We are in the midst of searching for the Bible’s attitude toward homosexuality. Last week, I finished talking about the Jewish Scriptures and found there to be no condemnation there. Now we will turn to the three passages in the New Testament that are used to condemn homosexuality. I Corinthians 6:9 is often used that way:
“Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders….” (NIV)
And what could be more clear than that? Well, the picture gets murky when we use the King James Version:
“…Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind…”
And the story takes yet another twist in the English Standard Version, where the last two groups on the list are combined into one:
“…Do not be deceived: neither the sexual immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality…”
Why is there such intense disagreement between the translations? It is clear that Paul means to condemn some group or groups, but it is not clear which ones. The two controversial Greek words which show up in that list are malakoi and arsenokoitai, respectively. The translation difficulty stems from the fact that neither Paul only uses the word this one time, so it impossible to know from other contexts if he thinks malakoi means ‘homosexual.’
Malakoi is variously translated above as “the effeminate”, “male prostitutes”, and one-half of “men who practice homosexuality.” If the Greeks were going to turn the masculine plural noun ‘malakoi’ into an adjective, they would be saying that the object was soft. So wax would be malakos when it was hot but the opposite of malakos when it was cold. Paul here applies it to people, and the masculine ending probably means he had men in mind. It is difficult to say what a “soft male” is or why such a person would be cast off from the kingdom, but it is certainly an enormous and unjustified jump for the NIV and ESV to assume a connection to homosexuality. The KJV is the most faithful to the Greek to simply translate the word as “effeminate.” Translated this way, we can see that there is no necessary connection between softness and sexuality, as the NIV and ESV have it. “Softness” could mean many things. For instance, there are two Christian books I read several years ago that both denounce “soft” males: The Silence of Adam by Larry Crab, and Wild at Heart by John Elderidge. The softness described in males in those two books has no necessary connection with sexuality. That is, they were writing books condemning soft, passive, heterosexual males. Furthermore, other ancient Greek texts speak of a ‘soft man’ as a man who is pampered or cowardly. But never until the ESV-translators got on their moral high-horse did the word mean ‘homosexual.’
The NIV is bad here, but even so, we get no condemnation of homosexuality: they translate malakoi as a 'male prostitute.' Condemning male prostitution is no more to condemn all homosexuality than condemning heterosexual prostitution is to condemn all heterosexuality. But they do make the mysterious jump from “soft male” to “soft male in the area of sexuality.” This is supposed to be God’s Word, and those who don’t know Greek take a translation at face value. So translating malakoi as male prostitutes without knowing what this word actually refers to is quite dangerous. I’m sure Paul would have condemned male prostitution if he had gotten around to it, but we just don’t know if he does so in this passage.
Much more dangerous is the English Standard Version, which claims to know definitively that malakoi are “men who practice homosexual acts”. The two words malakoi and arsenokoitai are combined by these translators as two halves of a pair, with the malakoi being the passive partner in the male sex act and arsenokoitai the active partner. It is first of all worth noting that the NIV and the ESV are in conflict on this point, because obviously the group that gets money for gay sex is not the same group as the group that plays the passive partner in the male sex act. So at least one of these translations is necessarily in error, and possibly both.
Certainly, the interpretation that the male sex act is described here is a possible interpretation. But an interpretation must be much more than just possible in order to condemn someone’s lifestyle. It must be definite! The question of whether malakoi are passively gay men or male prostitutes may be an interesting dissertation topic for someone in seminary, but it has no place masquerading as Divinely-inspired truth. The truth is that we just don’t know what malakoi means. Paul simply never tells us! “Softness” as applied to people could mean any number of things, including the passive heterosexual male in Wild at Heart. I can’t see any other conclusion than that the ESV translators are homophobic.
3.16.2009
Homosexuality Part V: The Leviticus Condemnations
The final two passages in the Jewish Scriptures which are sometimes used as arguments against homosexuality are from Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13:
“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (18:22)
“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them” (20:13)
The oft-used phrase “homosexuality is an abomination” comes from these verses, and based on the wide usage of that phrase, it is obvious that these verses have an immediate intuitive appeal to many. Those are indeed harsh words.
We first must realize that there are many prohibitions given by Leviticus that are simply no longer taken as good advice, let alone divine law. For instance, the interceding chapter (19) gives a strange order in verse 27: “You shall not round off the hair on you temples or mar the edges of your beard.” And of course, your choice of facial hair is morally irrelevant. On the other hand, Leviticus gives certain prohibitions against murder. The problem, then, is whether the condemnations of homosexuality should be considered irrelevant today, like the facial hair requirement, or as still relevant, as the laws about murder. We can focus the issue with this question: why do we keep some prohibitions but not others?
There are three motivations for the laws in Leviticus: a law is either for the sake of cleanliness, religious symbolism, or morality. This gives us a strong justification for why we would keep some prohibitions and disregard others – we don’t sacrifice our children (20:4) because that is still morally wrong, but we don’t banish from our society two married people who have sex during the woman’s menstrual period (20:18). The first law is for the sake of morality, but the latter is clearly for the sake of cleanliness. Any law that concerns keeping clean, such as the famous prohibitions of mold growth, or about how to be a good Jew at the time, such as the facial hair requirements, we freely discard because we are much better at keeping clean than the Israelites were, who were at the time deprived of science.
So the question is whether 18:22 and 20:13 are for the sake of morality or for the sake of cleanliness. There are two good reasons for us to think that these condemnations are for the sake of cleanliness: 1) we know that that this particular act is indeed an act with the potential to spread disease, and 2) there are no prohibitions on other forms of male homosexual behavior or female same-sex behavior. It seems as though those activities would have been condemned as well if this were to be read as a moral condemnation. And Moses does in fact address female sexual relations elsewhere. For instance, 20:15 prohibits males from bestiality. But then females get their own verse forbidding bestiality in 16. Moses thought that for whatever reason there had to be separate prohibitions for males and females in that case. But two verses before, he only condemns one form of male homosexuality, and no forms of female same-sex activity. The asymmetry could very well be because the prohibition of ‘lying with a man as with a women’ is for the sake of cleanliness; it is not a moral law. As such, it is no longer relevant.
“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (18:22)
“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them” (20:13)
The oft-used phrase “homosexuality is an abomination” comes from these verses, and based on the wide usage of that phrase, it is obvious that these verses have an immediate intuitive appeal to many. Those are indeed harsh words.
We first must realize that there are many prohibitions given by Leviticus that are simply no longer taken as good advice, let alone divine law. For instance, the interceding chapter (19) gives a strange order in verse 27: “You shall not round off the hair on you temples or mar the edges of your beard.” And of course, your choice of facial hair is morally irrelevant. On the other hand, Leviticus gives certain prohibitions against murder. The problem, then, is whether the condemnations of homosexuality should be considered irrelevant today, like the facial hair requirement, or as still relevant, as the laws about murder. We can focus the issue with this question: why do we keep some prohibitions but not others?
There are three motivations for the laws in Leviticus: a law is either for the sake of cleanliness, religious symbolism, or morality. This gives us a strong justification for why we would keep some prohibitions and disregard others – we don’t sacrifice our children (20:4) because that is still morally wrong, but we don’t banish from our society two married people who have sex during the woman’s menstrual period (20:18). The first law is for the sake of morality, but the latter is clearly for the sake of cleanliness. Any law that concerns keeping clean, such as the famous prohibitions of mold growth, or about how to be a good Jew at the time, such as the facial hair requirements, we freely discard because we are much better at keeping clean than the Israelites were, who were at the time deprived of science.
So the question is whether 18:22 and 20:13 are for the sake of morality or for the sake of cleanliness. There are two good reasons for us to think that these condemnations are for the sake of cleanliness: 1) we know that that this particular act is indeed an act with the potential to spread disease, and 2) there are no prohibitions on other forms of male homosexual behavior or female same-sex behavior. It seems as though those activities would have been condemned as well if this were to be read as a moral condemnation. And Moses does in fact address female sexual relations elsewhere. For instance, 20:15 prohibits males from bestiality. But then females get their own verse forbidding bestiality in 16. Moses thought that for whatever reason there had to be separate prohibitions for males and females in that case. But two verses before, he only condemns one form of male homosexuality, and no forms of female same-sex activity. The asymmetry could very well be because the prohibition of ‘lying with a man as with a women’ is for the sake of cleanliness; it is not a moral law. As such, it is no longer relevant.
3.10.2009
Hmosexuality, Part IV: Genesis 19
Genesis 19 focuses on the city of Sodom, whose residents were of course Sodomities, which is where we get out word sodomy, which is a euphemism for homosexual male sex. So why exactly do we define sodomy as gay sex? Genesis 19 gives us the most detail we ever get about the city of Sodom. As the story goes, Lot takes in two visitors (angels). Upon learning that Lot had guests, the men of the city come to rape them. Later in the chapter Sodom was destroyed along with Gomorrah because God had heard “the outcry against its people” (v. 13). Over time, homosexual male sex was labeled as “sodomy,” apparently in order to serve as a reminder of the moral lesson we were supposed to draw from the judgment of that city.
But did we get the correct lesson? What was it exactly that angered God to the point of destroying the city? In Genesis 19, there is no description of the offending sin or sins (remember the text just describes an ‘outcry against its people’), so we had to wait for the prophet Ezekiel to name the sins in detail:
“Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it” (Ez. 16:48-50).
The specific causes of Sodom’s condemnation mentioned are 1) pride, 2) excess of food and 3) prosperous ease, combined with 4) an unwillingness to aid the poor and needy. Whatever else was wrong with Sodom didn’t even specifically make the list. I don’t know if it’s possible to overstate the implications of this prophesy. Genesis 19 implies that gang rape was a normal, hoe-hum cultural activity for the Sodomites. But what really made God angry was that they would not spread the wealth. So we have missed spectacularly in defining sodomy as homosexual male sex. Here is my proposed amendment to the dictionary:
sod.om.y n. 1. Pride. 2. Excess of food, wealth. 3. Apathy, esp. in respect to the poor and needy. v. (to sodomize) 1. To pass over the poor in an unconcerned manner. 2. To have an excess. Antonyms – see “thanksgiving”
But did we get the correct lesson? What was it exactly that angered God to the point of destroying the city? In Genesis 19, there is no description of the offending sin or sins (remember the text just describes an ‘outcry against its people’), so we had to wait for the prophet Ezekiel to name the sins in detail:
“Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it” (Ez. 16:48-50).
The specific causes of Sodom’s condemnation mentioned are 1) pride, 2) excess of food and 3) prosperous ease, combined with 4) an unwillingness to aid the poor and needy. Whatever else was wrong with Sodom didn’t even specifically make the list. I don’t know if it’s possible to overstate the implications of this prophesy. Genesis 19 implies that gang rape was a normal, hoe-hum cultural activity for the Sodomites. But what really made God angry was that they would not spread the wealth. So we have missed spectacularly in defining sodomy as homosexual male sex. Here is my proposed amendment to the dictionary:
sod.om.y n. 1. Pride. 2. Excess of food, wealth. 3. Apathy, esp. in respect to the poor and needy. v. (to sodomize) 1. To pass over the poor in an unconcerned manner. 2. To have an excess. Antonyms – see “thanksgiving”
3.02.2009
Homosexuality, Part III: Genesis 2
Now that I’ve given a few introductory comments on the topic, I want to examine the Biblical passages one by one that supposedly condemn homosexuality. Upon closer inspection, I will show that those verses do not say what the conservative thinks they do. The passages in question are Genesis 2, Genesis 19, two verses from the Old Testament law, two verses from the Epistles, and of course Romans 1.
Many Christians feel that a sufficient condemnation of homosexuality already exists in Genesis 2, even though there is no explicit mention of homosexuality here. This is where God creates only two genders (“she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” 2:23), and then ordains marriage by saying that “they shall become one flesh” (2:24). The idea that this passage delivers a knock-out blow to homosexuality and gay marriage is deep-rooted. In the eighties, conservative Christians were fond of the witty saying, “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Likewise, only two days before the referendum on the definition of marriage in 2004, my pastor suddenly deviated from his current series of sermons to talk about the “one man, one woman” marriage principle from Genesis 2. Although it was never said, the implicit message was clear: “Same-gendered marriage is morally wrong and should be voted against!”
The thinking here is that since God created only two genders and ordained marriage to be between one man and one woman, and since any deviation from God’s plan is sin, then homosexuality is sin. But is it true that any deviation from God’s plan is sin? It certainly is a widely held belief, even among great Christians. For example, in John 9 the disciples encountered a blind man and asked Jesus a question about him: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus responded to their question by rejecting their implication altogether (as he often did) that blindness was a punishment for something.
Blindness is certainly a deviation from the purpose for eyes (what else are eyes for but to see?), and homosexuality is also a deviation from the purpose for gender (as a brief anatomical investigation will make clear). But no one thinks anymore (as the disciples did) that blindness is the result of a moral failure. What is true is that blindness is not God’s ideal for the eyes. Similarly, the only thing implied by Genesis 2 is that homosexuality is not God’s ideal for sexuality, but as the example of Jesus’ response to blindness makes clear, this does not at all make it sin. After all, we are also behaving as deviants when we step onto an airplane: “If God wanted people to fly, then God would have created people with wings!!!”
So there is no condemnation of homosexuality in Genesis 2. Maybe in Genesis 19, then, with those nasty Sodomites? Let’s look at that next week.
Many Christians feel that a sufficient condemnation of homosexuality already exists in Genesis 2, even though there is no explicit mention of homosexuality here. This is where God creates only two genders (“she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” 2:23), and then ordains marriage by saying that “they shall become one flesh” (2:24). The idea that this passage delivers a knock-out blow to homosexuality and gay marriage is deep-rooted. In the eighties, conservative Christians were fond of the witty saying, “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Likewise, only two days before the referendum on the definition of marriage in 2004, my pastor suddenly deviated from his current series of sermons to talk about the “one man, one woman” marriage principle from Genesis 2. Although it was never said, the implicit message was clear: “Same-gendered marriage is morally wrong and should be voted against!”
The thinking here is that since God created only two genders and ordained marriage to be between one man and one woman, and since any deviation from God’s plan is sin, then homosexuality is sin. But is it true that any deviation from God’s plan is sin? It certainly is a widely held belief, even among great Christians. For example, in John 9 the disciples encountered a blind man and asked Jesus a question about him: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus responded to their question by rejecting their implication altogether (as he often did) that blindness was a punishment for something.
Blindness is certainly a deviation from the purpose for eyes (what else are eyes for but to see?), and homosexuality is also a deviation from the purpose for gender (as a brief anatomical investigation will make clear). But no one thinks anymore (as the disciples did) that blindness is the result of a moral failure. What is true is that blindness is not God’s ideal for the eyes. Similarly, the only thing implied by Genesis 2 is that homosexuality is not God’s ideal for sexuality, but as the example of Jesus’ response to blindness makes clear, this does not at all make it sin. After all, we are also behaving as deviants when we step onto an airplane: “If God wanted people to fly, then God would have created people with wings!!!”
So there is no condemnation of homosexuality in Genesis 2. Maybe in Genesis 19, then, with those nasty Sodomites? Let’s look at that next week.
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