Thursday, April 9, 2020

Bernadette J. Brooten on Paul and Female Homoeroticism


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)