Uhh… apparently my reply to this got so long that it can’t be submitted as a single comment, so… reply chain incoming. Breaking it up where I’d originally placed “—”.
Ooh, yes, excellent, let’s talk about Old Testament law, it was remiss of me to not find this for the initial conversation. Apologies in advance, this is going to feel like a lot of avoiding the implied question, but I feel like I have to give a bunch of context around OT law in general before I reply directly, which I promise I will at the end. This is also gonna be pretty disorganized, it’s a big topic that I’m trying to summarize into a comment.
Ok, so let’s start entirely within the Old Testament, with a bit of cultural context we import into our understanding of the Bible, and that’s the idea of “statutory law”. In the modern world, a “law” is something written with extreme clarity, meant to be followed exactly. This is done so that the law can be 100% consistent across an entire massive society, even the globe.
But that’s actually a very modern concept, and isn’t how laws worked for most of human history. Instead of arguing this from OT law, let’s look at a law from the same era, the Code of Hammurabi. This law was extremely common, and went “ancient viral” in a way, according to Wikipedia, copies “were found not only in Susa but also in Babylon, Nineveh, Assur, Borsippa, Nippur, Sippar, Ur, Lars, and more”. Feel free to read the “Theories of Purpose” for far more evidence on this.
But the way this kind of law worked is that it was more like a list of examples of judgements, rather than direct legal code in the modern sense. For example, in a law like this, you couldn’t have tax lawyers, who interpret and manipulate the exact phrasing cleverly to avoid paying anything. Rather, a judge would deem you in violation of the spirit of the law and tax you accordingly. This also works in reverse, where circumstances could lessen a sentence or even leave you as innocent. In many ways, it’s an enviable system, although it’d obviously be impractical and abused in a modern context.
Second random topic, the law in the Old Testament actually doesn’t function primarily as a law. It’s part here as law, part here as narrative. Much of the law is given right before we’re shown Israel breaking that law, for example. In addition, it’s not nearly enough law for a society to function. The Old Testament only includes ~600 laws, and Jews would quickly have to infer more than 5000 laws based on the principles shown in the laws that were given.
The law was also not intended as a final state. I gave an example earlier of a law changing when it was first given before it was given again later. And Jews did debate the principles set forth in the law and push them further over time, taking concepts that were progressive in Biblical times, and making them more progressive later. Again, it’s not statutory law, it’s the principle behind it that matters more than the letter.
And the law was also intended for an ancient Jewish people, in that time. There are cases where the law doesn’t “rock the boat”, so to speak, but clearly points things in a more progressive direction than where it was, and what’s explicitly described in the law is never espoused going forward. Let me give an example, of a law that sounds horrifying. There’s a biblical law that states, if a city is taken in war, and a soldier sees a pretty woman on the battlefield, they can take her as spoils of war and bring her home and marry her. I think we can all agree this isn’t a nice thing to do. But let’s compare it to the standard of the time, where it was common to rape women in a city you’ve captured. Compared to the standard, the law now states, ok, you can kind of do this. But you must take her with you, and not violently rape her then and there. Instead, she travels in your tent, and you must bring her home after the campaign, give her a month to mourn, and marry her, guaranteeing to take care of her as your own, making her your dependent. You are also forbidden from selling her as a slave in this situation, if you decide not to marry her.
So what I see here is not a standard which I want to live by in the current day, but I see a law meeting an accepted practice of the day and saying “this has to change for the better”. The principles I believe are being espoused here is that women are not objects, and rape is not an acceptable “crime of passion”. I think a Jew studying this would infer such crazy things from this shifting of the rules as “rape is not ok” and “women need to be treated with respect”.
Ok, final diatribe on Old Testament law. A lot of it is regarding “ritual purity”. As a modern reader, familiar with germs and hygiene, I don’t think it’s wild to ask if, given I believe an all-knowing God gave this law, if a lot of these aren’t intended to prevent the spread of diseases. Let’s look at some of the things that make you ritually unclean, for which the cure for is, essentially, isolation from others, and a bath. Touching a dead human or animal, having a period, touching blood, touching someone unclean. Even the unclean animals are ones like cows and pigs, which we’ve known to give us many deadly plagues and diseases through history. This is more a suspicion than anything I’m proposing as dead-serious religious study, but I find it remarkable how good a lot of these arbitrary-seeming ritual purity laws would be at preventing plagues in a society that doesn’t properly understand germs.
Alright, finally done with an Old Testament perspective on the law. I wanted to make a case separately from an NT perspective, because I know the obvious response to an NT-focused position here is “that’s the same God you worship now, you still believe in a God that set this law for thousands of years”.
In the New Testament, Jesus takes a really interesting stance on the law. First of all, he breaks it, as the Pharisees understand it, constantly. However, he always has a Biblical argument for doing so, and consistently leaves the Pharisees befuddled and frustrated when they accuse him of this.
Additionally, as a Gentile, the NT is clear that we are not beholden to the OT law. This is a surprisingly well-discussed issue, as it seems the early church was often followed by a group of Jewish Christians that would persuade new churches that they were beholden to the law, and had to be circumcised, etc. So Paul’s letters frequently have to correct this stance, when he contacts the churches he’s planted. Even for Jews, Paul himself has a vision where he’s told to eat unclean animals, and soon after participates in a feast that sees more people brought into the church.
There’s also a really interesting moment with Jesus, when a woman is set to be stoned because she was found cheating on her husband, and is brought to Jesus. And Jesus tells the crowd gathered to stone her, “let he who is without sin, throw the first stone”. Slowly, the whole crowd leaves, and he tells the woman “If no one will condemn you, then I won’t either. Go, and sin no more.” So there’s this forgiveness and grace brought into the equation, that seems contrary to the harsh punishments described in the original Law, and made more important than that.
So so far this suggests that, hey, as Christians today we can basically ignore the Law. But Jesus actually tells us something more interesting, that he’s not here to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it. In other words, Jesus believes his radical, loving philosophy is what the Law was meant to lead us to all along.
So basically, as a modern Christian, I don’t at all have to obey the Law. I can get tattoos, wear mixed fabrics, and work on Sundays all I like. But the Law is relevant. I try to study it as Jesus did, and understand it as he did, with his radically loving and gracious and kind philosophy. And I don’t always succeed, I’m not going to tell you I have a perfect understanding of every Law and its purpose, but I understand enough that I have faith that there is good explanation for the things I haven’t understood yet, and try to put the work in to understand the things in the OT that do bother me.
Also, I feel like I should add, as a modern Christian with the whole Bible before me, the Law is almost like… a failed experiment. Not that God isn’t omniscient and would be “experimenting”, but the Law clearly doesn’t work. Israel fails to follow it constantly, until the kingdom is split and both halves continue to fail until their exiles. In fact, there are some practices laid out in the laws, such as the Year of Jubilee, that we apparently don’t have historical evidence of ever having happened. The Law needed fulfilling through Christ, because we couldn’t possibly make it work, and that was always the plan for it. So no, I don’t look at modern Israel and see some platonic ideal society because they still try to follow the Law, or anything like that.
So, finally, the verse in question. First thing, I’m looking at the word “abomination” and I’m curious what that is in the original Hebrew, as that’s a loaded word. Here’s the list of everywhere that word appears in the Hebrew. The word is used here, but also in contexts such as “it would be an abomination to an Egyptian to eat with a Hebrew”, unclean animals are described as “abominations”, a sacrifice or prayer offered by a wicked person is an abomination to God, etc. There are some stronger uses of the word, such as using it for adultery or idol worship, but I’m seeing this word originates with the KJV, and I suspect its definition has drifted over time. Other translations, like the NIV choose words like “detestable” or “loathsome” for this. So definitely still not positive words, but that doesn’t read to me in the ultra-harsh way “abomination” does, and it’s also notable that unclean animals, something Paul is later encouraged to eat, is described with the same word.
Looking at this verse, I basically see 3 possible explanations for its inclusion in the Law. I’ll list them:
A) The obvious one, that homosexuality is just plainly frowned upon, and was always meant to be interpreted as wrong. Not an unreasonable reading, although point B from my previous comment still applies, protests and harassment are unjustifiable.
B) That this may be a health thing, similar to unclean animals. After all, we saw with the AIDS epidemic a health issue that swept through gay men most of all, largely because of a lack of healthcare resources that certainly wouldn’t have been around in B.C.
C) The one I personally find most likely, is that this had to do with God’s desire to see Israel and humanity grow in population. Abraham was promised descendants “as numerous in the stars in the sky”, and this is fairly close to the Genesis commission to “be fruitful and multiply” and to “fill the whole earth and subdue it”.
These days, I consider the earth to be pretty well filled, so I don’t believe those commands apply too much to us now. The Christian sects that always try to have 10+ kids strike me as weird too, I don’t feel any obligation to procreate like that.
Alright, let me wrap up here. My feelings on Biblical law are clearly complex, but to be clear, this is a good part of the case to be made that homosexuality isn’t godly, and you’re right to point it out, but still doesn’t sway me, for all the reasons I explained in my first comment on it. This is still part of what I’d described as the Bible’s “remarkable silence” on the topic of homosexuality.
A law in Leviticus is not nearly as persuasive as it would be if Jesus had spoken on the topic, for example. Or simply, more instances of the topic being directly addressed in scripture. This also still doesn’t bring much clarity about modern homosexuals in marriage, etc. There’s a lot of clear biblical disdain for casual sex, so a lot of gay culture like Grindr isn’t ever going to get a Biblical thumbs up, just like Tinder hookups don’t. So forbidding that kind of sexual activity is expected, but there are explicit examples of forbidden marriages in this list of laws about sex, such as marrying your sister, but a man marrying a man or woman marrying a woman isn’t mentioned.
But ultimately, my entire rant from the previous comment still stands. Even if Jesus had outright and directly said “any form of homosexuality, no matter how monogamous and loving, is tantamount to murder” 20+ times, the way much of the church has behaved would still be biblically unacceptable. In the sermon on the mount, the most detailed example of Jesus’s direct teaching we have, he tells us that all sins are equal. That to even look at a woman with lust, to think an angry thought about someone, is a crime worthy of death. And so we’re all equal. I’m just as sinful and “bad” as you, as any murderer, as anyone who’s done any sin you can name. So any church that picks a “pet sin” to focus on like this, whether it be sex and drugs, dungeons and dragons, rock music, or homosexuality and gender diversity, it’s done in direct contradiction to Jesus’s direct and plain teaching, in his most important and repeated message. It can be correct to call out sin in love, but this isn’t what that looks like.
Uhh… apparently my reply to this got so long that it can’t be submitted as a single comment, so… reply chain incoming. Breaking it up where I’d originally placed “—”.
Ooh, yes, excellent, let’s talk about Old Testament law, it was remiss of me to not find this for the initial conversation. Apologies in advance, this is going to feel like a lot of avoiding the implied question, but I feel like I have to give a bunch of context around OT law in general before I reply directly, which I promise I will at the end. This is also gonna be pretty disorganized, it’s a big topic that I’m trying to summarize into a comment.
Ok, so let’s start entirely within the Old Testament, with a bit of cultural context we import into our understanding of the Bible, and that’s the idea of “statutory law”. In the modern world, a “law” is something written with extreme clarity, meant to be followed exactly. This is done so that the law can be 100% consistent across an entire massive society, even the globe.
But that’s actually a very modern concept, and isn’t how laws worked for most of human history. Instead of arguing this from OT law, let’s look at a law from the same era, the Code of Hammurabi. This law was extremely common, and went “ancient viral” in a way, according to Wikipedia, copies “were found not only in Susa but also in Babylon, Nineveh, Assur, Borsippa, Nippur, Sippar, Ur, Lars, and more”. Feel free to read the “Theories of Purpose” for far more evidence on this.
But the way this kind of law worked is that it was more like a list of examples of judgements, rather than direct legal code in the modern sense. For example, in a law like this, you couldn’t have tax lawyers, who interpret and manipulate the exact phrasing cleverly to avoid paying anything. Rather, a judge would deem you in violation of the spirit of the law and tax you accordingly. This also works in reverse, where circumstances could lessen a sentence or even leave you as innocent. In many ways, it’s an enviable system, although it’d obviously be impractical and abused in a modern context.
Second random topic, the law in the Old Testament actually doesn’t function primarily as a law. It’s part here as law, part here as narrative. Much of the law is given right before we’re shown Israel breaking that law, for example. In addition, it’s not nearly enough law for a society to function. The Old Testament only includes ~600 laws, and Jews would quickly have to infer more than 5000 laws based on the principles shown in the laws that were given.
The law was also not intended as a final state. I gave an example earlier of a law changing when it was first given before it was given again later. And Jews did debate the principles set forth in the law and push them further over time, taking concepts that were progressive in Biblical times, and making them more progressive later. Again, it’s not statutory law, it’s the principle behind it that matters more than the letter.
And the law was also intended for an ancient Jewish people, in that time. There are cases where the law doesn’t “rock the boat”, so to speak, but clearly points things in a more progressive direction than where it was, and what’s explicitly described in the law is never espoused going forward. Let me give an example, of a law that sounds horrifying. There’s a biblical law that states, if a city is taken in war, and a soldier sees a pretty woman on the battlefield, they can take her as spoils of war and bring her home and marry her. I think we can all agree this isn’t a nice thing to do. But let’s compare it to the standard of the time, where it was common to rape women in a city you’ve captured. Compared to the standard, the law now states, ok, you can kind of do this. But you must take her with you, and not violently rape her then and there. Instead, she travels in your tent, and you must bring her home after the campaign, give her a month to mourn, and marry her, guaranteeing to take care of her as your own, making her your dependent. You are also forbidden from selling her as a slave in this situation, if you decide not to marry her.
So what I see here is not a standard which I want to live by in the current day, but I see a law meeting an accepted practice of the day and saying “this has to change for the better”. The principles I believe are being espoused here is that women are not objects, and rape is not an acceptable “crime of passion”. I think a Jew studying this would infer such crazy things from this shifting of the rules as “rape is not ok” and “women need to be treated with respect”.
Ok, final diatribe on Old Testament law. A lot of it is regarding “ritual purity”. As a modern reader, familiar with germs and hygiene, I don’t think it’s wild to ask if, given I believe an all-knowing God gave this law, if a lot of these aren’t intended to prevent the spread of diseases. Let’s look at some of the things that make you ritually unclean, for which the cure for is, essentially, isolation from others, and a bath. Touching a dead human or animal, having a period, touching blood, touching someone unclean. Even the unclean animals are ones like cows and pigs, which we’ve known to give us many deadly plagues and diseases through history. This is more a suspicion than anything I’m proposing as dead-serious religious study, but I find it remarkable how good a lot of these arbitrary-seeming ritual purity laws would be at preventing plagues in a society that doesn’t properly understand germs.
Alright, finally done with an Old Testament perspective on the law. I wanted to make a case separately from an NT perspective, because I know the obvious response to an NT-focused position here is “that’s the same God you worship now, you still believe in a God that set this law for thousands of years”.
In the New Testament, Jesus takes a really interesting stance on the law. First of all, he breaks it, as the Pharisees understand it, constantly. However, he always has a Biblical argument for doing so, and consistently leaves the Pharisees befuddled and frustrated when they accuse him of this.
Additionally, as a Gentile, the NT is clear that we are not beholden to the OT law. This is a surprisingly well-discussed issue, as it seems the early church was often followed by a group of Jewish Christians that would persuade new churches that they were beholden to the law, and had to be circumcised, etc. So Paul’s letters frequently have to correct this stance, when he contacts the churches he’s planted. Even for Jews, Paul himself has a vision where he’s told to eat unclean animals, and soon after participates in a feast that sees more people brought into the church.
There’s also a really interesting moment with Jesus, when a woman is set to be stoned because she was found cheating on her husband, and is brought to Jesus. And Jesus tells the crowd gathered to stone her, “let he who is without sin, throw the first stone”. Slowly, the whole crowd leaves, and he tells the woman “If no one will condemn you, then I won’t either. Go, and sin no more.” So there’s this forgiveness and grace brought into the equation, that seems contrary to the harsh punishments described in the original Law, and made more important than that.
So so far this suggests that, hey, as Christians today we can basically ignore the Law. But Jesus actually tells us something more interesting, that he’s not here to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it. In other words, Jesus believes his radical, loving philosophy is what the Law was meant to lead us to all along.
So basically, as a modern Christian, I don’t at all have to obey the Law. I can get tattoos, wear mixed fabrics, and work on Sundays all I like. But the Law is relevant. I try to study it as Jesus did, and understand it as he did, with his radically loving and gracious and kind philosophy. And I don’t always succeed, I’m not going to tell you I have a perfect understanding of every Law and its purpose, but I understand enough that I have faith that there is good explanation for the things I haven’t understood yet, and try to put the work in to understand the things in the OT that do bother me.
Also, I feel like I should add, as a modern Christian with the whole Bible before me, the Law is almost like… a failed experiment. Not that God isn’t omniscient and would be “experimenting”, but the Law clearly doesn’t work. Israel fails to follow it constantly, until the kingdom is split and both halves continue to fail until their exiles. In fact, there are some practices laid out in the laws, such as the Year of Jubilee, that we apparently don’t have historical evidence of ever having happened. The Law needed fulfilling through Christ, because we couldn’t possibly make it work, and that was always the plan for it. So no, I don’t look at modern Israel and see some platonic ideal society because they still try to follow the Law, or anything like that.
So, finally, the verse in question. First thing, I’m looking at the word “abomination” and I’m curious what that is in the original Hebrew, as that’s a loaded word. Here’s the list of everywhere that word appears in the Hebrew. The word is used here, but also in contexts such as “it would be an abomination to an Egyptian to eat with a Hebrew”, unclean animals are described as “abominations”, a sacrifice or prayer offered by a wicked person is an abomination to God, etc. There are some stronger uses of the word, such as using it for adultery or idol worship, but I’m seeing this word originates with the KJV, and I suspect its definition has drifted over time. Other translations, like the NIV choose words like “detestable” or “loathsome” for this. So definitely still not positive words, but that doesn’t read to me in the ultra-harsh way “abomination” does, and it’s also notable that unclean animals, something Paul is later encouraged to eat, is described with the same word.
Looking at this verse, I basically see 3 possible explanations for its inclusion in the Law. I’ll list them:
A) The obvious one, that homosexuality is just plainly frowned upon, and was always meant to be interpreted as wrong. Not an unreasonable reading, although point B from my previous comment still applies, protests and harassment are unjustifiable.
B) That this may be a health thing, similar to unclean animals. After all, we saw with the AIDS epidemic a health issue that swept through gay men most of all, largely because of a lack of healthcare resources that certainly wouldn’t have been around in B.C.
C) The one I personally find most likely, is that this had to do with God’s desire to see Israel and humanity grow in population. Abraham was promised descendants “as numerous in the stars in the sky”, and this is fairly close to the Genesis commission to “be fruitful and multiply” and to “fill the whole earth and subdue it”.
These days, I consider the earth to be pretty well filled, so I don’t believe those commands apply too much to us now. The Christian sects that always try to have 10+ kids strike me as weird too, I don’t feel any obligation to procreate like that.
Alright, let me wrap up here. My feelings on Biblical law are clearly complex, but to be clear, this is a good part of the case to be made that homosexuality isn’t godly, and you’re right to point it out, but still doesn’t sway me, for all the reasons I explained in my first comment on it. This is still part of what I’d described as the Bible’s “remarkable silence” on the topic of homosexuality.
A law in Leviticus is not nearly as persuasive as it would be if Jesus had spoken on the topic, for example. Or simply, more instances of the topic being directly addressed in scripture. This also still doesn’t bring much clarity about modern homosexuals in marriage, etc. There’s a lot of clear biblical disdain for casual sex, so a lot of gay culture like Grindr isn’t ever going to get a Biblical thumbs up, just like Tinder hookups don’t. So forbidding that kind of sexual activity is expected, but there are explicit examples of forbidden marriages in this list of laws about sex, such as marrying your sister, but a man marrying a man or woman marrying a woman isn’t mentioned.
But ultimately, my entire rant from the previous comment still stands. Even if Jesus had outright and directly said “any form of homosexuality, no matter how monogamous and loving, is tantamount to murder” 20+ times, the way much of the church has behaved would still be biblically unacceptable. In the sermon on the mount, the most detailed example of Jesus’s direct teaching we have, he tells us that all sins are equal. That to even look at a woman with lust, to think an angry thought about someone, is a crime worthy of death. And so we’re all equal. I’m just as sinful and “bad” as you, as any murderer, as anyone who’s done any sin you can name. So any church that picks a “pet sin” to focus on like this, whether it be sex and drugs, dungeons and dragons, rock music, or homosexuality and gender diversity, it’s done in direct contradiction to Jesus’s direct and plain teaching, in his most important and repeated message. It can be correct to call out sin in love, but this isn’t what that looks like.