To conclude this somewhat bumby post with a question: Was Paul familiar with the kind of homosexual relationships which can relate to what we find in the church today, the monogamous, mutual, faithful, equal and publicly accepted marriage between people of the same sex. Or is he simply addressing the unhealthy and unequal pederastic traditions of his time?
Pederasty, adult male sex with enslaved teenaged boys, was a foundational social institution in ancient Greco-Roman civilisation that a majority of elite Roman males engaged in.
Monogamous, consensual homosexual relationships based upon mutual love and equality of status between two adults were not the norm in the classical world, as they are today, and so wouldn't have been on Paul's radar.
Sexuality in general was not understood in terms of orientation - heterosexual versus homosexual - but in terms of positions of dominance and subordination,
penetrators and the
penetrated. Masculinity was defined as the penetrative, dominant partner and it didn't matter if the inferior penetrated was a male or female.
The references to homosexual acts in the New Testament epistles should predominantly be understood against this cultural backdrop (whereas the condemnation of gay sex in the Old Testament, for instance Deuteronomy, had male temple prostitutes of the Canaanite pagans in mind).
It is for this reason that in his recent translation of the New Testament, the Eastern Orthodox scholar David Bentley Hart translates 1 Timothy 1:10 as condemning, “
men who couple with catamites” (meaning abuse of young male slaves) while Luther’s German Bible actually renders it as referring to ‘
paedophiles’.
The Didache, the first century document attributed to the Twelve Apostles that served as the early church’s first catechism (for which reason it is used as an authority, witnessing to sacred tradition, in the modern Catechism), contained an explicit condemnation of sex between adult males and young males and this is the
only form of homosexual activity that it mentions because as Professor Hart explains, “
in the first century the most common and readily available form of male homoerotic sexual activity was a master’s or patron’s abuse of young male slaves”
THE DIDACHE
2:1 And this is the second commandment of the teaching.
2:2 You shall do no murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not seduce boys, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not steal, you shall not deal in magic, you shall do no sorcery, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill them when born, you shall not covet your neighbor’s goods, you shall not perjure yourself, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not speak evil, you shall not cherish a grudge, you shall not be double-minded nor double-tongued;
The biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, who translated the Didache in 2003 for the Loeb Library, noted: "
The Didache condemns certain sexual “sins” (pederasty, adultery, and, generally, immorality) but it does not number homosexual activity among them, or say anything about it."
The first legislation proscribing pederasty was passed by a group of bishops at the Synod of Elvira in southern Spain in 309 AD.
As late as the 7th century, a canon of the church by St. Fructuosus of Braga, condemning "
clerics and monks who are seducers of males" quoted by St. Peter Damian in 1051, still defined homosexual sex in terms of pederasty:
"A cleric or monk who seduces adolescent males or young boys, or who is caught in a kiss or other occasion of indecency, should be publicly beaten and lose his tonsure, and having been disgracefully shaved, his face is to be smeared with spittle, and he is to be bound in iron chains, worn down with six months of imprisonment, and three days every week to fast on barley bread until sundown.
After this, spending his time separated in his room for another six months in the custody of a spiritual senior, he should be intent upon the work of his hands and on prayer, subject to vigils and prayers, and he should always walk under the guard of two spiritual brothers, never again soliciting sexual intercourse from youth by perverse speech or counsel and he shall never again associate with male youths in private conversation nor in counselling them."
(Book of Gomorrah Chapter 16 )
In French, "
pédérastie" is still used as a synonym for homosexuality.
The
Sibylline oracles claim that only the Jews were free from this:
[The Jews] are mindful of holy wedlock,
and they do not engage in impious intercourse with male children,
as do Phoenicians, Egyptians and Romans,
spacious Greece and many nations of other,
Persians and Galatians and all Asia, transgressing
the holy law of immortal God, which they transgressed.