Notes to Gagnon’s Essay in the Gagnon-Via Two Views Book
Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of New Testament
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, PA 15206
gagnon@pts.edu
September 2003
Updated 10/2/03
The following notes correspond to the note numbers in my essay, “The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Key Issues,” in Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (co-authored with Dan O. Via; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 41-92. For full bibliographic entries to the abbreviations given below, see the “Fuller Bibliography” on the "Material for 'Two Views'" web page.
1. I am not asserting that the issue of homosexual practice is the most important concern of the church in absolute terms—more important, for example, than the issue of the sole lordship of Jesus Christ over our syncretistic culture. Christology is obviously the heart and soul of Christian faith. Yet attacks on Christ’s lordship are rarely frontal assaults. They more commonly occur when positions that would have appalled Jesus and that represent a radical departure from Scripture are foisted on the church. The church’s historic stance on a prescriptive male-female paradigm for sexual unions is the current foremost “endangered species” of the church. As such, it demands special attention. Indeed, as noted in points 3 and 4 below, religious freedom itself is at stake. For a riveting and alarming discussion of this, see the aptly subtitled book by Alan Sears and Craig Osten: The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today. No Christian who has reservations about affirming homosexual behavior can read this book and not recognize the extraordinary political dangers that face the church and youth generally from pro-homosex legislation.
2. It is true that the Western church continues to be beset by the problem of materialism and indifference to the plight of the poor. However, I know of no lobby in the church celebrating greed as a positive good or attempting to overturn the dominant scriptural perspective on this issue.
3. For a theocentric and christocentric preface to sexuality, see Gagnon 2001b, 1-3 (for an online pdf copy see http://www.theologymatters.com/TMIssues/NovDec01.PDF or http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/gagnon1.pdf). There I look at texts from both Paul and John to show that arguments favoring homosexual behavior overturn not only Scripture’s explicit teaching on this matter but also other basic principles enshrined in Scripture. In insisting that God and Christ could not possibly deny one whole form of consensual sexual expression, pro-homosex arguments give only subordinate weight to (1) the theocentric posture of Scripture, (2) the basic Christian paradigm of grace amidst cruciformity, and (3) the image of Jesus as the sufficient Answer to all life’s desires.
4. Gagnon 2001a, 460-69; Gagnon 2001b, 5-6. Although now widely utilized by pro-homosex advocates, the initial proponents of this analogy were: Luke Timothy Johnson, Decision Making in the Church (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 96-97; revised as Scripture and Discernment: Decision Making in the Church (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 144-48; idem, “Debate & Discernment, Scripture & Spirit,” Commonweal (Jan. 28, 1994): 12-13; and Siker 1994, 187-90; idem 1996, 145-46; Fowl.
5. Indeed, the Apostolic Decree (15:20, 29; 21:25) specifically enjoined Gentiles not to engage in porneia (“sexual immorality”) which, given the echoes of Leviticus 17-18, clearly had the sin of homosexual intercourse in view, among others. On the fifth point, see the biblical texts cited in Gagnon 2001a, 466-69.
6. Ancient Israel, early Judaism, and early Christianity did not naively imbibe at the cultural well on this issue; they were distinctly countercultural. We know of no other cultures in the ancient Near East or in the Greco-Roman world that stood more unequivocally opposed to same-sex intercourse. Early Israel, early Judaism, and Christianity had to think long and hard about what they were doing to buck cultural trends elsewhere.
7. Also: mandatory release dates, the right of near-kin redemption, and not returning runaway slaves.
8. Some allege that biblical critiques of homosexual practice today “sound like” defenses of slavery in the pre-Civil War period. This misses the point: Scripture itself does not provide the unequivocal witness for slavery that it exhibits against same-sex intercourse.
9. In other words, being a woman is a condition given at conception. Homosexual passions, however, are almost certainly not primarily or directly congenital. They can be created, elevated, reduced, and sometimes even eliminated, depending on familial and peer influences and macrocultural sanctions.
10. E.g., Miriam, judge Deborah, Huldah, and Esther among others in the OT; the women involved in the ministry of Jesus; the example of Prisca (Priscilla) and other women who served as Paul’s co-workers (Rom 16:1-15; Phil 4:2-3). See also Webb 2001.
11. E.g., pedophilia, zoophilia (bestiality), transvestism, transgenderism, necrophilia, sadomasochism, incestuous desires, and severe sexual addiction. Sexual orientation refers merely to the directedness of sexual desire at a given segment of a person’s life. The term sexual orientation is often treated in pro-homosex literature as some sort of inviolable talisman. As a conversation stopper someone will say: “This is the person’s sexual orientation; nothing can be done about that.” Although pro-homosex advocates have worked feverishly to promote the view that sexual orientation refers to an unalterable and congenital condition, it cannot have such a meaning because socio-scientific research has not established that homoerotic desire is unalterable and congenital. Pro-homosex advocates have also tried to restrict use of the term to heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgenderism so as to link the last three orientations exclusively to the one sexual orientation endorsed by society, heterosexuality, and to disengage it from a broader list of unacceptable paraphilias. The attempt to make sexual orientation a legal category meriting special protection requires this semantic move; but nothing in the words sexual or orientation requires it.
12. Charles Cosgrove acknowledges the need to give “greater weight to countercultural voices in scripture” but suggests that Paul has bowed to the “dominant antipathy in his culture against homosexuality” in Rom 1:26-27, whereas in Gal 3:28 Paul “challenges dominant notions of sexual identity” (Appealing to Scripture in Moral Debate [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002], 43). Cosgrove is wrong. The Greco-Roman culture had a “dominant antipathy” to some forms of homoerotic practice but by no means all (see Williams’ Roman Homosexuality). Even the occasional Greek or Roman critic of homoerotic practice fell far short of the intensity of opposition expressed in Judeo-Christian circles. Both Jews and Christians recognized that their view of homosexual practice set them apart from the culture at large. The Judeo-Christian view was not merely “echoing the dominant culture” when it opposed all same-sex intercourse; it was critiquing that culture. As noted in 2.d. (p. 46), nothing in Gal 3:28 challenges the root reason for Paul’s opposition to same-sex intercourse.
13. On the one hand the Old Testament allows divorce for men (Deut 24:1-4). On the other hand, anti-divorce currents can be detected: the Old Testament makes no provision for divorce initiated by wives, puts some restrictions on a husband’s right to divorce his wife (Deut 22:19, 29; 24:1), at one point declares “I (Yahweh) hate divorce” (Mal 2:16), and presents a vision of marriage in Gen 1:27 and 2:24 that Jesus understood to be in tension with the Mosaic allowance for divorce (Mark 10:9).
14. Suffice it to say that Paul’s and Matthew’s slight modulation of Jesus’ divorce ruling –if that is the right word—gives no grounds for a complete overhaul of a core sex-proscription in Scripture such as the one against same-sex intercourse. Paul and Matthew were not saying: we should celebrate divorce and provide cultural incentives for perpetuating a cycle of divorce and remarriage. Indeed, they undoubtedly saw their qualifications as in line with Jesus’ own original intention.
15. Walter Wink has suggested that Jesus was more staunchly opposed to divorce than to homoerotic intercourse, if indeed Jesus was opposed to the latter at all (Wink 1999, 41). Yet shall we claim that Jesus had weaker convictions about bestiality and incest on the grounds that he said not a word about these subjects? In speaking against divorce and remarriage, Jesus was turning his attention to a sexual issue that was a problem in his society; namely, the threat posed by divorce to the indissolubility of the one valid form of sexual union, the matrimony of one man and one woman. Obviously Jesus did not regard the longevity of a given sexual union to be more important than the intra-human, non-incestuous, and heterosexual prerequisites for entering such a union. Illicit sexual unions deserve to be severed.
16. Does it no longer trouble us that the church has become all too lax in its willingness to permit divorce when Jesus Christ himself, the epitome of God’s love, took a different approach? Essentially we have arrived at, and even expanded upon, the Old Testament allowance for divorce that precipitated Jesus’ criticism in the first place.
17. Arguably, sex between a man and his mother would be a comparable offense, slightly more or slightly less offensive depending on the author. Apart from that one possible qualification, however, only bestiality was considered a more severe “consensual” sexual offense than same-sex intercourse. At least four points demonstrate this. (1) Both ancient Israel and early Judaism exhibited extreme repugnance for same-sex intercourse. Such repugnance, of course, is conveyed in the Levitical proscriptions, which specifically tag man-male intercourse as a to’evah (an abomination; something particularly abhorrent, detestable, loathsome, repugnant, disgusting). Abhorrence for same-sex intercourse per se also factors prominently in three important “kitchen sink stories” of massive human depravity (Ham, Sodom, the Levite at Gibeah) and in the references to the qedeshim (male cult prostitutes) in Deuteronomic law and in the Deuteronomistic History (Joshua through 2 Kings; here too labeled a to’evah). The fact that Ezekiel could describe it only by metonymy in 16:50 and 18:12 (as to’evah) also points in this direction, as does the absence of a specific recorded case of same-sex intercourse in early Judaism (from the Second Temple period on) prior to ca. A.D 300. Regarding the possibility of Jews engaging in this abhorrent behavior, a text from the rabbinic Tosefta comments simply: “Israel is not suspected” (Qiddushin 5:10). Jews in the Greco-Roman period regarded man-male intercourse as the prime example, or at least one of the top examples, of Gentile impiety (e.g., Sibylline Oracles 3; Letter of Aristeas 152). In a lengthy description of sex laws, Philo (ca. 10 B.C.-A.D. 45) characterizes male-male intercourse as a “much greater evil than that which was mentioned [above],” referring minimally to sex with a menstruous and barren women and possibly as well to the preceding discussion of adultery and incest (Special Laws 3.7-42; though cf. 3.14: “What form of unholiness could be more impious than [marrying one’s mother]?”). Philo follows his discussion of male-male intercourse with one about bestiality (3.43-50), introduced with the words alla gar (literally, “but really, certainly”), whose sense may be correctly captured in F. Colson’s translation for the Loeb Classical Library edition: “Even worse than this,” that is, even worse than man-male intercourse. When Josephus (ca. A.D. 37-100) discusses marriage laws, his very first point, before he even mentions incest and adultery, is: “The Law recognizes only intercourse according to nature, that which is with a woman. . . . That of males with males it abhors and, if anyone attempts it, death is the penalty” (Against Apion 2.199-200). At another place, though, he singles out sexual intercourse with one’s mother as “the greatest evil” before citing (in no particular order of priority) other forms of incest, sex with a menstruous woman, bestiality, and male-male intercourse (Jewish Antiquities 3.274-75). (2) The marriage text in Gen 2:24 marks as the one essential prerequisite of a married union, beyond its intra-human character, that it involves a man and a woman. Incest itself must be ruled out of bounds on the basis of post-Fall developments. Same-sex intercourse is precluded already prior to the Fall. (3) The Old Testament makes limited accommodations to monogamy and longevity, and in the patriarchal period some relationships existed that were subsequently banned by Levitical legislation as incestuous. Yet the Old Testament makes no exceptions for same-sex intercourse. (4) In Rom 1:24-27 Paul highlights same-sex intercourse, along with idolatry, as a prime example of egregious human suppression of the truth about God in creation. This, plus the charged terms with which Paul describes same-sex intercourse in 1:24-27, confirm that Paul’s views on same-sex intercourse were as strong as those held by Jews generally of the period. That Paul employs the discussion in 1:18-32 to ensnare the righteous Jew in 2:1-3:8 in no way detracts from Paul’s own vigorously negative assessment of same-sex intercourse (Gagnon 2001a, 277-84).
18. Scripture explicitly designates sex between sexual sames as “contrary to nature.” In a derivative sense we might speak of the unnatural or bodily incongruous character of incest, bestiality, and pedophilia. Leviticus 18:23 designates bestiality as a tevel, “an untoward mixture, perversion.” The same term is applied in 20:12 to a father having sex with his son’s wife. The term zimmah (“depravity, monstrosity”) is used in 20:14 of a man who has sex with a woman and her daughter. Of course, to’evah (“abomination, detestable act”) is specifically attached to man-male intercourse in Lev 18:22 and 20:13; then, by extension, to all sexual offenses in Leviticus 18 (so 18:24-30).
19. The following comments on pedophilia by Dr. Fred Berlin, founder of the Sexual Disorders Clinic at Johns Hopkins, provide an interesting parallel to homosexual orientation: “The biggest misconception about pedophilia is that someone chooses to have it. . . . It’s not anyone’s fault that they have it, but it’s their responsibility to do something about it. . . . Biological factors play into [the development of pedophilia]. . . . We’ve learned that you can successfully treat people with pedophilia, but you cannot cure them” (People Magazine, Apr. 15, 2002).
20. Linda Mealey, Sex Differences (San Diego: Academic Press, 2000), 244.
21. Jesus did speak against judging others (e.g., Matt 7:1-5 // Luke 6:37, 41-42). However, the context for such sayings, both literary and historical, makes it obvious that Jesus was not advocating that his followers cease making moral distinctions between good and bad behavior. Indeed, one can hardly criticize another for the act of judging without making such a distinction. The point of the anti-judgment sayings was to warn people, particularly the Pharisees, against judgment that is overly punctilious, hypocritical, and loveless. The very next saying after Matt 7:1-5 is about not giving what is holy to dogs or throwing pearls before swine (7:6)—certainly not a non-judgmental statement.
22. Gagnon, “A Rejoinder to Walter Wink’s Views,” 23-33 (http://robgagnon.net/articles/gagnon5.pdf).
23. When Paul refers to the law as something abrogated he has in view the law of Moses instituted on Mount Sinai as the ruling power over Israel and thus, by extension, over all Adam’s descendants. In Paul’s understanding the Mosaic law was defective in three key ways: (1) Since it was given to Israel it served as a marker of Jewish identity and therefore as a boundary that tended to keep Gentiles out; in short, it was ethnically exclusive. (2) Even though there was a redemptive component to the law, it did not have as its basis the definitive and climactic redemptive work of God in Christ. Its stress was on human doing rather than divine doing and, as such, it made possible boasting in one’s own self. (3) Most importantly, it was helpless to empower obedience in the face of the strong sinful impulse operating in Adamic flesh, but powerful to curse those who violated its commands.
24. Martin Luther says as much in his comments on Rom 6:14 (Lectures on Romans, in Luther’s Works [vol. 25; Saint Louis: Concordia, 1972], 316-17): “Hence we must note that the apostle’s mode of speaking appears unusual and strange to those who do not understand it because of its great peculiarity. For those people understand the expression ‘to be under the Law’ as being the same as having a law according to which one must live. But the apostle understands the words ‘to be under the Law’ as equivalent to not fulfilling the Law, as being guilty of disobeying the Law, as being a debtor and a transgressor, in that the Law has the power of accusing and damning a person and lording it over him, but it does not have the power to enable him to satisfy the Law or overcome it. And thus as long as the Law rules, sin also has dominion and holds man captive. . . . Therefore he says in this passage that we can restrain the reign of sin because ‘we are not under the Law but under grace’ (v. 14). All this means ‘that the body of sin might be destroyed’ (v. 6) and the righteousness which has been begun may be brought to perfection.”
25. Ibid., 321. John Calvin made a similar point when he commented on Rom 8:9: “Those in whom the Spirit does not reign do not belong to Christ; therefore those who serve the flesh are not Christians, for those who separate Christ from His Spirit make Him like a dead image or a corpse. . . . [F]ree remission of sins cannot be separated from the Spirit of regeneration. This would be, as it were, to rend Christ asunder” (The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Romans and to the Thessalonians [trans. R. MacKenzie; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961], 164).
26. The trip to God’s kingdom is free, all expenses paid by Christ’s death, but one still has to get on and stay on the airplane that God provides to get us there (the Spirit). So long as one lives in the main as a fleshly being, one remains very much on the runway.
27. Faith in Christ for Paul meant an end to a life for self and a beginning to life for Christ who gave himself for us. The one who lives in the main for self does not have faith in Christ. Paul stresses in the theme statement of his letter to the Romans that the Christian life is always characterized by believing in the gospel about Christ, not just at the moment of conversion. “God’s righteousness”—the rightness of God to save through a law-free gospel about Christ, and/or the saving activity that flows from and vindicates God’s rightness—“is being revealed from faith to faith,” that is, by faith from beginning to end or from first to last (Rom 1:17a). Paul’s main proof text was Hab 2:4: “The one who is righteous from faith shall live” (Rom 1:17b; Gal 3:11). Faith is concrete. The truth of the gospel daily challenges believers to believe that the message of the gospel about Christ’s death and resurrection for them is more real than anything that can be seen or touched. It calls on them to believe that they can cease living for themselves and instead let Christ live in them. And it urges them to acknowledge that God’s program for their lives, namely to form Christ in them by any means necessary, is better than any immediate self-gratification. Suppose a man wants to have sex with a woman other than his wife. What does faith mean in this context? Does it mean believing that Jesus died for him, knowing that he is going to heaven, and then having sex with the woman? May it not be so. Faith here means: Because I am so grateful for the salvation accomplished through Christ and am convinced that what God has in store for me—forming Christ in me, often through deprivation—is better than the gratification of this sinful impulse, I will not yield to that impulse. In other words, one cannot live primarily in conformity to the self-oriented impulse operating in human flesh and then claim to be living out of the conviction of being justified by faith. To be sure, even when one obeys, it is God who effects “both the willing and the working for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:13). Yet it is precisely because “God is the one who is at work in you” that one is to “work at your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). One must comply with God’s doing. To do otherwise is to substitute one’s own willing and doing for God’s, living out of one’s flesh rather than the Spirit. The outcome is death rather than life.
28. “Law” (nomos) here and in Rom 7:23 and 7:25b has a metaphorical sense. The law of God from Moses is good (7:12, 16) but, unfortunately, it is external and weak. The “law of the mind” that recognizes the goodness of the commands of the Mosaic law is, fortunately, internal but, unfortunately, still weak. There is “another law,” another regulating power, at work in human flesh, the “law of sin (and death), i.e., the sinful impulse. Unfortunately, it is not only internal but also strong, time and again taking prisoner the mind’s desire to do what the Mosaic law commands. A new internal “law” or regulating power that is stronger than the sinful impulse needs to be introduced. That new law is none other than the Spirit of Christ, made available to all who believe and enabling believers to do the essential will of God enshrined in the Mosaic law—without, however, reinstituting the jurisdictional authority of the Mosaic law (8:1-17). With most Pauline scholars, I take Romans 7:7-25 (minus the anticipatory cry of deliverance in 7:25a) to be a description of the life of the unbeliever, one who does not have the Spirit and so remains under the regime of Adamic flesh and its Spirit-less jurisdictional authority, the Mosaic law. The prefacing texts, 7:5-6, decisively favor this interpretation. Romans 7:5 (“when we were in the flesh the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our members, so as to bear fruit for death”) is a perfect summary of the experience elaborated in 7:7-25. Romans 7:6 (“but now we were discharged from the law, having died to that by which we were being held down, so that we might serve in newness of Spirit, and not oldness of letter”) is likewise the perfect rubric for 8:1-17, which also begins with a “now” denoting the new circumstances of the believer in Christ. In short, the difference between “the law of the Spirit” and the law of Moses is threefold, answering to the threefold defect in the Mosaic law cited in n. 23 above: (1) The law of the Spirit does not set up barriers to Gentiles. (2) It is brought into being by the amends-making death of Christ, allowing us to be purified to receive God’s Spirit. (3) It not only commands us to live righteously but also empowers such obedience.
29. A fully sanctified life does not take hold all at once. Even so, in the main, one will serve Christ by the Spirit’s power rather than sin by human power. As Paul says in his letter to the Philippians, “with fear and trembling work at your own salvation; for God is the one who is at work in you, [effecting] both the willing and the working for his good pleasure” (2:12-13). Note the wonderful balance here: we are to work at our own salvation but such working is nothing other than letting God work in us. Not to progress in holiness is to resist actively the work of God in one’s life. And as Paul says later in the same letter: “not that I have already been made perfect (or: reached the goal), but I press on to make it my own. . . . forgetting what lies behind and straining to what lies ahead” (3:12-14). When we fail, we get up, push on, and forget about the failures of the past. We renew our resolve to crucify the sin-controlled life, not by our own efforts but by the power of God, and thereby to reach the goal of eternal life.
30. The vice list of 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 begins with pornoi (sexually immoral people), idolaters, adulterers, “soft men,” and men who lie with males. The reason that pornoi are mentioned separately from other sexual offenders is that the main issue at hand is still the case of the incestuous man, who is designated as a pornos in 1 Corinthians 5. Hence, pornoi is put at the head of the vice list, leapfrogging over idolatry (which is sometimes placed first in vice lists). Given that the ensuing discussion in 6:12-20 and 7:2 puts sex with prostitutes and sex outside the bond of marriage, respectively, under the rubric of porneia, reference to adulterers and participants in male-male intercourse in 6:9 should be understood as further specifying what pornoi might include (cf. 5:11 where pornoi appears in a nearly identical vice list as the sole designation for various forms of sexual immorality). Similarly, 1 Timothy 1:10 singles out immediately after pornoi “men who lie with males” (arsenokoitai)—not because arsenokoitai are distinct from pornoi but because arsenokoitai are a particularly egregious instance of pornoi.
31. The connection between engaging in a pattern of self-affirmed sexual immorality and exclusion from the eternal life of the kingdom of God is unmistakable in Paul. Thus he could say to the Thessalonian believers, in the earliest extant New Testament document:
For you know what commands we gave to you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God: your holiness, that you abstain from sexual immorality (porneia) . . . [and not live] like the Gentiles who do not know God. . . . because the Lord is an avenger regarding all these things. . . . For God called us not to sexual uncleanness (akatharsia) but in holiness. Therefore the one who rejects [these commands] rejects not humans but the God who gives his Holy Spirit to us. (1 Thess 4:2-8)
And to the Galatian Christians:
The works of the flesh are obvious, which are: sexual immorality (porneia), sexual uncleanness (akatharsia), licentiousness (aselgeia) . . . , which I am warning you about, just as I warned you before, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. . . . Stop deceiving yourselves; God is not to be mocked, for whatever one sows that one will also reap. For the one who casts seed into one’s flesh will reap a harvest of destruction and decay from the flesh, but the one who casts seed into the Spirit will reap a harvest of eternal life from the Spirit. And let us not grow tired of doing what is right for in due time we will reap, if we do not relax our efforts. (Gal 5:19-21; 6:7-9)
And again to the Corinthians, in the context of how to deal with a practicing, self-affirming Christian participant in an incestuous adult union:
Or do you not realize that unrighteous people will not inherit God's kingdom? Stop deceiving yourselves. Neither the sexually immoral (the pornoi), nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor soft men (malakoi), nor men who lie with males (arsenokoitai) . . . will inherit the kingdom of God. And these things some of you used to be. But you washed yourselves off, you were made holy (sanctified), you were made righteous (justified) in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. (1 Cor 6:9-11).
In 2 Corinthians Paul expresses deep concern that
I may have to mourn over many who have continued in their former sinning and did not repent of the sexual uncleanness (akatharsia), sexual immorality (porneia), and licentiousness (aselgeia) that they practiced. (12:21)
Just as Paul correlated man-male intercourse with sexual immorality (porneia) in 1 Cor 6:9 (cf. 1 Tim 1:10), so too he treated same-sex intercourse as the prime example of “sexual uncleanness” (akatharsia) in Rom 1:24-27:
Therefore, God gave them over, in the desires of their hearts, to a sexual uncleanness (akatharsia) consisting of their bodies being dishonored among themselves. . . . to dishonorable passions, for even their females exchanged the natural use (i.e., of the male as regards sexual intercourse) for that which is contrary to nature; 27and likewise also the males, having left behind the natural use of the female (as regards sexual intercourse), were inflamed with their yearning for one another, males with males committing indecency and in return receiving in themselves the payback which was necessitated by their straying.
Later, in Rom 6:19-22, Paul urged Roman believers to reverse this trend:
For just as you presented your members as slaves to sexual uncleanness (akatharsia) and to [other types of] lawlessness for the sake of lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for the sake of holiness (or: sanctification). For when you were slaves of sin, you were free with respect to [the demands of] righteousness. What fruit did you have at that time? Things of which you are now ashamed, because the end (or: outcome) of those things is death. But now, since you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you have your fruit for holiness (or: sanctification), and the end (or: outcome) is eternal life.
The message of Colossians and Ephesians is similar:
So put to death the members that belong to the earth: sexual immorality (porneia), sexual uncleanness (akatharsia), passion, evil desire . . . because of which things the wrath of God is coming [on the children of disobedience], in which things you also once walked, when you were living in them. But now put away all (such) things . . . , because you have stripped off the old humanity with its practices and clothed yourselves with the new, which is being renewed into knowledge according to the image of the one who created it. (Col 3:5-10)
[N]o longer walk as the Gentiles walk, . . . who . . . have given themselves up to licentiousness (aselgeia) for the doing of every sexual uncleanness (akatharsia). . . . Sexual immorality (porneia) and sexual uncleanness (akatharsia) of any kind . . . must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. . . . Know this indeed, that every sexually immoral person (pornos) or sexually unclean person (akathartos) . . . has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God is coming on the children of disobedience. (Eph 4:17-19; 5:3-6)
And so too the Pastoral Epistles:
The law is not laid down for the righteous, but for the lawless and disobedient, the ungodly and sinners, the unholy and profane, killers of fathers and killers of mothers, murderers, the sexually immoral (pornoi), males who take other males to bed (arsenokoitai), kidnappers (or: slave dealers), liars, perjurers, and whatever else is opposed to sound teaching that accords with the gospel. (1 Tim 1:9-11)
Many scholars regard Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, and the Pastoral Epistles as “deuteropauline,” i.e., written by later Paulinists in Paul’s name. As regards the danger of sexual immorality, though, these texts are in complete agreement with the undisputed Pauline corpus.
32. The other main interpretation, that Ham’s offense was voyeurism, does not do justice to the statement that Noah “came to know what his youngest son had done to him” (9:24). Nor does it explain adequately the severity of the curse and its placement on Ham’s ‘seed,’ Canaan. It ignores the fact that the expression “see the nakedness of” is used elsewhere with reference to sexual intercourse (Lev 20:17; similarly, “uncover the nakedness of” throughout Leviticus 18 and 20). It also overlooks the background story of incestuous homosexual rape in the Egyptian myth of Horus and Seth. Among those who interpret the story as involving immoral sexual intercourse are: Hermann Gunkel, Gerhard von Rad, Christoph Levin, Thomas Schmidt, Donald Wold, Athalya Brenner, and Martti Nissenen. The Babylonian Talmud records a debate ca. A.D. 225 between two rabbis about the meaning of “had done to him” in Gen 9:24: one suggesting castration, the other homosexual relations (Sanhedrin 70a). See Gagnon 2001a, 63-71.
33. Cf. the use of the term “the abominable” in Rev 21:8 (paralleled by “dogs” in 22:15) as a designation for those participating in homosexual cult activity.
34. Testament of Asher 7:1 states clearly that the men of Sodom “did not recognize the Lord’s angels” (similarly Philo and Josephus). Hebrews 13:2 may provide an inverted echo of this sentiment when it advises that hospitality be shown to strangers “for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
35. According to the Testament of Naphtali 3:3-4, the descendants of Naphtali shall not be like the Gentiles who changed “the order” of nature by devoting themselves to idols; instead, they shall recognize in the heavens, earth, and sea “the Lord who made all these things, in order that [they] may not become like Sodom, which exchanged the order of its nature.” Strikingly similar motifs to Rom 1:19-27 make it likely that either Paul formulated Rom 1:19-27 with this tradition in mind or T. Naph. 3:3-4 is another Christian interpolation into the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. I think the former is more likely, but either supposition increases the probability that the clause about Sodom exchanging “the order of its nature” refers to same-sex intercourse. This is important because, like Jude 7, the actions of the men of Sodom are compared with the actions of the angels in Gen 6:4, who “likewise exchanged the order of their nature” by copulating with human females. The “likewise” suggests similarity but not identity. How far does the similarity go? Both the Sodomites and the angels acted against “the order of their nature,” engaging in, or attempting to engage in, structurally incompatible forms of sexual intercourse. Both acts involved, or threatened to involve, human-angel copulation. Yet the very concept of “exchange” implies volition, an intentional action—as with the exchange of nature’s order for idols—and that is precisely the point where the analogy between the Sodomites and the angels breaks down. This volitional element comes across clearly in Rom 1:18-27, which correlates the concept of exchange with a conscious suppression of truth in creation/nature. Consequently, one should probably understand T. Naph. 3:3-5 in a way that confirms our interpretation of Jude 6-8: the Sodomites deliberately exchanged the order of their nature as males by attempting intercourse with other males. In the process they got more than they bargained for, unknowingly attempting sex with “other flesh,” angels. The primary exchange is opposite-sex intercourse for same-sex intercourse but the undertone is unintended sex with angels. The latter component solidifies a connection with the rebellious angels—a connection already intimated by the fact that both, in different ways, consciously exchanged the natural for the unnatural. For other early Jewish texts that pick up on the motif of sexual immorality at Sodom, see Gagnon 2001a, 88-89 n. 121.
36. The issue of coercion was secondary. As with Rom 1:24 the language of impurity is applied to sinful desires. In a highly tendentious review of The Bible and Homosexual Practice, L. William Countryman charges that my reading of Jude 7 is an example of exegetical carelessness (Anglican Theological Review 85:1 [Winter 2003]: 196). Countryman insists that the phrase “in a manner similar to these,” a back-reference to the mention of the angelic “Watchers” in Jude 6, mandates that the sole and exclusive sin of Sodom in Jude’s eyes was attempted sex with angels. All Countryman has demonstrated is his own lack of exegetical precision. Nothing in the wording of Jude 7 dictates an exact correspondence with the sin of the Watchers and, in fact, there cannot be an exact correspondence since the story of Sodom depicts offenders who are unaware of angels in their midst. In my review of Countryman’s review, I expand on my discussion in Homosexuality and the Bible by pointing to six indications that ekporneusasai (“having committed sexual immorality”) in Jude 7 alludes at least in part to intended male-male intercourse. See http://robgagnon.net/Reviews/homoCountrymanResp.pdf (pp. 10-14) or http://robgagnon.net/RevCountryman.htm.
37. The Deuteronomistic History is a label that scholars give to the unified work running from Joshua to 2 Kings. “Deuteronomistic” refers to the Deuteronomistic History; “Deuteronomic” to the legal material in Deuteronomy. For a fuller treatment of the qedeshim and the story of the Levite at Gibeah, see Gagnon 2001a, 91-110.
38. The Holiness Code (H) is the designation that scholars give to Leviticus 17-26, a block of laws that urge all Israelites to keep the land of Israel unpolluted through obedience to the commands found therein.
39. Whether a capital sentence would have been standard procedure everywhere is not clear. Cf. Gagnon 2001a, 110-111 n. 176, 113 n. 181.
40. Gagnon 2001a, 43-56, 347-60, and passim. The reason that female-female intercourse goes unmentioned is that it probably was not a problem in ancient Israelite society, given the tight controls on female chastity (cf. also its virtual absence in ancient Near Eastern sources). Note that the reason for forbidding male-male intercourse (“The Necessity of Sexual Complementarity,” pp. 64-65) would also preclude lesbian intercourse, though it is an open question whether the penalty would have been as severe. Cf. Gagnon 2001a, 142-46.
41. The one exception is the prohibition of sex with a menstruating woman (18:19). However, there are good reasons for bracketing this out. (1) Even the framers of the Holiness Code regarded such intercourse as a second-order severe offense, one not requiring immediate civil action (20:18). (2) Elsewhere in Leviticus, outside the Holiness Code, the only ‘penalty’ mentioned for sex with a menstruating woman is that the man is put into a state of ritual uncleanness for seven days (15:24). In fact, of all the sexual transgressions cited in Lev 18 and 20, sex with a menstruating woman is the only one that overlaps with permitted impurities in the Priestly Source (P). Also speaking to the issue of ritual purity is the fact that the main issue is the interaction of fluids (menstrual blood and semen) and not the legitimacy of the sexual union per se (as with adultery, same-sex intercourse, incest, and bestiality). (3) Other than in Ezek 18:6; 22:10, we hear not a word elsewhere in the Old Testament about the problem of sex with a menstruating woman. (4) There is no clear carry-over of this proscription into the New Testament canon. The closest one comes is the Apostolic Decree where abstention from blood is at least distinguished from abstention from porneia (Acts 15:20, 29; 21:25). Points (1) through (4) above suggest that this particular proscription is not a canonical core value, particularly in the context of the movement from old covenant to new. The next two points speak to additional problems with carrying over this proscription into a contemporary context. (5) Sex with a menstruating woman does not carry quite the same “unnatural” quality of having sex with one’s parents, someone of the same sex, or an animal. It happens inadvertently, in the course of normal sexual activity. Finally, (6) the social-scientific case for avoiding incest, bestiality, adultery, and same-sex intercourse is a world away from the evidence for abstention from sex during menstruation. For further elaboration see Gagnon 2002a, 100-103.
42. Pro-homosex advocates usually cite as analogous quaint and obsolete regulations two sets of apodictic law (of “You shall not” style) in the Holiness Code: Lev 19:19 (against breeding two different kinds of animals, sowing different kinds of seeds in the same field, and wearing clothing made of two kinds of yarns) and Lev 19:27-28 (against rounding off the hair on the temples, destroying one’s beard, gashing one’s flesh, and tattooing one’s body). Since no penalty is attached to the proscriptions, it is hard to know how strongly they were taken. However, Lev 19:19 has a parallel in Deut 22:9-11 and there the penalty for sowing one’s vineyard with a second kind of seed is merely that the yield is forfeited (22:9). By extension it is likely that the penalty for violating the other two prohibitions was merely that the animals (or their offspring) and the clothes, respectively, would be destroyed. Moreover, the prohibition of animal and cloth mixtures was not absolute: the cherubim of the ark were hybrid creatures; and mixtures of linen and wool were enjoined for some Tabernacle cloths, parts of the priestly wardrobe, and the tassel of the laity (the last involving a single blue thread amid linen corner fringes). The reason for the prohibitions appears to be that mixtures symbolized penetration into the divine realm (so Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 17-22 [AB; New York: Doubleday, 2000], 1658-64). This does not mean, however, that all mixing has a sacral quality, for not even priests are permitted to engage in bestiality; nor that all mixing is forbidden, for in one sense heterosexual intercourse requires a greater degree of mixing than homosexual intercourse. As for the prohibitions in Lev 19:27-28 (cf. Deut 14:1b), at least the hair cutting and flesh gashing were associated with pagan mourning rites for the dead. The aim of the proscriptions was to prevent participation in idolatrous rites. The significance of the tattoo ban is less clear but may have had to do with the abolition of perpetual slavery (ibid., 1694-95). Neither the proscriptions of Lev 19:19 nor those of 19:27-28 are taken up in the New Testament. Their timebound quality is self-evident, possessing as they do a largely symbolic character. Adultery, incest, same-sex intercourse, and bestiality perhaps have a negative symbolic value. Yet their wrongness is hardly exhausted by viewing them as symbols. Yes, adultery can be used as a metaphor to picture the unfaithfulness of God’s covenant people. But it does concrete intra-human harm as well. It is wrong to view the Levitical proscription of man-male intercourse, or of incest and bestiality, merely as a dispensable symbol.
43. The incest laws in Leviticus 18 and 20 do not include a specific prohibition of sex with one’s full sister or daughter. The reason is probably that the opening heading in Lev 18:6, “no one shall approach any flesh of his flesh,” automatically forbids such relationships, along with sex with one’s mother, as the closest kin. Sex with one’s mother is explicitly addressed in 18:7 only in order to establish that all other incestuous unions are, in one way or another, a violation of one’s mother or father. The remainder of the list in 18:8-18 shows which more distant kin-relations beyond mother, sister, and daughter are forbidden. Cf. Milgrom 2000, 1527-30.
44. The Middle Assyrian Laws, the only other legal corpus in the ancient Near East that penalizes man-male intercourse, stipulates castration and that only for rape (Gagnon 2001a, 45-47, 55-56).
45. See further Gagnon 2001a, 114-115 n. 182; Gagnon 2002a, 91-92.
46. The word “abomination” is elsewhere connected with man-male intercourse in Ezek 16:50; 18:12; Deut 23:18; 1 Kgs 14:24; Rev 21:8.
47. E.g., Milgrom 2000, 1567-68, 1750, 1785-90. Even with the mandate to procreate in Gen 1:28, there is no evidence that the authors of the Holiness Code in particular, much less Scripture generally, treated marital intercourse with a sterile woman as an abomination. Or coitus interruptus practiced by married couples or sex during a woman’s pregnancy. My critique of Milgrom’s strange proposal that Lev 18:22 and 20:13 condemn only incestuous man-male intercourse within Israel is forthcoming.
48. The prohibitions of child sacrifice and of sex with a menstruant have to do, respectively, with respect for the sacral quality of life emanating from sex and the sacral season of death and renewal in a woman’s body. Cf. Gagnon 2001a, 135-39.
49. There is an interesting line in the pseudo-Lucianic work Affairs of the Heart (ca. A.D. 300) in which Charicles, in the course of defending the superiority of male love for women (19-21), refers to homosexual men as those who “looked with the eyes at the male as (though) at a female. . . . but [saw] themselves in one another” (cf. Gagnon 2001a, 166-67 n. 10 for fuller citation).
50. Cf. the quotes from Mary Douglas and Stephen Bigger, as well as from Plato’s Laws 838 in Gagnon 2001a, 126-28.
51. L. William Countryman is an exception. He actually argues that the taboo status associated with incest does more harm than good (pp. 257-58).
52. Milgrom 2000, 1400, 1573, 1578, and passim. “Calling those involved in improper sexual relationships impure is a way of calling the persons sinful” (David P. Wright, “Unclean and Clean [OT],” Anchor Bible Dictionary 6:734).
53. Cf. Lev 18:20 which refers to the “defiling” of the man who has sex with another man’s wife and 19:22 which labels as “sin” (hatta’t) the similar—in fact, lesser—act of having sex with a slave woman designated for another man. Similarly, the depiction of the “trial by ordeal” of the suspected adulteress in Num 5:11-31 mixes the terms “iniquity” (‘awon), “defiling herself,” “uncleanness,” and “unfaithful.” Of course, throughout the Old Testament sin is viewed as an agent of defilement and impurity that requires metaphorical and often literal cleansing. Many texts could be cited but it will suffice to mention one: Ps 51 (“cleanse me from my sin. . . . purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean,” etc.).
54. Countryman is again an exception (see note 77 below).
55. The reference to the incestuous man having his “father’s wife” (1 Cor 5:1) echoes both Levitical (18:7-8; 20:11) and Deuteronomic (27:20) proscriptions of sex with one’s “father’s wife.” Paul’s word for “nakedness, indecent exposure, indecency” (aschēmosunē) in Rom 1:27 is used 24 times in the Septuagint translation of Lev 18:6-19; 20:11, 17-21. Paul’s word for “uncleanness, impurity” (akatharsia) in Rom 1:24 appears in the Septuagint rendering of Lev 18:19; 20:21, 25. “Worthy of death” in Rom 1:32 may also have called to mind the capital sentence pronounced on man-male intercourse in Lev 20:13. Even Bernadette Brooten, author of the best pro-homosex work on lesbianism in antiquity, and herself a self-professed lesbian, acknowledges that Rom 1:26-32 “directly recalls” Lev 18:22 and 20:13. However, she contends that this is a good reason for disavowing Paul’s views (281-94). For a rebuttal of the latter point, see Gagnon 2001a, 122-28.
56. Three points are pertinent here.
(1) Despite making the most vigorous case for the Mosaic law’s abolition among New Testament authors, Paul saw significant continuity across covenants on a host of moral issues. Generally the “big ticket items” in the Old Testament understanding of illicit sexual activity remained in place for Paul: adultery, incest, same-sex intercourse, sex with prostitutes, fornication, and, presumably, bestiality. Although bestiality is not mentioned in Paul’s letters, a number of considerations establish that Paul’s “silence” indicates complete agreement with the Old Testament proscription: the fact that Gen 1:27 and 2:18-24 presuppose the humanity of both participants; the fact that bestiality was probably the most extreme behavior in the Old Testament pantheon of sexually immoral acts (Exod 22:19; Lev 18:23; 20:15-16; Deut 27:21); the fact that early Judaism continued to show extreme repugnance for bestiality (e. g., Philo who described bestiality as the worst case of sexual immorality); the rarity, perhaps virtual nonexistence, of actual cases of bestiality in early Judaism and early Christianity (hence, no need to mention it); and the exceedingly unnatural quality of bestiality, a concern that would not have been ignored by Paul given his argument from nature in Rom 1:24-27 and elsewhere.
(2) Within this broad continuity, Paul accepted some discontinuity between the two covenants over sexual issues. It is unlikely that Paul would have been overly concerned about intercourse during menstruation. Furthermore, as with the church generally, Paul did not carry over the civil penalties prescribed by the Mosaic law for various offenses, including sexual offenses. However, this hardly meant that Paul regarded sexual offenses less seriously than did ancient Israel. Christian churches were voluntary associations with no authority from the state to implement civil sanctions. More importantly, the Christian worldview was oriented toward the establishment of a new creation, governed by the Spirit rather than the flesh and more concerned with preparing for the coming kingdom of God than with preserving the institutions of this passing world. In accord with Jesus’ teachings, the early church gave high priority to core values of outreach, compassion and forgiveness. Yet it also in Jesus’ name believed that the church should make use of community discipline, up to and including expulsion from the community of believers (recommended by Paul for the case of incest in 1 Cor 15; cf. Matt 18:15-20). Paul’s teachings on the consequences of serial unrepentant sexual immorality were in line with Jesus’ teachings: such behavior risked exclusion from God’s eternal kingdom. This does not seem like a softening of capital offenses but rather a projection of death onto an eternal eschatological landscape. Jesus and Paul’s key concern was to bring about repentance from immoral behavior before the Day of the Lord (dead men don’t repent), not to express tolerance for immoral activity.
(3) Generally the elements of discontinuity were in the direction of exceeding the sex-ethic demands of the Mosaic law. This approach is consistent with the one taken by Jesus himself. Women were given greater equality with men as regards expectations of sexual purity—not so much by loosening the constraints on female sexuality but rather by tightening the constraints on male sexuality. The Old Testament exhibits some degree of laxness on matters involving male sexuality, particularly concerning the option of polygyny, but also as regards fornication and prostitution. Paul followed Jesus in making the options for divorce and remarriage by men as limited as the options that women always had. Jesus’ implicit principle, namely that sex with someone other than one’s single living spouse constitutes adultery, was accepted by Paul, which in turn made polygyny impossible (polyandry had always been an impossibility). All sex outside of marriage was firmly held to be illicit fornication, not only for women (1 Cor 7). Male sex with prostitutes was treated as a grave offense (1 Cor 6:12-20). At the same time, while raising the bar on sexual purity for men, Paul also made explicit the implicit Levitical proscription of lesbian relations (Rom 1:26).
57. Non-Christian Jews, too, could make this distinction. For example, the Jewish author of The Letter of Aristeas (ca. 200-100 B.C.) understood the Mosaic food laws to be symbolic of a deeper moral purity found, for example, in the laws against homosexual intercourse and incest (151-52).
58. The same observation applies to the language of defilement used by Jude 7 and 2 Pet 2:10 to describe the actions of the Sodomites.
59. This misuse of the centurion story is so far-fetched that I did not even bother addressing it in my book. However, since a number of pro-homosex advocates have continued to cite this story—and some have communicated to me that it is an “important” missing element of my book—I now think that there is a need to address it. Some contend that because sex between Gentile masters and slaves was quite common, and because too Jesus did not warn the centurion not to have sex with his slave, Jesus did not have a problem with male-male intercourse. Four main points tell against this conjecture.
(1) Not every provincial or Roman officer was having sex with his slave so Jesus could hardly have assumed such behavior was going on. Moreover, we know that the form much master-slave homoeroticism took included not only coerced sexual activity but also forced feminization, up to and including castration. By the reasoning of those who put a pro-homosex spin on the story, we would have to conclude that Jesus had no problem with this particularly exploitative form of same-sex intercourse inasmuch as he did not explicitly tell the centurion to stop doing it.
(2) The fact that Jesus healed the centurion’s “boy” (pais) in Matt 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10 communicates nothing in the way of approval of any potential sexual intercourse that the centurion may have been engaging in, whether with his “boy” or anyone else. Jesus also reached out to tax collectors. Yet he certainly was not commending their well-deserved reputation for collecting more taxes from their own people than they had a right to collect. Jesus reached out to sexual sinners yet, given his clear statements on divorce/remarriage, he certainly was not condoning their sexual activity. Why should we conclude that Jesus’ silence about the centurion’s sexual life communicates approval? Luke adds the motif that Jewish elders interceded on the centurion’s behalf (7:3-5). Should we argue that these Jewish elders had no problem with same-sex intercourse, when every piece of evidence that we have about Jewish views of same-sex intercourse in the Second Temple period and beyond is unremittingly hostile to such behavior?
(3) There can be no question of Matthew or Luke (or the Q source before them) reading into the story a positive view of same-sex intercourse on the part of Jesus. If even Paul, the most vigorous Jewish proponent in the Bible of the abrogation of the Mosaic law, was strongly opposed to same-sex intercourse, what chance is there that Matthew, the most vigorous proponent in the New Testament of the retention of the Mosaic law, would have recognized in this story a pro-homosex element? Even less likely would be a positive spin on same-sex intercourse by the Q community—still more conservative on the question of the law than Matthew’s community. Luke’s reference to the Apostolic Decree in Acts 15, with its prohibitions drawn from those enjoined on the resident alien in Lev 17-18, including the one against porneia (sexual immorality), could not have read an affirmation of homosexual behavior in the story. So if three of the earliest extant interpreters of the story, those in closest proximity to Jesus’ views and time, did not detect any pro-homosex content in it, it is likely that contemporary interpreters who do are simply reading their own biases into the story.
(4) The final blow to all pro-homosex theories is that, from a tradition-historical point of view, the earliest recoverable version of the story probably did not contain the requisite elements for a pro-homosex spin. Here I refer the reader to my forthcoming work on the tradition history of the story of Jesus and the Capernaum official. It is likely that the “boy” (pais) originally meant a “child” or “son” of the Capernaum official. The Q and Matthean versions are equivocal. They mention only a pais, which could mean “boy” in the sense of “child, son” or in the sense of “slave.” Luke interprets the pais to be a “slave” (doulos), but this is a product of later Lukan redaction and cannot tell us what Q or Matthew understood the pais to be. John 4:46-54 represents an independent variant version of the same account and there the pais is viewed as a “son” (huios) of the official. For a number of reasons this is likely to be the earliest version. In fact, my own reconstruction of the story suggests that the earliest core speaks about Jesus meeting a non-descript Capernaum official who was probably neither a military officer nor a Gentile but a Galilean Jew in the employ of Herod Antipas (so John’s version). If that is so, then it is certainly improbable that a Jewish official would be having sex with his son. If one is concerned with historical Jesus issues, this text lends absolutely no support for a pro-homosex view on Jesus’ part. And there is obviously no support for a pro-homosex reading from any of the subsequent trajectories of the story’s tradition history (Johannine Signs Source to John, Q to Matthew, Q to Luke).
Even further into the realm of fantasy is the position that Jesus himself may have been a homosexual, given his singleness and close relationship with the “beloved disciple.” Martti Nissinen, who in my view has written the best treatment of the subject of the Bible and homosexuality from a pro-homosex perspective, acknowledges this (118-22). Unfortunately, he never gets much beyond this point to ask what Jesus might have thought about same-sex intercourse.
A critique of the recent book by Theodore Jennings, The Man Jesus Loved, is forthcoming.
60. Consistent with the powerful witness of the Scriptures of Israel against same-sex intercourse, Jews in the period from 200 B.C. to A.D. 200 viewed same-sex intercourse as a prime example—most often the prime example—of Gentile sexual depravity. Cf. Letter of Aristeas 152; Sibylline Oracles 3:184-87, 596-600, 764; 5:166, 430; Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides 190-92, 212-14; Wisdom of Solomon 14:26; Philo, Abraham 135-37, Special Laws 1.325, 2.50, 3.37-42, Contemplative Life 59-62; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 1.200-201, Against Apion 2.199, 273-75; Testament of Levi 17:11; Testament of Naphtali 3:4; Second Enoch 10:4; 34:1-2; Mishnah Sanhedrin 7:4. See Gagnon 2001a, ch. 2.
61. If there is any historical veracity to the story of Jesus and the adulterous woman, found in Bibles at John 7:53-8:11 but not an original part of John’s Gospel, it may be that Jesus reinterpreted capital sentences on immoral behavior in the Old Testament to apply to eschatological judgment. Cf. Gagnon 2001a, 188-89.
62. Cf. Gagnon 2001a, 190-92. Hyperbole is a characteristic feature of many of Jesus’ sayings; for example, “The one who does not hate father and mother cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26), where the Matthean parallel replaces “hate” with “love more than.” In the saying about defilement, Mark does parenthetically remark that Jesus’ saying about what goes into a person had the effect of “cleansing all the foods” (7:19b). The Matthean parallel, however, strikes this conclusion, probably in disagreement with Mark. The subsequent disputes in early Christianity over dietary matters are difficult to explain on the assumption that Jesus clearly abolished food laws (cf. Gal 2:11-14; Romans 14). We can, of course, say that Jesus’ comments were suggestive of the kinds of rules that might become invalid in moving, after Jesus’ death and resurrection, from the jurisdiction of the Mosaic law and of the old Adam to the jurisdiction of the law of the Spirit and of the new Adam.
63. Paul was more “liberal” on the inclusion of Gentiles, circumcision, Sabbath and festival observances, and food laws. He also provided a very limited option for divorce not contained in his inventory of Jesus sayings.
64. Undoubtedly, had Paul heard of a specific case of a homoerotic relationship going on in one of his churches, he would have said the same thing that he said in the case of the incestuous relationship at Corinth; namely, “in the name of the Lord Jesus” remove provisionally the perpetrator(s) from the life of the community (1 Cor 5:4; cf. 5:11 with 6:9). It is important to note that Paul probably did not have an explicit saying of Jesus on incest. Yet he could emphatically advocate policy “in the name of the Lord Jesus” because, Jesus saying or not, there was no doubt about Jesus’ view on incest. The same can be said about Jesus’ view of same-sex intercourse. And what of Jesus’ closest followers during his earthly ministry, including Peter and John, and Jesus’ brother James? Certainly the leadership in the Jerusalem church, which was still debating the relevance of food laws and Sabbath observance, never would have drawn the conclusion from anything that Jesus had said during his life on earth that same-sex intercourse was acceptable under certain circumstances.
65. The sinful woman in Luke 7:36-50 was so grateful for forgiveness that she put herself entirely at Jesus’ service. The woman caught in adultery in John 7:53-8:11 was protected from stoning not because adultery was a minor matter but because stoning was an immediate terminal punishment that closed off repentance. Jesus’ parting words to her, “from now on sin no more,” indicate the point of this show of mercy: deterrence from further acts of adultery. Two verses in the story—“Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (8:7) and “Neither do I condemn you” (8:11)—are often interpreted metaphorically to mean that people should not be critical of the behavior of others, especially sexual behavior. Yet in the context of the story, condemn means to “execute the sentence of stoning,” and throw a stone refers to real stones, capital punishment, not a moral judgment about adultery. The Samaritan woman in John 4 first had to be converted to the recognition that Jesus was, in Johannine terms, the true Well (or Spring) from which flowed the living waters of the Spirit. The consequent transformation of her life is implied by her subsequent role as an evangelist (4:39) and by the later insistence of John’s Jesus that “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15; cf. 14:21; 15:10).
66. The parables about the lost sheep, the lost coin, and particularly the lost (prodigal) son in Luke 15 illustrate these points. The saying about sinning seven times a day or sinning seventy-seven times (cf. Gen 4:24) indicates that the community of believers must forgive even chronic offenders, so long as each act of sin is followed by repentance. With respect to the issue of homosexual practice, this means that, as far as the church’s forgiveness is concerned, the key issue is not whether someone engages in same-sex intercourse but whether someone fails to express repentance for such acts. The church should extend grace to the penitent almost to the point of absurdity but it cannot tolerate serial unrepentant sin of a clear and serious nature. That requires church discipline (Matt 18:15-20). For a discussion of the role of repentance in Jesus’ teaching, see Gagnon 2001a, 219-27.
67. Cf. Gagnon 2001a, 226-27; idem, “A Second Look at Two Lukan Parables: Reflections on the Unjust Steward and the Good Samaritan,” Horizons in Biblical Theology 20 (1998): 1-11.
68. Matthew places the saying about cutting off body parts between the sayings about adultery of the heart and divorce. The sexual connotation resonates with a similar tradition found in the Babylonian Talmud (Niddah 13b; cited in Gagnon 2001a, 208 n. 34). A doublet of the saying appears in Mark 9:43-48 (parallel in Matt 18:8-9) in close proximity to Mark’s divorce text. The mention of cutting off body parts is obviously hyperbole, but it is hyperbole for taking strenuous measures to overcome temptations to sexual sin. Cf. Gagnon 2001a, 197-209.
69. The placement of Gen 2:24 immediately after Gen 1:27 gives the impression that, in Jesus’ view, the “for this reason” refers back to 1:27; that is, because God made humans male and female, only the complementary sexual pairing of a man and a woman makes possible an indissoluble one-flesh bond. As Gordon P. Hugenberger so effectively shows, Malachi makes a similar normative allusion to Gen 2:24 in his discussion of divorce (Marriage as a Covenant: Biblical Law and Ethics as Developed from Malachi [VTSup 52; Leiden: Brill, 1994; reprint: Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998], 151-67, 341-43). Hugenberger renders the MT of Malachi 2:15: “Did he (God) not make [you/them] one, with a remnant of the spirit belonging to it? And what was the One seeking? A godly seed! Therefore watch out for your lives and do not act faithlessly against the wife of your youth.” The first line underscores that “divorce constitutes an offense against one’s own life”—an allusion to “the profound communion of life which God effects between a man and his wife as established in Gen. 2:24” (p. 342; cf. p. 166). Sexual union is “ideally suited to depict the ‘one flesh’ reality which is definitional of marriage in Gen. 2:24.” Consequently, it is understood “at least by some biblical authors” (including Malachi), “as a complementary covenant-ratifying oath-sign” (p. 343). Hugenberger gives various reasons why Malachi “was justified in his understanding of the Adam and Eve narrative as providing a normative paradigm for marriage” (pp. 151-56). Malachi too undoubtedly recognized the male-female pairing as an essential prerequisite of Gen 2:18-24.
70. Gagnon 2001a, 190-92. Paul makes a similar point to Mark 7:21-23 in 1 Corinthians 6:12-20—indeed, one may even be justified in seeing an intertextual echo. Sex is not like food, which involves only the stomach (6:13). Sex involves the whole body, and it is the body as a whole that is now being, and will be, reclaimed by God (6:14-15). Consequently, immoral sexual intercourse uniquely defiles the whole body, the temple that houses the Holy Spirit (6:18-20). It matters not whether the sexual intercourse is relatively impersonal (sex with prostitutes, 6:15-17), born of an intense desire for some other committed relationship (adultery, 6:9), or undertaken with a loving heart (incest, ch. 5; man-male intercourse, 6:9). Such behaviors, violating as they do the standard for human sexual behavior willed by God in Gen 2:24 (cited in 1 Cor 6:16), are forbidden in all circumstances. The desire for them is inherently sinful, regardless of the disposition of the consensual participants.
71. Elements of the “Western” manuscript tradition (D k; Irenaeus) operated with this understanding when they added to the command “Do not commit adultery” in Mark 10:19 the command “Do not commit porneia.”
72. Or: “consecrated / sanctified man, a man dedicated to the deity.” This would, of course, be the self-designation of the qedeshim, not one made up by the Deuteronomistic Historian.
73. The negative construal of such cult figures would hold even if Jesus were using them as a cipher for any wicked persons who mock holy things. On the question of whether Mark 9:42 (“causing one of these little ones to sin”) originally referred to homoerotic pederasty, or whether raka in Matt 5:22 refers to “the soft,” see Gagnon 2001a, 185-86 n. 1.
74. Further confirmation that these so-called “Noahide laws” included the commandment against man-male intercourse can be found in Sib. Or. 4:24-34 and b. Sanh. 58a. Cf. Gagnon 2001a, 435-36.
75. Reading the Bible in its historical context would be jettisoned for a flat “gnostic” reading of the text, attributing non-mention to a lack of concern for the issue when all the historical evidence suggests a universal consensus against homosexual practice. This consensus was so strong that it served as an effective deterrent against potential violators in the community of faith, which in turn made it generally unnecessary to broach the subject explicitly. One might say that it just happens that Paul has the most significant single statement on same-sex intercourse in the canon. By just happens I mean that Paul wrote letters, and enough of them, with enough of them surviving, in a cultural environment where the occurrence of man-male intercourse might merit some mention. That Paul did not speak against same-sex intercourse more often in extant letters was undoubtedly due to the fact that he did not encounter concrete cases of such offenses in his churches. Based on Rom 1:24-27 and 1 Cor 6:9 (cf. 1 Tim 1:10), there can be no doubt that had Paul encountered a case of homoerotic behavior he would taken the same stance as the one manifested against the incestuous believer in 1 Cor 5. It is worth noting that, had there not been a concrete case of incest in the Corinthian church, there would be no explicit mention of incest anywhere in the New Testament. Surely no reasonable person would argue that New Testament authors were not particularly concerned about incestuous relationships. Similarly, bestiality, mentioned in just three literary strata in the Old Testament (Exod 22:19; Lev 18:23; 20:15-16; Deut 27:21), receives not a single mention in the New Testament. Who would contend that the “silence” of the New Testament indicates little or no interest as to whether humans have sex with animals? By the same token, there are no credible historical grounds for arguing that one or more New Testament authors were unconcerned about same-sex intercourse or that there is a relative canonical indifference to the subject.
76. Cf. Gagnon 2001a, 251-53. The plot structure of 1:18-32 can be diagrammed as follows:
Stage 1: God’s invisible transcendence and majesty is visibly manifested in creation (1:19-20).
Stage 2: Despite this ample evidence regarding the true God, humans knowingly and thus foolishly “exchanged” this God for manufactured gods of their own making, idols (1:21-23, 25, 28).
Stage 3: God withdrew his guidance and “gave over” humans to the overpowering, self-degrading desires of their unfit mind (1:24, 26, 28). Seeking to master God, humans were turned over by God to passions that mastered them. Among the range of “improper” and evil behaviors to which humans were subjected and in which they acquiesced (1:28-31), Paul focuses at the outset on a particularly self-evident, appalling, and ironic instance of human suppression of the truth about God in nature: the “exchange” of opposite-sex intercourse, which he defines as “natural,” for same-sex intercourse, which he defines as “contrary to nature” (1:24, 26-27).
Stage 4: The sins of humans are then heaped up and, in turn, call forth the ultimate recompense of “death” (1:32).
There are three uses of the word “exchanged” ([met]ēllaxan) in 1:18-32 but only two of these (1:23, 25) refer to the same basic act in Stage 2: the foolish human exchange of God for idols. The second of these, in 1:25, appears in the midst of the mention of same-sex intercourse (1:24-27) and provides a flashback to 1:21-23. It is designed to remind the reader that the punishment of same-sex intercourse fits the crime of idolatry. The same intent, apparently, comes across in the third use of “exchanged,” in 1:26—but referring not to the exchange of God for idols (Stage 2) but rather to a disoriented human exchange of natural sexual intercourse for unnatural sexual intercourse (Stage 3). The foolish and self-degrading exchange of the truth about God in creation leads to a foolish and self-degrading exchange of the truth about human sexuality in nature. The reference in 1:28a to “failing to acknowledge God” restates, without repeating the precise word “exchanged,” the same essential act of exchanging God for idols charged in 1:23 and 1:25 (Stage 2). Paul states the back reference in 1:28a in order to preface the resumption of a list of vices (1:29-31) already begun with the extended discussion of the particularly shocking vice of same-sex intercourse (1:24, 26-27).
The word “gave over” (paredōken) is used three times in 1:18-32; all three occurrences refer to the same basic action by God (Stage 3). The occurrences, in 1:24 and 1:26, immediately follow the references to the human exchange of God for idols (1:23, 25): the divine “giving over” is a response to the human “exchange.” The third occurrence, in 1:28b, does not correlate with the third reference to “exchanged” in 1:26 (now applied to the human exchange of natural sex for unnatural sex) but rather with the synonymous reference to failing to acknowledge God in 1:28a.
One should note here that while the “wrath of God” is initially revealed in God’s stepping back and allowing humans to be mastered by self-degrading passions, it is not exhausted in this semi-passive act. By continuing in their sinful deeds, humans heap up their sins and render themselves liable to the climactic manifestation of God’s judgment on the “Day of Wrath” (2:3, 5, 8-9, 12). Therefore, it is not quite right to say that same-sex intercourse is not a cause, reason, or provocation of God’s wrath but only a consequence or result of it (e.g., Ernst Käsemann, Commentary on Romans [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980], 47; Hays 1994, 8-9). Nevertheless, it is important to bear in mind that God’s judgment is not limited to striking people with thunderbolts or other climactic acts. Judgment starts with allowing humans to engage in the self-dishonoring behaviors that they want to engage in. Engaging in same-sex intercourse, Paul argues, is its own initial “payback” (1:27) because it distorts the stamp of gender given at creation.
77. Some contend that Paul did not regard same-sex intercourse as sin, or that Paul thought only idol worshippers could engage in same-sex intercourse. Rarely it is argued that Paul in Rom 1:24-27 regarded same-sex intercourse as “dirty” and/or as an unfortunate byproduct of the Fall (like pain in childbirth) but not as sin (so Countryman, 104-23). This view is easily dispatched: (1) The heading and conclusion of Rom 1:18-3:20 underscore that Paul is making a case for universal sin and unrighteousness. (2) The parallel between idolatry in 1:19-23 and same-sex intercourse in 1:24-27 indicates that Paul conceives of same-sex intercourse as sin. (3) The two synonymous “giving over’s” in 1:24 and 1:26 to sexual uncleanness/same-sex intercourse parallel the third “giving over” in 1:28 to unrighteousness and wickedness. In fact, the reference to sexual uncleanness in 1:24-27, specifically same-sex intercourse, is simply the initial element, after idolatry, of the broader vice list that follows in 1:29-31. We have already seen at the end of section III above that a reference to sexual sins, sometimes along with idolatry, normally starts Paul’s vice lists. (4) The terms used to describe same-sex intercourse in 1:24-27—sexual uncleanness, the dishonoring/degrading of their bodies, dishonorable/degrading passions contrary to nature, indecency/obscenity, error/wandering—are terms employed elsewhere in Paul and/or early Jewish literature to denote sin. (5) In Rom 6:19-21, “slaves of uncleanness” parallels “slaves of sin,” which in turn is defined in ways quite similar to Rom 1:24-27, 32 (doing “things of which you are now ashamed” and leading to death). (6) All Jewish authors of the period, and even some Greco-Roman moralists, treated same-sex intercourse as a moral evil. Cf. Gagnon 2001a, 273-77.
Another weak argument for disallowing hermeneutical weight to Rom 1:24-27 is the contention that Paul thought only idol worshippers could engage in same-sex intercourse (so Martin 1995). Of course, by the same reasoning one would have to assert, falsely, that only idol worshippers could engage in the vices mentioned in Rom 1:29-31 (e.g., covetousness, envy, and murder). Indeed, by this reasoning there could be no non-idol-worshipping Christian pornoi—a point manifestly contradicted by the case of the incestuous believer in 1 Cor 5 and the warning against believers’ involvement in man-male intercourse, adultery, or sex with prostitutes in 1 Cor 6:9-20 (note too that in the vice list in 6:9-10 idolaters are listed as a category distinct from pornoi, adulterers, and participants in same-sex intercourse). Also inexplicable would be Paul’s warning in Rom 6:19-23 not to return to the sexual uncleanness of their pre-Christian life, which certainly has in view, among other things, the same-sex intercourse cited as a prime example of sexual uncleanness in Rom 1:24-27. Cf. Gagnon 2001a, 284-89.
78. On “payback” and “straying,” cf. Gagnon 2001a, 260-63.
79. For this point and a comparison with Wisdom of Solomon 13-14 (cf. 14:26: “change of birth” or “interchange of sex roles”), see Gagnon 2001a, 246-53.
80. Some scholars seek to deflate the force of Paul’s indictment of same-sex intercourse in Rom 1:24-27 by pointing to the trap that Paul lays for the Jewish interlocutor in 2:1-3:20: the real sin is not homosexual practice but the religious bigotry of those who judge others (so, for example, Furnish 1994, 29; idem 1985, 78-80). In addition to the points made in the paragraph footnoted here, the following can be said. Paul contends in Romans that God’s goal is to transform the lives of believers into holy sacrifices (12:1-2; 15:16) for an “obedience of faith” (1:5; 15:18; 16:26). That Paul was not especially concerned with homosexuality is unlikely in view of his highlighting it, along with idolatry, as a vivid instance of the deliberate suppression of the truth about God accessible to Gentiles in nature. Cf. Gagnon 2001a, 277-84.
81. The limited threefold combination of birds/animals/reptiles in Rom 1:23 appears in Gen 1:30.
82. In Rom 1:18-27 the distinction between creation (ktisis, 1:20, 25) and nature (phusis, 1:26; “the natural use” [tēn phusikēn chrēsin] in 1:27-28) collapses because Paul means here by “creation” the way things turned out after the initial act of creating. What is “contrary to nature” is at one and the same time contrary to divinely created structures (cf. Gagnon 2001a, 258-59 n. 18). Some deny that Rom 1:18-32 has any reference back to the Genesis creation accounts on the ground that this passage has in view a decline-of-civilization narrative, not the origin of sin. The latter point is correct—I make it myself in Gagnon 2001a, 246, 285-86, 291—but it does not prove the former point. Obviously an event can be both post-Fall and a tacit repudiation of pre-Fall decrees and structures. In Rom 1:18-27 Paul characterizes the post-Fall sins of idolatry (in a non-generic sense of worshipping images of other gods) and same-sex intercourse as a rebellion against God’s will for humankind established at creation and set in motion in nature. Indeed, all subsequent rebellions against the will of God can be so described.
83. Some contend that Paul’s opposition to same-sex intercourse can be traced primarily to its non-procreative character (so, for example, Davies; Ward). This line of reasoning stumbles over the fact that not even “pagans” in the ancient Near East, Greece, or Rome regarded the sterile nature of same-sex intercourse as the sole or main reason for its disapproval—to say nothing of ancient Israel and early Judaism. Moreover, in 1 Cor 7 Paul validated marital sexual intercourse in its own right as a means of providing an outlet for sexual passion that might otherwise spill over into sexual immorality (7:2-5). The issue of procreation barely factors in the discussion (cf. 7:14)—precisely what one would surmise from someone who suspected that the time for Jesus’ coming was near (7:29). The problem with same-sex intercourse could no more be limited to issues of procreation for Paul than could the problems with bestiality, incest, and adultery be so limited. The absence of procreative potential in homoerotic relationships served for Paul as one among several clues from nature of the non-complementary quality of homoerotic relationships, one and only one aspect of what it means to be man and woman. Cf. Gagnon 2001a, 270-73.
84. Cf. Rom 7:1 (“I am speaking to those who know the law”) and the numerous biblical citations and echoes found throughout the letter to the Romans (e.g., Rom 1:23, which alludes to the story of the golden calf as told in Ps 106:20: “and they exchanged their [or: his] glory for the likeness of a calf feeding on grass”).
85. Cf. Wisdom of Solomon 13:1, 5: “For all people who were ignorant of God were foolish by nature; and they were unable from the good things that are seen to know the one who exists, nor did they recognize the artisan while paying heed to his works. . . For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator.”
86. The short flashback to 1:19-23 in 1:25 and the two analogous uses of “exchange” (1:23/25 and 1:26) confirm a deliberate coupling on Paul’s part. God handed over those who absurdly exchanged the truth about God perceptible in creation for a lie to an absurd desire to exchange the truth about proper sexual intercourse perceptible in nature for a lie. The latter, second lie is the belief that the bodily complementarity of male and female can be dispensed with in human sexual relationships.
87. To use an anachronism: it is not, and was never intended by God to be, the equivalent of rocket science or brain surgery.
88. Gagnon 2001a, 254-58, 264-68. Similar arguments appear in Greco-Roman and Jewish texts (ibid., 164-76). According to Williams, “some kind of argument from ‘design’ seems to lurk in the background of Cicero’s, Seneca’s, and Musonius’ claims: the penis is ‘designed’ to penetrate the vagina, the vagina is ‘designed’ to be penetrated by the penis” (p. 242). Williams goes on to say that “comments like theirs represented a minority opinion” (p. 243). Yet that this would be a “minority opinion” among Roman moralists is precisely what one would expect given the fact that few Romans, unlike Jews, believed that same-sex intercourse should be proscribed absolutely. The second-century physician Soranus (or his “translator” Caelius Aurelianus) referred to molles, “soft men” eager for penetration, as those who “subjugated to obscene uses parts not so intended” and disregarded “the places of our body which divine providence destined for definite functions”(On Chronic Diseases 4.9.131).
89. Even today homosexuals generally do not define themselves as something other than the biological sex into which they were born, although they do try to redefine gender as a cognitive and social construct distinct from a biologically given sex. “Transsexuals,” however, do perceive their sex to be other than the one given them through physical characteristics (compare transgenderists). It is evident from Paul’s condemnation of the malakoi (“soft men”) in 1 Cor 6:9—males who go to great lengths to turn their masculinity into femininity—that Paul would have regarded deliberate efforts at changing nature’s stamp of sex on the human body as a grave affront to the Creator, risking exclusion from God’s coming kingdom. Even if there were some partial and indirect biological influences contributing to the development of transsexualism and transgenderism—this remains to be proven—the main contributing factors are probably individual and social. The body is a more secure indicator of sex than a self-perception largely confused by abnormal childhood experiences. Finally, there is a group known as the “intersexed” (hermaphrodites). Usually an allegedly intersexed person has a genital abnormality that does not significantly straddle the sexes; for example, females with a large clitoris or small vagina, or males with a small penis or one that does not allow a direct urinary stream. Extreme instances of sex ambiguity are rare. They no more constitute adequate grounds for doing away with proscriptions of same-sex intercourse than do ambiguities in defining pedophilia or incest constitute grounds for eradicating rules against these.
90. Complementarity is not just a question of parts fitting. It is also about moderating extremes in, and filling in the gaps of, the sexual “other.” For example, the fact that women on average manufacture only about one-seventh the amount of the sex-hormone testosterone each day that men do accounts for significant interpersonal differences between men and women, such as the intensity of the sex drive and the kind and amount of interpersonal communication needed. Putting two testosterone-driven males together in a sexual union, or two females not so driven, significantly changes the dynamics of the sexual relationship—usually for the worse. Sexual gaps are not filled and extremes are not moderated.
91. A few claim that Rom 1:26 refers to heterosexual anal or oral intercourse rather than lesbian intercourse (e.g., Miller). However, the parallel phrasing of 1:26-27 leaves little doubt that same-sex intercourse was intended: “even their females exchanged the natural use for one contrary to nature, and likewise also the males, having left the natural use of the female, were inflamed in their yearning for one another, males with males.” For the “likewise also” of 1:27 to be appropriate, both the thing exchanged and the thing exchanged for must be comparable—here sex with members of the same sex, not non-coital sex. Male and female homoeroticism are paired often enough in ancient sources for there to be nothing surprising about such a pairing in Rom 1:26-27. In addition, while it was commonplace to refer to female homoeroticism as “unnatural,” I know of no explicit references to anal or oral heterosexual intercourse as unnatural. Even Bernadette Brooten criticizes those who interpret Rom 1:26 as something other than female homoeroticism (pp. 248-52). Cf. Gagnon 2001a, 297-99.
92. Cf. Brooten, 361: “The ancient sources, which rarely speak of sexual relations between women and girls, undermine Robin Scroggs’s theory that Paul opposed homosexuality as pederasty.”
93. That passive homosexual partners experienced sexual gratification from intercourse with men is evident from a number of sources (e.g., Soranus in On Chronic Disease 4.9.131-37). Reciprocal homoerotic love was acknowledged in the ancient world (e.g., Pausanias and Agathon and the myth of the origin of erotic desire spun by Plato, cited in Gagnon 2001a, 351-54; cf. Brooten for instances of reciprocal lesbian love). In the pseudo-Lucianic Affairs of the Heart (ca. A.D. 300) Callicratidas makes the point that when “the beloved” reaches manhood, “the one who for a long time was a recipient of affectionate regard gives back reciprocal expressions of love, and it is difficult to perceive which of the two [males] is a lover of which, as though from a mirror” (48; Gagnon 2001a, 357; cf. ibid., 165 n. 10).
94. The biblical prohibitions of same-sex intercourse were no more limited to pederasty than were those of incest limited to adult-child incestuous activity.
95. To reject pederasty was to reject the best, not the worst, in the homosexual practice of the day. The prime matter of concern with respect to same-sex intercourse was gender deviance, not how well gender deviance was done.
96. Philo uses the following terms: malakia and malakotēs, “softness”; also: anandria, “unmanliness,” hoi paschontes, “those who are ‘done’” [as opposed to the “doers,” hoi drōntes], and androgynoi, “men-women” afflicted with thēleia nosos, “a female disease” (cf. Special Laws 3.37-42; On Abraham 135-36; Contemplative Life 59-61; translated in Gagnon 2001a, 172-75).
97. Cf. Williams, 127-32, 142-53, 172-78; and pp. 179-229 passim. The Greek word kinaidos (Latin transliteration cinaedus) probably meant originally “butt-shaker,” an effeminate dancer who wiggled his buttocks to signal a desire for anal penetration. It came to be more commonly appli