Dr. William Loader on Same-Sex Intercourse

(Information on Dr. Loader can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Loader)

As noted in the Introduction, the overview presented in the four chapters of this book is a distillation of the findings of five volumes of research (all by the author, William Loader), encompassing over 2400 pages of detailed discussion. That research was undertaken as an attempt to listen as closely as possible to what various writers were saying in their world and in their terms about sexuality. Engaging ancient texts requires the discipline of careful method but also the acknowledgement that as scholars we have limitations, may miss some detail or see it in a distorted way because of our own perspective or experience. Hence the importance of engaging not only the texts, but also the community of scholarship already engaged with these texts.^[1]

… The five volumes are:

1. Enoch, Levi, and Jubilees on Sexuality: Attitudes towards Sexuality in the Early Enoch Literature, the Aramaic Levi Document, and the Book of Jubilees (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007)

2. The Dead Sea Scrolls on Sexuality: Attitudes towards Sexuality in Sectarian and Related Literature at Qumran (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009)

3. The Pseudepigrapha on Sexuality: Attitudes towards Sexuality in Apocalypses, Testament, Legends, Wisdom, and Related Literature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011)

4. Philo, Josephus, and the Testaments on Sexuality: Attitudes towards Sexuality in the Writings of Philo, Josephus, and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011)

5. The New Testament on Sexuality (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012)^[2]

Attacking “Perversion”

The engagement with Hellenistic culture accounts for Jewish writers giving much greater emphasis to passions and to procreation as the purpose of sexual intercourse, as they appropriated what they saw as commonly shared concerns. That engagement also accounts for increased attention to what it saw as abuses. Idolatry had always been an issue at the interface of cultures. It was frequently associated with sexual wrongdoing. Thus the prohibitions of incest and other acts of sexual wrongdoing in Leviticus 18 are prefaced by the exhortation to the Israelites: “You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan”.²³⁶ Such doings included various forms of incest as well as intercourse during menstruation; adultery; sacrificing offspring to Molech; lying “with a male as with a woman”, similarly condemned, and as a capital offence in 20:13; and having sexual relations with an animal (applicable to both men and women).²³⁷

Same-sex intercourse took on particular significance because of its prevalence, at least in the Jewish mind, among other peoples of the period. It is absent from Ben Sira, and barely mentioned in literature emanating from the Jewish context of Judea. In the Damascus Document the prohibition occurs in its catalogue of transgressions²³⁸ and it extends the prohibition of cross-dressing in Deuteronomy²³⁹ to apply to both the outer- and the undergarment and perhaps also to unisex clothing.²⁴⁰

Issues with same-sex intercourse feature significantly, however, in writings composed where Hellenistic influence was strong. This is so in the Sibylline Oracles. In the earliest layer of Book 3, written in the second century B. C. E., the author attacks Rome for supporting male prostitution of boys,²⁴¹ but then extends the accusation to all nations.²⁴² Such behaviour, it alleges, breaches universal law.²⁴³ The attacks on pederasty continue in Book 4, written in the first century C. E.,²⁴⁴ and in book 5 from the early second century C. E.

2 Enoch, probably written at the turn of the era, similarly deplores “sin which is against nature, which is child corruption in the anus in the manner of Sodom”,²⁴⁵ but also “abominable fornications, that is, friend with friend in the anus, and every other kind of wicked uncleanness which it is disgusting to report”.²⁴⁶ Here the concern extends beyond pederasty to adult consensual same-sex relations. The latter receives attention in the late first century C. E. Apocalypse of Abraham, which portrays men not in anal intercourse, but standing naked forehead to forehead.²⁴⁷

Pseudo-Aristeas rails against the practice of procuring males in the cities of his world as perversion like incest.²⁴⁸ The Book of Wisdom appears to make a link between having perverted ideas of God leading to idolatry and having perverted sexual relations.²⁴⁹ The link between idolatry and sexual wrongdoing was common. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs in linking sexual immorality and idolatry, sometimes sees the former leading to the latter,²⁵⁰ sometimes the reverse.²⁵¹ The nexus between perverted understandings of God and perverted sexual behaviour, present in Wisdom, inspired the same connection made by Paul in Romans 1.

In its list of forbidden acts, citing the ten commandments, Pseudo-Phocylides appends to the prohibition of adultery: arousing homosexual passion.²⁵² In another place it takes up Plato’s argument in Laws that animals never engage in such sexual activity,²⁵³ repeated also by Josephus (but as we now know factually incorrect). It also deplores same-sex relations between women,²⁵⁴ generally deemed unnatural and offensive²⁵⁵ and advises parents to be very careful not to braid their sons’ hair, lest effeminate appearance attract male sexual predators.²⁵⁶ The Testament of Solomon portrays same-sex intercourse as something practised and inspired by the demonic. The demon Ornias rapes boys.²⁵⁷ The demon Onoskelis perverts men’s natures.²⁵⁸ The demon Beelzeboul promotes male anal sex.²⁵⁹

The account in Genesis 19 of the men of Sodom wanting to rape Lot’s male guests made the story a prime example of inhospitality. Sometimes authors focus entirely on the inhospitality with no reference to its sexual violence. Such is the case in Ben Sira²⁶⁰ and Wisdom,²⁶¹ and may well be so in Luke.²⁶² It seems to have been the focus also earlier in Isaiah,²⁶³ Jeremiah,²⁶⁴ and Ezekiel.²⁶⁵ Jubilees refers to sexual sin at Sodom, but without referring specifically to same-sex intercourse.²⁶⁶ Among the previously unknown documents found among the Dead Sea Scrolls only two make brief reference to the story, one, generally with reference to sexual sin;²⁶⁷ the other, speaking of disgusting acts, of spending the night together and wallowing.²⁶⁸ Pseudo-Philo makes a connection between the intended violence at Sodom and the sexual violence against the Levite’s concubine at Gibeah,²⁶⁹ as does Theodotus with Dinah’s abduction,²⁷⁰ and possibly 2 Baruch in depicting Manasseh’s Jerusalem as like Sodom, as a place of sexual violence against women.²⁷¹

As one might expect, Philo has much to say about same-sex intercourse. He reads the prohibitions in Lev 18:22 and 20:13 as targeting both pederasty and adult consensual sex, both male and female.²⁷² Apart from citing the prohibitions, he frequently gives reasons for them. Thus such behaviour wastes semen, an argument made already by Plato.²⁷³ It also entails, at least in male-male intercourse, having a man behave as a woman. This is something much more serious than simply a role reversal. It is a step down the ladder. It renders one man inferior. It humiliates, whether by force—as in war, or consensually. That in turn, he argues, infects a man with what Philo describes as the disease of effemination, which will eventually render men impotent and so unable to fulfil the role God has given them.²⁷⁴ To waste seed, to behave or cause others to behave as women, to engage in sex other than for propagation, is to act contrary to nature.

His account of Sodom portrays the men as controlled by sexual passion, leading them into promiscuity with both women and men.²⁷⁵ Philo sees such behaviour typifying drunken parties of his day, where men have indiscriminate sex, often with young adolescent boy slaves conscripted or assigned to attend their needs.²⁷⁶ He ridicules therefore not only Aristophanes’ myth of sexual origins, which traces homosexual passion in men and women and heterosexual passion to a desire to restore original unities, which once existed when there were three kinds of human being: male, female, and bisexual, sundered in half by Zeus in a fit of rage.²⁷⁷ He also scorns the symposium itself. For in such settings the combination of wine and lack of control let such passions loose.

It was not that at some point some men (or women) made a decision to seek out their own for sexual pleasure, as if this were a rational decision about sexual orientation or sexual preference. Rather, unbridled passion went for every fulfilment it could find, in the process producing both transgression and perversion. Philo shows no sign of contemplating that some people in sober reality might have a sexual orientation towards their own kind. The extant evidence suggests that he shared the view of all others Jews we know of from the time, namely that there are two kinds of human being, male and female, as Genesis depicts creation,²⁷⁸ and anything else is a deliberate denial and perversion of that reality.

Josephus similarly views same-sex intercourse as a perversion, the fruit of uncontrolled sexual passion, also usually associated with people who were at the same time promiscuous with women. His view is clear about the role of sexual intercourse: it is “the natural union of man and wife (woman), and that, only for the procreation of children”.²⁷⁹ All else is perversion and abhorrent, and shames men into behaving as women. Thus he tells how Antony wanted to have both Mariamme, Herod’s new wife, and her brother, Aristobulus, both apparently very attractive, come to him in Alexandria that he might engage in sex with them.²⁸⁰ Deft manipulation on Herod’s part rescued them from Antony’s sexual intentions. For while Antony backed down on Mariamme, Herod could only save Aristobulus by appointing him high priest, contrary to his intent, which would make it illegal for him to leave the land. Herod later saved himself from the danger that created of having a high priest of the old Hasmonean line, by engineering that he drowned in a palace pool at Jericho.²⁸¹

Machinations in Herod’s household, of which there were many, including those connected with sexual issues, resulted, as noted above, in his son, Alexander, sleeping with Herod’s eunuchs, much as Absalom had done with David’s concubines and Abner with Saul’s.²⁸² Thereafter these eunuchs, of whom, Josephus tells us, he was “immoderately fond … because of their beauty”, could no longer be “putting the king to bed”.²⁸³ Josephus motivates the attempted male sexual assault at Sodom as a response to what he describes as their beauty.²⁸⁴ His account of David and Jonathan’s love²⁸⁵ gives no indication that he saw it as having a sexual component, despite the use of sexual imagery in David’s lament.²⁸⁶ None of his contemporaries saw it that way either.

He alleged that the Zealots, who featured in the revolt against Rome which led to the fall of Jerusalem, engaged in violation of women and effeminacy, cross-dressing, and copying women’s passions.²⁸⁷ This probably had more to do with his agenda to denigrate the Jewish rebels before his Roman audiences and commend his own worthiness than to do with history. For Josephus knew he could find common ground with many in attacking such excesses, including in Rome, and so also deplores the “unnatural and extremely licentious intercourse with males” characteristic of Sparta, Elis and Thebes.²⁸⁸

Officially Roman law deemed same-sex intercourse among citizens as stuprum, a criminal act. It was depicted by many as a “Greek disease”, though in reality where in Greek tradition same-sex intercourse was tolerated, it assumed relations between an older and younger male and that these would cease once the young man reached maturity. The Romans on the other hand tolerated same-sex intercourse with non-citizens of all ages, and depicted it unabashedly on their pottery and in public art, something Greeks found deplorable. Greek kinaedos, indicating a man who preferred to be penetrated anally, became Latin cinaedus, referring to someone engaged in a range of effeminate behaviours. Fantasy about lesbian relations created the bizarre fantasy of the tribas as a woman with a clitoris so large that it could function as a penis.

The authors of the Sibylline Oracles books cited above, represent the Roman scene well; brothels, with male and female prostitutes, abounded.²⁸⁹ Thus Josephus might hope for a sympathetic audience among those Romans who abhorred such practices, saw them as demeaning and subverting the ideal image of the strong, disciplined male, and charged philosophers who had such close relations with their students, with hypocrisy.

As might be expected, the author of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, makes it clear that same-sex intercourse, which it illustrates by reference to Sodom, is a deliberate act of perversion of one’s nature comparable to that of the Watchers who transgressed divine order when they engaged in sex with human women.²⁹⁰ While at one point depicted primarily as a breach of hospitality and violence,²⁹¹ elsewhere it depicts the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah as illicit sexual union, in the form of adult male to male sexual acts.²⁹² Pederasty also belongs to the evils of the last age.²⁹³

The mix of reasons for rejecting same-sex intercourse included, therefore, the feminisation of men, a matter of great shame; the perversion of the act, producing sperm which could not fulfil its function of procreation; manifest failure to control strong passion, resulting in connections contrary to what is natural; and, especially for Jews, flouting of both divine commandment prohibiting such acts, and the divine order which required male to mate with female and not otherwise.

These values almost certainly inform the brief reference to same-sex intercourse in Paul’s letter to the Romans.²⁹⁴ He could probably rely, as Josephus did, on finding willing support in his Roman audience, not least because they were mainly Jews and converts to Judaism, having to live with Rome’s excesses. Even though his purpose is to use this common ground as a basis for launching into an argument that in fact all humanity stands condemned and needs redemption, his exposition of same-sex intercourse is meant to be taken with utmost seriousness.

Perversion is a key theme, probably borrowed in part from the Book of Wisdom. Accordingly, failing to comprehend God’s true nature had the effect that people developed a perverted understanding also of their own selves.²⁹⁵ Paul sees this not as a calm intellectual process, but as something driven by passion. Three times, using different words, he addresses passion, finally depicting is as aflame.²⁹⁶ Passion aflame produces perversion. Paul no more sees this as an excuse than do his Jewish contemporaries. This is not about natural orientation into which people might have been born or which they might have developed in the processes of maturation. This is the fruit of strong passion taking over.

Though he does not say it, he may well have in mind what his contemporaries railed against: parties where drunk men engaged in promiscuous sex in all directions. He may have had boy prostitutes in mind. Nothing, however, indicates that he is exempting some same-sex intercourse as acceptable. It is all an abomination for Paul. The mutuality implied in his description of what is attacked “for one another”,²⁹⁷ makes it unlikely that he is addressing only one-sided exploitative relations, as in pederasty. He employs the language of shame and dishonour,²⁹⁸ though never explicitly referring to males being shamed by becoming females. Indeed, his declaration of perversion applies to both men and women and to both the active and the passive partners. The allusion literally to “males” and “females”²⁹⁹ probably has in mind, the creation of male and female,³⁰⁰ which along with the prohibitions of Leviticus³⁰¹ will have shaped Paul’s stance. It is interesting that the argument about procreation and so perversion of intercourse from its purpose of propagation does not appear in his statements, but that is also consistent with Paul’s comments about sexuality elsewhere.

In 1 Corinthians Paul employs a list of people who are disqualified from entering God’s kingdom, among whom are some, called in Greek arsenokoitai (“bedding males”) and malakoi (“soft”).³⁰² The former occurs also in the first letter to Timothy composed in Paul’s name.³⁰³ The terms are best understood as references to people engaged in same-sex intercourse, in their active and passive roles, the latter word used also more widely in disapproval of the effeminate. Paul’s use of the word may indicate that he shared the view of the shamefulness of men acting as women, despite not saying so directly in Romans, but the evidence is too slim to be sure, occurring as it does in a list without further commentary.

The only other probable reference to same-sex relations is limited to pederasty, where it makes best sense of the severe warning issued by Jesus against causing little ones to stumble, a common metaphor for sexual failing.³⁰⁴ In this case the issue is abuse of children and, while not explicitly mentioning sexual abuse, most likely has it in mind. The following context, which challenges people to cut off hands and feet and pluck out eyes,³⁰⁵ may also have been addressing sexual wrongdoing originally, not least because Matthew uses such sayings explicitly to warn against sexual sin.³⁰⁶ Much less certain is the proposal that in bringing children to Jesus for him to “touch” (another word used also in sexual contexts), people had sexual engagement in mind, such as is alleged of some teachers of the day, who would exploit especially prepubescent youth, and could explain the strength of the disciples’ response.³⁰⁷ It is difficult, however, to imagine this occurring in first century Galilee, though it is possible that the story might have been heard in this way by some in other contexts. Apart from these, nothing suggests that the centurion must have had a sexual relation with his slave,³⁰⁸ as some speculate, nor that the reference to eunuchs really means people born with homosexual orientation.³⁰⁹

Paul shared with his contemporaries the view that human beings were either male or female. He would have agreed with Philo (and, it seems Plato, himself) in laughing off Aristophanes’ myth which claimed that some people are naturally inclined towards members of their own sex. While in Paul’s world that idea comes to the surface occasionally, though rarely, we can be fairly confident that Paul and his fellow Jews would have rejected the notion. For Paul, failure to respond rightly to God led to people failing to live rightly and so allowing their passions to take over and produce in them behaviour which was both unnatural and a transgression of divine order and command. Paul sees no need to argue for this view, but rather believes he can assume it as undisputed among his hearers and therefore can use it as a basis for what he does go on to argue, namely that all others are sinful, too.³¹⁰

Though his brief exposition is incidental to his larger purpose, Paul’s analysis has its own logic. Perversion in one area leads to perversion in the other. In both it is sin. To be so overcome by your sexual feelings that you act contrary to what is natural for you, resulting in acts which contradict who you are is depravity and perversion in his view. Of course, for people who find themselves naturally oriented towards their own kind, such a judgement necessarily falls wide of the mark, but we should not blame Paul for that. He wrote according to his understanding. Nor then does it make sense to blame people who are not engaged in perversion but who are simply following their orientation with as much control and maturity as those otherwise oriented. Nothing, however, indicates that Paul entertained such a possibility.

What emerges from this review of what writers said about sexual passions is that wherever belief in creation informs their attitudes, sex and sexual passion is seen as something positive. Even where, as in the case especially of Philo and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, there is strong influence trending in the direction of condemning sexual passion as evil, the writers stop short of doing so, but instead advise strict control. Even the dominant focus on the role of sexual intercourse for propagation of the species mostly does not expunge the sense that sexual intercourse entails pleasure, which is hedged about with provisions which confine it to marriage. Anything outside of that context is out of order and so condemned as sin, which thus encompasses a wide range of activities. For some, sin includes sex within marriage where procreation is not the focus. For most, the dual focus reflected in the creation stories of propagation and companionship allows legitimacy where either of the latter is the goal, though in their day, unlike ours with effective contraception, such distinctions were mostly irrelevant, though not entirely. Increasingly the focus was not just on actions but attitudes, which resulted in attention to sexual passion and its direction, especially where intense, and here assumptions about what was natural, as God’s creation intended it, determined that what was deemed unnatural such as both passion and action towards members of one’s own sex was abhorrent. The seriousness with which philosophers of the day, whose influence shaped the views of the writings we have considered, addressed matters of sexual desire and behaviour, deserves respect as belonging to some of the most profound discussions of the human condition ever produced. Attitudes to sexual passion and sexual behaviour inherent in these texts have significantly shaped ethical thought to our own day and so warrant respectful critical engagement in our very different world. 

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^[1] Loader, W. (2013). Making Sense of Sex: Attitudes Towards Sexuality in Early Jewish and Christian Literature (pp. 131–141). Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

^[2] Loader, W. (2013). Making Sense of Sex: Attitudes Towards Sexuality in Early Jewish and Christian Literature. Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

²³⁶ Lev 18:3.

²³⁷ Lev 18:23; 20:15–16; Exod 22:19; Deut 27:21.

²³⁸ 4QD^e/4Q270 2 ii.16b–17a / 6QD/6Q15 5 3–4.

²³⁹ Deut 22:5.

²⁴⁰ 4QD^f/4Q271 3 3–4; 4QOrd^a/ 4Q159.

²⁴¹ Sib. Or. 3:185–187.

²⁴² Sib. Or. 3:596–599.

²⁴³ Sib. Or. 3:758.

²⁴⁴ Sib. Or. 4:33–34.

²⁴⁵ 2 Enoch 10:2.

²⁴⁶ 2 Enoch 34:1–2.

²⁴⁷ Apoc. Abr. 24:8.

²⁴⁸ Ps.-Arist. 152.

²⁴⁹ Wis 14:12.

²⁵⁰ T. Reub. 4:6; T. Sim. 5:3; T. Jud. 23:2; cf. also T. Dan 5:5; T. Benj. 10:10.

²⁵¹ T. Naph. 2:2–3:5.

²⁵² Ps.-Phoc. 3.

²⁵³ Plato Leg. 836C.

²⁵⁴ Ps.-Phoc. 190–192.

²⁵⁵ Ovid Met. 9.728–734.

²⁵⁶ Ps.-Phoc. 210–214.

²⁵⁷ T. Sol. 2:3.

²⁵⁸ T. Sol. 4:5.

²⁵⁹ T. Sol. 6:4 ms P.

²⁶⁰ Sir 16:8.

²⁶¹ Wis 10:6–8; 19:13–17.

²⁶² Luke 19:10–12.

²⁶³ Isa 1:10; 3:9.

²⁶⁴ Jer 23:14.

²⁶⁵ Ezek 16:48–50.

²⁶⁶ Jub. 13:13–18.

²⁶⁷ 4QUniden/4Q172.

²⁶⁸ 4QCatena^a/4Q177 iv.9–10a; par. 4QBéat/4Q525 22.

²⁶⁹ LAB 45:1–6.

²⁷⁰ Theod. 7; similarly T. Levi 6:8–11.

²⁷¹ 2 Bar 64:2; cf. Sodom in Liv. Pro. 3:6–9.

²⁷² Spec. 3.37–42; QG 2.49; Virt. 20–21; Her. 274.

²⁷³ Spec. 3.32–33, 37, 39; Anim. 49; Abr. 135, 137; Contempl. 62; Plato, Leg. 838E–839A.

²⁷⁴ Spec. 3.37; Abr. 136; Contempl. 60; Plant. 158; Spec. 1.325; 2.50.

²⁷⁵ Abr. 133–141.

²⁷⁶ Abr. 133–135; Contempl. 50–58; Ebr. 21; Legat. 14; Spec. 3.37, 40.

²⁷⁷ Contempl. 50–63; cf. Plato Symposium 189–193.

²⁷⁸ Gen 1:27.

²⁷⁹ Ap. 2.199.

²⁸⁰ A.J. 15.25, 30.

²⁸¹ A.J. 15.50–56.

²⁸² A.J. 16.230.

²⁸³ A.J. 16.230.

²⁸⁴ A.J. 1.200.

²⁸⁵ A.J. 6.206, 241, 275; 7.5, 111.

²⁸⁶ 2 Sam 1:26.

²⁸⁷ B.J. 4.561–562.

²⁸⁸ Ap. 2.273–275.

²⁸⁹ Sib. Or. 3:185–187; 5:386–396.

²⁹⁰ T. Naph. 3:4–5; 4:1; see also T. Levi 14:6; T. Benj. 9:1.

²⁹¹ T. Ash. 7:1.

²⁹² T. Levi 14:6; T. Naph. 4:1; T. Benj. 9:1.

²⁹³ T. Levi 17:11.

²⁹⁴ Rom 1:24–28.

²⁹⁵ Rom 1:20–25, 28; Wis 14:12.

²⁹⁶ Rom 1:24, 26, 27.

²⁹⁷ Rom 1:27.

²⁹⁸ Rom 1:24, 26, 27.

²⁹⁹ Rom 1:26, 27.

³⁰⁰ Gen 1:27.

³⁰¹ Lev 18:22; 20:13.

³⁰² 1 Cor 6:9–10.

³⁰³ 1 Tim 1:9–10.

³⁰⁴ Mark 9:42.

³⁰⁵ Mark 10:43–48.

³⁰⁶ Matt 5:29–30.

³⁰⁷ Mark 10:13–16.

³⁰⁸ Cf. Matt 8:5–13; Luke 7:1–10; cf. John 4:46–53.

³⁰⁹ Matt 19:12.

³¹⁰ Rom 3:9, 23; 1:16–3:26.