A CAREFUL VIEW OF SCRIPTURE with Regard to LGBT Questions

Sexuality - A Biblical and Church History




We start with a re-quote from the divorce and remarriage page on what marital practices were present in ancient Israel ... some up through the time of Christ.

Things we no longer do or believe concerning sex and marriage...

We no longer allow polygamy or concubines on the side.
We no longer kill the bride if she is found to not be a virgin.
We no longer do the bed sheet test for virginity.
We no longer ignore the sexual habits of the man (groom).
We no longer do marriage as a business deal.
We no longer require  a rapist to marry the woman that he raped.
We no longer consider eunuchs to be unworthy of serving in ministry.
We no longer kill couples who have sex outside of marriage.
We  no longer do arranged marriages (though some cultures still do).
We  no longer expect the wife to marry her dead husbands brother.
We no longer view the "withdraw method" as a capital offense punishable by God.
We no longer disallow a woman to have property rights.
We no longer consider celibacy to be a more holy path than marriage.



http://www.conservapedia.com/Greek_Homosexuality   note important points in this reference combo of several references...

Historical sources and evidence


What is known about homosexuality in Greece is mainly revealed through and Greek tragedies (dramas) and mythological stories of Greek gods, and this historical record is overall fragmentary. Of the approximately 1,000 Greek tragedies that were produced in Athens, the learning capital of Greece in little over one century, only 33 have survived. In addition, this and other literary evidence of homosexuality in ancient Greece consists almost completely of public forms, and lacks the evidence of private journals and letters. A further issue is that it is difficult to determine if homosexuality was at all common among all classes, rather than mostly remaining among the upper classes of society. Some assert that pro-homosexual authors have been extrapolate prevalent homosexuality out of little evidence.[4]

The largest amount of material pertinent to the history of homosexuality in Greece is from notable philosophers and writers such as Plato, Xenophon, Plutarch, and pseudo-Lucian, to plays by Aristophanes, to Greek artwork and vases. James B. De Young notes that homosexuality seems to have existed more widely among the ancient Greeks more than among any other ancient culture. The main form of this was pederasty, a custom that seems to have been practiced mostly among the upper classes, in which an older man (the erastest) would make a young free boy (the eromenos) his sex partner, and become his mentor. This was regulated by the State as an institution. However, this practice was usually a supplement to marriage,[5] and thus is seen as being done by bisexuals. The practice of pederasty is mentioned in Homer's Iliad, and is evidenced to have existed at least 4500 years ago in ancient Egypt.[6]

In the Amores (the loves) of Lucian, an Assyrian rhetorician (125 to approx. 180), which many think was written by another in a later period, and thus it is called, pseudo-Lucian, extensive discourses are given on the subject of homosexual affections and relations. In Amores 10, Lycinus describes the Athenian character Callicratidas as one who was well provided with handsome slave-boys and all of his servants were. pretty well beardless. They remained with him till the down first appeared on their faces, but, once any growth cast a shadow on their cheeks, they would be sent away to be stewards and overseers of his properties at Athens.[7] This man is set in contrast to the character Charicles who loves females, and who supports the cause of normal heterosexual passion, first most because of their ability to procreate.

However, homosexual "orientation" is also indicated on the part of Callicratidas, at least toward boys, as in Amores 20 he is said to be reluctant to go to the temple of Aphrodite because he was going to see something female, while Charicles describes those who engage in homosexual sex as having "bought a little pleasure at the cost of great disgrace. Sternly reproving homosexuals he also states, With what blind insensibility have you engulfed your souls that you have missed the mark in both directions, avoiding what you ought to pursue, and pursuing what you ought to avoid? (22)

Charicles also laments those who attempted basic sex change operations through castration: The daring of some men has advanced so far in tyrannical violence as even to wreak sacrilege upon nature with the knife. By depriving males of their masculinity they have found wider ranges of pleasure. But those who become wretched and luckless in order to be boys for longer remain male no longer, being a perplexing riddle of dual gender, neither being kept for the functions to which they have been born nor yet having the thing into which they have been changed. (21)

For his part Callicratidas forwards an polemic that is used today by homosexual apologists, that homosexuality was not seen in early times, "for intercourse with women was necessary so that our race might not utterly perish for lack of seed", (35) and postulates that doing away with martial relations would be a good thing, if children could be hand another way, lamenting the efforts women must go through to make themselves attractive. Yet he sees the efforts that a child must go through as making him an attractive object of homosexual affection for all men. (38-46)

The famous philosopher Plato (427 B.C. - 346 B.C.) around 348 B.C. describes and implies the widespread practice of homosexuality, and advocates laws to regulate it.[8] One of the most explicit records of disapproval of homosexuality is found in Laws 636c, in which Plato, speaking through the character of the Athenian stranger, describes homosexual relations as an "enormity" or "crime" (tolmema), and explains that it derives from being enslaved to pleasure. He plainly rejects homosexual behavior as "unnatural" (para physin), as “When male unites with female for procreation the pleasure experienced is held to be due to nature, but contrary to nature when male mates with male or female with female”.[9][10] Homosexuality is also described regarded as shameful by barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments: Homosexuality is regarded as shameful by barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments just as philosophy is regarded as shameful by them, because it is apparently not in the interest of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or passionate love-all of which homosexuality is particularly apt to produce.[11]<

In Plutarch's Dialogue on Love[12], he has Daphnaeus disparage "union contrary to nature with males" (he para physin homilia pros arrenas), as contrasted to "the love between men and women," which is characterized as "natural" (te physei). A few sentences later, Daphnaeus complains that those who "consort with males" willingly are guilty of "weakness and effeminacy," because "contrary to nature (para physin)," they "allow themselves in Plato's words 'to be covered and mounted like cattle'" (Dialogue on Love 751C, E). However, he also wrote that "The noble lover of beauty engages in love wherever he sees excellence and splendid natural endowment without regard for any difference in physiological detail"[13], and which many use to endorse homosexuality.

Plato's Symposium, a collection of ideas on love by several friends of Socrates, with the latter's thoughts at the end, acknowledges homosexuality as a condition. Aristophanes posits that there were three kinds of beings from the beginning, that of the male, the female - and a third androgynous - type of person. Zeus is said to have cut these humans in half so that they seek their other sexual counterpart, or in the case of composite being, their own sex. Aristophanes then describes the latter as being such as prefer their own gender, in which he includes lesbianism, and all of which the pagan philosopher commends.Young notes that in Symposium,[14] Plato anticipates virtually every element in the modern discussion the homosexual condition. This reality stands in opposition to the premise which many pro-homosexual writers rely upon, in seeking to disallow the universal condemnation of homoeroticism in Romans 1.[15]

Additional sources in Plato's Symposium which evidence and advocate homosexuality in Greek culture, including some that speak of a predisposition towards it, include The Speech of Pausanias (181b-185c), The speech of Socrates (209c-d; 210e-211e). The Speech of Alcibiades (215a-222b). Selections from the Phaedrus (231c-240c) also give indications of how homosexuality was thought of in Greek philosophy.[16]

Though the Greeks also practiced homosexual relations existed among equals, it was considered problematic, as while the predominate man was considered to be masculine, the one who played the female role would be seen as inferior.[17] In Amores 24, Charicles invokes Plato as saying that "as long as his beard was not yet fully grown, he was beloved by all. But, after he had passed from boyhood to manhood, during the years when his hitherto immature intellect now had its full powers of reason, he was hated by all." This role more likely pertained to slaves, or male youths who were not yet citizens.

Attitudes toward homosexuality varied in Greece, as general strictures against same-sex eros existed in parts of Ionia, while in Elis and Boiotia (e.g., Thebes), it was approved of and sometimes celebrated.[18]









Sexuallity per history and the church fathers …

10. Plato, Laws , 839, quoted in Thomas K. Hubbard, ed., Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 256.

11. Dio Chrysostom, “The Seventh or Euboean Discourse,” Discourses , vol. 1, at University of Chicago, last modified September 21, 2012, http://​penelope.​uchicago.​edu/​Thayer/​E/​Roman/​Texts/​Dio_​Chrysostom/​Discourses/​7*.​html 

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Dio_Chrysostom/Discourses/7*.html

147 I suspect that at Sparta as well some boys of a similar paternity received this appellation, since quite a number are called Parthenians.47 Consequently, if the majority born in such immoral cities did not perish through utter lack, I imagine, of divine protection, then nothing would save the world from being overrun by demigods. 148 But as it is, some die at birth, while those that do survive live on to old age in obscurity in the status of slaves, since those who gave them being can give them no further support.

Now then, in a city where the girls' condition p373is as bad as we have described, 149 what are we to expect the boys to be? What EDUCATION and training should we expect them to receive? Is there any possibility that this lecherous class would refrain from dishonouring and corrupting the males, making their clear and sufficient limit that set by nature? Or will it not, while it satisfies its lust for women in every conceivable way, find itself grown weary of this pleasure, and then seek some other worse and more lawless form of wantonness? 150 Yes, the seduction of women — especially, one might almost say, of the freeborn and virgins — has been found easy and no task for a man who pursues that kind of game with money; and even against the highly respected wives and daughters of men really respected, the libertine who attacks with the device of Zeus and brings gold in his hands will never fail. 151 But the further developments, I presume, are perfectly evident, since we see so many illustrations. The man whose appetite is insatiate in such things, when he finds there is no scarcity, no resistance, in this field, will have contempt for the easy conquest and scorn for a woman's love, as a thing too readily given — in fact, too utterly feminine — and will turn his assault against the male quarters, eager to befoul the youth who will very soon be magistrates and judges and generals, 152 believing that in them he will find a kind of pleasure difficult and hard to procure. His state is like that of men who are addicted to drinking and wine-bibbing, who after long and steady drinking of unmixed wine, often lose their taste for it and create an artificial thirst by the stimulus of sweatings, salted foods, and condiments.

 

12. Chrysostom, “The Seventh or Euboean Discourse.”  seeabove

 

 13. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans , 4, quoted in Gerald Bray and Thomas C. Oden, eds., Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Romans , New Testament vol. 6 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1998), 47–48.

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/210204.htm

 

All these affections then were vile, but chiefly the mad lust after males; for the soul is more the sufferer in sins, and more dishonored, than the body in diseases. But behold how here too, as in the case of the doctrines, he deprives them of excuse, by saying of the women, that they changed the natural use. For no one, he means, can say that it was by being hindered of legitimate intercourse that they came to this pass, or that it was from having no means to fulfil their desire that they were driven into this monstrous insaneness. For the changing implies possession. Which also when discoursing upon the doctrines he said, They changed the truth of God for a lie. And with regard to the men again, he shows the same thing by saying, Leaving the natural use of the woman. And in a like way with those, these he also puts out of all means of defending themselves by charging them not only that they had the means of gratification, and left that which they had, and went after another, but that having dishonored that which was natural, they ran after that which was contrary to nature. But that which is contrary to nature has in it an irksomeness and displeasingness, so that they could not fairly allege even pleasure. For genuine pleasure is that which is according to nature. But when God has left one, then all things are turned upside down. And thus not only was their doctrine Satanical, but their life too was diabolical. Now when he was discoursing of their doctrines, he put before them the world and man's understanding, telling them that, by the judgment afforded them by God, they might through the things which are seen, have been led as by the hand to the Creator, and then, by not willing to do so, they remained inexcusable. Here in the place of the world he sets the pleasure according to nature, which they would have enjoyed with more sense of SECURITY and greater glad-heartedness, and so have been far removed from shameful deeds. But they would not; whence they are quite out of the pale of pardon, and have done an insult to natureitself. And a yet more disgraceful thing than these is it, when even the women seek after these intercourses, who ought to have more sense of shame than men. And here too the judgment of Paul is worthy of admiration, how having fallen upon two opposite matters he accomplishes them both with all exactness. For he wished both to speak chastely and to sting the hearer. Now both these things were not in his power to do, but one hindered the other. For if you speak chastelyyou shall not be able to bear hard upon the hearer. But if you are minded to touch him to the quick, you are forced to lay the naked facts before him in plain terms. But his discreet and holy soul was able to do both with exactness, and by naming nature has at once given additional force to his accusation, and also used this as a sort of veil, to keep the chasteness of his description. And next, having reproached the women first, he goes on to the men also, and says, And likewise also the men leaving the natural use of the woman. Which is an evident proof of the last degree of corruptness, when both sexes are abandoned, and both he that was ordained to be the instructor of the woman, and she who was bid to become an helpmate to the man, work the deeds of enemies against one another. And reflect too how significantly he uses his words. For he does not say that they were enamoured of, and lusted after one another, but, they burned in their lust one toward another. You see that the whole of desire comes of an exorbitancy which endures not to abide within its proper limits. For everything which transgresses the laws by God appointed, lusts after monstrous things and not those which be customary. For as many oftentimes having left the desire of food get to feed upon earth and small stones, and others being possessed by excessive thirst often long even for mire, thus these also ran into this ebullition of lawless love. But if you say, and whence came this intensity of lust? It was from the desertion of God: and whence is the desertion of God? From the lawlessness of them that left Him; men with men working that which is unseemly. Do not, he means, because you have heard that they burned, suppose that the evil was only in desire. For the greater part of it came of their luxuriousness, which also kindled into flame their lust. And this is why he did not say being swept along or being overtaken, an expression he uses elsewhere; but what? Working. They made a business of the sin, and not only a business, but even one zealouslyfollowed up. And he called it not lust, but that which is unseemly, and that properly. For they both dishonored nature, and trampled on the laws. And see the great confusion which fell out on both sides. For not only was the head turned downwards but the feet too were upwards, and they became enemies to themselves and to one another, bringing in a pernicious kind of strife, and one even more lawless than any civil war, and one rife in divisions, and of varied form. For they divided this into four new, and lawless kinds. Since (3 manuscripts whence) this war was not twofold or threefold, but even fourfold. Consider then. It was meet, that the two should be one, I mean the woman and the man. For the two, it says, shall be one flesh. Genesis 2:24 But this the desire of intercourse effected, and united the sexes to one another. This desire the devil having taken away, and having turned the course thereof into another fashion, he thus sundered the sexes from one another, and made the one to become two parts in opposition to the law of God. For it says, the two shall be one flesh; but he divided the one flesh into two: here then is one war. Again, these same two parts he provoked to war both against themselves and against one another. For evenwomen again abused women, and not men only. And the men stood against one another, and against the female sex, as happens in a battle by night. You see a second and third war, and a fourth and fifth; there is also another, for beside what have been mentioned they also behaved lawlessly against nature itself. For when the Devil saw that this desire it is, principally, which draws the sexes together, he was bent on cutting through the tie, so as to destroy the race, not only by their not copulating lawfully, but also by their being stirred up to war, and in sedition against one another.

14. Curtis M. Wong, “India’s Gay Sex Law Praised by Bryan Fischer,” Huffington Post, December 13, 2013, www.​huffingtonpost.​com/​2013/​12/​13/​india- gay- law- bryan- fischer_​n_​4439543.​html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/13/india-gay-law-bryan-fischer_n_4439543.html

 

. 15. “Discussion: Christianity and Homosexuality,” YouTube video, 7:54, from the Speaking of Faith radio program, posted by “deep- coffee,” May 12, 2008, www.​youtube.​com/​watch?v=​PkWk1ATYHno .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkWk1ATYHno

 

16. Plato, Laws , 636b–d, quoted in Hubbard, Homosexuality , 252.

 17. Plutarch, Dialogue on Love , 5, quoted in Hubbard, Homosexuality , 455.

18. Josephus, Against Apion , quoted in Richard B. Hays, “Relations Natural and Unnatural: A Response to John Boswell’s Exegesis of Romans 1,” Journal of Religious Ethics 14, no. 1 (1986): 193; and Bernadette J. Brooten, Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 245n86.

 19. Philo, On Abraham , trans. F. H. Colson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954), 133–41, www.​well.​com/~​aquarius/​philo- abraham.​htm .

 

20. Philo, On Abraham .

 

 21. The Sentences of Pseudo- Phocylides , quoted in Gagnon, Bible and Homosexual Practice , 171.

 

22. Pseudo- Lucian, Amores; or Affairs of the Heart , quoted in Gagnon, Bible and Homosexual Practice , 166n10.

 

23. James Miller argued that Romans 1:26 refers to “unnatural” heterosexual behavior in his essay “The Practices of Romans 1:26: Homosexual or Heterosexual?” Novum Testamentum 37 (1995), 1–11. James Brownson made the same case, noting that “both Clement of Alexandria and Augustine interpret Romans 1:26 as referring to oral or anal intercourse between women and men.” Brownson, Bible, Gender, Sexuality , 207–8; see also 224–25. Bernadette Brooten, however, challenged Miller’s reading of ancient sources on this point, arguing that “the type of sexual relations engaged in by women most often called ‘contrary to nature’ (para physin) in the Roman world is sexual relations between women.” Brooten, Love Between Women , 248–53. I’m inclined to agree with Brooten’s argument here, even though it isn’t definitive. (As she noted, some Greek Stoics considered heterosexual adultery to be unnatural. Love Between Women , 251n101.) But ultimately, whether Romans 1:26 refers to female same- sex relations or to opposite- sex behavior doesn’t alter my argument. The mere existence of the debate, however, further underscores the differences between ancient understandings of nature and the interpretations of many non- affirming Christians today.

 

24. See Gareth Moore, A Question of Truth: Christianity and Homosexuality (London: Continuum, 2003), 96–99. See also David E. Fredrickson’s discussion of the lack of mutuality implied in the phrase “sexual use,” “Natural and Unnatural Use in Romans 1:24–27: Paul and the Philosophic Critique of Eros,” in Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture , ed. David L. Balch (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000), 199–207.

 

25. Robert A. J. Gagnon, “Truncated Love: A Response to Andrew Marin’s Love Is an Orientation ,” pt. 1, August 31, 2010, www.​robgagnon.​net/​articles​online.​htm .

 

26. Gagnon, Bible and Homosexual Practice , 291.

 27. Gagnon has argued that, because the truth of God is visible in creation (Romans 1:19–20), God’s will for human sexuality is also “visibly manifest in male and female bodies.” Hence, Gagnon reads Romans 1:26–27 to indicate that, “along with idolatry, same- sex intercourse represents one of the clearest instances of conscious suppression of revelation in nature by gentiles, inasmuch as it involves denying clear anatomical gender differences and functions (leaving them ‘without excuse’).” Gagnon, Bible and Homosexual Practice , 264–66. But as Brownson wrote, “This reading confuses Paul’s meaning. What Paul actually says in these two verses is that what can be known about God is plain or visible in the creation, specifically God’s eternal power and divine nature. The focus here is not on knowledge of human things, but on the knowledge of God.… It appears that the notion of ‘anatomical gender complementarity’ is really a modern concept rather than a category that actually shaped ethical thought about sex in the ancient world. To the extent that ancient references to ‘nature’ in sexual ethics envisioned anatomy and biology, they clearly had procreation in mind.” Brownson, Bible, Gender, Sexuality , 241–43.

 

28. Helmut Koester, “Physis,” ed. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament , vol. 9 (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1977), 262. See also G. E. R. Lloyd, “The Invention of Nature,” Methods and Problems in Greek Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 417–34.

 

29. Euripides, The Phoenician Women , 395, quoted by Helmut Koester, “Physis,” ed. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament , vol. 9 (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1977), 262.

 

30. Polybius, Histories , 15.36, “Greek Texts and Translations,” Perseus Under PhiloLogic, http://​perseus.​uchicago.​edu/​perseus- cgi/​citequery3.​pl?​dbname=​GreekFeb2011&​query=​Polyb.%2015.​36&​getid=​1 . 31. Plutarch, quoted in Mark D. Jordan, The Ethics of Sex (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), 33–34.

 

 32. Seneca, Epistles , 122.7–8, quoted in John J. Winkler, The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (New York: Routledge, 1990), 21; and Craig A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality , 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 271. Cicero, De finibus , 5.35–6, quoted in Williams, Roman Homosexuality , 270.

 33. For more on this idea, see Brooten, Love Between Women , 63, summarizing The Sentences of Pseudo- Phocylides: “The author also warns the reader against letting a son have long, braided, or knotted hair, as long hair is for voluptuous women.” See also this statement from Roland Barthes, quoted in Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians , The New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000), 828–29: “Within the semiotic clothing code of first- century Roman society … ‘a veil or hood constituted a warning: it signified that the wearer was a respectable woman and that no man dare approach her,’ i.e., as one potentially or actually sexually ‘available.’ ” See also Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 229–49. 34. See Brownson, Bible, Gender, Sexuality , 204–22.

 

35. Brownson, Bible, Gender, Sexuality , 218.

 

36. My argument is not limited to the same- sex relationships of gay people. Long- term, monogamous same- sex unions— whether the partners identify as gay, bisexual, pan, queer, or whether they eschew sexual identity labels altogether— are significantly different from the lustful, self- centered behavior Paul has in view in Romans 1:26–27.

 

37. Along the same lines as Gagnon, New Testament professor Simon Gathercole has made the bigger- picture claim that “the key correspondence” between idolatry and same- sex relations “lies in the fact that both involve turning away from the ‘other’ to the ‘same.’ ” “Sin in God’s Economy: Agencies in Romans 1 and 7” in Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 163–64. But if that analysis were correct, we should expect to see the rest of Romans 1:18–32 fit into that pattern. Yet the exchange of a righteous for a depraved mind in verses 28–32 has nothing to do with “sameness” and difference. Rather, the key correspondence between idolatry and same- sex relations for Paul is that both involve an exchange of order for disorder, and as a result, an exchange of honor for dishonor.

 

38. See both John Chrysostom’s and Augustine’s interpretations of the passage, quoted at length in James R. White and Jeffrey D. Niell, The Same- Sex Controversy: Defending and Clarifying the Bible’s Message About Homosexuality (Bloomington, MN: Bethany, 2002), 221–47. Chrysostom wrote that Paul “shows that the punishment was in this pleasure itself,” 226.

 

39. Julian of Eclanum, quoted in Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence , bk. 2, trans. Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis, rev. Benjamin B. Warfield, in Nicene and Post- Nicene Fathers , 1st ser., vol. 5, ed. Philip Schaff (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing, 1887), at New Advent, rev. and ed. Kevin Knight, www.​newadvent.​org/​fathers/​15072.​htm .

 

40. William Sanday and Arthur C. Headlam, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans , International Critical Commentary, 5th ed. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1902), 50. Chapter 7

 

1. See Dale B. Martin, Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 43–47. Martin wrote, “When used as a term of moral condemnation, the word still refers to something perceived as ‘soft’: laziness, degeneracy, decadence, lack of courage, or, to sum up all these vices in one ancient category, the feminine,” 44.

 

2. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations , 2.53, 55, quoted in Craig A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality , 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 148.

 

3. Seneca, Epistles , 67.4, quoted in Williams, Roman Homosexuality , 151.

 

4. For more on this idea, see Williams, Roman Homosexuality , 145.

 

5. See Martin, Sex and the Single Savior , 44–45.

 

6. See Peter Brown, “Body and City,” in The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Catharine Edwards, “ Mollitia: Reading the Body,” in The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); and David E. Fredrickson, “Natural and Unnatural Use in Romans 1:24–27: Paul and the Philosophic Critique of Eros,” in Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture , ed. David L. Balch (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000).

 

 

7. Plautus, Truculentus , 608–11, quoted in Williams, Roman Homosexuality , 157–58.

 

8. Seneca the Elder, Controversiae , 2.1.6, quoted in Williams, Roman Homosexuality , 163.

 

 

9. Plutarch, Life of Pompey , 48.5–7, quoted in Edwards, Politics of Immorality , 85.

 

 

 

10. See Martin, Sex and the Single Savior , 45–46. The detractors of the love of women call it “unmanly,” saying that men who are zealous for women show “effeminacy” and “weakness.”

11. Fredrickson, “Natural and Unnatural,” 197, 218–21. The 1985 New Jerusalem Bible uses a similar translation for malakos: “self- indulgent.”

12. See Robin Scroggs, The New Testament and Homosexuality (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1984), 101–9.

13. Martin, Sex and the Single Savior , 39.

 

14. Sibylline Oracles , 2.70–77, quoted in Martin, Sex and the Single Savior , 40.

15. Acts of John , 36, translated in Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., New Testament Apocrypha , rev. ed., trans. R. McL. Wilson (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1991).

 

16. Martin, Sex and the Single Savior , 42. See Martin’s discussion of Hippolytus’s Refutation of All Heresies and Eusebius’s Preparation for the Gospel , 42.

 

17. The word arsenokoites reappears in 1 Timothy 1:10, this time in a list of those for whom the law was written: “Knowing this, that the law is not made for a rig
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