A few months ago I was working through some common ideas about what sorts of same-sex engagements were practiced in first-century Rome. This is an important conversation because it shapes how we understand the context that generated the New Testament and the context within which it was heard.
I have shifted a bit since then on the importance of pederasty for dealing with the Roman world.
Here’s the data I was working with: (1) Greek writers (think Plato) valorize the idea of taking a young male and raising him up in the way he should walk, and this was thought to include at times a sexual relationship between the man and the youth. (2) Roman moralists thought this was an outrage and a violation (physical and moral) of the integrity of Rome’s manly future.
So, generally speaking, I have been reluctant to see pederasty as part of the first-century conversation because we have moved from Greek rule to the Roman Empire.
But here’s what I’m realizing: whether it was still practiced or not, pederasty was still known and condemned in the first century, perhaps by Greek-speaking writer in particular. This is probably more important for understanding the NT than whether the practice was actually engaged in–if people thought it was still a danger, and wrote about it as if it were still a danger, this perception is as likely to influence what is written and read as knowledge of the actual practice.
Dio Chrysostom
Probably writing from Rome about the evils of those Greek cities “out there,” Dio Chrysostom (late first, early second century) writes:
The man whose appetite is insatiate in such things, when he finds there is no scarcity, no resistance, in this field, will have contempt for the easy conquest and scorn for a woman’s love, as a thing too readily given—in fact, too utterly feminine—and will turn his assault against the male quarters, eager to befoul the youth who will very soon be magistrates and judges and generals, believing that in them he will find a kind of pleasure difficult and hard to procure.
There it is: a Roman saying that those nasty Greeks “befoul the youth” who would grow into the civic leaders. Whether or not this was actually happening, it is one way that a first century Roman imagined sexual contact of a man with males after his appetite for women had been sated but his sex drive had not been. (Note that the idea of orientation is wholly missing.)
Philo of Alexandria
I mentioned Philo on Saturday, and want to return to him now. There is one very big reason why Philo is important to this discussion. As a first-century Hellenized Jew (Paul’s peer in both respects), Philo interprets the prohibition on same-sex intercourse in Leviticus 18 (and 20) as referring to pederasty.
In Special Laws 3, he decides to go through the list of no-nos delineated in Leviticus 18 and reflect on why they are so wholesome and wise. At the point where he begins to reflect on “You shall not lie with a man as one lies with a woman,” here is how he begins:
Moreover, another evil, much greater than that which we have already mentioned, has made its way among and been let loose upon cities, namely, the love of boys (τὸ παιδεραστεῖν), which formerly was accounted a great infamy even to be spoken of, but which sin is a subject of boasting not only to those who practice it, but even to those who suffer it, and who, being accustomed to bearing the affliction of being treated like women… (Spec. Leg. 3:37)
Everything that Philo goes on to say about how this introduces “the female disease” and snuffs out the spark of manliness, and brings the just punishment of death for both parties (alluding to Leviticus 20) is run through an interpretation of Lev 18 that sees male same-sex contact as referring to pederasty.
Now, it may well be that Philo is simply trying to make a point of connection between the biblical text and what he knows of in his own society. Or it may be that he thinks that pederasty is what the author of Leviticus had in mind. More likely, he did not distinguish the two and saw the application he was making as the concern of the text itself. (It should be noted that Philo is perfectly capable of giving multiple interpretations of a passage without skipping a beat.)
Implications?
While we can never be sure what Paul had in mind when he moralized against same-sex intercourse, it is important to note that these other moralists recognized the need to continue speaking out against pederasty as a (or the) expression of same-sex intercourse of which they were aware.
Philo’s appeal to pederasty in his interpretation of Lev 18 and his allusions to Lev 20 are even more significant inasmuch as they show that a first-century Hellenized Jew might read those texts as condemnations of the specific act of a man taking an underaged boy as a lover.
I think it much more likely now than I did a few months back that this particular expression of same-sex intercourse might be on Paul’s radar as he weighs in against men having sex with men. I am also quite certain that he would have been aware of and had slave-sex in mind as a primary expression of such behavior.
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