Summary |
In the previous post in this series, I showed that Christians should not look to the Old Testament Law to make moral judgements today. That does not mean the Old Testament Law should be ignored. Jesus and the Apostles relied on it to show the character of God, the nature of sin and as a symbol that pointed to Christ. So, although it is not binding on us today, we should nevertheless still study and understand it.
We therefore turn to Leviticus 18 and 20, and the two verses that talk about male same-gender sexual activity (Lev. 18:22 and 20:13). Lev. 18 – 20 form a unit, with various prohibitions laid out in Lev. 18 and 19, and then a selection of these repeated in Lev. 20 with specific punishments prescribed.
Progressive Christians have explained why these verses do not apply to homosexuality today in a number of ways. I don’t agree with all of these, but they are worth considering briefly to show you that the interpretation is not quite as straightforward as our English translations suggest:
- We ignore other laws in Leviticus and the Old Testament, so on what basis do we apply these laws on homosexuality? This was dealt with in depth in the previous section. Note that it is really just the laws about tattoos, having sex with a women during menstruation, cross breeding animals, planting different seeds in a field and wearing a garment made of different materials that are relevant for this discussion, as they appear in the same chapters of Leviticus. They do cause problems for the traditional interpretation, as does the death penalty punishment for homosexuality. We shouldn’t be allowed to pick and choose which parts of the Bible we apply and which we don’t without very clear principles.
- In the NIV translation, the law says: “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman. That is detestable.” The actual translation of the Hebrew however says: “With a male you shall not lie lyings of a woman; it is taboo.” This was a strange phraseology, even in ancient Hebrew, and indicates that the author had something specific in mind. There are two additional translation problems here: the Hebrew language does not actually have a word for ‘homosexual’, and the translation of ‘abomination’ (KJV) or ‘detestable’ in many Bible versions is an incredibly bad translation of the original Hebrew word. We’ll look at these in detail below.
- Though there are many laws in Leviticus that limit female sexual behaviour, female same-sex activity is never mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures. This seems a significant oversight if indeed the intention is to prohibit homosexuality and lesbianism in general. These verses must therefore be about some specific form of homosexual activity.
- Jewish scholar and rabbi, Jacob Milgrom adds that the lack of female-female references could also be that the issue was the male “spilling of the seed” (see the sexual ethics section below) that was the primary motivation for this law. Uneasiness about non-procreative sexuality was a factor in Old Testament – and perhaps also the New Testament – treatments of homosexuality.
- The prohibition in both Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 talks of not having sex with a man as one does with a woman. This extra phrase would seem to be redundant. Surely the law – written to men – could just have been “don’t have sex with a man”? “As one does with woman” adds a qualifier, which can be understood only in the context of the treatment and status of women in ancient culture. Women were property of men, and subservient to them. They had to do what the men commanded them to, and this included sexual activity. This is the reason why there is no corresponding law prohibiting women from having lesbian sex with other women – the thought that women would have sex for their own pleasure was inconceivable. These verses might therefore better be translated: “You shall not sexually use a man as property, nor may you sexually subjugate another man as you would do a woman”. This would then be a restriction on a particular form of same-gender sexuality, and not a prohibition against homosexuality in general.
- Matthew Vines, in “God and the Gay Christian” argues that the the moral logic for the homosexual prohibitions in Lev 18:22 and 20:13 is because of a cultural, assumed male hierarchy. That is, men were valued above women, and when men have sex with other men they treat the passive partner as a mere woman, and this is unacceptable. Although this was undoubtedly true culturally, I don’t think this is a good way to interpret the meaning of these verses.
- These prohibitions against male same-gender sexual activity have to do with temple prostitution, and not homosexuality in general. This is the most compelling view for me, and we’ll look at it in detail below.
- These verses are only prohibiting anal sex. Homosexuals who engage in other sexual activities or who remain celibate would be free to be in lifelong, covenantal relationships.
- Most scholars argue that some laws in the Old Testament were specifically for Israel and others were for everyone everywhere. This is obviously true of the civil laws applying to Israel’s nationhood and of dietary laws, which were for Israel only. It’s argued that since Leviticus 18:2 (the heading for this section of laws) starts with, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘I am the Lord your God'”, that the laws that follow applied only to Israel back then, and not today.
From the above brief comments, it should be immediately obvious that “the simple reading” of the verses is not quite what they might seem. At very least, there are significant question marks over what the verses might mean and how we could apply them today, and we should therefore be very careful of building a theology which sentences homosexuals to hell on the basis of these verses.
