Authored by: Payton Alexander.

Before I say anything else, I must first thank Machen and Thrasymachus for their generous contributions to our discussion of Christianity and homosexuality on Urban Philosophy.  Your work here has enriched and developed this dialogue many times further than I ever thought it would go.  Thank you both!

But I am not done, as I have pointed out once or twice already.  I had originally intended to write an article about a certain verse in Paul’s letter to the Romans as my next article, but Machen has jumped the gun on me by bringing up Leviticus in his response to my original article about a week ago.  So, I have decided to write my article about Leviticus first.  It draws heavily from, defends, and explains the work of Justin Cannon and William Lindsey, so please bear with me on the extended quotations, and note that this article is any attempt of mine to “try my hand at Greek”.  As I already cleared in a comment with C. L. Bolt, “I have no hand at Greek!”

So, in this article here I will do two things;

1)    I will deal with Machen’s criticism independent of any interpretation of Leviticus.

2)    And, I will offer an interpretation of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, in the context of a rebuttal to Machen’s criticism of my interpretation of 1 Timothy.

Now, let’s begin with Machen’s criticism of my article.

His argument centers around the idea that in 1 Timothy, Paul is referring to the Septuagint translation of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13.  In Leviticus, he claims, the phrase, “arsenos koites”, is used to mean, “lie with a man”.  Seeing as how the compound word, “arsenokoitai”, is used in 1 Timothy, it seems no real stretch to him to suggest that “Paul condemns what Leviticus condemns”.

Unfortunately, this can either help or destroy Machen’s case.  Extraordinary as it may sound, if it is indeed true that Paul is condemning what Leviticus condemns, then it is possible that Leviticus does not condemn homosexuality.  It can go either way. This is going to be the cornerstone of my first argument, though it is just a thought.

Having introduced that concept, let’s review what I said in my previous article with respect to the context of “arsenokoitai” in 1 Timothy.  Machen seems to think that I don’t think “koites” is a sexual term, and criticizes me for it.  Of course, this is completely false.  Not only did I never say any of that, but the sexual nature of “koites” is a fundamental assumption of Cannon’s argument.

Here is what Justin Cannon originally said about 1 Timothy:

Looking closely at 1 Timothy 1:9-10, we can see that there are what I will call ‘structural pairs’ that are reflected below in the English as well as in the Greek–the original language of the New Testament.

1 Timothy 1:9-10 (RSV) – Greek

Row A:	anomoi             kai                          anupotaktoi
Row B:	asebesin           kai                          amartwloi
Row C:	anosioi              kai                          bebhloi
Row D:	patralwai          mhtralwai                androfonoi
Row E:	pornoi              arsenokoitai            andrapodistai
Row F:	yeustai              epiorkoi

As you will notice there seems to be a relationship between the words in each row. The chart below illustrates that the words in each row are either synonyms or closely related in some manner:

Row A:	lawless & disobedient	=  two synonyms
Row B:	ungodly & sinners	=  two synonyms
Row C:	unholy & profane	=  two synonyms
Row D:	murderers of fathers, murderers of mothers, manslayers	= three types of murderers
Row F:	liars & perjurers	=  two synonyms

But what about row E? What do “immoral persons, sodomites, and kidnappers” have in common? To answer this question beyond a shadow of a doubt, we will need to explore the Greek. The three Greek words present in line E are: pornoi (pornoi), arsenokoitai (arsenokoitai), and andrapodistai (andrapodistai).

NOTE: Evidently, WordPress latinized the Greek characters above.

“Arsenokoitai” does not mean “prostitute”.  I never said this.  Row E should be translated like this: “Pornoi” means prostitutes, “arsenokoitai” means those who sleep with prostitutes, and “andrapodistai” refers to the people who kidnap the prostitutes.  this is the conclusion I presented in my previous article.

That pornoi and andrapodistai refer to prostitution is undeniable and near-universally believed.  We can assume, following Paul’s obvious pattern here, that whatever “arsenokoitai” means, it has something to do with prostitution.  I have concluded that it refers to the men who sleep with the prostitutes Paul is talking about here.

Even without having attacked my argument, Machen’s own argument regarding Leviticus is silly.

In my research for this article, I contacted William Lindsey about Machen’s argument via email.  Among other things, he had this to say (my notes are in brackets):

1. He emphasizes repeatedly that Paul’s intent is to condemn “homosexual practice.”  Yet he launches into an argument which focuses exclusively on forbidding male homosexual contact, as if “homosexual practice” is equivalent to male homosexual behavior.  Homosexual women: you have a free pass!

2. He dismisses the powerful and significant argument that Paul uses a neologism in this passage, when koine Greek of his period had specific and well-understood words to describe homosexuality.  And he does so by suggesting that Paul is trying to replicate in Greek a Hebrew phrase; when Paul is writing for and communicating with people who are culturally Greek and not Hebrews at all, for the most part!

This would imply that Paul’s intent is to equate the gospel with Jewish law and custom, something he vehemently works against in writings like Galatians.  Not to mention the fact that nobody would have noticed the reference at all.

But to point out the obvious–that koite often refers to sexual contact in Greek–is really to say nothing at all, nothing significant about this word for his argument.  He seems to think that by making this etymological point he proves that the word refers to homosexual sex when joined with the word “arsenos.”  [Of course, I have already shown what “arsenokoitai” means.  It is not in conflict with Machen’s etymological point here, either, as it definitely would have included homosexual sex.  What Machen does not realize is that it must have been homosexual sex in the context of prostitution, as I said earlier.]

He’s arguing that because Paul was intent on communicating clearly, he adopted a mysterious and totally undefined new word!  And that he did so while addressing a Greek audience, in order to play on an understanding of a Hebrew text with which they were not familiar, because they were culturally Greek and not Hebrew at all.

He’ll have to do far better to build a convincing argument.  If so much hinges on condemning homosexuality, why would the person who thinks that everything hinges on it resort to such intricate, unexpected verbal tactics to communicate a very plain point that could easily have been communicated in the plain Greek that the people to whom he was writing spoke?

But what if Paul really is acting unreasonably?  What if he is making a subtle, unexpected, and obscure reference to the Hebrew Scriptures to communicate a very simple point in his letter to a bunch of Greeks?

Even still, Cannon’s argument would still stand.  I mentioned earlier that Machen’s argument from the similarities between 1 Timothy and Leviticus could either help him or destroy him.  Having shown that they cannot help him, by saying that the meaning of arsenokoitai in 1 Timothy is already absolutely obvious, let’s count the ways it could destroy him.

To be clear, I don’t argue any of the following seriously. I only offer it as an overkill tactic designed to show that even if Machen’s argument is right, it is still useless.  I maintain what I wrote before; that there is probably no connection between Leviticus and 1 Timothy as Machen claims.  But if we were to assume that there is such a connection does exist, all that this shows is that either 1 Timothy means what Leviticus means, or Leviticus means what 1 Timothy means.  Since we can see from Cannon’s argument that Paul is referring to prostitution in 1 Timothy, we can assume that if he is also making a reference to Leviticus in that verse, he also thinks Leviticus refers to prostitution.

This is more than likely not the case, in my opinion.  There are few textual clues in Leviticus that could be construed to support such a conclusion.  However, Mr. Cannon provides an interpretation of Leviticus which may be more reasonable, yet also provide for a connection between it and 1 Timothy.  He says:

Even if we accept the NIV or KJV translations, (KJV: “Thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination.”) we still must understand the historical context of how a man laid with a woman, for this is the qualifier of the phrase. Some affirm that this law is quite straightforward. Clearly from the previous sixteen verses, we know that these laws are written to men. Thus, some may say, this law forbids men to “lie with”, or have sex with, other men. This interpretation is flawed as it entirely ignores the phrase “as with a woman.” These four words cannot simply be understood to refer to lying sexually, since that is already indicated in the Hebrew word translated “to lie with.” If the above interpretation were what the author means he could have just written, “Thou shalt not lie with a man; it is an abomination.” 

“As with a woman” must have been added for some reason, and we must understand the context of this law to understand it fully. The status of women in that time was much lower than that of men, and women were even considered property of the men. This belief regarding gender relations is rejected by most of the Christian church today, but in order to make sense of this specific Jewish law we must keep in mind this context in which it was written.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow explains, “The whole structure of sexuality in the Torah assumes a dominant male and a subordinate female.”⁴ In other words, women were obedient to men, and men in that time would have been dominating and controlling in sexual encounters. The woman did what the man wanted and how the man wanted it. For a man in a sexual encounter to be treated in that way, within the Jewish culture of the time, the man would have be taking a lower status, as well as being sexually dominated and controlled. To do so would have been reducing him to property and in effect defiling the image of God, which man was considered in that culture. This, however, is exactly how men would have treated the male temple prostitutes—in a controlling and abusive manner, and also is how individuals would have been treated in the sacred sexual orgies with which Baal was worshiped. They would have lied with other men “as with a woman.”

What I find valuable in this interpretation is that the manner in which a man would have sex with a male prostitute, as in 1 Timothy, is exactly how a man “lies with a woman”!  It is a controlling, aggressive, dominant sort of act; one which would reduce the male prostitute to the role of a woman.  So if we accept Justin Cannon’s interpretation of Leviticus, we should also be able to accept Machen’s argument by showing it to be the case in 1 Timothy as well.

In my completely unprofessional opinion, I might point to Cannon’s English translations of the original texts, and offer another possible interpretation:

“And with a male you shall not lay lyings of a woman.”

Right off the bat I think this is telling men not to submit themselves sexually to other men, i.e., don’t be the bottom guy in the relationship.  I can’t say for sure, as I have no formal education in Jewish cultural history, but I might think this was intended as a precaution for the men of Israel not to submit themselves in any way, simply for the sake of Israel.  This seems like an issue of national or tribal pride, which would make sense in the context of Leviticus, which is full of rituals and customs designed to separate Israel from the surrounding races, so as to set God’s own apart.  But that is just a thought.  I say it only as a suggestion.

And that concludes my rebuttal to Machen and my interpretations of Leviticus.  I have provided the really convincing argument that there is no realistic connection between 1 Timothy and Leviticus, and then offered a further argument just in case Machen continues to assert that there is such a connection.  I will clarify, at this point, that I have judged the initial “choice” on the question of whether or not there is a connection between 1 Timothy and Leviticus to be easily decided by logic.  I believe that there is no connection as I stated earlier.  My second major point, indeed, the second half of this paper, is really “just in case”.  In this way, I think I’ve thoroughly dealt with 1 Timothy, and Machen’s objection to my interpretation of it, but I have not given Leviticus the treatment it deserves.  I have offered nothing but a hypothetical interpretation of Leviticus, and so I may decide to write a more thorough article later on it to do it justice.  As for 1 Timothy, I will only say that I do not enjoy repeating myself.  Don’t make me.