William Loader Uniting Church of Australia - wrong on homosexuality

The ABC Australia tried to convince Australian Christians that the Bible supports homosexual orientation and homosexual marriage. The ABC gathered two like minded authors to write the misleading article - William Loader (Principal UCA WA Bible College) and Robyn Whitaker ( Bromby Lecturer in Biblical Studies at Trinity College Theological School, Parkville Melbourne, Australia.

William Loader has written several books on homosexuality and a series of Anglican collection of essays. All of which promote the sin of homosexuality. 

For example: Loader says the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19 is not about homosexuality but gang rape. Then we get a glimpse of what Laoder really is thinking: Genesis 19 has nothing to say about homosexuality or mutually consenting adults of the same gender expressing their desire and love.
Proponents of this new view of Sodom follow an interpretative strategy that is appropriately described as revisionist. By one way or another, this interpretation claims that any condemnation of homosexuality in such literature is either erroneous or an irrelevant interpretation for twenty-first-century culture.

Such interpreters fail to find homosexuality linked to Sodom in Scripture—at least Scripture before 2 Peter and Jude or in the Old Testament Apocrypha. They believe that a sexual interpretation began only with the Pseudepigrapha, Jubilees 13:7; 16:5–6; 20:5–6. Therefore, the homosexual interpretation is clear only in The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs of the Pseudepigrapha. Even then, some would restrict the condemnation of homosexuality to pederasty. They would not find any reference to “adult-adult mutual relationships.”80

Although such interpreters as Bailey, Boswell, Scroggs, Countryman, and Nissinen do not all speak uniformly on the matter, there is general agreement, and they arrive at the same basic prohomosexual position.

The revisionists claim that the writers of the Apocrypha associate Sodom only with pride or inhospitality, or perhaps other sins, but not with sodomy. However, the full meaning of pride or arrogance and of such terms as abominations, sins, ungodly, wickedness, folly, failure, and confusion of sex in Ecclesiasticus and The Wisdom of Solomon do not fit the revisionists’ restrictive use.

This view also fails to consider all the pertinent passages where Sodom or sodomy is either explicit or strongly implicit. The neglect of such texts contributes to the seriousness of the misinterpretation. Those who hold this view fail to discuss Ecclesiasticus 10:13–18; 49:1; 4 Ezra 2:8–9; 5:7; 7:106; and other passages in The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs where reference to sodomy may be implicit.

The claim that the Pseudepigrapha, particularly Jubilees and Testament of Naphtali, associate sexual sin, and particularly sodomy, with Sodom for the first time is false. The association is implicit and early in the Apocrypha. Chapter 1 showed that the sexual, homosexual meaning originates in Genesis 19 itself. Also, terminology in both the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha is sufficiently similar to support the existence of a unified witness throughout the intertestamental period.

Testament of Naphtali does use such unique, explicit terms as “changed the order of nature,” but these words are a legitimate interpretation if the Old Testament narrative (Genesis 19) refers to sodomy. Jubilees is not any more explicit than Ecclesiasticus. Indeed, 2 Enoch is the most explicit of all (in the long recensions), with other testaments and The Letter of Aristeas being quite explicit as well. These observations seem valid whatever the dating and interdependency of these books.

The claim that Jewish reaction to Greek pederasty influenced the Pseudepigrapha to associate (wrongfully) sodomy with Sodom is also in error. Only in one place does the term meaning “pederasty” occur (T. Levi 17:11), and here there is no link with Sodom. In contrast, Philo uses several terms for pederasty. Instead, authors virtually everywhere assume adult-adult homosexuality (even 2 Enoch 34:1–3 balances the reference to “child corruption” in 10:4–5). 

It is Old Testament terminology, including standard euphemisms (such as “know” in Genesis 19 and Judges 19 for sexual intercourse), that influenced the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (e.g., in the use of abominations and pride), as one would expect in Jewish literature.

Because there is no single Greek or Hebrew word meaning “homosexuality” and writers used euphemisms, there is a lack of explicit references. However, implicit references to homosexuality and contextual studies make the vice at least as frequent in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha as in the Old Testament. The fact that references become more explicit in later intertestamental or New Testament times does not mean that the vice first arises or that authors read it back into the Sodom story. Instead, they reflect increased contact with pagan Greece and Rome, requiring more forthright candor.

The claim that the pseudepigraphal Book of Jubilees and Testament of Naphtali influenced 2 Peter and Jude to associate (wrongfully) sodomy with Sodom is false. We should view these New Testament books as part of a stream of tradition regarding the sins of Sodom that began in the Old Testament itself. These writers use terminology consistent with the Old Testament: lawless deeds, ungodly, sensual conduct, and fornication.

The idea that 2 Peter and Jude got their homosexual interpretation from their dependency on intertestamental literature exceeds the evidence. Even a study comparing the series of judgments found in Peter and Jude with those in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha argues against any certain dependence. Peter and Jude have a different order of judgments: Peter omits entirely a reference to pharaoh; Jude puts events of the wilderness first (out of chronological order, and contrary, it seems, to the intertestamental books). Neither refers to giants before the Flood (angels take their place).

Those who wish to use the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha to eradicate sodomy or condemnation for it from the Old Testament or to eradicate condemnation of it where it is obviously present are proposing an extreme, unfounded interpretation. It is so radical in its tenets, so contrary to good exegesis, and so serious in its consequences for ethics then and now, that calling it “revisionist” and “prohomosexual” is not unfounded. In a sense, the revisionist view is not unlike revisionist interpretations of the holocaust of the twentieth century.