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Date: Thu, 5 Dec 91 12:41:33 EST
From: lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu (Louie Crew)
Message-Id: <9112051741.AA12497@andromeda.rutgers.edu>
To: lcrew
Subject: Save as text/Boswell


>Path: andromeda.rutgers.edu!rutgers!ub!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!yale.edu!yale!mintaka.lcs.mit.edu!spdcc!dyer
>From: dyer@spdcc.com (Steve Dyer)
>Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
>Subject: Re: Homosexuality and the Bible
>Message-ID: <1991Dec5.061145.21340@spdcc.com>
>Date: 5 Dec 91 06:11:45 GMT
>References: <1991Dec4.190129.22828@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> <1991Dec4.212604.5236@hellgate.utah.edu>
>Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA
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In article <1991Dec4.212604.5236@hellgate.utah.edu> jwindley%asylum.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Jay Windley) writes:
>I've already spoken about the two Greek words and their possible
>meanings in a separate post.

This is what Boswell says on this topic.  Note that for the reasons
I mentioned before, a "rebuttal" isn't needed.  However, for those
who like this kind of thing, it's food to chew on.

>From Boswell, "Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality_, pp. 106-114
Footnotes omitted, Greek text transliterated.  Any transcription errors,
mine.  This is part of a larger chapter on the Scriptures in the book.

Saint Paul, whose commitment to Jewish law had taken up most of his
life, never suggested that there was any historical or legal reason to
oppose homosexual behavior: if he did in fact object to it, it was
purely on the basis of functional, contemporary moral standards.

There are three passages in the writings of Paul which have been
supposed to deal with homosexual relations.  Two words in I Corinthians
6:9 and one in I Timothy 1:10 have been taken at least since the
early twentieth century to indicate that "homosexuals" will be excluded
from the kingdom of heaven.

The first of the two, "malakos" (basically, "soft"), is an extremely
common Greek word; it occurs elsewhere in the New Testament with the
meaning "sick"  and in patristic writings with senses as varied as
"liquid", "cowardly", "refined", "weak willed", "delicate", "gentle",
and "debauched".  In a specifically moral context it very frequently
means "licentious", "loose", or "wanting in self-control".  At a broad
level, it might be translated as either "unrestrained" or "wanton", but
to assume that either of these concepts necessarily applies to gay
people is wholly gratuitous.  The word is never used in Greek to
designate gay people as a group or even in reference to homosexual acts
generically, and it often occurs in writings contemporary with the
Pauline epistles in reference to heterosexual persons or activity.

What is more to the point, the unanimous tradition of the church
through the Reformation, and of Catholicism until well into the
twentieth century, has been that this word applied to masturbation.
This was the interpretation not only of native Greek speakers in the
early Middle Ages  but of the very theologians who most contributed to
the stigmatization of homosexuality.  No new textual data effected the
twentieth-century change in translation of this word: only a shift in
popular morality.  Since few people any longer regard masturbation as
the sort of activity which would preclude entrance to heaven, the
condemnation has simply been transferred to a group still so widely
despised that their exclusion does not trouble translators or
theologians.

The second word, "arsenokoitai", is quite rare, and its application to
homosexuality in particular is more understandable.  The best evidence,
however, suggests very strongly that it did not connote homosexuality
to Paul or his contemporaries but meant "male prostitute" until well
into the fourth century, after which it became confused with a variety
of words for disapproved sexual activity and was often equated with
homosexuality.

The remaining passage, Romans 1:26-27, does not suffer from mistrans-
lation, although little attention has been paid to the ramifications of
its wording: "For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for
even their women did change the natural use into that which is against
nature:  And likewise, also the men, leaving the natural use of the
woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working
that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of
their error which was meet" (KJV).

It is sometimes argued that the significance of the passage lies in its
connection with idolatry: i.e., that Paul censures the sexual behavior
of the Romans because he associates such behavior with orgiastic pagan
rites in honor of false gods.  This might seem to be suggested by the
Old Testament condemnations of temple prostitution.  Paul may have been
familiar with temple prostitution, both homosexual and heterosexual,
and it is reasonable to conjecture that he is here warning the Romans
against the immorality of the kadeshim.  The fact that the overall
structure of the chapter juxtaposes the sexual activities in question
with the superstitious beliefs of the Romans adds further credence to
this theory, as do possible Old Testament echoes.

Under closer examination, however, this argument proves to be inade-
quate.  First of all, there is no reason to believe that homosexual
temple prostitution was more prevalent than heterosexual or that Paul,
had he been addressing himself to such practices, would have limited
his comments to the former.  Second, it is clear that the sexual
behavior itself is objectionable to Paul, not merely its associations.
Third, and possibly most important, Paul is not describing cold-blooded,
dispassionate acts performed in the interest of ritual or ceremony: he
states very clearly that the parties involved "burned in their lust one
toward another" ([greek text omitted]).  It is unreasonable to infer
from the passage that there was any motive for the behavior other than
sexual desire.

On the other hand, it should be recognized that the point of the
passage is not to stigmatize sexual behavior of any sort but to condemn
the Gentiles for their general infidelity.  There was a time, Paul
implies, when monotheism was offered to or known by the Romans, but
they rejected it (vv. 19-23).  The reference to homosexuality is simply
a mundane analogy to this theological sin; it is patently not the crux
of this argument.  Once the point has been made, the subject of
homosexuality is quickly dropped and the major argument resumed
(vv.  28ff.).

What is even more important, the persons Paul condemns are manifestly
not homosexual: what he derogates are homosexual acts committed by
apparently heterosexual persons.  The whole point of Romans I in fact,
is to stigmatize persons who have rejected their calling, gotten off
the true path they were once on.  It would completely undermine the
thrust of the argument if the persons in question were not "naturally"
inclined to the opposite sex in the same way they were "naturally"
inclined to monotheism.  What caused the Romans to sin was not that
they _lacked_ what Paul considered proper inclinations but that they
_had_ them: they held the truth, but "in unrighteousness" (v. 18),
because "they did not see fit to retain Him in their knowledge" (v. 28).

This aspect of the verses, overlooked by modern scholarship, did not
escape the attention of early Christian writers.  Noting that Paul
carefully characterized the persons in question as having _abandoned_
the "natural use", Saint John Chrysostom commented that Paul thus:

   deprives them of any excuse, . . . observing of their women that they
   "did change the natural use".  No one can claim, he points out, that
   she came to this because she was precluded from lawful intercourse or
   that because she was unable to satisfy her desire she fell into this
   monstrous depravity.  Only those possessing something can change it ....

   Again, he points out the same thing about the men, in a different way,
   saying they "left the natural use of the woman".  Likewise he casts aside
   with these words every excuse, charging that they not only had
   [legitimate] enjoyment and abandoned it, going after a different one,
   but that spurning the natural they pursued the unnatural.

Although the idea that homosexuality represented a congenital physical
characteristic was widespread in the Hellenistic world--and undoubtedly
well known to Chrysostom--it is not clear that Paul distinguished in
his thoughts or writings between gay persons (in the sense of permanent
sexual preference) and heterosexuals who simply engaged in periodic
homosexual behavior.  It is in fact unlikely that many Jews of his day
recognized such a distinction, but it is quite apparent that--whether or
not he was aware of their existence--Paul did not discuss gay _persons_
but only homosexual acts comitted by heterosexual persons.

There is, however, no clear condemnation of homosexual acts in the
verses in question.  The expression "against nature" is the standard
English equivalent of Paul's Greek phrase "para physin" which was first
used in this context by Plato.  Its original sense has been almost
wholly obscured by 2,000 years of repetition in stock phrases and by
the accretion of associations inculcated by social taboos, patristic
and Reformation theology, Freudian psychology, and personal misgivings.

The concept of "natural law" was not fully developed until more than a
millennium after Paul's death, and it is anachronistic to read it into
his words.  For Paul, "nature" was not a question of universal law or
truth but, rather, a matter of the _character_ of some person or group
of persons, a character which was largely ethnic and entirely human:
Jews are Jews "by nature", just as Gentiles are Gentiles "by nature".
"Nature" is not a moral force for Paul: men may be evil or good "by
nature", depending on their own disposition.  A possessive is always
understood with "nature" in Pauline writings: it is not "nature" in the
abstract but someone's "nature", the Jews' "nature" or the Gentiles'
"nature" or even the pagan gods' "nature" ("When ye knew not God, ye
did service unto them which by nature [i.e., by _their_ nature] are no
gods", Gal. 4:8, KJV).

"Nature" in Romans I :26, then, should be understood as the personal
nature of the pagans in question.  This is made even clearer by the
strikingly similar passage in the _Testament of Japhtali_, a roughly
contemporary document whose comment on this subject was obviously
influenced by (if not an influence on) Paul's remarks.  "The Gentiles,
deceived and having abandoned the Lord, changed their order.... [Be
ye not therefore] like Sodom, which changed the order of its nature.
Likewise also the Watchers changed the order of their nature . . .
(3.3.4-5).

"Against" is, moreover, a somewhat misleading translation of the prep-
osition "para".  In New Testament usage "para" connotes not "in opposi-
tion to" (expressed by "kata")  but, rather, "more than", "in excess
of"; immediately before the passage in question, for example, what the
King James renders as "more than" (the creator) is the same preposition.
Finally, this exact same phrase "para physin" is used later in the same
epistle to describe the activity of God in saving the Gentiles: "For if
thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert
graffed contrary to nature [para physin] into a good olive tree: how
much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be graffed into
their own olive tree?" (Rom. I l :24, KJV).  Since God himself is here
described as acting "against nature", it is inconceivable that this
phrase necessarily connotes moral turpitude.  Rather, it signifies
behavior which is unexpected, unusual, or different from what would
occur in the normal order of things: "beyond nature", perhaps, but not
"immoral".  There is no implication of the contravening of "natural
law" in Paul's use of this phrase, and for Christians familiar with
all of the books which now comprise the New Testament the phrase may
have had no negative implications at all; in 2 Peter 2 :12, for
example, a similar passage employs "natural" as a term of derogation.

Paul believed that the Gentiles knew of the truth of God but rejected
it and likewise rejected their true "nature" as regarded their sexual
appetites, going beyond what was "natural" for them and what was
approved for the Jews.  It cannot be inferred from this that Paul
considered mere homoerotic attraction or practice morally reprehensible,
since the passage strongly implies that he was not discussing persons
who were by inclination gay and since he carefully observed, in regard
to both the women and the men, that they changed or abandoned the
"natural use" to engage in homosexual activities.

In sum, there is only one place in the writings which eventually became
the Christian Bible where homosexual relations per se are clearly
prohibited--Leviticus--and the context in which this prohibition
occurred rendered it inapplicable to the Christian community, at least
as moral law.  It is almost never cited as grounds for objection to
homosexual acts (except allegorically; see chap 6).  The notion that
Genesis 19--the account of Sodom's destruction--condemned homosexual
relations was the result of myths popularized during the early
centuries of the Christian era but not universally accepted until much
later and only erratically invoked in discussions of the morality of
gay sexuality.  Many patristic authors concluded that the point of the
story was to condemn inhospitality to strangers; others understood it
to condemn rape; most interpreted it in broadly allegorical terms, only
tangentially related to sexuality.  There was no word in classical
Hebrew or Greek for "homosexual", and there is no evidence, linguistic
or historical, to suggest that either the kadeshim of the Old Testament
or the arsenokotai of the New were gay people or particularly given to
homosexual practices.  On the contrary, it is clear that these words
merely designated types of prostitutes: in the case of the former,
those associated with pagan temples; in that of the latter, active (as
opposed to passive) male prostitutes servicing either sex.

Romans I did not condemn homosexual behavior as "against nature" in the
sense of the violation of "natural law".  No clear idea of "natural
law" existed in Paul's time or for many centuries thereafter.  To Paul,
the activities in question were beyond nature in the sense of
"extraordinary, peculiar", as was the salvation of the Gentiles,
described with the same phrase.  Moreover, the persons referred to were
considered by influential early Christian theologians to have been
necessarily heterosexual (i.e., "naturally" attracted to the opposite
sex).  There was no implication in the passage that homosexual acts,
much less homosexual persons, were _necessarily_ sinful.

-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer