Part of a series on
Christianity and LGBT topics
Overview articles Christianity and sexual orientation Christianity and homosexuality Christianity and transgender people History of Christianity and homosexuality The Bible and homosexuality Hebrew Bible New Testament Queer theology LGBT-affirming Christian denominations Blessing of same-sex unions
Denominational positions Anglican Communion Baptist Eastern Orthodox Latter-day Saints Lutheran Methodist Metropolitan Community Church Presbyterian Quaker Roman Catholic Seventh-day Adventist
LGBT Christian clergy LGBT Christian clergy LGBT Roman Catholic clergy Gay bishops
LGBT portal

The Bible refers to sexual practices that may be called "homosexual" in today's world, but the original language texts of the Bible do not refer explicitly to homosexuality as a sexual orientation. The Bible is interpreted by officials in some denominations as condemning the practice. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, however, the extent to which the Bible mentions the subject and whether or not it is condemned, has become the subject of debate.

Passages in the Old Testament book Leviticus that prohibit "lying with mankind as with womankind" and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah have historically been interpreted as condemning homosexuality, as have several Pauline passages. Other interpreters, however, maintain that the Bible does not condemn homosexuality, saying that historical context suggests other interpretations or that rare or unusual words in the passages may not be referring to homosexuality.

Hebrew Bible

Leviticus 18 and 20

Chapters 18 and 20 of Leviticus, which form part of the Holiness code, contain the following verses:

22 Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable. (Leviticus 18:22 NIV)^[1]

13 “‘If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads. (Leviticus 20:13 NIV)^[2]

The two verses have historically been interpreted by Jews and Christians as clear blanket prohibitions against homosexual acts.^[3][4]

References to Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible

The story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis does not explicitly identify homosexuality as the sin for which they were destroyed, but the passage has historically been interpreted within Judaism and Christianity as a punishment for homosexuality due to the statement that the men of Sodom wished to rape the angels who retrieved Lot. While the sin of Sodom was not interpreted by Jewish prophets as sexual but rather as lack of charity,^[5] the sexual interpretation became so prevalent that the name "Sodom" became the basis of the word sodomy, still a legal synonym for homosexual and non-procreative sexual acts, particularly anal or oral sex.^[6]

While the Jewish prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos and Zephaniah refer vaguely to the sin of Sodom,^[5] Ezekiel specifies that the city was destroyed because of its arrogance, apathy towards the poor, and committing "abomination",^[7][8][9] the word used in Leviticus 18 and 20, as well as in other parts of the Bible to refer to various forms of idolatry and other undesirable actions. The Talmudic tradition follows Ezekiel's interpretation of the sin of Sodom as lack of charity, as does Jesus in the New Testament, for instance in Matthew 10:14-15 when he tells his disciples that the punishment for houses or towns that will not welcome them will be worse than that of Sodom and Gomorrah.^[10][5]

Later traditions on Sodom's sin considered it to be heterosexual immorality.^[11] In Jude 1:7 the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah are stated to have given themselves "up to sexual immorality and perversion."^[12] Later Jewish writers Philo and Josephus were the first to assert unambiguously that homosexuality was among the sins of Sodom.^[11] By the end of the 1st century Jews commonly identified the sin of Sodom with homosexual practices.^[13]

David and Jonathan and Ruth and Naomi

The account of the friendship between David and Jonathan in the Books of Samuel has been interpreted by traditional and mainstream Christians as a relationship only of affectionate regard, but has been interpreted by some authors as of a sexual nature.^[14][15] The story of Ruth and Naomi is also occasionally interpreted in this way.^[16]

New Testament

Romans 1

26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.(Romans 1:26-27 NIV)^[17]

This passage has been debated by some twentieth and twenty-first century interpreters both in terms of its relevance today and in terms of its actual prohibition.^[18] While Christians of all denominations have historically maintained that this verse is a complete prohibition of all forms of homosexuality,^{[19][20][21][22][23]} some twentieth and twenty-first century authors contend the passage is not a blanket condemnation of homosexuality at all.^[24][25][26]

Other Epistles

In the context of the broader immorality of his audience, Paul of Tarsus wrote in the First Epistle to the Corinthians,

9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men (malakoi, arsenokoitai), 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11 NIV)^[27]

The word arsenokoitai (ἀρσενοκοῖται) has challenged scholars for centuries, and has been variously rendered as "abusers of themselves with mankind" (KJV), "sodomites" (YLT), or "men who practice homosexuality" (NIV). Greek ἄῤῥην / ἄρσην [arrhēn / arsēn] means "male", and κοίτην [koitēn] "bed," with a sexual connotation.^[28] Paul's use of the word in 1 Corinthians is the earliest example of the term; its only other use is in a similar list of wrongdoers given (possibly by the same author) in 1 Timothy 1:8–11:

8 We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. 9 We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, 10 for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality (arsenokoitai), for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine 11 that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.(1 Timothy 1:8–11 NIV)^[29]

Later Christian literature used the word to mean variously prostitution, incest or rape without any single clear meaning – Patriarch John IV of Constantinople, in a passage dealing with coercive and non-procreative sex, speaks of "...many men [who] commit the sin of arsenokoitia with their wives".^[30] Other scholars have interpreted malakoi and arsenokoitai as referring to weakness and effeminacy, or to the practice of exploitative pederasty.^[31][32]

Matthew 8; Luke 7

In Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10, Jesus heals a centurion's servant who is dying. According to James Neill, the Greek term "pais" used for the servant^[33] almost always had a sexual connotation.^[34] According to Daniel A. Helminiak, it only "sometimes" was given this meaning.^[35] Donald Wold states that its normal meaning is "boy", "child" or "slave" and its application to a boy lover escapes notice in the standard lexica of Liddell and Scott and the Bauer lexicon.^[36] In her detailed study of the episode in Matthew and Luke, Wendy Cotter dismisses as very unlikely the idea that the use of the Greek word "pais" indicated a sexual relationship between the centurion and the young slave.^[37] Neill himself compares the meanings of Greek "pais" to those of French "garçon", which, though also used to mean "waiter", "most commonly means 'boy'". In support of his view that Greek "pais" on the contrary most often means a young male lover, he says that it is "the" root of the English word "pederasty", while at the same time indicating that the English word is derived also from Greek "erasthai" (to love).^[34] He sees in the fact that the boy is described^[38] as "valued highly" by the centurion an indication of a homosexual relationship between the two, and says that the Greek word "doulos" (a slave) used of him in Luke's account of the episode suggests he may have been a sex slave.^[34] Others interpret "pais" merely as a boy servant, not a male lover, and read nothing sexual into "valued highly".

Matthew 19:12

In Matthew 19:12, Jesus speaks of eunuchs who were born as such, eunuchs who were made so by others, and eunuchs who choose to live as such for the kingdom of heaven.^[39] This passage has been interpreted as having to do with homosexual orientation; Clement of Alexandria, for instance, wrote in his commentary on it that some men, from birth, are naturally averse to women and should not marry.^[40]

Acts 8

The Ethiopian eunuch, an early gentile convert encountered in Acts 8, has been described as an early gay Christian, based on the fact that the word "eunuch" in the Bible was not always used literally, as in Matthew 19:12.^[41][42] Commentators generally suggest that the combination of "eunuch" together with the title "court official" indicates a literal eunuch - not a homosexual - who would have been excluded from the Temple by the restriction in Deuteronomy 23:1.^[43][44]

See also

• Religion and homosexuality
• Homosexuality and Christianity
• Homosexuality and Judaism
• Homosexuality in ancient Greece
• Women in Christianity
• Malakia
• Biblical law in Christianity

References

Literature

• Amsel, Nachum. Homosexuality in Orthodox Judaism.
• Bahnsen, Greg L. 1978 Homosexuality: A Biblical View. ISBN 0-8010-0744-5
• Bahnsen, Greg L. 1994 In the Shadow of Sodom: Does the Bible Really Say What We Thought About Homosexuality?
• Biblical Studies Press 1996–2005 The NET Bible.
• Boswell, John. 1980 Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-06711-4
• Brooten, Bernadette. 1998 Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-07592-3
• Brown, Driver, Briggs and Gesenius. Hebrew Lexicon entry for Dabaq. The Old Testament Hebrew Lexicon.
• Brunson, Hal. 2007 Lesbos, Narcissus, and Paulos: Homosexual Myth and Christian Truth. ISBN 0-595-40596-7
• Catholic Answers 2005 Early Teachings on Homosexuality, iuniverse, 2007.
• Dover, Kenneth. 1978 Greek Homosexuality. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-36270-5
• Durns, John Barclay 2002 Lot’s Wife Looked Back. Journal of Religion and Society 4, p. 1–16.
• Chapman, Patrick 2005 Homosexuals in the Bible: Jesus, John, the Centurion and the Slave?. Rainbow Journal Olympia, vol 2(1) (November 2005).
• Crompton, Louis, et al. 2003 Homosexuality and Civilization. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press ISBN 0-674-01197-X
• Elliott, John^{[disambiguation needed]} 2004 "No kingdom of God for softies? or, what was Paul really saying? 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 in context'" Biblical Theology Bulletin, Spring 2004.
• Gagnon, Robert A. J. 2001 The Bible and Homosexual Practice. Abingdon Press. ISBN 0-687-08413-X
• Greenberg, David 1988 The construction of homosexuality. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-30628-3
• Halsall, Paul. Homosexuality and Catholicism: A Partially Annotated Bibliography
• Helminiak, Daniel 2000 What the Bible really says about homosexuality. Alamo Square Press. ISBN 1-886360-09-X
• Hilborn, David. 2002 Homosexuality and Scripture. Evangelical Alliance.
• Horner, Tom. 1978 Jonathan Loved David. Westminster Press. ISBN 0-664-24185-9
• House of Bishops 1991 Issues in Human Sexuality. Church of England. ISBN 0-7151-3745-X
• Howard, Kevin L. Paul's View of Male Homosexuality: An Exegetical Study. M.A. thesis (unpublished). Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Deerfield, Illinois. June 1996.
• Jennings, Theodore 2003 The Man Jesus Loved: Homoerotic Narratives From the New Testament. Pilgrim Press. ISBN 0-8298-1535-X
• Johns, Loren 2004 Homosexuality and the Bible: A Case Study in the Use of the Bible for Ethics (The Academic Dean of the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary).
• Koch, Timothy R 2001 Cruising as methodology : homoeroticism and the scriptures, In Queer Commentary and the Hebrew Bible, ed. Ken Stone, Pilgrim Press. ISBN 0-8298-1447-7
• Martin, Dale. 1996 Arsenokoites and malakos: Meanings and Consequences, pp. 117–136. In Biblical Ethics and Homosexuality. Ed Robert Brawley. Westminster Press ISBN 0-664-25638-4.
• Marston, Paul 2003 'Christians, Gays and Gay Christians'. Free Methodists.
• McNeill, J. J. 1993 The Church and the Homosexual. Beacon Press. (4th edn.). ISBN 0-8070-7931-6
• Nissinen, Martti. 1998 Homoeroticism in the Biblical World: A Historical Perspective. Augsburg Fortress Publishers. ISBN 0-8006-2985-X
• Ostling, R. N. 2003 Book claims Jesus had homosexual relationship Chicago Sun-Times 29 May 2003.
• Robinson, B. A. 1996–2005 What the Bible says about homosexuality. Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance.
• Satlow, Michael 1995 Tasting the Dish: Rabbinic Rhetorics of Sexuality. Scholars Press. ISBN 0-7885-0159-3
• Townsley, Jeramy 2003 All known references to arsenokoit*
• West, Mona 2005 The Bible and Homosexuality. Metropolitan Community Church.
• White, James and Neill, Jeffrey 2002 The Same Sex Controversy: Defending and Clarifying the Bible's Message About Homosexuality. ISBN 0-7642-2524-3
• White, Mel 2011 What the Bible Says - And Doesn't Say - About Homosexuality.
• Williams, Rowan 2002 ’The Body’s Grace’, in Eugene F. Rogers (ed.), Theology and Sexuality: Classic and Contemporary Readings, Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-21277-9