Issue link: http://denverseminary.uberflip.com/i/731874
2016-2017 Denver Seminary Washington, D.C. Extension Student Handbook 46 Redemption and transformation are deeply rooted in the gospel message. So must they also permeate the Church's life and mission. NOTES 1 If such were the case then one could argue that the ban on coveting, for example (Exodus 20:17; Deuteronomy 5:21), applies only to men because it explicitly mentions only wives (and not husbands) as an object of coveting. 2 The Leviticus passages clearly prohibit homosexual activity. Attempts to qualify these prohibitions by ignoring their broad apodictic nature are not exegetically convincing. For example, to argue that this applies only to close relatives who live in Israel ignores the book's wilderness context (Leviticus was not given in the land of Israel). On the other hand, the suggestion that the idiom, "lie in the beds of," refers to a non-sexual activity, on the basis of four of the five other occurrences of this expression (Psalm 149:5; Isaiah 57:2; Hosea 7:14; and Micah 2:1), is problematic. The fifth occurrence, Genesis 35:22, does refer to an illicit sexual act (Reuben lying with his father's concubine). Further, this interpretation misses the context of both Leviticus 18 and 20, which are primarily concerned with forbidden sexual activity. Only in these two locations, is the full phrase used, "you shall not lie in the beds of a woman." These attempts appear as special pleading to avoid the implications of the text. The laws regarding homosexuality in Leviticus 18 and 20 should be considered in the ancient Near Eastern cultural context, in the Israelite social context, and in the literary context of Leviticus. Leviticus 18:2-3, 24-28 identify the prohibited practices here, including homosexuality, as forbidden because they were practiced by the Egyptians and by the peoples of Canaan. While mythic texts of Egypt and of Ugarit (a city on the modern Syrian coast whose myths regarding Baal and other deities provide a 13th century B.C. background for Canaanite beliefs) do indeed describe various sexual practices forbidden in Leviticus 18 (and 20), they do not specify homosexual activities. Across the ancient world (except for child rape which is banned), only the Middle Assyrian laws (14th-11th centuries B.C.) prohibit homosexual activity, wherein as punishment the perpetrator was to be sodomized and castrated. Thus, as found at Sodom (and Hivite influence at Gibeah?), homosexuality may well have been practiced in the land of Canaan. Sociologically, early Israel was a patrilineal, kinship-based, agrarian society, generally surviving at a subsistence level and valuing large families for economic survival. This is demonstrated by the narratives of Judges, Ruth, and 1 Samuel. These place Israel in the hill country in small villages. There extended families live together around the oldest male and female. Married couples and young families tend to live with or near the husband's side of the family and the identity of both men and women tends to be defined by the patronym (X son/daughter of Y, where Y is the father) and the male line. This description also concurs with the archaeological excavations of Israelite villages with clusters of the so-called four-room (or pillared) houses, ideal for an extended family. This explains the particular prohibited incest relations, which fit in a patrilineal extended family. Generally, they identify relations a male would encounter in his household (e.g., a sister, mother, daughter, daughter-in-law,etc.). The default masculine gender in Hebrew grammar is part of the patrilineal culture and found in other laws such as the Ten Commandments (e.g., Don't covet your neighbor's wife). However, as the Ten Commandments apply to women as well as men, it can be assumed that the corresponding incest prohibitions would exist for the women of the household. The same is true of the homosexual prohibitions. They should be assumed to apply to both men and women. Further, the value placed on large families in this society would reinforce prohibition of sexual activity outside of heterosexual marriage, especially the sort that would not provide for children. This would explain the inclusion of the prohibition of sacrificing children to Molech, as well. Besides committing murder and worshipping a false god, the practice destroyed the lives of potentially productive family members. The literary context of the homosexual laws in Leviticus 18 and 20 considers three elements: the nature of the ban as "detestable," its position in chapter 18 next to the law against child sacrifice, and its double appearance. While Leviticus 18:26 characterizes all the practices in this chapter as "detestable," only homosexuality is specifically flagged as detestable in 18:22 and 20:13. This suggests a special warning against the practice. It may be related to other warnings against improper mixtures (cf. Deuteronomy 22:11) and the crossing of boundaries (e.g., Leviticus 11) that God has set. As for the law against sacrificing children to Molech in the previous verse (Leviticus 18:21), it is possible that homosexuality played a role in the religious cult (cf. the following paragraph on cultic functionaries). However, this connection does not appear in Leviticus 20:13 and thus it cannot be limited to homosexuality as practiced in the religious cult. Finally, the fact that the law, along with the other sexual prohibitions, appears twice suggests a rhetorical emphasis designed to stress its importance. The question of cultic functionaries raises the matter of the identity of what the NIV refers to as