LGBT justification - Leviticus Bible arguments

How significant are the prohibitions of same-gender behavior in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13? Are these passages limited to Israel’s purity code and her separation from the surrounding gentile nations, or are they universal?

The Revisionist Answer

The context limits the prohibitions to the cult or religion of Israel, as shown by the use of the word abominable (Heb. toʿeba, Gk. bdelygma).
These regulations belong solely to the purity laws applied to Israel in the Old Testament and have no on-going value as moral standards. These passages are never quoted in the New Testament as part of the Christian ethic.
Establishment of the death penalty for violators does not help determine whether the texts apply to the modern world. The texts have no relevance.

The Biblical Answer

Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 clearly describe homosexual behavior, with the second passage calling for the death penalty. The words abomination or detestable occur in both passages. Among the vices listed in the two chapters, this is the only one singled out as an “abomination,” and this use occurs twice. It speaks to severity and provides a link to Ezekiel 16:50, where the prophet identifies Sodom’s sin as an “abomination” (see pp. 43–45 for an extended treatment of this term).

As a whole, Leviticus 18–20 forms a special section within Leviticus that transcends Israel’s cult or ritual. In significance the text approaches Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, where the Ten Commandments occur. These texts are universal in scope. No mention is made of sacrifice, ritual, or ceremony, as in the rest of Leviticus. The sins of this section, commonly referred to as the “Code of Holiness,” are child sacrifice, religious prostitution, spiritism and consulting mediums, cursing parents, adultery, incest, bigamy, homosexuality, and bestiality. None of these are limited to Israel’s own purity code.

Other considerations support their universal significance. The New Testament cites Leviticus 19 as a universal code. Jesus cites Leviticus 19 as universal (Matt. 5:33, 43; 19:19; 22:37–40), as do Paul (Rom. 10:5; 13:8–10; 2 Cor. 6:14ff.; Gal. 3:12; 5:14), Peter (1 Peter 1:14–16), and James (2:8). Frequently they cite the “second commandment”: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (19:18). Surely they saw this section as embodying universal standards of morality. The prohibitions of Leviticus 19 repeat or reflect on the Ten Commandments, including prohibitions of stealing, lying, deceiving, swearing falsely, and cursing (19:11–12).

Although some instructions and prohibitions of chapters 18 and 20 are limited to Israel (distinguishing clean and unclean animals and having sexual relations with one’s wife during her menstrual period), most are not. 

The context itself distinguishes limited, cultic prohibitions from universal prohibitions. The reader is able to discern which laws are universal. In addition, the similarity of these chapters to the Ten Commandments and the New Testament’s applications of this section warrant consideration of most of these rules as valid. Prohibitions of homosexuality elsewhere in the Old Testament, ancient Judaism, the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, and in the New Testament also justify the interpretation that the prohibition is universal.

Application of the death penalty in 20:13 must be a factor in our consideration. It raises homosexuality from the level of a simple social or civil concern to the category of a crime against society.


Traditional Jewish Literature

What is the view of the traditional literature of the Jews? How do the Mishnah and targums view Old Testament references to homosexuality?

The Revisionist Answer
The traditional literature of the Jews as found in the Mishnah and elsewhere does not interpret the sin of Sodom as homosexuality. This literature is unclear in its understanding of the severity of homosexuality. More recent writings of the Jews have greater importance than does this ancient tradition.


The Traditional Jewish Answer
The Mishnah and those various targums that discuss homosexuality take the biblical passages as condemning it. The Mishnah (Sanh. 7:1–9:1) restates the penalty of death and groups homosexuality with adultery, incest, and murder. Yet it allows for atonement for the sin of homosexuality, as for adultery and murder. Later Jewish writings, such as the works of Philo and Josephus, follow the interpretation of the Mishnah and strongly condemn homosexual vice.



What do the Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha say about homosexuality? How does this Jewish literature written between the Testaments understand the references to Sodom and homosexuality?

The Revisionist Answer

This body of literature does not read the Old Testament passages as condemning homosexuality in general; rather they refer to some other sin, such as pederasty. Sodom is condemned for its pride and inhospitality.
Even if homosexuality is understood to be the sin of Sodom, this interpretation is wrong and linked to the sin of the angels before the Flood. These angels committed a sin “against nature.” 

In turn, this interpretation in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha has wrongly influenced various places in the New Testament (Jude 7; 2 Peter 2:6–8) so that they also link the sin with that of the fallen angels. All of these improper connections arose in the intertestamental literature because of Jewish aversion to Greek homosexual practices.

The Traditional Jewish and Biblical Answer

Various passages in the Apocrypha (Ecclus. 16:8; 10:13–18; 49:2) use such terms as abomination and arrogance—terms associated with homosexuality—to describe the sin of Sodom. Wisdom of Solomon 14:23–26 cites “confusion of sex” as one result of idolatry; this phrase may be rendered, “interchange of sex roles.” Wisdom 19:13–17 and 10:6–9 describe the sin of Sodom as inhospitality, as well as “ungodly,” “wickedness,” “failure,” and “folly” (see pp. 72–84).
The Pseudepigrapha even more definitely associate homosexuality with Sodom. Second Enoch 10:4–5a and 34:1–3 use stark language to describe sodomy. Third Maccabees 2:3–6 describes the Sodomites as acting “insolently” and becoming “notorious for their crimes.” 

Jubilees 7:20–21, 16:5–9, and 20:5–6 describe the sin of the Sodomites as “wicked,” “sinners exceedingly,” “defiling themselves,” “committing fornication in their flesh,” “working uncleanness on the earth,” “fornication and uncleanness,” and “pollution of sin.” Fourth Ezra 2:8–9; 5:7 and 7:102–31 refer to Sodom as coming under divine judgment. Testament of Naphtali 3:4–5 and 4:1 refer to the sin of Sodom as “wickedness” and that which “changed the order of nature” in a way similar to the sin of the angels before the Flood. 

Testament of Asher 7:1 connects the sin of Sodom with that of the angels. Testament of Benjamin 9:1 refers to the “fornication of Sodom.” Testament of Levi 14:6 refers to “the union” of Sodom, and 17:8 refers to unmentionable “pollution.” Levi 17:11 makes the only reference to pederasty in all of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, associating pederasts with adulterers, the arrogant, and those who practice bestiality. Other Testaments refer to “revolting gentile affairs,” “the evils of the Gentiles,” or “corruption in fornication.” The Letter of Aristeas 152 indicts gentile men for, among other sins, having “intercourse with men” and “defiling their own mothers and even their daughters."

The intertestamental literature is frank, not only in associating homosexuality with Sodom, but also in denouncing this as an evil gentile vice. The view of Sodom and its sin flows out of a plausible interpretation of the sin of Sodom found in the Old Testament itself and of the homosexuality described in Leviticus 18 and 20 as “abomination” or “detestable.” This literature does not distort the Old Testament. If certain New Testament passages reflect the terminology of this literature, they do so because this literature accurately reflects the sin of Sodom and the homosexuality of the nations that is prohibited in Leviticus.