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The “Distorted Christian Tradition” of the Sodomy Myth (1)

Not everything that exists in the Church must for that reason be also a legitimate tradition; in other words, not every tradition that arises in the Church is a true celebration and keeping present of the mystery of Christ. There is a distorting, as well as legitimate tradition……..[and]….. consequently tradition must be considered not only affirmatively, but also critically.

-Fr Joseph Ratzinger “The Transmission of Divine Revelation”,

quoted by Salzmann and Lawler “The Sexual Person” p214

If Pope Emeritus Benedict can argue in this quote (as a young theologian) that some of Catholic tradition can be “distorted”, or (later, as pope) that the lesson of St Joan of Arc is that theologians and cardinals can be mistaken - who are we to argue?

Joseph Ratzinger, Peritus

Salzmann and Lawler in their book on Catholic sexual ethics use a sociohistorical approach to demonstrate that much of what is currently presented as “constant and unchanging” traditional teaching on the subject is in fact the outcome of a long process of this “distorting tradition” that the young Joseph Ratzinger referred to. One particular example of this, with horrendous consequences for gay men and lesbians everywhere, has been how Christians have distorted the story of Sodom in Genesis 19. A superb exposition of how this has occurred can be found in K. Renato Ling’s “Love Lost in Translation“,, a comprehensive liniguistic and literary analysis of the biblical texts that refer or appear to refer to homoeroticism.

Historically the destruction of Sodom in Genesis 19 has has been used to justify systematic persecution of people in homoerotic relationships. In fact, no other biblical text has had such sinister repercussions for s-called sexual minorities. In the penal codes of some countries today, one still finds the medieval concept of sodomy.

-Love Lost in Translation, p241

Note the last sentence in that quotation - the word and concept of “sodomy” was a medieval invention (as shown by the historian Mark D. Jordan in “The Invention of Sodomy”). In later centuries, that concept was used to justify the active hunting down and execution of thousands of people accused of it, along with others accused of heresy. In some of those countries that still have the concept proscribed in the statue books, sex between men can still result in a death sentence for those found guilty. Yet, as Ling shows by a careful linguistic and literary analysis of Genesis 19, and of all related texts in the Hebrew Bible (which he calls the “First Testament”), and as understood by Jewish scholars and commentators, the passage does not in fact deal with male homoeroticism - or with any other kind of sex. What the passage does in fact condemn, is the very behaviour that the persecutors of gay men and lesbians are themselves guilty of.

Biblical “Knowledge”

The assumption that the sins condemned in the story of Sodom were sexual rests on the interpretation of the words, “Let us know them” in Genesis 19.5, because, as everyone knows, “to know” in the biblical sense means “to have sex with”. However, what “everyone knows” frequently turns out to be entirely false, and so it is in this case. By an extended linguistic analysis, Ling shows clearly that although the meaning in the bible can be sexual, it is actually so in only a tiny proportion of its occurrences. (He cites a range of scholars who concur in finding a percentage of only 1 - 2% of cases, where the meaning is sexual). Furthermore, he notes that where the meaning is sexual, the verb is used in conjunction with other words that make the context clear - accompanying words which are not found in its use in the story of Sodom. He also closely examines the entire passage, Genesis 18 as well as Genesis 19, for clues in which he finds a carefully constructed literary form which using extensive pattern and repetition., with “know” in Gen 19.5 repeating the usage earlier in the passage, where the meaning is definitely not sexual. So, Ling finds that linguistic analysis of the passage does not support the interpretation of the offence of Sodom as a sexual one.

The Pontifical Biblical Commission states clearly that sound biblical interpretation requires analysis of any text against the context of the Bible as a whole. Ling does this, by scouring the entire Bible, First Testament and Second (more familiarly known as the “New Testament”), for all references to Sodom and it’s sin. That sin is clearly a grave one, as there are numerous references to it elsewhere, often used as a benchmark, a measure of grievous sinfulness. What does he find? Throughout the Bible, First Testament, Second Testament and Apocrypha, the overwhelming consensus is that the sin of Sodom concerned two core ideas: injustice and oppression of the weak or marginalized, and the refusal of hospitality to strangers. How ironic it is, that those who refuse hospitality in church to LGBT Christians, or who campaign to preserve secular discrimination and injustice to sexual and gender minorities, are themselves guilty of the grievous sins so strongly condemned in the story of Sodom - but which they perversely cite in defense of their own , discrimination, and persecution of “the other”!

Ling goes on to show that this distortion over two millenia of tradition, is a specifically Christian one. Nowhere in Jewish readings, he claims, is there the same interpretation of Sodom as a condemnation of homoeroticism - until very recently, when a small number of Jewish commentators have done so - influenced by the Christian writers..

Quite how this Christian tradition has distorted the original sense of Genesis 19, was for me the most fascinating part of Ling’s entire analysis of the story (which, spread over five chapters, represents about a third of the entire book). That, I will go into in the second part of this account, which I will publish later,

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