How did the Mosaic law’s view of homosexual behavior compare to the views held by the surrounding cultures?
Israel’s neighbors practiced human sacrifice along with ritual bestiality, homosexuality, and promiscuity. Apparently, the most socially accepted form of homosexual behavior was male ritual prostitution,1 but homosexuality also occurred in brutal forms. Just as prisoners commonly rape other men in U.S. prisons as an expression of dominance, male prisoners of war were often raped as a symbol of their abasement and humiliation. Few legal codes of that period have survived to modern times. One code that did survive—the middle Assyrian laws—seemed to consider it intrinsically degrading for a man to be sexually molested by another. A man who falsely accused another man of playing the role of a woman in homosexual relationships could be castrated, as could a man who raped a social equal. But under these laws consensual homosexual behavior was apparently not punished, and even homosexual rape of aliens or men of lower classes may have been permitted.
In stark contrast, Gagnon declares that “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” (The Bible and Homosexual Practice, p. 56). William Webb explains how while Israel’s law was much more protective of the rights of slaves and women than were the laws of surrounding nations, it was also much stronger in its rejection of homosexual behavior. Both the Mosaic law’s concern for the basic human rights of women and slaves and its strict prohibition of all forms of homosexual behavior were strikingly “countercultural.” When the New Testament was written, it showed complete continuity with Old Testament law both in its advanced concern for human equality and its unconditional disapproval of homosexual behavior.2
The overall teaching of Scripture makes it evident that slavery, sexism, and homosexual behavior do not fit in with God’s original purpose for humanity. All three of these conditions diminish essential aspects of human identity and dignity. Slavery is “fundamentally incompatible with the created equality of human beings” and sexism is censured by the fact that “the Bible honors womanhood by affirming that men and women share equally in the image of God.”3 Homosexuality, like all other sexual sins, subverts the “one flesh” husband and wife ideal of Genesis 2:24. It diminishes the dignity and potential of human beings created in God’s image.
