity, before we examine the Torah’s purity code in any detail, we will first address the Sodom story and the very similar events that took place at the town of Gibeah.
The story of Sodom is detailed in Genesis 19: 1-11, and that of Gibeah is recorded in Judges 19.
Both record a visit of a small group of travellers – some versions describe the visitors as ‘angels’.
Both stories describe how the inhabitants of the town, instead of welcoming the visitors and offering them safe hospitality for the night, did the exact opposite. The townsfolk gathered around the house where the travellers had been offered a place to stay and demanded that the householder bring his visitors out, so that the mob could ‘know’ them. The use of the word ‘know’ in this context is totally unambiguous – it meant to have sex. In other words, the mob wanted to gang rape the visitors! Whether that act would have been homo, or hetero- sexual is irrelevant - the offence here is gang rape.
Early readers of these two stories would have understood that they were moral tales about the Jews’ obligation to offer hospitality and safe overnight accommodation to travellers. But somehow, over time, these stories came to be misinterpreted as meaning that the main offence the occupants of Sodom and Gibeah committed was to seek to have homosexual encounters with the visitors - a huge distortion of the stories' true purpose.
The moral aspects of these two stories are made even more confusing for modern readers by the fact of the hosts offering their daughters/concubines as alternatives for the mob to rape. However, these bizarre – and, to us, totally outrageous – offers do serve to illustrate just how important the Jews regarded the obligation to offer travellers safe shelter for the night. The disregard for the rights of women in these stories will start to become somewhat more comprehensible after we have examined the then prevailing sexual status of Jewish women.
Status of women and Jewish beliefs about human reproduction
The Jews believed that man was made ‘in the image of God’, but women were not – women were made from man. This difference is of fundamental importance. The Jews believed that man, like their creator God, had the gift of being able to create new life. Women did not have that gift. God and Men were the creators, women were not.
Their knowledge about how human and mammalian reproduction worked was sketchy at best and was probably based on the Jews’ observation of how plant life was reproduced. The Jews believed that a man’s semen carried a seed – a seed that contained everything needed to create a life - and that sowing a man’s seed into a woman was akin to sowing a plant seed in a field. (Hence the reason why women’s womb, when the women are infertile, are frequently described as ‘barren fields’.)
If a man’s ‘seed’ was planted in a woman and it failed to grow into a child, it was assumed that this was the fault of the woman, that her womb was not a fertile enough or that the seed had not reached the womb at a fertile time.
Wasting seed – as they saw it, the gift to be able to create life - that God had given man was frowned upon as not being a good, wholesome, way for a Jew to behave. (But note how masturbation, whilst being frowned upon, is not actually prohibited! It seems that even way back then, men were total hypocrites when it came to this activity!)
There are prohibitions in the Torah on men having sex with women during menstruation or after the menopause – because a ‘seed’ planted in a woman at such times would be wasted. A man having sex with a woman in either state was therefore not ‘wholesome’, so any man doing this would have been regarded as having acted in an un-wholesome or, as the Jews termed it, ‘unclean’ way.
Having sex with his wife when she was at the fertile stage of her cycle would be regarded as wholesome, because then the conditions would be right for conception to take place.
Doing anything that was less than ‘whole-some’ was seen as being how other tribes and races behaved.
So. one of the fundamental purposes of the Torah was to provide the Jews with a set of instructions - a code of behaviour, a purity code - that marked Jews as being the special people they believed themselves to be – God’s chosen people.
The Torah also barred menstruating women from the temple, for the simple reason that they were regarded as being in an un-wholesome state – i.e. that they were both temporarily unable to nurture a man’s seed and also liable to contaminate their husbands with their ‘un-cleanliness’.
Similarly, disabled and diseased people were barred from the temple – because their physical imperfections marked them as being ‘less’ than what a pure Jew person should be. Disable people might be capable of being an active member of Jew society and be accepted as making a positive contribution to that society but being disabled still marked them as being ‘unclean’.
All of this sounds very harsh but, in practice, it probably wasn’t – every Jew would have (probably, frequently) found themselves to be in an ‘unclean’ state - so it seems unlikely that they would have been particularly condemnatory toward others who found themselves temporarily in that condition.
I is interesting that neither female masturbation nor female homosexual acts are mentioned in the Torah's purity code. This is almost certainly because these acts did not involve men and so could not render a man unclean. There is also no specific prohibition in the Torah against a man ‘spilling his seed upon the ground’ – i.e. masturbation to climax. However, in addition to men's contradictory attitudes to masturbation, this activity had been regarded as an 'unclean' act from long before the code was written, so perhaps the authors simply felt that, as it was already an accepted fact, it wasn’t necessary to write it into the purity code.
A man having a nocturnal emission (wet dream), however, was included in the code, which said that the man should wash (the affected parts) and would deemed to be unclean for about a day. One might suppose that the Jews assumed that, having shed his seed, he would be infertile for a day, so not capable of creating life and so, temporarily, not ‘whole’. This rule also shows how one could become unclean even through an unconscious act - which, again, leads one to think that perhaps being unclean was probably not regarded as being such a big deal, as it was just a transient state.
There are some texts in the purity code that have long been thought to prohibit homosexual acts, but to interpret them in that way has now been clearly shown to be an incorrect interpretations of the actual meanings and significance of those texts.
Perhaps the most commonly misinterpreted text is Lev 18:22; 20:13 which states that man shall not lie with man as with a woman. To interpret this as being a blanket prohibition of homosexual acts is thoughtless and totally misses the point. For, if this text had been intended to simply prohibit homosexual acts, it would have just have read ‘man shall not lie with man’. That simple phrase would, if this text were a prohibition of homosexual acts, have been a complete, sufficient statement. But it doesn’t say just that, it says that; man shall not lie with man as with a woman. That second phrase, a seemingly unnecessary, elaboration is in fact included for a very specific reason and its inclusion in this text totally changes the meaning of what the writers were referring to. It was common practice in battles for the victorious soldiers to rape their male prisoners, in order to demonstrate that they were now subservient. Even more demeaning, this act disregarded their captives’ maleness - by not treating them as a male, but using them sexually as a woman. The Jews knew that even males in other tribes had the gift of being able to create life so, to use a man in this degrading way, was also being disrespectful of God’s gift to men.
If one compares the two possible meanings of this text;
1. a blanket prohibition of all homosexual acts or;
2. raping men and thus disrespecting God’s creative gift;
which act is the most likely to have been regarded as the most abhorrent and appalling to the authors of the Torah?
Lev 18:22, 20:13 talks about homosexual acts as being an ‘abomination. Again, this verse has often been taken completely out of the context in which it was written. That context is now well known, but still all too often ignored, in that some of the tribes and cults surrounding the Jews used male prostitutes in their religious rituals, something that would indeed have seemed abhorrent to the Jews.
One also has to understand that, back then, the Jew’s use of the word ‘abomination’ was a much less strong expression of condemnation than how we tend to think of it now. Then, it meant simply ‘disgusting things’ and was used to describe not just homosexual acts but such things as unclean foods.
For a much more in-depth (but very readable) explanation of what the Torah is, read L William Countryman's book 'Dirt Sex and Greed' (2)
The New Testament.
What did Jesus say about homosexuality and/or homosexual acts?
Answer - absolutely nothing!
This fact has to be highly significant for, if such activity was really as big a deal as some Christians would have you believe, wouldn’t Christ have had something to say on the subject?
Given how he treated women caught in adultery and prostitutes – with love, kindness and forgiveness – can anyone seriously believe that Jesus would have approved of the hateful way in which some Christians regard homosexuals?
Paul’s letter to the Romans. The verse in Paul’s letter where he refers to homosexual acts is perhaps the most quoted by homophobic Christians.
In so doing, they not only take that verse totally out of the context in which Paul was using it, they display their profound ignorance of the nature and intent of Paul’s letter. One simply cannot take individual phrases of verses from Paul’s letters and use them as ‘proof’ texts, for this entire letter was intended to be read as a whole and one can only grasp its meaning by realising that the whole letter is in fact a skilfully crafted rhetorical argument.
Note; In Roman times, rhetoric was almost an art form and this term had a subtly different meaning to how we understand the concept today. Back then, in order to convince an audience of a concept you knew that they might struggle to accept, the speaker would first state the view which was, or had been, the view commonly held by the people in his audience. Then, the speaker would gradually develop his argument in such a way that enabled him to then turn the commonly held view on its head. Paul was a master of rhetorical argument and his letter to the church at Rome may well have been written in that form because he knew they respected skilful use of rhetoric.
We also know that there was an ongoing argument between Paul and some of the other disciples, particularly Peter, about whether Gentile (i.e. non-Jewish) converts to Christianity should, as well as accepting Christ, have to adopt the rules of the Torah.
Paul knew that there were some in the church at Rome who supported Peter's view and that is why he wrote this letter – to address what he regarded as very wrong thinking. In the first part of his letter, Paul describes how the Jews had, for a very long time, tried to live according to the Torah -and it is in that section that he states some examples of the Purity Code, including the one about homosexual acts.
Then Paul begins the process of changing his audiences perspective – he points out that thousands of years of the Jews trying (and failing) to follow the Torah has not really achieved its purpose – it has tended to make men hypocrites and has not saved men from their sin, has not kept men’s relationship with God special.
He then explains how things have now fundamentally changed, that the messiah Christ came to show them that it isn’t by blind obedience of such rules that one is saved.
Paul also points out that the Torah was written for Jews, not for Gentiles. So, Peter's wanting to make Gentiles adopt a Code that was designed to mark one out as a pure Jew doesn’t actually make any sense.
Paul’s argument nears its climax when he tell the Romans that by Christ’s grace alone are we (meaning Jews and Gentiles) saved’. Then, as if that were not a powerful enough statement, Paul adds the ‘killer’ point of his rhetorical argument - that, if the church insisted on Gentile converts being forced to follow the rules of the Torah, that would be tantamount to saying that Christ’s grace was not sufficient!
Paul's letter to the Corinthians. In 1 Cor. 6:9-10, Paul condemns a number of types of sinner;
'Neither those given to harlotry nor idolators nor adulterers nor malakoi nor arsenokoitai nor thieves nor the greedy - not the drunken or the abusive or the rapacious will inherit God's reign.'
Language scholars have long argued as to exactly what Paul meant by the terms 'malakoi' and 'arsenokoitai. Some biblical scholars assume that Paul used this word to describe homosexuals but that interpretation is impossible, as the concept of someone being homosexual was at that time still unknown.
So why did translators take these two words to mean something they could not possibly mean and what do these words actually mean?
Malakoi, literally translated, simply means 'soft' and some translators have interpreted its use in this passage to mean 'effeminate' But other scholars, such as Scroggs (3) think that its use here relates to pederasty and is referring to effeminate call-boys.
The word 'arsenokoitai' is even more problematic. It is a very rare word and Paul's use of it is thought to be the earliest source we have of its use - it is possible that the word waw coined by Paul. In order to create this word, Paul joined the word arsen (meaning male) with koite (meaning bed) and uses the two words together as a verb in the plural form, so some translators took this word to mean 'men who take men to bed'. But that is a simplistic, even naïve, translation, based more on assumption than linguistic research. Later translators, such as Martin (4), take the view that, in later documents, the context of the use of the word arsenokoitia implies that the word actually meant the unjust and coercive use of another person sexually. (For an in-depth discussion on the use and probable meanings of these two words, see the link at source 5., below.)
Some writers in the bible talk about men and women ‘leaving behind their own nature’, to give up 'laying' with the opposite sex and, instead, to lay with their own sex. This phrasing clearly demonstrates that the writers had no idea that, for some people, their true ‘nature’ was in fact to only want to lie with their own sex - i.e. to be exclusively homosexual. They simply assumed that, as male-female sex was the only way to create life, that must be the ‘natural’ way of things for everyone. They seemed also, as many homophobic Christians still do, to have ignored the fact that sex isn’t just for procreating – that it has a strong role in deepening relationships. And heaven forbid that anyone should admit that the main reason most people have sex is because it is also very enjoyable! How boggled would these writers have been by the findings of researchers such as Kinsey?!
If Paul was intending to condemn certain sexual acts, one must consider which acts might he be most likely to choose to condemn? Given that pederasty and the use of under-age boys as prostitutes was still rife in the Greco-Roman era and that both were acts that exploited the most vulnerable, isn't it logical to assume that Paul, when talking about sexual sin would have condemned both of these despicable acts? Yet the only texts that could be translated as referring to pederasty and boy prostitution have, in the past, been translated as referring to homosexuality or homosexual acts. Thanks to scholars such as Robin Scroggs (3) we now know that Paul's condemnations did indeed refer to exploitative sexual acts such as pederasty, and not to consensual homosexual acts.
Nowhere in the Bible does it prohibit, condemn or even mention, 'homosexuality'. The Bible only refers to ' homosexual acts'.
Nowhere, in either Testament, is there a specific prohibition of homosexual acts – the Bible only prohibits such acts in certain, very specific circumstances, as I have described (in the section about the purity Code) above.
To claim that any part of the Bible condemns homosexuality is to ignore the fact that the concept of someone being a homosexual was totally unknown at that time - see Boswell (1). This concept and the term ‘homosexuality’ weren’t even described until the late 1800s, when the condition was first recognised by psychologists. The biblical writers would, of course, have known that some men engaged in homosexual acts but their assumption was that all men were basically heterosexual - this is precisely why they believed that, for a man to engage in homosexual acts was to act 'against his nature'.
Nature.
Some religious people argue that for anyone to engage in a homosexual act is to act against his or her nature because (they claim) the act itself is 'un-natural'. I has to be realised that this claim is only their opinion, it is not a fact. The fact is, that this opinion is absurd - because anything that occurs in nature must, by definition, be 'natural'. Homosexual behaviour is as common in every species as it is in humans and animals demonstrate as diverse a range of orientations as humans - i.e. from those who are 100% heterosexual, through those who are bisexual, to those who are exclusively homosexual.
There is now scientific evidence which shows that there are genetic markers linked to sexual orientation. (6)
See information about the latest research here.
A final thought. If you are a Christian, then this whole Biblical argument is totally academic - for the Torah was never intended to apply to Gentiles, whether they be hetero-, or homo-, sexual, or, as is the case for most people, somewhere between the two. See; Kinsey Institute - Diversity of sexual orientation
If you have found this article in any way useful, or if you have any questions, do please get in touch via my Contact form.
Thank you.
Answer - absolutely nothing!
This fact has to be highly significant for, if such activity was really as big a deal as some Christians would have you believe, wouldn’t Christ have had something to say on the subject?
Given how he treated women caught in adultery and prostitutes – with love, kindness and forgiveness – can anyone seriously believe that Jesus would have approved of the hateful way in which some Christians regard homosexuals?
Paul’s letter to the Romans. The verse in Paul’s letter where he refers to homosexual acts is perhaps the most quoted by homophobic Christians.
In so doing, they not only take that verse totally out of the context in which Paul was using it, they display their profound ignorance of the nature and intent of Paul’s letter. One simply cannot take individual phrases of verses from Paul’s letters and use them as ‘proof’ texts, for this entire letter was intended to be read as a whole and one can only grasp its meaning by realising that the whole letter is in fact a skilfully crafted rhetorical argument.
Note; In Roman times, rhetoric was almost an art form and this term had a subtly different meaning to how we understand the concept today. Back then, in order to convince an audience of a concept you knew that they might struggle to accept, the speaker would first state the view which was, or had been, the view commonly held by the people in his audience. Then, the speaker would gradually develop his argument in such a way that enabled him to then turn the commonly held view on its head. Paul was a master of rhetorical argument and his letter to the church at Rome may well have been written in that form because he knew they respected skilful use of rhetoric.
We also know that there was an ongoing argument between Paul and some of the other disciples, particularly Peter, about whether Gentile (i.e. non-Jewish) converts to Christianity should, as well as accepting Christ, have to adopt the rules of the Torah.
Paul knew that there were some in the church at Rome who supported Peter's view and that is why he wrote this letter – to address what he regarded as very wrong thinking. In the first part of his letter, Paul describes how the Jews had, for a very long time, tried to live according to the Torah -and it is in that section that he states some examples of the Purity Code, including the one about homosexual acts.
Then Paul begins the process of changing his audiences perspective – he points out that thousands of years of the Jews trying (and failing) to follow the Torah has not really achieved its purpose – it has tended to make men hypocrites and has not saved men from their sin, has not kept men’s relationship with God special.
He then explains how things have now fundamentally changed, that the messiah Christ came to show them that it isn’t by blind obedience of such rules that one is saved.
Paul also points out that the Torah was written for Jews, not for Gentiles. So, Peter's wanting to make Gentiles adopt a Code that was designed to mark one out as a pure Jew doesn’t actually make any sense.
Paul’s argument nears its climax when he tell the Romans that by Christ’s grace alone are we (meaning Jews and Gentiles) saved’. Then, as if that were not a powerful enough statement, Paul adds the ‘killer’ point of his rhetorical argument - that, if the church insisted on Gentile converts being forced to follow the rules of the Torah, that would be tantamount to saying that Christ’s grace was not sufficient!
Paul's letter to the Corinthians. In 1 Cor. 6:9-10, Paul condemns a number of types of sinner;
'Neither those given to harlotry nor idolators nor adulterers nor malakoi nor arsenokoitai nor thieves nor the greedy - not the drunken or the abusive or the rapacious will inherit God's reign.'
Language scholars have long argued as to exactly what Paul meant by the terms 'malakoi' and 'arsenokoitai. Some biblical scholars assume that Paul used this word to describe homosexuals but that interpretation is impossible, as the concept of someone being homosexual was at that time still unknown.
So why did translators take these two words to mean something they could not possibly mean and what do these words actually mean?
Malakoi, literally translated, simply means 'soft' and some translators have interpreted its use in this passage to mean 'effeminate' But other scholars, such as Scroggs (3) think that its use here relates to pederasty and is referring to effeminate call-boys.
The word 'arsenokoitai' is even more problematic. It is a very rare word and Paul's use of it is thought to be the earliest source we have of its use - it is possible that the word waw coined by Paul. In order to create this word, Paul joined the word arsen (meaning male) with koite (meaning bed) and uses the two words together as a verb in the plural form, so some translators took this word to mean 'men who take men to bed'. But that is a simplistic, even naïve, translation, based more on assumption than linguistic research. Later translators, such as Martin (4), take the view that, in later documents, the context of the use of the word arsenokoitia implies that the word actually meant the unjust and coercive use of another person sexually. (For an in-depth discussion on the use and probable meanings of these two words, see the link at source 5., below.)
Some writers in the bible talk about men and women ‘leaving behind their own nature’, to give up 'laying' with the opposite sex and, instead, to lay with their own sex. This phrasing clearly demonstrates that the writers had no idea that, for some people, their true ‘nature’ was in fact to only want to lie with their own sex - i.e. to be exclusively homosexual. They simply assumed that, as male-female sex was the only way to create life, that must be the ‘natural’ way of things for everyone. They seemed also, as many homophobic Christians still do, to have ignored the fact that sex isn’t just for procreating – that it has a strong role in deepening relationships. And heaven forbid that anyone should admit that the main reason most people have sex is because it is also very enjoyable! How boggled would these writers have been by the findings of researchers such as Kinsey?!
If Paul was intending to condemn certain sexual acts, one must consider which acts might he be most likely to choose to condemn? Given that pederasty and the use of under-age boys as prostitutes was still rife in the Greco-Roman era and that both were acts that exploited the most vulnerable, isn't it logical to assume that Paul, when talking about sexual sin would have condemned both of these despicable acts? Yet the only texts that could be translated as referring to pederasty and boy prostitution have, in the past, been translated as referring to homosexuality or homosexual acts. Thanks to scholars such as Robin Scroggs (3) we now know that Paul's condemnations did indeed refer to exploitative sexual acts such as pederasty, and not to consensual homosexual acts.
Nowhere in the Bible does it prohibit, condemn or even mention, 'homosexuality'. The Bible only refers to ' homosexual acts'.
Nowhere, in either Testament, is there a specific prohibition of homosexual acts – the Bible only prohibits such acts in certain, very specific circumstances, as I have described (in the section about the purity Code) above.
To claim that any part of the Bible condemns homosexuality is to ignore the fact that the concept of someone being a homosexual was totally unknown at that time - see Boswell (1). This concept and the term ‘homosexuality’ weren’t even described until the late 1800s, when the condition was first recognised by psychologists. The biblical writers would, of course, have known that some men engaged in homosexual acts but their assumption was that all men were basically heterosexual - this is precisely why they believed that, for a man to engage in homosexual acts was to act 'against his nature'.
Nature.
Some religious people argue that for anyone to engage in a homosexual act is to act against his or her nature because (they claim) the act itself is 'un-natural'. I has to be realised that this claim is only their opinion, it is not a fact. The fact is, that this opinion is absurd - because anything that occurs in nature must, by definition, be 'natural'. Homosexual behaviour is as common in every species as it is in humans and animals demonstrate as diverse a range of orientations as humans - i.e. from those who are 100% heterosexual, through those who are bisexual, to those who are exclusively homosexual.
There is now scientific evidence which shows that there are genetic markers linked to sexual orientation. (6)
See information about the latest research here.
A final thought. If you are a Christian, then this whole Biblical argument is totally academic - for the Torah was never intended to apply to Gentiles, whether they be hetero-, or homo-, sexual, or, as is the case for most people, somewhere between the two. See; Kinsey Institute - Diversity of sexual orientation
If you have found this article in any way useful, or if you have any questions, do please get in touch via my Contact form.
Thank you.
Recommended further reading
1. John E Boswell (Historian, full professor at Yale) Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality University of Chicago Press
2. L William Countryman (Professor in Biblical Studies at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California) Dirt Sex and Greed SCM Press 1988 and Fortress Press 2007
3. Robin Scroggs (Edward Robinson Professor of Biblical Theology, Union Theological Seminary, New York) The New Testament and Homosexuality: Contextual Background for Contemporary Debate (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983). Download Extract
4. Dale B Martin (Woolsey Professor of Religious Studies, Yale) “Arsenokoitês and Malakos: Meanings and Consequences,” in Biblical Ethics and Homosexuality; ed. Robert Brawley (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996
5. Perry V Kea (Associate Professor of biblical studies at the University of Indianapolis.) Malakos and Arsenokoitês 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 - a Mini Seminar on the Clobber Passages, Westar Institute National Spring Meeting. Transcript; https://www.westarinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Malakoi-Arsenokoitai-3.1.pdf
1. John E Boswell (Historian, full professor at Yale) Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality University of Chicago Press
2. L William Countryman (Professor in Biblical Studies at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California) Dirt Sex and Greed SCM Press 1988 and Fortress Press 2007
3. Robin Scroggs (Edward Robinson Professor of Biblical Theology, Union Theological Seminary, New York) The New Testament and Homosexuality: Contextual Background for Contemporary Debate (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983). Download Extract
4. Dale B Martin (Woolsey Professor of Religious Studies, Yale) “Arsenokoitês and Malakos: Meanings and Consequences,” in Biblical Ethics and Homosexuality; ed. Robert Brawley (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996
5. Perry V Kea (Associate Professor of biblical studies at the University of Indianapolis.) Malakos and Arsenokoitês 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 - a Mini Seminar on the Clobber Passages, Westar Institute National Spring Meeting. Transcript; https://www.westarinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Malakoi-Arsenokoitai-3.1.pdf
