Does the Porn of Ancient Pompeii Help Prove the New Testament Isn’t Anti-Gay After All?
You likely know the history of Mount Vesuvius destroying the ancient city of Pompeii in 79 A.D. The volcano was thought to be extinct, and when it erupted, no one was prepared. The heat and ash quickly killed the citizens of Pompeii, preserving them nearly perfectly.
More recently, Pompeii was in the news when it looked like one unfortunate Pompeiian had been killed while — well, while spending time with the one he loved most. Take a look:
Now, as it turns out , this unlucky person wasn’t spending some quality time with himself. The heat of the volcano caused his muscles to flex, putting his body into this position after he died.
But the discovery raised an interesting discussion about the highly sexualized culture of Pompeii. The city’s residents are known to have had sexually explicit art on their walls. Excavations have also discovered many brothels, complete with sexual graffiti.
And aside from sexualized art, the preservation of Pompeii gives us a look into the culture of the Roman Empire around the time the New Testament was written. Like all works of literature, the New Testament is a product of its culture.
The Bible is, after all, not just a religious text but a history book. And in addition to that, it’s also cultural commentary.
A video by Rev. Canon Steve Chalke of the Open Church Network, takes the standard anti-gay “clobber verses” from the New Testament to explain why they’re not actually about why God hates queer people.
Chalke looks at the three clobber verses written by St. Paul — Romans 1:27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, 1 Timothy 1:9-10 — plus Matthew 19:12. The ruins of Pompeii illustrate the culture these texts were written in; a sexualized culture with a “fascination with the image of the stiff, erect penis — a symbol of power and pleasure.”
He then describes the culture of the Roman Empire, where homosexuality was very common:
If you were a man in Roman culture, so long as someone was your social inferior — a slave, a gladiator, a woman etc. — it was considered socially acceptable and respectable to penetrate them.
A married man would have a mistress for pleasure and a non-Roman boy for ecstasy. They called these people ‘infames’; those utterly lacking in social standing and deprived of most protections accorded to citizens under Roman law.
There is also much evidence that Roman women also engaged exploitative sex — typically with female slaves, gladiators or male castrated slaves — whose testicles had been removed or rendered inoperative, so that they could not produce sperm and lost their desire for sex but still had the ability to perform it.
Chalke says that verses like Romans 1:27 should not be read to condemn homosexuality but instead the use of sex as a weapon against those without power. As he says, “Every Christian believes God to be a God of love. It is no wonder that these abusive practices are condemned by inspired scripture.”
Chalke isn’t the first to claim St. Paul wasn’t anti-gay. Some scholars claim that when God tells Paul “Don’t call anything unclean that God has made clean,” God’s not (only) lifting the laws against unclean food. He’s also lifting the Old Testament’s warnings about “unclean” people, illustrated by Paul’s acceptance of Cornelius, the Roman centurion. And thus, if Cornelius is accepted, the Leviticus laws against homosexuality should likewise be rejected.
While interpretations like this look to the internal consistency of the Bible from a philosophical side, Chalke’s approach is historical.
As a main takeaway, check out this quote from Chalke:
We misunderstand Paul’s criticism of rituals that exploit power and abuse people and then, out of ignorance, use them to try to prevent people of same-sex orientation from finding loving, committed and fulfilling partnerships and of entering into, what I believe is, the holy institution of same-sex marriage. For the Church, the Bible is the cornerstone of faith and practice. It is time we took it more seriously. The Church has a duty to use every tool of modern scholarship available in this task.
Well said, Rev. Chalke.
How does this info affect how you think about New Testament homosexuality scripture?
This article was originally published on July 19, 2017. It has since been updated.
