An Analysis of Six Critical Texts Used To Condemn Homosexuality - continued
by: Royce Buehler
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ECHOS AND SILENCES In debates over homosexuality and the Bible, one frequently hears advocates of the traditional view assert that homosexuality must be not only a sin, but a sin especially detested by God, on the grounds that Leviticus 20 prescribes the death penalty for it. What they fail to realize is that the "death penalty" argument is two-edged. One edge, which they believe cuts against homosexuals, is in fact blunt: we have shown that what Leviticus 20 makes a capital crime is probably not homosexuality as such, but some form of idolatrous practice. The other edge, cutting against the traditionalists, is sharp. If an offense is a capital crime, then the chances are good that it will be taken very seriously. The chances are in fact excellent that if you write down the laws twice, you will get around to mentioning the offense each time. We therefore would expect, on finding a capital crime named in Leviticus, to find it at least forbidden somewhere in Deuteronomy. That expectation is, in general, borne out. Here is a complete list of the offenses which Leviticus 20 says are punishable by death. In each case, we note the parallel passage in Deuteronomy.
Seven out of nine are repeated precisely in Deuteronomy - down to the details of which degree of consanguinity is involved in acts of incest. 20:12 (incest with a daughter-in-law) is not repeated precisely, but the same degree of consanguinity is forbidden in Deut. 20:23. Necromancy is not specifically forbidden again in Deuteronomy, but it is attested in a number of places outside of Leviticus 18/20, notably in I Samuel 14:32-35, which refers to the death penalty associated with the practice. Many of these items are forbidden in numerous other places in the Old Testament, but Deuteronomy by itself makes the pattern clear. One offense, and one only, is deemed worthy of the death penalty but not worthy of mention in more than one place: homosexuality. The silence is strange. Given how common the offense is in all societies (far more so than bestiality, or incest with one's father's wife), the silence becomes even more perplexing. Recall that, although an argument from silence is usually a very weak argument, it becomes valid if one can also present strong evidence that the speaker would have made a statement if the speaker had entertained a particular belief. We have strong reason to believe that the Pentateuch will state a prohibition more than once if it incurs a capital penalty: namely, that it does repeat such prohibitions in every case except this one. A second silence is also mildly odd: Both men and women are forbidden to commit adultery, or incest with a parent, or incest with a parent-in-law. But, at least if the prosecution's theory is true, only males are forbidden to have sex with their own gender. If we assume the traditional theory, both of these silences are unexpected, and both break the pattern of the way the Bible treats equally serious sins. The silences present a puzzle. On the defense theory, however, there are no curious silences to be explained. If what Leviticus 18/20 forbids is a specific idolatrous practice, then:
The data fit the defense theory like a glove; try to slip the same data onto the prosecution's theory, and these two unseemly holes, these two embarrassing silences, stick out like missing thumbs. And what was this idolatrous practice?
Deuteronomy 23:17. (NRSV) None of the daughters of Israel shall be a temple prostitute; none of the sons of Israel shall be a temple prostitute. 18. You shall not bring the fee of a prostitute or the wages of a male prostitute into the house of the Lord your God, for both of these are abhorrent [Hebrew toevah] to the Lord your God. Our study of Leviticus 18/20 led us to expect an idolatrous practice involving "lying with a man as with a woman". Here the Bible itself spells out for us what the idolatrous practice was: male temple prostitution. Deuteronomy even repeats the same explanation for its prohibition which Leviticus had pronounced: It is abomination, toevah. For many generations of Christians, the idolatrous significance of Deuteronomy 23:18 has been obfuscated. In the King James translation, the terms for temple prostitute and male temple prostitute had been translated as "whore" and "sodomite" respectively. It was simply a mistranslation, a fact on which all modern bible scholars, both conservative and liberal, concur. All modern translations - including the NIV, no friend to homosexuals - render it correctly, as the NRSV does above. The reason it has become uncontroversial is that the Hebrew allows no room for confusion. The Hebrew term for the male temple prostitute is qadesh; for the female, the feminine form of the same word, qadeshah. It has the same root as the word 'holy', and a literal translation would simply be "(male or female) holy one". Obviously, the writer of Deuteronomy didn't consider these people to be holy; but he was using the common name for them in Canaan: they were called "holy" there, because they had been dedicated to the god at whose shrine they offered their sexual services. |
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THE OVERLOOKED FIVE The word qadesh appears five other times in the Old Testament. These are the verses concerning same-gender sex which never appear in the anti-gay literature. They are simply of no use in denouncing homosexuality, since they so obviously concern the practices of an idolatrous cult. The KJV mistranslated four of these occurrences as "sodomite" again; the last one it mistranslated as "unclean", a term so bland that (so far as this writer has seen) the verse has been left entirely out of the debate on homosexuality and the Bible. The oversight is unfortunate, since, as we shall see, this last instance is perhaps the most revealing of the lot. Here are the five (RSV):
1 Kings 14:23. "For they [Judah] also built for themselves high places, and pillars, and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree; 24. and there were also male cult prostitutes [qadeshim] in the land. They did according to all the abominations [plural of toevah] of the nations which the LORD drove out before the people of Israel." If archaeology and the etymology of qadesh had left us in any doubt, these verses and their contexts of idol-clearing activities underscore the religious function of these male prostitutes. It is particularly clear in the 2 Kings passage. Most telling is the instance in 1 Kings 14. On the traditional theory, Leviticus prohibits homosexuality in general, and only in Deuteronomy is male temple prostitution directly addressed. One would therefore expect the writer of Kings to echo the themes of Deuteronomy 23 when the subject of male temple prostitution comes up: the parallel with female prostitutes, the concern over bringing their pay into the temple. But that doesn't happen. Instead, 1 Kings echoes several of the specific themes of Leviticus 18:27-28: calling the practices toevah (echoing the whole phrase "did all of the abominations"); characterizing them as practices of the former inhabitants of the land; stating that those inhabitants were driven out of the land because of them. That the writer was not rather moved to allude to the supposedly more specific passage in Deuteronomy is a trifle odd - unless he regarded the Leviticus passage as likewise specific to the practice of cult prostitution. Finally, we have Job 36:14. "They [the godless] die in youth, and their life ends in shame. (Footnote: among the [male] cult prostitutes.)" For some reason, no version seems to want to translate the Hebrew of this verse as it stands.
Let us sum up what we have learned. Aside from the complex of passages dealing with Sodom, the Old Testament mentions same gender sex exactly eight times. Of these, the two in Levticus may be regarded as ambiguous: it is possible they refer to male-male sexual behavior in general; it is possible (as rabbinical tradition has it) that they refer specifically to male-male anal intercourse. But most likely they refer only to male temple prostitution. This is made likely, first, by the stated reason for the prohibition - that it is toevah, which most commonly means idolatry. It is made likely, second, by its grouping with other prohibitions which can also be understood as concerned with idolatry. It is made likely, third, by the statement of Leviticus 18:3 that the prohibitions in the chapter are prohibitions of things the Egyptians and Canaanites did by "statute". It is made likely, fourth, by the fact that otherwise this would represent the only death-penalty offense whose prohibition is never repeated. It is, fifth, made slightly more likely by the peculiar failure to extend the prohibition to actions of females with females. The other six passages which refer to same-gender sex all use the term qadesh, and all commentators, liberal and conservative, agree that it unambiguously describes idolatrous male prostitution. There is not a single passage which gives a specific example of any disapproved male-male sexual act, other than acts of temple prostitution. (Again, setting aside the Sodom complex, since we are all agreed that gang rape-murder is not a good thing.) The only two passages (and one might argue that Leviticus 18 and 20 are more like two versions of the same passage) which may prohibit male-male acts in general, we have shown, are most likely also directed to the same specific idolatrous acts. The defense theory completely accounts for the biblical evidence. The prosecution theory requires us to ignore all the evidence which the defense has here submitted. It requires us to attribute the overwhelming weight of concern for qadeshim, the way Kings echos Leviticus rather than Deuteronomy when discussing qadeshim, the failure of Deuteronomy to make any general same-sex prohibition, despite the supposed seriousness of the crime, the utter absence of a single historical case of non-idolatrous homosexual behavior among the half-dozen specific cases alluded to - all these it requires us to attribute to sheer coincidence. The prosecution would have you believe that the central concern of the One who inspired these writings was to prohibit homosexuality in general, and that this Inspirer intended to make that crystal clear to every reader. They would have you believe that this Inspirer, being omniscient, knew that the very questions defense has raised here would arise. And they would have you believe that, nevertheless, said Inspirer, while including two specific examples of gang rape, and six specific examples of cult prostitution, chose to omit any example of two males cleaving sexually to one another out of secular motives, whether they be motives of lust or of love. The defense does not believe that the One who inspired these writings was so inept at achieving His goals. We believe that the intent of the text is what the intent seems to be, when it is approached on its own terms without preconceptions as to the guilt of our clients. It prohibits gang rape. Of that charge, the prosecution will stipulate that our clients are not guilty. It prohibits the toevah, the idolatrous practice, of a man lying with a man who has been dedicated as a temple prostitute, a qadesh. Of that charge, the prosecution will stipulate that our clients are not guilty. It is possible - although we have amply shown that it is not likely - that the intent of the text was indeed to prohibit homosexual acts in general. But we are in a court of law. You are not obliged - you are not permitted - to convict based on a mere probability; much less on a mere possibility. You must find the prosecution's theory true beyond a reasonable doubt; or you must render a verdict of "not guilty." Please do not introduce your own personal feelings into your deliberations. You must decide based on the law, the text which is before us, and on the law alone. You must acquit.
Same-gender behavior, in one form or another, is mentioned in only three places in the New Testament. (Again, I lay aside the Sodom complex.) Two of these are sin lists in which the disputed word arsenokoitai appears. We have concluded that it is most likely a coinage based on Leviticus 18/20. Since we have now demonstrated that, in all probability, Leviticus described not homosexuality in general, but male temple prostitution; and since we know that similar institutions prevailed in 1st century Gentile culture, the defense theory accounts entirely for these two verses. We would expect, on the basis of our defense theory, that when we turn to the other passage (Romans 1), we will find that it features idolatry prominently in its account. That is, of course, exactly what we find. Romans asserts that the same-sex behavior with which it deals (whatever it is) is a direct consequence of the worship of idols, of images of "birds and beasts and men." At this point the defense could also rest its New Testament case. However, in the course of researching this essay, I stumbled upon an extremely interesting correlation which, so far as I am aware, has not been remarked on previously. I discovered that like the term arsenokoitai, Romans 1 also echos (most likely deliberately) an old testament passage. If the echo hasn't been noted before, it's because we don't know our Old Testaments as intimately as the apostle Paul did! Let us first briefly recapitulate the storyline of Romans 1. Paul's narrative postulates a set of people who:
Now let us look at the full context for Job 36:14. Elihu is speaking to Job. The points he makes are a good deal more subtle and complex than the superficially similar points made by the previous speakers, the "false comforters". He begins by saying, like them, that God unfailingly punishes the wicked and rewards the righteous. But then he continues, as they do not, with an "and if..." The structure of his assertion is what programmers refer to as a "nested if-then-else clause." I'll indent it to make its logical structure easier to follow. (I find Elihu's discourse deeply fascinating, completely apart from its application to the current discussion.)
Job 36 There's meat for a long sermon already! Do human beings measure how "mighty" someone is by his capacity to despise no one, or by his capacity to injure those he despises? Do human beings measure "might" by depth of understanding? Does Elihu foreshadow a God who shows his might by mingling with prostitutes, and by dying a violent and ignoble death? Religious people are fond of quoting that God's ways are higher than our ways; but are they actually still higher, still stranger, than those people have usually imagined?...
6. He does not keep the wicked alive, Ignoring the fortunate righteous in verse 11, (Paul gets to them in Romans 4), Elihu's narrative postulates a set of people who:
The parallel with Romans 1 is striking. I submit that Elihu must have been Paul's primary model for the Romans 1 narrative, and a principal reason (though I think it was, as mathematical physicists put it, overdetermined) why the particular punishment he describes there involves same-gender sex. Having found this model, we can confirm the conclusion to which the rest of our old testament study, and the specific role of idolatry in Romans 1, had already pointed us: Just as in Job, the form of same-gender sexual activity Paul had in mind as he wrote Romans 1 was male temple prostitution. With this final, unexpected, and welcome witness, the defense rests. |
