INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
AUTHORTALK® HOST: RONALD WAY
AUTHOR: L. MICHAEL WHITE
SUBJECT: HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE BIBLE — PART ONE OF TWO
AUTHORTALK® HOST: RONALD WAY
AUTHOR: L. MICHAEL WHITE
SUBJECT: HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE BIBLE — PART ONE OF TWO
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Ron Way:
Hello, everyone. My name is Ron Way, I'm your host here on AuthorTalk, and the Rising Light Media outlets. Here on AuthorTalk we interview some of the most famous spiritual, and religious authors in the world. Today, we're going to continue in this tradition with one of my own favorite authors, a man I count as a friend, Dr. Michael White. Today, we're both attending the American Academy of Religion and Society Biblical Literature in San Antonio, Texas. It's here that I caught up with Michael and asked him if he would allow me to interview him on the subject I think is critically important to millions of people around the world, and most especially within the Christian churches. The subject is the forbidden word, homosexuality, and most importantly, homosexuality in the bible.
Michael is an American Bible scholar. He holds Ronald Nelson Smith chair in classics and Christian origins, and he's the director of the Institute of the Study of Antiquity and Christian Origins, at the University of Texas at Austin. He attended Oberlin Christian University, Yale University, and Yale Divinity School. He's one of the most brilliant scholars that I know. We're both members of Westar, better known to the public as the Jesus Seminar, which is where I met he and his wife.
He has written several books. Among them, From Jesus to Christianity, How Four Generations of Visionaries, and Storytellers Created the New Testament and Christian Faith, and Scripting Jesus: The Gospel in Rewrite.
Wow. That's a lot of introduction, but I tell you these things about Michael, so that you will know that the man that's going to walk us through this subject of homosexuality, most frequently referred to as “gay” in today's world, is well qualified to take us on this journey into the Old and New Testament and the world that created them. Welcome Michael to AuthorTalk. It's great to see you, again.
Michael White:
Thanks, Ron. Good to be here.
Ron Way:
You can find the word homosexual in most of the English versions of the Bible, Michael, but you say, there is no general word for same sex relations in the Hebrew Bible, and same sex relations are not exclusively condemned except in two passages in Leviticus. How did we get to this point? Even if they didn't use the word homosexual didn't it mean the same thing?
Michael White:
Ron, I think we have to start with the realization that the term homosexual, and homosexuality are actually very modern terms. They were only invented, quite literally, invented at the end of the 19th Century, and coming into English usage at that point in time to describe modern medical phenomenon, but we have to recognize that as such they are really looking at things from a modern perspective, a perspective that didn't exist in the ancient world.
Let me start with a quotation from one of my teachers, Wayne Meeks, formally of Yale University, now retired, and this was from an article he did on the issue of the Bible and homosexuality back in 2004 in the Christian Network Journal, and here's the quotation I want to start with, "The category homosexuality is absent from the bible, and generally unknown in antiquity. It is a modern construction, and depends upon an understanding of gender that arises only in modern times. Ancient understandings of sex as well as gender are quite varied, and all different in some fundamental ways from our own. Therefore, simply to pick out those rather rare places where the Bible mentions or eludes to sexual acts, and to assume that they mean the same things that they would mean in our culture, will and inevitably lead to confusion."
The first point to make is that the terminology that we use today, has evolved, it's come about and it has a range of meaning, but neither the terminology was there in the ancient world, nor was the concept. That's the critical thing. Let me go farther on that for just a moment. Now, as for the term homosexuality, according to the supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary the word homosexuality was first coined in English in 1892, by Charles G Chaddock, and was later used in that same year by another author JA Symonds. It in turn it appears that Chaddock had formed the word as a neologism, in other words, just a new word to translate an equivalent German term first coined in 1869 and taken over by the famous German medical writer, Krafft-Ebing, who popularized in his work Psychopathia Sexualis, published in 1887.
Now, at this point in time the term was being coined by medical writers as a primarily descriptive term from a medical perspective. Since it was attempting to render in more scientific terms practices that were widely discussed, but had no technical scientific jargon to go with them, and specifically the word they were trying to get rid of, to get away from was sodomy.
Ron Way:
Ah.
Michael White:
So, homosexuality came about in 1869 to '90, so not very long ago. A little over a 100 years, but primarily the deal with an older term sodomy. You might say, that's what they're talking about-
Ron Way:
Exactly.
Michael White:
In the Bible.
Ron Way:
Right.
Michael White:
But, in fact the term sodomy didn't exist until the middle ages. In fact, not until 1072.
Ron Way:
Then, let's talk about Leviticus and what are they talking about? Aren't we talking about the same thing, and it's just semantics, you're discussing, Doctor?
Michael White:
I don't think it is just semantics, and I don't think it's quite possible as in the quote from Wayne Meeks that I've already read. I suggest that the terminology really doesn't operate, the concept isn't there in the ancient world. If were going to talk about this we have to start by talking about something much more basic. That is same sex sexual relations.
Ron Way:
Right.
Michael White:
Obviously, that can be same sex relations between men, or between women, and that's where the discussion comes in, what we're going to see as we go through this material is same sex relations between women is hardly ever discussed in the ancient world, at all, and never in the Bible. How can you apply a term like homosexuality, which is supposed to be hyper descriptive of a whole phenomenon if half of the people who might be engaged in those kinds of acts are not even discussed?
Ron Way:
I know you've got in your brief, because I was reading it, you summarize a few of these statements out of Old Testament, and then we'll get to New Testament with primarily Paul, and then Timothy. Can you walk us through what it says and how you interpret that, then?
Michael White:
Okay. Let me start by saying very explicitly, there are a few passages in the Bible that explicitly talk about same sex relations between men. The two passages are from Leviticus Chapter 18, and Leviticus Chapter 20, and those are the only two passages anywhere in the Hebrew Bible that actually discuss same sex relations. Yes, there are such statements, but they have to be taken in a bit of context of what they're talking about. I want to start by this observation. They do not constitute a universal prohibition, only a statement about purity laws within Jewish tradition, as it deals to specifics. Let me read the passage and then we'll go from there.
Ron Way:
Good.
Michael White:
I'm reading now, from the King James version that may be the ones that most people know, and I can talk about the terminology once we do that. This is Leviticus 18 verse 22. "Thou shall not lie with mankind as with womankind, it is abomination. Neither shall thou lie with any beast to defile thyself, there with neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion." That's the first passage. The second passage-
Ron Way:
It says “confusion?”
Michael White:
It says confusion in the second one, but that's talking about with beasts.
Ron Way:
Okay. Got it.
Michael White:
Not about-
Ron Way:
Man and women.
Michael White:
Sexual relations with men-
Ron Way:
Okay.
Michael White:
Between men and women. Then in Leviticus 20 verse 13, "If a man also lays with a man, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination."
Ron Way:
Bingo.
Michael White:
Those are the two passages.
Ron Way:
Pretty clear.
Michael White:
It's an abomination. Then, when you, when we look at the context for this, and even the term abomination as it's used in the Hebrew scriptures, it becomes fairly interesting. Let's start with that. Let's talk about that term “abomination”.
Ron Way:
Okay.
Michael White:
What kind of things are abomination in the Hebrew Bible? Okay. Genesis 46:34, Shepherds.
Ron Way:
Shepherds?
Michael White:
Shepherds.
Ron Way:
Like, with sheep?
Michael White:
Yeah. Anybody who touches the sheep is an abomination. Proverbs 12:22, lying, so liars, any liar is exactly the same category of abomination as someone who has sex with another man. A man who has sex with another man.
Ron Way:
Wow.
Michael White:
Do we use the terminology that way?
Ron Way:
We tend to be a little picky on how we use our words or what we think. We pick them apart, don't we?
Michael White:
Yeah.
Ron Way:
Use what we want.
Michael White:
That's what we sometimes call cherry-picking.
Ron Way:
Yes.
Michael White:
If we go on, Proverbs 11:01, cheating is an abomination. There it's talking about business. Isiah 01:13, burning incense is an abomination. Then, in other places in the Hebrew Bible we do have some things that are a little more serious, like worship of idols or other things, that are called abomination, but even shellfish is called an abomination.
Ron Way:
That's correct.
Michael White:
The first point that I want to get at is, yes we have this direct statement in Leviticus 18 and 20, it does apply to men having sex with other men, and it's called an abomination, but the term abomination doesn't necessarily carry the weight that people sometimes assume that it does. I would also go a step farther, it's a very worthwhile pointing out that the term that is never applied to same sex relations between men in the Hebrew Bible is this other term confusion, and those are two different Hebrew words. The Hebrew word for abomination is Toebah. It's the one mentioned in all these passages I've just talked about.
The term that's translated confusion is Tebel, and that term, which is used of sex with animals, which is improper mixing, all kinds of things are thought of as wrong with that. That term is never applied to same sex relations between men or women.
Ron Way:
Really?
Michael White:
Really.
Ron Way:
It's a different level of abomination?
Michael White:
It's a different level of-
Ron Way:
Sin.
Michael White:
Sin.
Ron Way:
Right.
Michael White:
If you want to think of it in those terms, so in the category, or let's call it the hierarchy.
Ron Way:
Hierarchy?
Michael White:
Of purity terms in the Hebrew Bible. Abomination, well, you could say it's sort of bad, but it ranges for everything from lying and eating shellfish, to certain kinds of sexual acts, but it doesn't reach the threshold of this other term “confusion,” which would be applied to things like bestiality, incest, and other things.
Ron Way:
So, incest would be worse.
Michael White:
Yes. Based in the way the Hebrew Bible collaborates and codifies the sexual legislation that it brings forward.
Ron Way:
Then, tell me, you have two different Hebrew words, do the English versions of our Bibles that we use now International, et cetera, do they discern the difference between those two words, and what they mean?
Michael White:
No. That's one of the problems.
Ron Way:
Wow.
Michael White:
In fact, this is true through the long history of translation of Hebrew scriptures. The fact is that the terms kind of get mixed up, and so the term that's applied to one of these types of sins in one case may get applied to others later on; both in English, but also even in the Latin, and the Medieval Bibles and so on. That's where a lot of our problems come in, in thinking they're all essentially the same level, but they're really not in the ancient Hebrew.
I think, there are some distinctions that the Hebrew Bible is making. We can begin to think about that and that's where some of the more recent studies by Hebrew Bible scholars are trying to think about what's going on in these particular passages, it really helps us understand what was the original historical context, and what was going on. Now, here's one way of thinking about it.
Ron Way:
All right.
Michael White:
These passages in Leviticus, first of all what is Leviticus? You have to think about what book this is. The book of Leviticus, the very name means, the Levites, or the priestly group.
Ron Way:
The priests, and not the rest of the Israelites?
Michael White:
Right. So, these are primarily regulations about the priestly groups within Israelites society, and how they lead the people. Because they're the priests, they're also expected to hold a higher degree of purity especially when they're performing their priestly rituals in and around, in conjunction with the temple in Jerusalem. So, some of this legislation may derive from that level of purity concern, and might not at all apply to every ordinary person within the society at large.
Ron Way:
How would that fit in with the prohibition against touching a woman during menstruation, I mean, that was impure, too? Wasn't it?
Michael White:
Right.
Ron Way:
That would be an abomination, or it would be…
Michael White:
It's a kind of impurity and some of these terms are used, and in fact one of the terms that the bible uses; if you touch or have contact with a woman during her menstrual cycle that would be an “abomination.”
Ron Way:
Right.
Michael White:
That's an impurity.
Ron Way:
But, not “confusion”?
Michael White:
But, that's not confusion. That's not this other term.
Ron Way:
Again, help me out, what are the specific things that confusion encompasses? The really bad stuff.
Michael White:
It's the really bad stuff in terms of sexual activity, it's things like incest, and then bestiality, that is having sex with an animal, and things that, and I don't know very many people who are going to quibble with this, yes?
Ron Way:
Right.
Michael White:
These are bad things. Yes, these are things that everybody sort of tends to think are problematic, but we shouldn't assume that the same prohibition is operative for the even the term, abomination. That's one thing I would observe. The other thing I would suggest is that these regulations are primarily for the priests in the performance of their ritual duties. In other words, it's not entirely clear that they apply all the time, even to the priests. We do know that same sex relations, especially between men was very commonplace in the ancient world. All aspects of the ancient world, all parts of the ancient world, including in ancient Israel. To suggest that these two passages sort of stand over against that larger cultural tradition that we know existed, and put a different stamp on everything is a little bit incongruousness, to me.
Ron Way:
It's very easy for me to think, then of the Greeks, because they're known for having their boyfriends, the little boys, and young men. You don’t have to go any further than Alexander the Great, who had a wife… and a young man whom he slept with. That is true also in the Hebrew culture? I mean, I'm blown away by that.
Michael White:
Yes. There are indications, and in various contexts, men, both men of adult age and younger boys, were involved in sexual activities, especially when captives were taken in war, sometimes they were taken as sexual slaves. These sorts of things just, I mean, it's not nice, it's not pretty, it's not something we may want to approve of. At the same time, their attitude toward those kinds of sexual practices were very, very different, so I think we have to remember that these two specific passages in Leviticus have a very limited range of applicability that we need to think about.
The other thing that I would observe is these two passages in Leviticus are significantly later when they finally entered into the Bible. The book…
Ron Way:
Timeframe?
Michael White:
The book of Leviticus is part of the reediting of the Books of Law, that occurred in the period after the Babylonian exile. In other words, this legislation didn't exist in the time of David, or Solomon, and for hundreds of years thereafter, until after the Babylonian exile and they came back from Babylon, so we also have to ask the question, are there some issues that are arising after having lived in Babylonian society sometime later.
Ron Way:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Michael White:
Whether that's coloring the picture in some way. There's lots of factors in terms of just thinking about the ancient cultures and the history that the Israelite people are going through that have to be considered when trying to understand where these passages are actually coming from. We should not, I think, take them as some overarching dictum about same sex relations that applies everywhere at all time. The passages are just not doing that.
Ron Way:
Wow. This is informative. It's so needed to be heard, because people love to quote passages out of the Bible without knowing the context, the history, and what it actually means. I am learning so much. A lot of the arguments against homosexuality runs smack up against Paul, where you begin to see it in the New Testament. Is there anything else in the old that we should know about, or to bring us into a focus, or put us in perspective, or should we move on, now?
Michael White:
I think we can start talking about the New Testament materials and we may come back to some of those issues once we thought about a couple of those things.
Ron Way:
Sure.
Michael White:
If we think about how the tradition relating to matters of same sex relations that comes out of the Hebrew Bible, how that comes forward into the New Testament period that's going to be another big issue for us to think about, but I think one simple point of equation that comes in that tradition is worth noting, and it will set up some of these later discussions. It's the idea that aberrant sexuality is somehow associated with idolatry. In fact, there's a passage from a book called, The Wisdom of Solomon.
Ron Way:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Michael White:
It shows up in the Catholic and Greek Orthodox Bibles, but here's the passage, it's Wisdom of Solomon 14 verse 12, "For the idea of making idols was the beginning of fornication and the invention of them was the corruption of life." One of the things that happens in the ancient Jewish tradition is that this idea of the worship of the heathens, that's the way they would have said it. Right? That kind of idea. The worship of the heathens is also associated with some sort of deviant sexual practice, and that's where some of these ideas get joined together and even come forward into the New Testament material.
Ron Way:
Ladies and gentleman you can see this is powerful. We just, we're flashing through the Old Testament, and now we're about to talk about the New Testament, and I know many of you are ready to cite quotations from Paul, to prove that homosexuality is wrong, but that's going to have to wait until next week. I'm sorry. We're running out of time. This has been an amazing adventure into the Old Testament, and homosexuality. I cannot wait for next week. I hope you join us, again, here on AuthorTalk, and the Rising Light Media. Thank you very, very much, Michael, for being with us, today. We're going to continue this next week.
Michael White:
Thank you, Ron. I look forward to it.
Ron Way:
All right, folks. That's it. Tune in next week, same time, same place, and you will hear the New Testament reasons why we have to rethink this whole process.
Thank you so much for being with us on AuthorTalk, and Rising Light Media. Now, until next week, I remain faithfully yours.
