Chapter 7
The Leviticus references
Leviticus 18:22; 20:13
When I first re-examined the Bible, I found that,apart from these two verses in
Leviticus,the only references in the Old Testament to
same-sex sexual expression were in the area of cultic prostitution
and sexual abuse.
So then I had to ask myself what these references in Leviticus
might mean - or rather this reference, as the second instance simply
states the penalty for the offence given in the first. Why was this
written? What's it all about?
Several questions sprang to mind:
+ Is this isolated reference really about the condemnation of
all male same-sex sexual acts (i.e. the interpretation most people
put upon it)?
+ Or is it about heterosexual men wilfully engaging in
same-sex sexual acts, when for them such acts would be an unnatural
perversion?
+ Or is it about male cult prostitution and other forms of
abusive same-sex sexual practices as in all the other Old Testament
references?
There is undoubtedly condemnation in the Bible when this or any
sexual act is an expression of sexual lust, exploitation or abuse.
The Bible is perfectly clear on this. But does it include the
expression of homosexual love for another within an enriching,
loving, faithful and committed relationship?
I find it difficult to believe that it means the condemnation of
all same-sex sexual acts, for the following three reasons:
1. It is out of Biblical character
Given that all the other references to same-sex acts are about
cult prostitution or sexual abuse, it would be essentially the only
reference in the whole Hebrew Bible to include, within a blanket
condemnation of all same-sex sexual acts, a true homosexual man's
loving and natural expression of his love for his beloved.
Yet this is just not typical of the Bible as a whole. Where the
Bible condemns, commends or exhorts, it is repetitious in its
condemnation, commendation or exhortation, allowing little real room
for doubt.
Take, for example, other sexual sins such as adultery and
prostitution. These are not only mentioned frequently in various
forms, but are part of the fulsome spiritual imagery of
'unfaithfulness' towards the God of Israel.
Is our Biblical view of the natural sexual expression of a true
homosexual within a loving, committed, faithful relationship to be
based on, what is in essence, one Bible reference?
This is a vital question, as the Hebrew scriptures was the Bible
of the Early Church (including all who
contributed to the New Testament) and for Jesus as well. This
fact will prove helpful to bear in mind when we examine two key references in the New Testament, the
canon of which was not finally agreed for nearly four centuries.
(In both these references you will later see that Paul uses a word that
refers directly to Leviticus 20:13).
2. Our sexuality is a 'given'
I also find it hard to accept the Leviticus reference at face
value because our sexuality is a 'given' - to homosexuals as well as
to heterosexuals.
We are made such that we need to love at a deep level, and most
of us, when we find that deep love, need to express that love
physically in various ways towards the person we love within a
faithful, committed relationship.
This raises an important question - one that I had to struggle
with when I first reached this point in my pilgrimage.
Would our Creator God have made people with a sexual attraction
for another of the same sex, only then to deny the validity of its
expression within a loving, committed, faithful relationship? (I
didn't believe he would, but I was trying to be open to an answer
either way to this question.)
3. The writers weren't talking about the
same thing.
There is yet a third reason I find it hard to accept the
Leviticus reference as applying to sexual expression in a loving,
committed relationship.
When re-reading the Bible in the light of this issue, my
overriding impression was that the writers knew nothing of
homosexuality as we know and understand it today.
They wrote as though there were only heterosexual men and women,
some of whom had perverted their natural desires to perform unnatural
sexual acts - sometimes with others of the same sex, and sometimes
with animals. Such acts either took place in the context of fertility
rites, or were depraved, corrupt practices and rightly to be
condemned.
Searching for further evidence
Now these three important considerations led me to believe that
in all probability the Leviticus reference was either about
heterosexual men wilfully engaging in same-sex sexual activity and/or
about male cult prostitution and other forms of same-sex sexual
abuses - just like all other Old Testament references.
But I needed further evidence in order to be more sure about
this. So I decided to look at the evidence from two other angles:
* by examining any key words in
the Leviticus passage with reference to
parallel accounts of the same thing - in this case the
Law;
* by examining the context of the
Leviticus reference - the times, culture, thinking and beliefs of the
people that wrote them down.
When I got to this point in my pilgrimage, I prayed hard as I
studied, asking the Lord to guide me so that I would be led to his
will and not dishonour him or mislead myself or others.
Comparative studies
I first explored what appeared to me to be the most likely
possibility - that the Leviticus references were really to do with
cultic prostitution, as is the case with nearly all the other
references in the Hebrew Bible.
Now one time-honoured method for gaining further insight into a
difficult text or passage is to compare different accounts of the
same thing - in this case the Law.
Theologians, ministers and preachers will do this, for example,
when studying the Synoptic Gospels ie Matthew, Mark and Luke), or
when comparing parallel accounts in Kings and Chronicles.
So I compared various passages in Deuteronomy (the 'copy of the
law' ) with parallel texts in Exodus and Leviticus. This proved
an enlightening and interesting exercise. I found many
parallels between Deuteronomy and the other two books on all
sorts of matters, including one reference in each to same-sex sexual
acts.
Deuteronomy 23:17 and Leviticus 18:22
are the only references in these respective books to same-sex
sexual acts. It would seem that the law given in Deuteronomy
23:17 was parallel to that given in Leviticus 18:22.
One point of particular interest is that the two texts are
complementary: Deuteronomy 23:17 says that no Israelite shall
be a cult prostitute, but does not specifically prohibit using the
services of such - whereas Leviticus 18:22 effectively does.
The final clues in Leviticus 18:22 (and 20:13), are firstly, the
often-used Hebrew word that is translated as 'abomination'
[RSV] or 'disgusting act' [GNB], and secondly, the context of these
verses.
Three Hebrew words are translated as'abomination':
* sheqets, which relates to food regulations in Leviticus
11;
* shiqquts, relating to unacceptable and unworthy worship of
God and desecration of the Temple.
But this one in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 is different. It
is used of serving other gods - doing what other religions do,
including fertility cult customs and practices. That Hebrew word is to'ebah, and is the word used for
'abomination' in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13.
It is the same word that is used in connection with cultic
prostitution in Deut 23: 18 and 1 Kings 14: 24 (as well as in over
100 other references associated with idolatry). The context of
Egyptian and Canaanite religion (Leviticus 18:3, 24-30; 20:23-24)
confirms the connection of Lev 18: 22 and Lev 20: 13 with the
statutes of the idolatrous cultus ie cultic prostitution.
And if the New American Standard Bible is correct, the literal
translation of Lev 18: 22 is 'you shall not lie with a male, as those
(plural) who lie with a female (singular)'. This clearly implies
prostitution. But the case is strong without this.
So the Leviticus references, like the
others in the Old Testament, are linked with the hated Canaanite
cults in which young men and women were recruited for temple
prostitution.
The sexual rites were supposed to 'wake up the gods' and make
fertile the herds, the crops, and those who entered the rites. Taken
together, the Levitical and Deuteronomical laws rightly banned any
kind of involvement in these cultic sexual rites.
Practical, cultural and religious
factors
There are also powerful cultural reasons that point to why those
references in Leviticus were written. It was bound up with the
beliefs and needs of those ancient people. Family for them was of
vital practical and religious importance.
This was reflected in one of the earliest recorded commands,
given in the Creation story (Genesis 1:28) to 'Be fruitful and
multiply.' [RSV] The Jews learned their faith through stories (a
tried-and-tested method that Jesus also used), and this particular
story related to a man and a woman raising a family - a story with
profound significance for their very survival.
Family was vitally important for a number of practical reasons,
because large families were needed:
+ to do the many chores needed to feed, clothe and generally
sustain the family;
+ to provide strong, healthy men to protect the tribe and to
keep their women, children, cattle and crops from being stolen;
+ to provide for care in later life.
In nomadic life especially, and even when the Israelites were
settled in Canaan, survival depended on large families helping one
another.
Family was also important because they had no concept of eternal
life such as we have today in Jesus. Beyond this life there was only
sheol - the shadowy world of the dead. So they concentrated on this
life, and 'lived on' in their descendants. This was a powerful
reason for the family line to continue.
It was the reason for Levirate marriage (see Deuteronomy 25:5-6),
whereby a childless widow became the wife of her dead husband's
brother. He would then raise up a family and thus continue the line
of his dead brother. Any brother who refused to do this suffered at
best a sullied reputation, and at worst death (see Deuteronomy
25:7-10 and Genesis 38:8-10).
Also, because the Jews had no concept of eternal life (as we know
it in Jesus), they believed that the God of justice meted out justice
in this life (see Deuteronomy 28:1-57). They therefore believed that
God:
- blessed the righteous with health, wealth and prosperity,
security and large families (remember his promise to Abraham, who had
everything else but family [Genesis 15:5-6])
- but cursed disobedient sinners with sickness, poverty, loss
and barrenness.
It followed from this that those who prospered must have been
favoured by God because of their righteousness, while the poor, sick,
barren etc. must be experiencing the result of their disobedience -
God was not pleased with them!
We still hear people say 'What have I done to deserve this?' when
things go wrong, and this is where the idea comes from.
The book of Job wrestles with exactly this problem. (It became
yet another instance of where Jesus stood things on their head. In
John 9:1-3, for example, the people's reaction to the man's blindness
is very much according the Jewish way of thinking, whereas Jesus put
a very different gloss on things.)
Large families were a joy for many reasons - not least because
they were seen as a reward for righteousness.
Conversely, barrenness was viewed as a consequence of sinfulness.
Thus not only did women have cause to grieve when they were barren
(think, for example of Rachel in Genesis and Hannah in 1 Samuel), but
they also had to contend with the belief that it was their fault
because it resulted from their disobedience to God. There was nothing
to stop their husband taking another wife, or servant, or concubine,
and fathering children in order to show it wasn't his righteousness
that was lacking!
So strong was the need for children that women might go to
extreme lengths to become pregnant. Among the best-known examples is
that of Lot's widowed daughters making their father drunk and lying
with him because they saw no prospect of children any other way (see
Genesis 19:30-36).
And in Genesis 38 the widow Tamar dressed as a prostitute and
solicited her father-in-law Judah because he had not given her one of
her dead husband's brothers as the law pre-scribed - thus she had
Judah's child.
So family was vital for various practical, religious and cultural
reasons.
But the ancients also believed it was men that had within them
the 'seed' of life (the King James Version contains many references
to 'seed', such as in Genesis 21:13). Men's semen was seen as the
human equivalent of the seed planted in the ground, while women in
pregnancy were merely viewed as incubators.
This also explains why genealogies are traced through the male
line. It followed from this that if a man deliberately 'spilled his
seed' in whatever way, they viewed it as a sin against God and
punishable by death (see Genesis 38:9-10). This was presumably
because it took away God's prerogative to give or withhold life; it
was a man's duty to use his 'seed' to raise a family.
How, then, was a man treated whose genitals had been damaged?
You might expect him to be treated with compassion. Yet not only
was the poor man condemned to life without a family, but according to
Deuteronomy 23:1 he was excluded from the assembly of the Lord (the
Temple), because they assumed he must have disobeyed God to
have suffered such a misfortune.
Finally, how would they have viewed any sexual act that was
clearly not procreative? They would have seen it as disobedience to
God - a crime against the tribe (whose survival depended on
procreation), and deliberately mocking God (who alone should decide
which were the righteous who should multiply, and which the sinners
who should remain barren).
People who committed such acts were condemned to death for
disobedience against God's command to be fruitful and multiply.
Does this still apply
today?
We have just considered the most powerful cultural reason
for the condemnation of same-sex sexual acts that is contained in
Leviticus 18:20 and 20:13.
Yet the reasons for that law in Leviticus no longer apply today!
We know from our experience and from Jesus' teaching that the
religious, cultural and scientific reasoning behind Leviticus 18:22
and 20:13 was wrong.
Men are not pre-eminent in having the seed of life within them.
God does not withhold family because people are sinners. There is
eternal life. God does not punish with death men who do not use their
semen for procreation.
And far from needing to multiply, we now need restraint. It took
from the creation of humanity up to 1900 AD to produce a world
population of two billion; it has taken less than a century to nearly
triple that number! The world is over- populated, with people dying
of starvation and disease in the very places where people still feel
the need to multiply for some of the same reasons that motivated the
Hebrews.
Fertility cult worship is certainly not part of the current
scene. Some sexual attitudes in society pose a danger to health as
well as faith, but as Christians we are aware of this and allow our
faith to guide us, whether we are heterosexual or homosexual.
Most importantly for this study, we know today that, just as the
heterosexual act can be born of lust or of love, so the homosexual
act described in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 can be an expression of
lust, but can also be an expression of responsible, faithful,
intimate and committed love.
And as John explains in his first New Testament letter, where
real love is, there is God. Indeed, such love is God's greatest
blessing - for God is love!
So it is not what we are given, but
whether we use those gifts in true love, that counts with
God.
We shall now move on to the New Testament references, and see if
they bring us to a different conclusion when considered in context.