What does the Old and New Testament say about homosexuality?

Homosexuality, a word for which there is no specific equivalent in the Hebrew Bible or in the Greek NT, since the concept of homosexuality as a “sexual orientation” originated only in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, there are a few biblical references to people who engage in sexual acts with persons of the same sex.

In the Hebrew Bible, the most explicit references to sexual acts between men are in the Holiness Code of Leviticus, where, under penalty of death, a male is strictly prohibited from lying with another male as he would with a woman (18:22; 20:13). In addition to these passages, the Bible contains two narratives in which men desire to have sexual relations with other men. 

The first of these is set in the city of Sodom and provides the derivation for the term “sodomy,” which in modern English is sometimes used as a pejorative term for “homosexual sex acts.” In the biblical account, the men of Sodom intend to rape two male visitors who have come to the house of Lot, not knowing that the visitors are actually angels of God (Gen. 19:1–11). In a similar story, the men of Gibeah want to rape a Levite who is staying as a guest in a local home (Judg. 19:16–26). 

Both of these stories are intended to expose crass immorality, but most interpreters regard that immorality as being evinced more through the intention of violent rape than through the intended intercourse with a same-sex partner. 

Indeed, in the Judg. 19 narrative, the rape is carried out upon a woman, and it is nevertheless harshly condemned, with severe consequences. As for the incident in Gen. 19, other references to Sodom in the Hebrew Bible view that city as a symbol of immorality in general, not specifically of homosexual desire (cf. Ezek. 16:49–50, where the sins of Sodom are gluttony and various instances of social injustice). 

In the NT, however, Jude 7 equates the sin of Sodom with “unnatural lust” (lit., “pursuing other flesh”). This could be a reference to the desire of men to have sexual relations with other men, or it could refer to the unnatural lust of mortals for angels.

The texts from Leviticus seem to inform two references in the NT in which the Greek term arsenokoitai is included on lists of persons whose behavior is condemned: in 1 Cor. 6:9, the arsenokoitai are listed as wrongdoers who will not inherit the kingdom of God; in 1 Tim. 1:10, they are named as people who do “what is contrary to the sound teaching” and, accordingly, as people who are lawless, disobedient, godless, sinful, unholy, and profane (cf. 1 Tim. 1:9). 

The precise meaning of the word arsenokoitai in 1 Cor. 1:9, has been translated as “sodomites” (NRSV, NJB), “homosexual offenders” (NIV), and abusers of themselves with mankind (KJV); in 1 Tim. 1:9, it has been rendered “sodomites” (NRSV, RSV), “perverts” (NIV), “homosexuals” (NJB), and “them that defile themselves with mankind” (KJV). 

Although the word arsenokoitai does not occur anywhere else in Greek literature, it is an obvious combination of arsen (“male”) and koitai (“to lie with [i.e., to have sex with]”); accordingly, most scholars maintain that Paul probably had the aforementioned texts from Lev. 18:22; 20:13 in mind when he used (or possibly coined) this term. 

The arsenokoitai condemned in the NT are men who lie with males in a manner prohibited in the Leviticus Holiness Code, though the question of whether such men should be called “homosexuals” and of whether their activity should be deemed an example of “homosexuality” remains in dispute (often owing to what those English terms are thought to imply or convey). 

This discussion is complicated somewhat by the occurrence of another term in the “vice list” of 1 Cor. 6:9. The word immediately preceding arsenokoitai is malakoi, which literally means “soft people” and which has also been translated in a variety of ways: “male prostitutes” (NRSV, NIV), “the self-indulgent” (NJB), and the effeminate (KJV). A common view among modern scholars is that the two words malakoi and arsenokoitai should be taken together as describing the passive and the active partners in a sexual act between two males; both participants, then, are condemned.

The most extensive biblical reference to sexual acts between same-sex partners (and the only biblical reference to such acts between women) is found in Rom. 1:26–27. There, such activity is mentioned as an example of the perversions that follow when humankind refuses to give glory and thanks to the one sovereign God (see Rom. 1:18–25, 28–32). 

Paul views such activity as evidence that God’s judgment is in effect; because people did not honor God as God but worshiped images, God gave them up to “degrading passions.” Specifically, “their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another” (Rom. 1:26–27). 

Paul views such sexual behavior as “shameful acts” and as the products of “a debased mind” (Rom. 1:27, 28). Again, whether the people described by Paul in this text should be called “homosexuals”—and whether the actions described should be regarded as instances of “homosexuality”—is not in dispute.

Furnish, V. P., & Powell, M. A. (2011). homosexuality. In M. A. Powell (Ed.), The HarperCollins Bible Dictionary (Revised and Updated) (Third Edition, p. 388). New York: HarperCollins.