Yesterday I
read the following interesting book:
Bernadette J. Brooten,
Love Between Women: Early Christian
Responses to Female Homoeroticism (The Chicago Series on Sexuality,
History, and Society; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996)
Brooten is
not a conservative scholar; instead, she is very liberal and herself openly gay.
Notwithstanding, her book refutes a lot of popular revisionist arguments about
sexual practices, orientation, and Paul’s teachings. Here are some interesting
excerpts:
On
similarities and differences between Paul and contemporary Jewish works:
. . .the author of The Sentences of Pseudo-Phokylides represents a woman having sexual
relations with another woman as imitating a man, which ties in closely with the
rhetoric as we have seen in the non-Jewish world. This Greek poem, probably
written by a Jewish author of the diaspora, contains a long section on proper
sexual behavior, marriage, and family life (The
Sentences of Pseudo-Phokylides 175-227). The author defines intercourse
between males as a transgression of nature not found in the animal world (The Sentences of Pseudo-Phokylides 190f).
A similar prohibition to women follows in the next line: “And let not women
imitate the sexual role [literally, “marriage bed”] of men” (The Sentences of Pseudo-Phokylides 192).
The author also warns the reader against letting a son have long, braided, or
knotted hair, as long hair is for voluptuous women (The Sentences of Pseudo-Phokylides 210-12). Further, beautiful boys
are to be protected from male sexual advances and virgins kept locked up until
their wedding day (The Sentences of
Pseudo-Phokylides 213-16). The sexual ethics presented in the poem are thus
based on strict gender differentiation in dress and sexual role. Girls are to
be kept fit for marriage and, once married, are not to stray outside the
boundaries of marriage. The rhetoric of transgressing against nature, of doing
acts that animals avoid, and of homoeotic women imitating men ties in which a
non-Jewish rhetoric . . . Since, however, Paul was trained as a Pharisee and
continued to view himself as a “member of the people of Israel” (Phil 3:5f), we
need to consider at least briefly his condemnation of female and male
homoeroticism in the context of Judaism. Like The Sentences of Pseudo-Phokylides, Paul presents homoerotic behavior
as contrary to nature, and he discusses female and male homoeroticism side by
side. Paul’s Greek terminology also resembles that of The Sentences of Pseudo-Phokylides in that both employ the language
of “males” and “females,” rather than the more usual terms “men” and “women.”
Both Paul and Pseudo-Phokylides may have employed the term “females” as a
parallel to the term “male” found in Lev 18:22 and 20:13, which could mean that
they saw themselves as extending the Levitical prohibition of Lev 18:22 to
include females (The LXX has αρσην. Paul and Pseudo-Phoklydes have the plural αρσενες and the plural θηλειαι/θηλυτεραι). Paul’s condemnation, however, differs from The Sentences of Pseudo-Phokylides and from all other Jewish
discussions of female homoeroticism in that he alone sees it as worthy of death
(Rom 1:32). We might view Paul as the only ancient Jew to extend Lev 20:13
to include women. Whether this stricter view represents a strand of Pharisaic diaspora
Jewish thought that has not otherwise survived or whether the greater
strictness resulted from changes in thinking due to his belief in Christ, has
to remain a matter of speculation. (pp. 63, 64)
On Rom 1:24:
“The lusts
of their hearts.” The Greek word for “lusts,” epithymiai,
can also mean “desires,” especially sexual desires. Paul does, however, often
associate epithymiai with sin,
transgression of the law, or vice (Rom 6:12; 7:7f; 13:14; Gal 5:16. See also
Gal 5:24). As modern readers steeped in popular psychology, we may find this negative
assessment of desire surprising or even offensive. Not so ancient readers
influenced by Stoic philosophy, which devoted much attention to the means of
extirpating or rotting out the passions. And Philo of Alexandria calls desire “the
source of all evils” (On the Special Laws
4.84).
Perhaps the NRSV committee, by rendering epithymiai as “lusts,” wanted to suggest
that Paul opposes uncontrolled or excessive sexual desires, but not healthy,
moderate desires. “Desires,” a term with a broader scope than “lusts” and not
restricted to uncontrolled or excessive desires, is probably the better
translation. In contrast to the Stoics, however, Paul does not present a
concrete plan on how to deal with desire. For Paul, desire is a theological
problem—the result of refusing to worship the true God. The cure for lust or
desire presumably lies in correct worship, in other words, in behavior or
action. (pp. 237-38)
On Rom 1:26:
Romans 1:26. For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women
exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural. How could a good God hand
people over to behaviors that are deserving of death (v. 32)? The spiral
movement of the text illustrates human accountability and God’s impartiality
through the image of God as judge and bailiff. God reacts to humans having
turned away from the truth by handing them over into the custody of degrading
passions. Is God thereby unfair or cruel? Not within the framework of this
text, as vv. 19f establish. Paul dovetails the ability to know God with a
requirement to recognize and worship that God without exception.
Vv. 19-26a both expand and explicate v. 18.
With the second part of v. 26, the text moves forward. We begin to learn the
meaning of impurity and the degrading passions. Paul’s suspension of details
for several verses may signal disgust concerning the degrading acts. Even here
as the actions of the women begin to come to light. Paul favors roundabout
description. Only the discussion of men’s passion for other men in v. 27 is
genuinely explicit. The fourth-century church father John Chrysostom,
commenting on this passage, claimed that this type of sexual contact is more
shameful for women than for men, since women ought to be more modest than men
(John Chrysostom, In Epistolam ad Romanos,
Homily 4, PG 60.417). This commonly
held cultural assumption about female shame may help to explain why Paul
mentions women first and why he does not spell out the exact form of their
sexual contact. Perhaps, as for many other writers throughout history, female
homoeroticism is unspeakable for Paul, making him hesitant to describe it
precisely.
Another explanation for mentioning women
first could be that homoeroticism represents and overturning of the order of
creation. According to Genesis 2, to which Paul refers in 1 Cor 11:8f, God
created woman from man and for man. Women in relationships with other women
defy the created order of “woman from man” and “woman for the sake of man.”
“Their women.” The text speaks of “their”
women, which points to the group nature of the transgression. Rather than the
image of isolated individuals worshipping idols, the text evokes a picture of
groups engaging in such religious Jewish readers would think of groups of
pagans. Thus, “their” women connotes the wives and daughters of the gentiles.
The relativizing “their” occurs only for the women (the text does not speak of “their”
men). Indeed, it is a logical term in male-dominated societies in which women
belong to men and are seen in relation to them. (pp. 239-41)
On Rom 1:26
and “exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural”:
Some scholars have argued that “exchanged” in
v. 26 and “giving up” in v. 27 show that the text speaks of heterosexuals
committing homosexual acts, rather than of homosexual persons per se, on the
grounds that Paul presupposes their ability to engage in “natural intercourse.”
Proponents of this position hold that Paul’s words do not address the situation
of lesbians and gay men today, who may feel that they cannot engage in
heterosexual intercourse, since their homosexuality is innate to their being .
. . [on the contrary] the evidence from ancient astrology and medicine
establishes that some people in the Roman world conceptualized a congenital
sexual orientation, although sexual orientation was far more complicated than simply
“homosexual” or “heterosexual” and could include the categories active or
passive, public or private, orientation toward persons richer or poorer, higher
or lower in status, and—in the case of men—attraction toward boys or toward
males of any age (for an example of this spectrum, see Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos 4.5, who argues that these
orientations are set at birth by the configuration under which one is born). On
the other hand, Paul may have accepted such a view, but, like the medical
teachers cited by Soranos, he may have seen the inherited condition as an
inherited disease, brought on by “shameful custom” or like the astrologers, as
innate, but nevertheless, unnatural . . . both arguments fall short (that Paul
condemns only heterosexuals committing homosexual acts and hot homosexual acts
per se, and that the distinction between sexual orientation and sexual acts
would have made no sense to him). Paul could have believed that tribades, kinaidoi, and other sexually
unorthodox persons were born that way and yet still condemn them as unnatural
and shameful, this all the more so since he is speaking of groups of people
rather than of individuals.
Further, even if Paul condemned only
homosexual acts committed by heterosexual
persons, many lesbians in the church, who feel that they have chosen to love women, as well as all
bisexuals, would fall under that condemnation and are thereby not helped by
this interpretation. In sum, the category of the innate homosexual who is
thereby free of shame and whose sexuality counts as natural does not fit the
Roman world and does not address the self-understanding of many contemporary
lesbian, bisexual and gay Christians.
I believe that Paul used the word “exchanged”
to indicate that people knew the natural sexual order of the universe and left
it behind. Paul uses the plural throughout Rom 1:18-32, showing the communal
aspect of the behavior: as a people, they suppressed the truth about God, and as
a people they changed their form of sexual behaviour (Paul mentions the
societal toleration necessary to sustain such changes in v. 32, lending support
to the communal interpretation). In other words, I see Paul as condemning all
forms of homoeroticism as the unnatural acts of people who had turned away from
God . . . The active verb (metēllaxan)
with a feminine subject (hai thēleiai)
is striking. The specific verbs for sexual intercourse are usually active then
they refer to men and passive when they refer to women. Thus, a ma penetrates (perainei) a woman, while a woman is
penetrated (perainetai) by a man.
Ancient Greek authors also applied an active verb to male animals having
intercourse or to male human beings having intercourse with animals. Thus, a
male animal or male human being mounts (ocheuei)
his animal partner, while a female animal or female human being is mounted (ocheuetai) by her animal partner. The
case is the same for marriage: a man marries (gamizei) a woman, while a women is married (gamizetai) by a man. Some verbs, such as “to mingle” (mignymi) do occur in the active for both
women and men, but the more common pattern is to use an active verb for the
male and a passive one for the female.
“To exchange” is, of course, not a verb that
means “to have sexual intercourse” or “to marry.” Nevertheless, in the context
of the widespread cultural view of women as sexually passive, for women
actively to “exchange natural intercourse for unnatural” stands out. (pp.
242-43, 244, 246, comment in square brackets added for clarification)
