A Highly Hierarchical History: Same-Sex Relationships in the Biblical World

“We” usually take for granted that sex is, or should be, a matter between consenting adults, without coercion or pressure. Subordinate and dependent relationships easily lead to exploitation and oppression. But our ideals for sex are very different from the ancient world. And when we scratch the surface of our Western societies, we often find that practices rather often deviate from the ideals and have more in common with antiquity than we would like to admit. 

See also Dirt, Shame, Status: Perspectives on Same-Sex Sexuality in the Bible and the Ancient World (Eerdmans, 2024).

By Thomas Kazen
Stockholm School of Theology
University College Stockholm
January 2025

In some parts of the world, homoeroticism is no longer a controversial issue, while in others it is still hotly debated, or just hushed down. Although the concept of homosexuality is rather modern – the word first appeared in 1868 – the ancient world of course knew of homoeroticism. But they did not understand sexual orientation the way we do today.[1]

There is little in the Bible about same-sex relationships, but the little we have is condemning. That is, there are a few texts condemning the anal penetration by one free man of another man of the same status. But to say that the Bible condemns “homosexuality” is in fact an anachronism. That does not mean that the ancient authors would accept what we today call homosexuality. They would most probably not understand us and our perspectives.

Now, if we step back for a moment we realize that many people today don’t understand this either. Because the “we” and the “us” I speak of assumes a Western, liberal, tolerant, and scientifically informed worldview. The opposition, whether contemporary or ancient, is often based on a hierarchical worldview. In the ancient world, hierarchies were taken for granted and governed everything, sexuality included. And this is the root of the problem.[2]

“We” usually take for granted that sex is, or should be, a matter between consenting adults, without coercion or pressure. Subordinate and dependent relationships easily lead to exploitation and oppression. But our ideals for sex are very different from the ancient world. And when we scratch the surface of our Western societies, we often find that practices rather often deviate from the ideals and have more in common with antiquity than we would like to admit.

Human beings are not necessarily hierarchical – at least not always. Many scholars think, for good reasons, that our prehistoric hunter-gatherer predecessors were less so, but as homo sapiens invented agriculture and developed a more sedentary lifestyle, and societies grew into chiefdoms and states, hierarchical organization became functional. But with hierarchies come advanced networks of relationships and dependencies, including levels of rank, status, and honor, with subordination, servitude, slavery, and shame as the flip side. All of this shapes sex.[3]

We usually talk of having sex with somebody else. This assumes a mutuality that of course must have existed in the ancient world as well – people had similar emotional lives and we do have depictions of love and infatuation in ancient texts. But in a deeply hierarchical society, sex, like everything else, is part of a system of social and political relations that is built on subordination and supremacy. The competitive dominance of free males is crucial and constitutive for such societies. And this applies to the ancient world.

This means that the so-called hegemonic masculine behavior included a dominant and penetrative sexual role.[4] While we usually think of asymmetric sexual relationships as problematic, they were the norm, also in the Biblical world. This explains why, for example, the Greeks, the Athenians in particular, found sex with teenage boys acceptable while we think the very opposite. In a traditional, hierarchical society, a free male could in theory have sex with (or perhaps “against”) anyone who was subordinate, whether woman, child, or slave, as long as that person was not under another free male’s domain, and regardless of gender. This is a slight exaggeration and did not apply always and everywhere, but it is only slight. This is why sex with “loose” women or prostitutes was usually not problematized, why sex with one’s own slaves was common, why sex with another man’s slave was no big deal but could be paid for or cleared in retrospect, and why the Greeks developed their pederastic practice of sex with boys. The latter was considered “complicated” and surrounded by rules, mostly unwritten and not always followed. Sex with children below the age of twelve was hybris and completely unacceptable, but teenage boys could be courted and wooed, given gifts, and even sung to. In theory, the boys should not be aroused and active, nor should they be penetrated. But ancient authors, from Plato to the comedy writers, imply that such decorum was not always kept. Nor did such relationships always end when the boys became overage, that is, too hairy – an unfortunate but unpreventable process that the Greek erotic poets complain about (Anth. Pal. 12.30, 39). (The Romans were less delicate and less troubled.)

In practice, Greek pederasty served a similar function as courtship does today – or rather did, a century or two ago, when our societies were more hierarchical on the surface than now, but allowed some agency for women. In the ancient world – and please forgive me for generalizing – decent women were often out of reach for men. At least among the Greek elites, married women were rather secluded and daughters were kept strictly. Marriages were arranged and were mainly social and economic transactions. Pederasty was perhaps an outlet, especially for free elite males.[5]

Our sources rarely reflect the whole of society. But hierarchy permeated it at all levels. An hierarchical view of sex explains a whole lot. Take for example the Middle Assyrian Laws from the 11th century BCE.

MAL A19–20
If a man secretly spreads rumors about his neighbor and says, “everyone fucks him,” or in open quarrel tells him: “everyone fucks you,” and further: “I can prove” but cannot prove and does not prove, then they shall give him fifty lashes; he shall serve the king for a whole month; they shall cut his hair; he shall also pay 3,600 shekels of lead.

If a man fucks his neighbor and they prove it and find him guilty, they shall fuck him and castrate him.

With apologies for the coarse language, I prefer to translate the Akkadian verb nâku (niaku) with “fuck” rather than “sleep with,” since the latter indicates a mutuality which is not at hand. The verb suggests unauthorized intercourse. The “neighbor” (Akk. tappāʾu) is a companion, a colleague, a clan member, a peer, somebody with the same social status, an equal. This is the whole point. A free male – because those are the addressees of such texts – must not penetrate another free male of the same status. Sex is penetration and penetration is an hierarchical act that establishes a power relationship. The problem here is not sex or even sex against another male per se, since the punishment meted out includes penetrating the perpetrator. The crime is exposing an equal to the shame and degradation resulting from being treated and penetrated like a woman. It’s in this light we must read and interpret the prohibitions against male-male intercourse in the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17–26).

LEV 18:22
With a male you must not lie woman-lays (miškəbê ʾiššâ), that is an abomination (tôʿēbâ).

LEV 20:13
And a man who lies woman-lays (miškəbê ʾiššâ) with a male, the two of them have done an abomination (tôʿēbâ). They shall die indeed. Their blood [guilt] is with them.

The demand for applying the death penalty to both in the latter version differs from the Middle Assyrian laws, but the logic is basically the same. The root of the problem is that the hierarchical order is transgressed and one of the men is shamed by being penetrated by the other – this is the likely meaning of the Hebrew text. Leviticus 20:13 perhaps assumes that this is not a case of coercion, since both are declared guilty. By attaching disgust language to the condemnation, the author(s) evoke strong negative emotions and connotations of impurity to the behavior.[6]

The assumption in all of this is, of course, that women are by nature subordinate and subject to sexual penetration. For women it would be shameful to act otherwise, for example taking an active role. But since women cannot by nature penetrate, little is said about same-sex relationships between women in the ancient world. And when female-female sexual relationships are discussed or portrayed in Greek and Roman literature, it is almost always disparagingly, and one is assumed to play the penetrative part of the man by making use of a fake penis (Gk: olisbos). The only exception is the fragmentary first-hand evidence from Sappho of Lesbos (7th century BCE), whose poems suggest an attitude quite different from homoerotic male poetry, which is usually quite coarse. There is little of hierarchy and domination in Sappho – something later ancient interpreters could not really understand, but they understood her, too, along the lines of male asymmetrical sexual dominance behavior.[7]

So we find this hierarchical, and by necessity also misogynistic, background against which we must try to understand and interpret texts that denounce same-sex sexual acts. This is the default setting also for the two Pauline texts usually appealed to in the debate. In 1 Corinthians 6:9–10, Paul assumes such an understanding when he excludes various categories of people from the kingdom of God.

1 COR 6:9–10
Do you not know that unrighteous people will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deluded: neither people engaging in shameful sex (pornoi), nor idolaters, nor adulterers (moichoi), nor “softies” (malakoi), nor “male-bedders” (arsenokoitai), nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor abusers, nor robbers, will inherit the kingdom of God.

The passage does not focus on sexual acts only but mirrors traditional vice lists known from moralizing and especially Hellenistic Jewish contexts. I translate fairly literally, because this text has often been mistranslated and the two categories malakoi and arsenokoitai have been thrown together into “homosexuals” or “men who have sex with other men”. But this is both anachronistic and deceptive. It makes us think in terms of reciprocity.

There are no simple equivalents to these two words. Malakos simply means “soft” or “weak” and could be used disparagingly about men who were perceived as effeminate or feminized, including men who took on the “passive” role in a penetrative intercourse. Arsenokoitēs is a rather odd word construction that means something like “male-bedder.” When the Septuagint translates the Holiness Code’s condemnation of the man who lies “woman-lays” with another man, the word arsēn is used for “man, male” and koitē for “bed, lying” (in a sexual sense). For a Greek-speaking Jew, arsenokoitēs is understood to refer to a male who lies “woman-lays” with another male and penetrates him, against the prohibition of the Holiness Code. And the other man, who allows himself to be penetrated, or is forced to do so, could be termed a malakos.

We tend to think in terms of sexual orientation. The ancients usually thought in terms of hierarchy, status and shame, and in terms of active (penetrative) and passive roles. The unknown author who wrote the pseudonymous Pauline first letter to Timothy, echoed Paul, but now the kingdom is out of sight and the focus is on legal obedience.

1 TIM 1:8–10
But we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, considering this, that the law is not there for the righteous, but for the lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and the sinful, the unholy and profane, for those who commit patricide and matricide, for murderers, for adulterers, “male-bedders,” kidnappers, liars, perjurers, and any other who oppose the sound teaching.

Just like in 1 Corinthians, sexual acts between males are condemned together with a voluminous vice list, which are rooted in Jewish polemics against the idolatry of other nations. But the “softies” are missing here; only the penetrative part is explicitly condemned.

This background in anti-idolatry polemic becomes especially prominent in the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans – the classical “homophobic” New Testament passage. Paul’s setting is taken from the Wisdom of Solomon, chapters 11–15, where idolaters are scoffed for being so dumb and stupid that they worship inanimate things, images of animals, and the like. This is due to ignorance and lack of knowledge of the true God and only leads to immorality, says the author in so many words. Paul picks up this type of critique against what is considered false worship in Romans 1 and relates it in condensed form. These people exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images of beasts and birds and reptiles. For this reason, says Paul, did God hand them over to all sorts of immoral and evil behavior.

ROM 1:24–32
Therefore, God handed them over through the desires (epithymiais) of their hearts to impurity (akatharsia) so as to dishonor (atimazesthai) their bodies with each other. They exchanged God’s truth for falsehood and venerated and worshiped creation instead of the creator—he who is blessed forever, amen. Because of this, God handed them over to dishonorable passions (pathē atimias): Their females exchanged the natural “use” (physikēn chrēsin) for that [which is] against nature (para physin), and similarly males also abandoned the natural “use” (physikēn chrēsin) of females and were inflamed with a yearning for each other in that males practiced shamefulness (aschēmosynēn) with males and received in themselves the necessary payment for their error (tēn antimisthian hēn edei tēs planēs autōn en heautois apolambanontes). And as they did not consider keeping God in mind, God handed them over to an insufficient mind, to do that which is improper, filled with all kinds of injustice, wickedness, selfishness, and evil, filled with envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice, becoming gossipers, slanderers, god haters, violent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil and disobedient to their parents. They became ignorant, unreliable, impassible, and merciless. Although they understand God’s decree that those who do these things are worthy of death, they not only do them, but also approve of others performing them.

Some of these formulations have influenced Christian thinking and served to justify homophobia through the ages. Here, again, we find sex between males being part of a traditional vice list. Paul talks of exchanging the natural “use” or “intimacy” (chrēsis) for an unnatural “use.” This refers to sexual intercourse, which is conceptualized either as natural (physikē) or against nature (para physin).

An interesting thing is that it is unclear what unnatural intercourses are supposed to consist of for females. From what Paul says about men it is reasonable to think that he refers to sexual acts between women. But sex against nature for a woman in Paul’s time could also mean taking an overly active role in intercourse, taking pleasure in the act, or possibly engaging in anal sex. Paul could very well be referring to sex between women but we cannot be sure. There are no relevant texts from the Hebrew Bible that say anything about sex between women.

Paul’s statements about sex between males is also subject to different interpretations. It is clear that he condemns it. But what does he say? Males yearned for each other, abandoned their “natural ‘use’ of females” and acted shamefully with other males. Paul thinks that by necessity there will be some payback for this (tēn antimisthian hēn edei tēs planēs autōn). This “reward” is something the men involved will receive (apolambanontes) in themselves (en heautois). What does he mean more precisely?

Some people think that Paul refers to the wide anuses that some were considered to incur by allowing themselves to be penetrated by other men too often. If this seems far-fetched, remember that several ancient Greek comedies, in a derogatory manner, ridicule men who allowed themselves to be feminized by taking on the woman’s role in intercourse between males and mock them for their large anuses. We can’t be sure that Paul thought along such paths, but it’s quite possible.[8]

Paul’s negative stance is quite easy to explain against his background as a Hellenistic Jew and the role that the Holiness Code came to play in Second Temple Judaism and among Christ followers alike. But the underlying assumptions are highly hierarchical and patriarchal, including a view of women as inferior. To penetrate a male, to treat him like a woman, is to violate his honor.

It is true that some ancient thinkers did consider women as capable of both social agency and learning. Plutarch, for example, wrote:

PLUTARCH, AMAT. 754D
If the nurse rules the infant and the teacher the child, the gymnasiarch the youth, and the lover the boy, who when he grows up is ruled by the law and by the commander—since no one is his own master or independent—what would be so strange if a sensible older woman governed a young man’s life?

But even if the context here is a love relationship between an older woman and a young man, the default setting is a clear power order, within which also pederasty found its place. What Plutarch argues for is the possibility of a reverse asymmetry, but the baseline remains the same.

Plato explains pederasty as “heavenly love,” which “has no part in the feminine but only in the masculine, because when men love boys they love “that which is stronger in nature and has more reason (nous)” (Symp. 181c). They begin to love boys only when they begin to possess reason, which is when they get a fuzzy chin (Symp. 181d). This is quite in line with Strato’s homoerotic poetry a few centuries later, which praises the ages of boys between twelve and sixteen (Anth. Pal. 12.4).[9]

Built into these pederastic practices we thus find a kind of misogyny. Women in antiquity were generally regarded as lacking in nous and hence inferior as intellectual partners. Hetaera, untied companion women, were partial exceptions, but a decent, free woman should stay in her place and be subordinate to her husband or father. Honor was something that men should strive for and something that could be gained even by sexual exploits. Modesty or shame was a suitable posture for women, if they didn’t want to appear shameless. Euripides describes the gender roles well:

EURIPIDES, IPH. AUL. 558–572
Different are the natures of mortals, different are their ways, but the real good is always plain. Well-educated nurturing leads to great virtue (aretan). For [a sense of] shame (to te gar aideisthai) is wisdom and brings the gift of well-founded insight into what is decent (to deon), and then good repute leads to timeless fame in life. Chasing virtue is great: for women according to the hidden Kypris [= Aphrodite; i.e., by a discrete erotic life] and for men, on the other hand, innumerable forms of order (kosmos) lead to the growth (auxei) of a greater city.

Honor and shame, together with the hierarchical social order, also governed sexual relations. Seneca the Elder tells about the orator Haterius who defended a freedman, that is, a man who had previously been a slave, who was accused of having acted as a passive partner (concubinus) to his former owner, now his patron.

SENECA THE ELDER, CONTROV. 4.PRAEF.10
Shamelessness (inpudicitia) for a freeborn is a crime, for a slave a necessity (necessitas), and for a freedman a duty (officium).

In practice, different rules applied for free males, for slaves, and for freedmen who were now in a client-patron relationship with their former owners. What was shameful for one was fitting for another. Shame and honor were always relative to the social ladder – and also to gender.

At the time of Paul, Stoic ideals of moderation (sōphrosynē) and self-control (enkrateia) were gaining ground. Passion and desire (epithymia) should be combatted by reason (nous). Paul’s writings very much reflect such ideals that also, or even primarily, included control over one’s body, and sometimes led to ascetic excesses.[10]

In the highly hierarchical setting we have portrayed, with its misogynistic overtones, these ideals were associated with male strength and honor, while women were considered emotional, easily seduced, and often shameless. One should not be surprised at such projection of male characteristics onto the other sex, but the negative effects in history, politics, economics, and religion are clearly visible until today. Within such a setting, same-sex relationships in the sense we like to think of them today, find it hard or impossible to gain a hearing, but are consistently understood within frameworks of hierarchy, honor, and hegemonic masculinity. Sex is asymmetric and in some relations that brings shame. I am convinced that neither Plato, nor Paul, would understand our discourse today.

Nor do many people in our contemporary world. Sex, in whatever constellations, is a complicated matter. There is no room to delve into its evolutionary and biological background, which explains and complicates matters further.[11] But we usually aim for symmetrical relationships and mutuality. Some relationships that brought honor in antiquity we regard as shameful, and some that we think are shameful or even deem oppressive and illegal were associated with honor in the ancient world.

It is true that Paul, as well as his near-contemporary, the Roman Stoic Musonius Rufus, at times display tendencies toward a mutuality that was not so common in their time.[12] But it is only a partial and small step. Today we aim for quite a different world. And then ancient notions of sexuality must be completely renegotiated.[13]

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