Homophobia is not in the Bible but in its translators. Interview with the theologian Lings

Interview by Carlos Osma to the theologian Renato Lings published on the blog Homoprotestentes (Spain) on July 16, 2014, freely translated by Marco Galvagno

Renato Lings is translator and interpreter, doctor in theology and writer. Among other things, he worked as an interpreter at the European Parliament and as a professor at the Latin American Biblical University and as a researcher at the Queen's Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education.
In 2011 he published "Biblia y homosexualidad; ¿If equivocaron los transductores?"(Bible and homosexuality: have the translators be wrong?). A few days ago he granted an interview with the Homoprotestantes blog. We thank him for having shared his experience and knowledge with us.

- Let's start from the beginning. You were born in Denmark in a Protestant family very busy in the Church, in fact your father was a master and had many parish assignments. How was it for you to discover your homosexuality in that environment?

Discovering my homosexuality was a very strange experience. Starting from eleven I realized that some boys attracted me a lot. At the same time I did not dare to show them any particular affection.
I grew up in a closed and repressive rural environment in which it was dangerous to show one's drives and conformism reigned on everything. Homosexuality was a taboo topic and to protect myself I kept my secrets for me. During my adolescence nobody realized my sentimental life.

- How was the god you had in the drawer? What has changed when you did coming out?

He was a contradictory god: on the one hand, the importance of John 3:16 had taught me to the catechism: “God in fact loved the world that he gave his unigenite Son, because anyone who believes in him does not die, but has the Eternal life ".
It is a beautiful statement, which has allowed me to preserve the Christian faith to date. At the same time, the God who reigned in my family environment was quite dictatorial, because in his name many things were prohibited there.
For example, to me, my brothers and sisters it was forbidden to learn to dance and we could not even read books or magazines with erotic content. At 18 I tried to come out by going to my family doctor, who sent me from a fairly retrograde psychiatrist who advised me to wait a few years.
I managed to come out only at 24 years of age and it was an authentic liberating experience. I started conceiving God in a different way, as a creator of the universe and therefore also of human sexuality.

- Your first studies, in the mid -seventies, were literature and Christianity, philosophy, Greek and Jewish; I deduce that you wanted to know the Bible deeper. What was the Bible for you, a source of liberation or condemnation?

During the adolescence I was bored from the Bible for the authoritarian way in which they imposed it. For a young boy as I was I was practically a fossilized document. Furthermore, they did not allow us to question anything.
When I had twenty -one years I listened to a conference in which a theologian analyzed the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah and ended his reflections, asserting that the Bible condemned homosexuality. This frightened me, and from that day I began to look for the truth in the Bible. Starting from that experience I tried to understand the nature of the alleged biblical condemnation and from then on I am looking for the liberating side of the Scriptures.

- If we now focus on the biblical texts that are used by conservative Christians to condemn homosexual people, the proposal of the article "El Yarcer de un mujer" seems interesting to me in which you argue that Levitico 18:22 can be translated "you will not commit documents incestuous with boys ". Can you explain to us briefly, so that we can understand the reasons for your translation and its implications?

The Versetto 18:22 of Levitico is very interesting. Jewish language is opaque, hard to understand. For this reason, since ancient times, different interpretations have accumulated. Currently my biblical research allows me to catalog 14 different interpretations of Levitico 18:22. What will the right one? The answer is simple, we don't know.
The less plausible interpretation is that which claims to present the verse as a condemnation of homosexuality. For years this reading has been in fashion because it facilitates the work of translators. Despite this, it is an anachronism to attribute homophobic ideas to the editor of the text.
This verse does not bring any interesting facts for gay, lesbian and transgender people of our day. If we use literary and linguistic criteria while we analyze it, the interpretative key of the text will go to another direction.
Until recent times, scholars have not paid attention to the theme of acest. Despite this, most of chapter 18 speaks of this problem. So I recommend keeping in mind the theme of acest when we think about Levitico 18:22.

- In another of your articles, "Sodoma EscaNario de Una Choque Cultural", said that dramas like that of Sodom can change in liberation tools for LGBT people. Can you give some examples? How can we get closer to this biblical story from our LGBT reality and feel freed?

Of course it is a good question, because at first glance my proposal may seem contradictory. If we strictly stick to the Christian tradition, the drama of Sodom and Gomorrah is a drama of oppression and violence, here we find the origin of all our Crucis streets.
Now there is another different way to get closer to the biblical story. If we want to respect the testimonies that the Jewish Bible presents us, we have the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and others. Historically they are the first interpreters of Sodom's drama.
According to this interpretative current, the sin of the city has nothing to do with alleged sexual crimes. All prophetic voices use the name of Sodoma as a metaphor to criticize hair without hair the rulers of their time giving them idolaters, selfish, oppressors and violent.
For example, read chapter 1 of Isaiah, focusing on verses 10-17; It is also worth studying Ezekiel, chapter 16 verses 46- 51. If we learn to listen to the prophets because they teach us to biblically interpret Sodom's drama, this process will help us free ourselves and to denounce the injustices and to be solidarity with the marginalized that live with hardships around us.

- And if we go to the New Testament and the letters of Saint Paul, for example Roman 1: 26- 27 or Corinthians 6: 9-10, we could interpret that the apostle takes a position against homosexual relations between two men. Do you think it is like this? How should we Christians and Christian people get closer to these texts?

Well, they are curious texts, each of which presents complexity. I suggest you proceed gradually. If we first examine the first letter to the Corinthians, many translators are wrong in interpreting Greek words such as Malakoi or Arsenokaitai. In the letter, "Malakoi" means "bland", "weak" or "smidolled", while we know practically nothing of Arsenokati. At the letter it would mean "men-beds" or "men who go to bed".
Probably the word has to do with brothels and with illegal trafficking of prostitutes and young prostitutes, a very profitable deal in the Roman Empire. I insist in saying that we know very little about this word. It is important to realize that it usually does not appear in other Greek literary texts. For this reason we cannot interpret it as a reference to homosexual men.
We have to reject the wrong translations vigorously, there are many. As for the letter to the Romans 1: 26-27, the situation is different according to the Christian tradition. Paolo criticizes homosexual people, however, if we subject these verses to careful literary analysis, we will see that all the main verbs appear to the past, indicating that the apostle refers to known historical episodes.
Some translators of our time have dared to modify the verbs transforming them to the present, sometimes to hurt gays and lesbians, but they are wrong. The apostle cites events that occurred in a remote past. In Versetto 26 it probably refers to a group of women who lent themselves in precise moment to devote themselves to activities against nature with men. In ancient times, anti-natural or controning means everything that comes from vaginal sex; It can be treated of both oral and anal sex. Instead, it seems that the men described in verse 27 had practiced gods in honor of the goddess Cybele, originally from Asia Minor.
In any case, Paul's speech in this passage is inspired by the book of Wisdom, which denounces the idolatrous practices and excesses they cause. Before anything else, Paul's criticism focus on idolatry.
At no point, he cares about condemning two people who live in pairs. The people of whom the apostle speaks in this passage is not a Christian but pagan. It is absurd to apply this controversy, which comes from a debate that arose 2000 years ago, to the Christian people of our times, who live in a completely different reality. To better understand Paolo in the letter to the Romans, you need to read the whole letter until you reach chapter 16.
Many readers limit themselves to studying some verses of chapter 1, ignoring that the text continues and serves to criticize a precise person who lived in Rome.
This person appears in chapter 2. At the time of the apostle there was no division in chapters that we know today, the complaints expressed in chapter 1 conclude in the next chapter, in which Paolo verbally chases the master of Jewish origin who sows confusion in the community Roman Christian just established. Until the end of the letter Paolo prevents his readers against those who preach doctrines that are foreign to him.
"Please, brothers, who look at you by those who arouse divisions and scandals against the doctrine you have learned." To study this context I recommend the works of theologians James Alison and Douglas Campbell. The latter senses that the diatribe expressed in chapter 1 of the letter really belongs to the Jewish master and that Paolo quotes it to reject it then vigorously.
Read in this way, the letter begins to have a profound consistency and allows us to better appreciate what the main mission of the apostle of the people is. As he himself says in Romans 1: 1 and Romans 1: 3, his task is to announce the Gospel of Christ Jesus.

- If we analyze today the road accomplished over the course of several decades by many Christians and Christians who try to clarify or reinterpret the biblical texts that the conservatives use to justify themselves, do not show in the end that we have not freed ourselves from homophobia?
What are we still asking them that they accept us in their churches and in their world? Doesn't it seem to you that this dynamic always put LGBT people on the side of those who must justify themselves and heterosexuals like those who must be convinced and give them the approval?

This question is very important; I recognize that I too sometimes fall in this position which forces me to justify my position as a Christian and my right to belong to a specific church.
For many years we have been used to this routine and it is hard to get out of the box, even if this routine is Barbara and uncomfortable. I have dedicated the last years of my life to reinterpreting biblical texts and explaining that they do not condemn LGBT people. I am sure, I am completely convinced that the Bible is not our enemy, but rather it is our friend.
But we all need to educate and study very much both the heterosexuals and those of us who define themselves in another way. Let's start with an ecclesiastical tradition that has embittered our life. It is clear that the problem is in tradition, not in the scriptures.
Returning to your initial question, it seems to me that only now we are getting used to questioning and asking questions to those who want to condemn us, to know the reasons for their attitude.
They believe they have the Bible on their side, while reality is very different. Since then I insist and I repeat that it is urgent to learn to analyze the translations of the Bible that we habitually use to be able to report the mistakes and errors that are unfortunately very frequent. It is up to us to demonstrate to the world that what it means to really love biblical texts.

- I suppose there are many biblical texts in which you recognized a God who speaks to you as a Christian and as gay. Texts that have freed you and given strength, consulate, given hope, but without having to leave aside your sexual orientation. Could you share one with us?

A biblical text that inspired me a lot is Rut's book. It is a literary and theological pearl. The narrator shows how a poor young woman, widow and foreign (Rut) is accepted by the whole community of Bethlehem and blessed by the God of Israel thanks to her unconditional love for an Israelite woman (Noemi).
When Rut gives birth to Obed, his firstborn, all the neighbors place the baby on his lap to Noemi saying "A son was born in Noemi". In this way they publicly celebrate the emotional bond that exists between the two women.

- experience confirms that homophobia can have nothing to do with the gospel of Jesus nor with the love of God. You can also share a biblical text that shows the incompatibility between the sequence of Jesus and the homophobia?

Homophobia excludes. The people that Jesus criticizes most often are those who exclude and despise others. Jesus has nothing homophobic. In Matthew 19:12 he talks about the "Eunuchi", a term that designates people who arise asexuals or who do not have the desire for a heterosexual marriage, whatever the reason. This is possible to include LGBT people.
In any case, the text highlights the fact that Jesus refers to these groups with respect. Let's also remember the Roman centurion (Luca 7 and Matteo 8). The dialogue that this officer entertains with Jesus shows us that anyone who approaches the master with sincerity and humility will be heard, as far as it is different from the majority and despite being, as in this case, nothing less than a representative of the now military occupation Roman.
On the other hand, it is likely that the centurion entertains a special affection relationship with the young dying servant and that it is precisely this love that pushes him to solicit the intervention of Jesus. The teacher celebrates the great faith of the officer and blesses him With a practical act, immediately sanctioning the beloved domestic. Also in this situation we grasp, in a certain way, the LGBT people, if we identify ourselves with the centurion and its partner.
Last thing, the relationship of affection that exists between Jesus and the disciple loved as repeatedly illustrated by the evangelist John starting from chapter 11. Jesus is not disturbed by the authentic relationship between two people of the same sex but the accepts in practice. This is so true that the same can be said of the special tenderness that unites it to a very expensive disciple.

- Currently social changes are making the churches must take a position regarding LGBT people. Let's see how some churches in Europe open their doors, others instead, as in the case of Spain, still keep them closed.
All this translates into tensions, contrasts ... what role can the Bible have to overcome this situation? How should we approach it so that it is a place to find the light and not a brick to be pulled on our heads?

The homophobic persecution orchestrated by some powerful churches is mainly based on prejudice and in a fist of erroneously interpreted biblical texts. The problem is not in the Bible, but in its interpreters. These facts are increasingly documented as shown, for example, some of my books. The largest documentation on this issue can read in my latest work in English, entitled Love Lost in Translation.
I dedicate all my theological work to two objectives: (1) reinterpret the Bible and (2) denounce the numerous errors made by the translators, who act thus not for bad will but out of ignorance, due to their training within a vast Ecclesiastical tradition of homophobic and misogynist character.
And as long as I live I will not tire of talking about the great psychological and theological wealth that the Bible contains and which is available to all LGBT people who wish to deepen their faith and grow spiritually. The best guide for this trip is the one who calls us saying "Follow me".

Thank you very much to Renato Lings for his answers and collaboration
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[1] Theology and sexuality. Volume 15.2, 2009, pp. 231-250.

[2] Lisa Isherwood (ed.). Patriarchs, Prophets, and Other Villiains. Longres, 2007.

Original text: "Homophobia no está en la biblia, up en so intérpretes". Entrevista with El Teólogo Renato Lings.

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