Beware of anachronisms when we read and interpret the Bible

Reflections by Pastor Lisandro Orlov taken from the Pastoral Ecuménica VIH/SIDA website (Argentina), August 2011, freely translated by Dino

Even today it cheers me up and amuses me to see the series of animated drawings entitled "The Ancestors" and the projection into that distant and remote Stone Age of many common elements that make our current daily life comfortable.
It makes me laugh to see them going from one place to another with the family "log car", to see their intense social contacts through the "horn" and the reactions of the little dinosaur baby transformed into the pet of the house and rightly called "Dino". All this is called “anachronism”.

If we look in any dictionary we have at hand, we can see that this term is defined as "Chronological error which consists in placing an event in a different era from the one in which it occurred" [1].
This is precisely the mistake we make when we talk about the Bible and homosexuality. No writer of the Old or New Testament knew or classified people based on the criterion of “sexual orientation.”
This is a recent contribution of scientific research, after 1869. Therefore, looking for an answer or clarification in texts prior to this date means making an error that is not always innocent.

Currently, the United Nations system in general cannot talk about homosexuality, because in some countries its manifestation and practice are still considered a crime. This is why the different divisions of this system talk about “men having sex with men” under the assumption that all men are what we now call heterosexual.
This is exactly the situation that we find in the biblical texts, which, and indeed all their authors, believe that all people are of a heterosexual orientation because they ignore the concept of homosexuality, just as they do not know that the earth revolves around the sun .

And so, if we consider the well-known texts that are used to condemn people who have an orientation other than the heteronormative one, we can see that they acquire a completely different hermeneutic possibility. None of them fit correctly to those people who we today believe to be constitutionally of homosexual orientation as such.

Currently the scientific world and many scholars of the Scriptures believe that sexual orientation is established involuntarily at a very early stage of human development and that it is irreversible. No one anywhere and at any time is able to control the choice of their sexual orientation. For all people, their sexual orientation is a discovery and is never a choice.
What is a choice is the area in which we freely implement responsible behaviors regarding the concrete exercise of this sexual orientation, whatever it may be. In this sense it is very interesting to know the history of people who write with their left hand, i.e. left-handed people [2].
When the Christian Church was at the height of its political power, it considered the left hand to be the hand of the devil, the hand of evil. Therefore, especially left-handed women were often considered servants of Beelzebub and immediately burned at the stake with the participation of the rest of the community.
When the Church lost this power over the state, using the left hand, while the majority uses the right, was considered a disease. I still remember a cousin who was tormented to learn to sew with her right hand.
Luckily, and for the peace of mind of all her cousins, she managed to learn to sew with her right hand, but in all those gestures for which she had not been punished or forced, her nature resurfaced and she went back to using her left hand.
That is, it was possible to contrast her nature and force her to adopt behaviors similar to those of the majority who are right-handed, but her basic nature continued to be left-handed, to the concern of the whole family.

Currently the entire scientific world, the Churches that have never asked for forgiveness from this infinity of women burned in the fires of fundamentalist ignorance and all educational institutions have accepted that the use of the left hand does not constitute any evil reality but is part of the human diversity. Surprisingly, in any culture, society, church or university the number of left-handed people is similar to the number of people with homosexual orientation.
With this I am not saying that left-handed people are homosexual but that human diversity is more complex and richer than we want to admit. It is not known why a person uses the right hand or foot in preference, just as it is not known why a constant and consistent minority does so with the opposite side. It certainly isn't an advantage to be left-handed in a right-handed world.
Everything is made to be used with the right hand: phone, scissors, writing, etc. Is it possible to think that as far as homosexuality is concerned, the same path of acceptance is being followed, albeit late?

Anachronism and the Bible

Currently, using the same methodology applied to feminist theology and hermeneutics, rereadings of the Scriptures and their historical context are being made which show us the invisible presence of sexual diversity, both in the Old and New Testaments [3].
Regarding the famous seven texts used to support hermeneutic anachronism we must use a known method to try to understand at least that scene which has always been used as an example of God's wrath and which in the darkest times gave its name to this sexual orientation .

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the book of Genesis (19:1-19) undoubtedly does not refer to what we today call homosexual orientation because no historical, scientific or cultural data shows us that all the males of a city are of homosexual orientation.
Here we are faced with a common fact in war situations: the humiliation of heterosexual males who fell prisoners in the hands of their enemies, who were also heterosexual, who through sexual penetration humiliated them to the condition of second-class citizens, forcing them to assume an attitude considered feminine. This was a common practice in the historical context in which the tale was written.
This is the violence and this is the abuse we are talking about, and it consists in the breaking of the rules of hospitality, so rigid and generous in the nomadic societies of then and today. In the same way the Scriptures, when in some passages they refer to the two cities (Sodom and Gomorrah), do not relate their sin to any sexual issue, which instead appears to be a rereading subsequent to the writing of the New Testament.
The reading of this passage in the prophetic texts accredits that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, which was already present before the attempted sexual abuse, is interpreted by Isaiah in these terms: "Listen to the word of the Lord, leaders of Sodom! Pay attention to the teachings of our God, people of Gomorrah! What do I care about their multiple sacrifices? - says the Lord - I am tired of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fattened animals, I no longer want the blood of bulls, lambs and goats... Stop doing evil and learn to do good! Seek justice, help the oppressed, do justice to the orphan, defend the widow! Come and let us discuss - says the Lord - (Isaiah 1:10-20).
It is clear that in this prophetic reading of the story the focal point refers to the law applied to populations wounded in their dignity. It is possible that today it is our faith communities that commit the same sin as the leaders of Sodom and the people of Gomorrah when we do not go out into the streets of our cities to guarantee the rights of every citizen, regardless of their sexual orientation. The prophet Jeremiah in recalling this event says: "...But among the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen horrible things: they are adulterers, they live in lies, they join hands with criminals. And so no one converts from their wickedness! To me they are all like Sodom and Gomorrah” (Jeremiah 23:14).

Many times, during the military dictatorship in Argentina, we saw those who should have raised a prophetic voice shaking hands with criminals and this silence prevented those who trampled on rights from converting, leaving a trail of orphans who were appropriated and widows who to this day they do not accept to be consoled unless justice and truth is done first because they do not want to continue living a lie.
The social dimension and responsibility towards populations wounded in their dignity is the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah. The position of the prophet Ezekiel is even clearer: “This was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: pride, abundance of food and total disinterest. In addition to this, she and her daughters did not help the poor and destitute, they became proud and committed abominations in my presence. Therefore I rejected them, as you yourself saw” (Ezekiel 16:49-50).
This statement is not an anachronism. The abomination has to do with social aspects that still cry out to the heavens for revenge. The pride of those who have a rich table at the expense of the hunger of many, in societies built with complete disinterest in the resources of an ecosystem put at total risk.

The only time that Jesus of Nazareth mentions these cities he does not do so in relation to any sexual situation but to a situation that is clearly connected with hospitality: "And if they will not receive you and will not listen to your words, as you go from that house or from that city, shake the dust from your feet. I assure you that on the day of judgment Sodom and Gomorrah will be treated less harshly than that city” (Matthew 10:14-15).
Currently many people of homosexual orientation have had to shake the dust from their feet and abandon many of our religious communities because we do not want to listen to their words nor to the words that various scientific organizations tell us that have eliminated homosexual orientation from the list of diseases because , after long and passionate discussions, have come to the conclusion that it does not possess any of the conditions necessary to be considered a disease.

The forgotten and hidden bibliography

Almost fifteen years before the struggle for the civil rights of the gay and lesbian population became visible, in the mid-1950s, the models and paradigms according to which homosexuality had been considered were shattered. These parameters, which were created in the 11th and 12th centuries, had been considered a valid reference without ever undergoing changes and without being called into question either by the scientific community or by the various theological schools, regardless of the confession to which they belonged.
When England made the decision to change the law that criminalized homosexual orientation, the British Parliament established a commission chaired by Lord John Wolfenden and which in 1957 produced what is rightly known as the Wolfenden Report [4].
For the first time this commission establishes that private homosexual behavior between consenting adults cannot be considered a transgression or criminal affront.
All but one of its members agree that "homosexuality cannot legitimately be considered an illness, because in many cases this is the only symptom and in other areas it is compatible with perfect mental health."
These indications did not find easy application given that only in 1967 did the English Parliament finally modify the legislation that decriminalized homosexuality, invalidating, with great difficulty, what had been approved in 1533 by Henry VIII. Just as it was extremely complicated to dismantle a social paradigm, so it still is to reconstruct what was established in the pre-scientific era in the 12th century. The Wolfenden commission also summoned theologians and pastors among the scholars.
In this context, the Anglican Canon Derrick Bailey presented a detailed and completely new study of the biblical texts used then and still today, of which a fundamentalist reading is made that ignores the historical context in which these texts were written, a study that allows us to break with a long tradition of stigma and discrimination. The result of this research is the book "Homosexuality and the Western Christian tradition" [5] in which the author criticizes the use of these texts and demonstrates that they have no relationship with what we today define as homosexual orientation.
He also reviews the interpretation that the Fathers of the Church as well as the theologians of the High and Late Middle Ages gave to these texts, reaching up to the 12th century of the Christian tradition when, in his opinion, the traditional position that we know was consolidated. without significant changes. Following the publication of this work, the debate, for or against these contributions, has revolved around them. Unfortunately the text has not been translated into Spanish.

Several years later, in 1976, the same interpretation of the biblical texts that had been given by the Christian tradition regarding theological interpretations pertaining to homosexuality was accepted by a priest of the Roman Catholic Church of the Jesuit order, John McNeill.
His book entitled "The Church in the Face of Homosexuality" [6] like Bailey's has become an indispensable reference work in dealing with this topic. The publication of this study has had a complicated history. For years the draft of the project went back and forth from the Vatican to New York, where the author lived. Various changes were suggested and discussed and accepted before being approved by the Church for publication.
The book caused such a sensation both inside and outside the Church that the Roman Curia went into uproar and immediately forbade the author from writing or speaking publicly on the subject again. Broadly speaking, this text follows the Anglican priest's statements and proposals for biblical rereading. Although this text was promptly translated into Spanish, it had limited distribution and no attempt was ever made to reprint it.
The third book, which goes in the same direction with a strictly scientific approach to this topic, is the work of John Boswell, professor of medieval history at Yale University in the United States.
Although not a priest, he is the founder, in the Roman Catholic Church, of the Dignity movement, which aims to promote the full recognition and unconditional inclusion in this Church of people of homosexual orientation.
This scholar published “Christianity, social tolerance and homosexuality” in 1982. Gays in Western Europe from the beginning of the Christian era until the 14th century” [7]. This study, of greater investigative rigor both of the biblical texts and of the documents that lead to the theological construction of the ancient and medieval Church, has deserved various academic awards precisely for the seriousness of this work.

Conclusion

We must be very careful about anachronisms, because they are lurking, spying on who to devour. Stating that Seneca is Spanish simply because he was born on the Iberian peninsula is a serious mistake because the concept of what we currently call "Spanish" was created, according to current opinion, between the 16th and 17th centuries. . Likewise, if we defined Alexander the Great as a person of homosexual orientation we would not give any idea of ​​what we are talking about because at that time people did not recognize themselves as such (homosexuals) nor did they classify themselves in this way, because sexuality was lived according to parameters that well beyond a heterosexual or homosexual bipolarity.
We must also recognize that the biblical and theological paradigms on the basis of which the attitude of Christian communities towards homosexuality took shape in the 14th century crumbled in the 19th century. Insisting with now old approaches to this topic does not mean being faithful to tradition but is precisely its betrayal.
The current context has changed both thanks to the contributions of the scientific, cultural and social world and to the tools of biblical analysis. It is surprising how many Christian communities, which in almost all issues have a critical approach to the text and the context in which the biblical stories were written, return to a literal and fundamentalist interpretation when they come to verses applied to homosexual orientation. This is also an obstacle that we must overcome.

In this short journey that we have taken together, seeking a better understanding of such a multifaceted topic as sexual orientation, sexuality in general and homosexual orientation in particular, its relationship with the contemporary scientific world and the modern approach to biblical texts, I set myself the objective of presenting new points of view, clarifying the terminology and bringing out of the shadows those texts that can help us to truly be people and communities that are much more hospitable to those who, due to their sexual identity and genre, was and still is victim of the fires of our religious blindness.

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[1] Diccionario Enciclopédico Océano. Edition 1993. Barcelona. Volume 1
[2] Idem. Left-handed “Is said to be a person who uses their left hand or foot to do things that most people do with their right hand or foot. Pertaining to or relating to the left hand. Figurative and familiar: “The opposite of how it should be done.”
[3] Jennings, Theodore W. “The man Jesus loved. Homoerotic narratives from the New Testament” The Pilbrim Press. Ohio 2003
[4] The Wolfenden Report. Report of the Committee of Homosexual Offense and Prostitution. September of 1957
[5] Bailey, Derrick Sherwin: “Homosexuality and the Western Cristina Tradition.” First Published 1955, Logman, Green and Co. Inc. London
[6] McNeill, John. “The Church before Homosexuality” Collection Human Relations and Sexology Nº 9. Ediciones Grijalbo, SA Barcelona. 1979
[7] Boswell, John: “Cristianismo, Tolerancia Social y Homosexualildad. Gays in Western Europe from the beginning of the Christian Era until the 14th century”. Muchnik Editores. Barcelona. 1992

Original text: Anachronism, Biblia y homosexualidad