BHP journal: The Ancient Near Eastern Background

In the ancient Near East one cannot speak either of uniform approval or uniform disapproval.

So after that terrible introduction, I'm actually encouraged by this. It's a really serious, well-researched investigation of the material outside the bible that may indicate the perceptions towards same-sex relationships and sex activity at the time the Old Testament was written.

It's super interesting, but as you can see by his own conclusion above, there's nothing that really closes the case. There is evidence of other societies writing disapprovingly of same-sex relationships, which most likely would have included relationships without an extreme power differential. There is reference to male cult prostitution (positively and negatively, I believe). Same-sex sex acts between master and slave. Etc. And there's an interesting passage he mentions that may have indicated consensual same-sex relationships were just as acceptable as heterosexual relationships. (And to be fair, if true, this may weaken one of my arguments so is worth considering further.)

This all mainly applies to men of course but I think he mentions women somewhere along the way as well. He also talks some about the idea that the penetrating partner in anal sex is often referred to as walking away from the act with some benefit or power, or in other cases has committed a crime by emasculating the penetrated partner (whether or not the sex as consensual) and the penetrated partner is more often depicted negatively.

I think this is what he's going for here in terms of setting up his argument...

The level at which the Levitical laws stigmatize and criminalize all homosexual intercourse, while not discontinuous with some trends elsewhere, goes far beyond anything else currently known in the ancient Near East.

I think the point is that the Old Testament Law goes above and beyond anything else we're aware of by clearly prohibiting all same-sex sex acts. I don't have a problem with this. This seems fairly typical of the Old Testament Law - right? - to go above and beyond in keeping all the Hebrew boys and girls little cherubs when compared to all the naughty neighbors! And I understand the Old Testament Law to at least forbid all forms (consensual or not) of anal sex between men.

Oh, but this is interesting, several times Gagnon assumes the Documentary Hypothesis which is the idea that the Pentateuch was written by multiple authors over many years instead of by Moses, as the bible itself says multiple times. The bible makes this direct claim many times more than homosexuality is possibly directly mentioned. (I'm looking at a list of 26 "selected passages" that affirm Moses' authorship, over half of those being in the New Testament.)

Inquiry: For people who respect "explicit statements in Scripture" at the level Gagnon claims to, how is it the bible cannot be trusted in something as foundational as what it says about itself? And what other "explicit statements in Scripture" cannot be taken at face value? Further, who makes these decisions? Are they made by academic consensus? What happened to "two millennia of church tradition" in the case of the authorship of the Pentateuch?

So this phrase can be added before everything else he says about scripture in this book, "Keeping in mind I think many foundational claims the bible makes are naively based on accepted views at the time, or simply false..."