Why Male-Male Sexual Intercourse is Prohibited in Leviticus

In the previous post I looked at the philological argument in Saul M. Olyan’s essay “’And with a Male You Shall Not Lie the Lying down of a Woman’: On the Meaning and Significance of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13,” in the Journal of the History of Sexuality 5 (1994): 179-206. There I suggested that Olyan’s conclusion regarding what is prohibited in Leviticus (not homoerotic acts generally but specifically anal intercourse; not only intercourse that would shame a free citizen by his taking the ‘feminine’ role but all intercourse between males regardless of status or role) is correct but based on two questionable assumptions.

In his essay  “Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13: Who is Doing What To Whom?,” JBL 120 (2001): 201-209,  Jerome T. Walsh rightly alerted us to one of these assumptions, namely that “knowing” and “lying down (with)” (“performing”) משכבי אשה are the same thing. But Walsh overlooked the other assumption, namely that אשה signals the one who “performs” the acts implied in the משכבים. It seems more likely that אשה complements the verbal notion so that the construct chain does not refer to “a woman lying down” but to “lying down with a woman.” The one who lies down with a male in the manner of lying down with a woman is therefore the one who makes the other experience משכב זכר.[1]

If the conventional rendering of Lev. 18:22 (and 20:13) is correct, e.g., “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination” (KJV) or “You must not have sexual intercourse with a male as one has sexual intercourse with a woman; it is a detestable act” (NET Bible), the prohibition addresses the one who penetrates another man rather than the receptive partner.[2]

Olyan argues that within Israel receptivity was “constructed as appropriate exclusively to females; it is gendered as feminine” (p. 188). By contrast laws in Athens, Rome and Assyria restrict behaviour in relation to status rather than biological sex. In other words, within Israel the one who penetrates had to be male, the one who receives had to be female. But elsewhere the critical thing was not biological sex but that the one who penetrates had a higher status than the one penetrated. Free male citizens penetrated legal inferiors, namely women but also slaves, foreigners or young men. “The receptive and insertive roles were primarily status-bound in both the Athenian and Roman contexts, though the language of gender played an important role in the manner in which these roles were discussed…to be penetrated was to be feminized, to surrender male status and authority” (p. 191).[3]

Olyan stresses that the Levitical laws themselves offer no reason as to why biological sex is seen as determinative. There is no explicit allusion to the “structure of creation” although he admits that the legislators “might well have had access to the creation story of the Priestly source with its command to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ …or to something similar” (pp. 188-89) and that later rabbinic commentators made the link between biology and “creation’s scheme” (p. 189).

Did the issue of shaming a male by relating to him as a female play no role at all in Israel? Not necessarily. As Olyan points out, a sense of the equality of all male residents may explain that Israelite men are prohibited not only from penetrating another male citizen (“your neighbour”) but any “male” (young or old, free or slave, Israelite or foreigner). But, as Olyan admits, this remains speculative. “In the final form of Lev. 18 and 20, issues of defilement are clearly paramount” (pp. 196-97, cf. p. 205).

This brings us to the question how the prohibitions in Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 relate to the other laws in these chapters. What if anything unites them?

First, Olyan discusses the “idolatry” approach of N. H. Smith and John Boswell. This “is probably the least convincing of the four to be discussed. It depends on the presence of Lev. 18:21, which refers to child sacrifice to an alleged god Molek, and/or a restricted and inaccurate understanding of [תועבה], the so-called abomination, a word that occurs in Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 with reference to the male-male intercourse described and in the framing materials of 18:26-30 with reference to all the violations enumerated in the chapter.” (p. 198). Olyan considers it “very likely” that Lev. 18:21 is secondary but in any case it seems to have been attached to a series of laws prohibiting sexual acts because of “a shared idiom and key word in verse 20” (p. 198) and not in order to associate all these acts with idolatry. 

Secondly, Thomas M. Thurston argues that Lev. 18:22 is best understood as reflecting a concern with living creatures conforming to their class (cf. Mary Douglas): “boundaries are blurred when a male plays the receptive role.” Olyan finds this attractive but rejects it on the grounds that “the lack of focus on the receptive partner” in Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 makes it “unlikely that the laws were ever motivated by a concern that the anally receptive male conforms to his class” (p. 199). I am maybe a little less convinced that we should make much of who is being addressed when it is clearly the act as such which is condemned (and for which the more active partner is maybe naturally made more immediately responsible).

Thirdly, S. F. Bigger argued for a concern with maintaining the “sexual purity of the individual” and suggested that the laws concern a misuse of semen, including the mixing of different types of semen (cf. the use of תבל, confusion in 18:23 and 20:12).[4] H. Eilberg-Schwartz suggested a concern with “threat to the integrity of the Israelite lineage” and D. Biale argued along similar lines that “the laws in question all proscribe acts that threaten procreation or its results (i.e., living children) or do not lead to it” (in Olyan’s words, p. 201). In her words (cited by Olyan, ibid.):

"What unifies all these acts is that they are considered affronts to procreation, either because they are sterile (homosexuality and bestiality), produce illegitimate progeny (adultery, incest), destroy progeny (sacrifice to Molech), or represent rebellion against the source of one’s own legitimacy (insulting one’s parents).”

Olyan finds Bigger’s theory “appealing”  and well grounded in the conceptual world of the text but considers his treatment of Lev. 18:22 “wholly inadequate.” He considers Eilberg-Schwartz’s presentation “more thoroughgoing and bolder” but laments the absence of concern for “mixing” in his argument. Maybe most importantly, these conceptualisations do not take into account that Lev. 18:22 “refer specifically to intercourse” (p. 202). If the concern were for “productive sexual relations…one might expect other genital acts that result in ejaculation but do not lead to conception to be proscribed” (ibid.).

Finally, Olyan himself suggests that “the reason for the proscription of male-male intercourse in the final form [of the text might] be to prevent two otherwise defiling agents – excrement and semen – from mingling in the body of the receptive partner” (p. 203). “Perhaps menstruation, parturition, ejaculation, and other events causing defilement according to P were only mildly defiling according to H, unthreatening to the continued presence of Israel in the land as long as no mixing with other defiling emissions was involved.” Olyan finds evidence of the seriousness with which H looked at such mixing by comparing Lev. 15:24 (P) with 20:18 (H) but it seems possible that 15:24 envisages the onset of menstruation during sexual intercourse, while 20:18 concerns sexual intercourse during menstruation. In other words, there may be a difference between deliberate and accidental infringement.

Ezek. 4:9-15 does indeed provide evidence for the view that (human rather than animal?) excrement was considered defiling by some priests (at least in connection with food) and we may compare Deut. 23:14 for the requirement to relieve oneself outside the camp. But excrement does not in fact play a role in Levitical law and even if one accepts that Lev. 18:22 refers specifically to anal intercourse, the move from “lying down with a male as with a woman” to the comingling of excrement and semen is maybe not as obvious as one might expect, if Olyan were right. I note that blood is considered very differently, depending on whether it is inside the body (“the life is in the blood”) or outside (shed blood = extinguished life = death). It seems to me questionable therefore that Israelite priests had a concept of defiling excrement inside the body, and more so as the defiling aspect of excrement outside the body is not raised in priestly law.

If this were my research project, I would now go to look at Thomas M. Thurston, “Leviticus 18:22 and the Prohibition of Homosexual Acts,” in Homophobia and the Judaeo-Christian Tradition, ed. M. L. Stemmeler and J. M. Clark (Dallas: Monument Press, 1990), pp. 7–23, as the proposal which appears to have the most merit.

---

[1] Later, however, the idiom is used differently. In 1QSa 1.10 (The Rule of the Congregation, also referred to as The Messianic Rule) משכבי זכר is parallel to “approaching a woman to know her.” So here משכבי זכר refers to what a man experiences with a woman. But the context is unambiguous allowing for greater flexibility. משכבי זכר may have been preferred because the focus is on the coming-of-age of the young man, the point (at twenty years of age) at which he is allowed to act the זכר.

[2] He speculates that “receptivity, if viewed as passivity, would perhaps have rendered them guiltless at a stage before the work of the final H tradents. In the final form of the laws of Lev. 18 and 20, purity concerns are paradigmatic: all the violations enumerated cause defilement and threaten the Israelite presence in the land” (p. 189).

[3] It is more difficult to establish the reasoning behind the Middle Assyrian Laws (see pp. 192-95) but status and coercion as well as repeated acts play a role and so they certainly differ from Leviticus in qualifying the prohibition of male-male couplings.

[4] I do not think that the rendering of תבל as “confusion” or “mixing” is sufficiently certain to offer a good foundation for this argument but a concern with intermingling of what does not belong together is evident throughout biblical law. 

Man, Bed, Woman - Analysing a Hebrew Idiom

With neither the book of Leviticus nor homosexuality being one of my specific research interests, I had not read Jerome T. Walsh’s “Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13: Who is Doing What To Whom?,” JBL 120 (2001): 201-209,  when it first came out. But I did some work on Leviticus recently and a blog post comment by Jerome T. Walsh whetted my appetite for his contribution.  In it he draws attention to Saul M. Olyan’s essay “’And with a Male You Shall Not Lie the Lying down of a Woman’: On the Meaning and Significance of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13,” in the Journal of the History of Sexuality 5 (1994): 179-206.

The two verses in question are widely understood to condemn gay sex but there remains disagreement as to whether the law specifically refers to anal intercourse or to homoerotic acts generally, and if the former whether only the penetrative role is prohibited or both the penetrative and receptive roles.

Comparing the idiom משכבי אשה with משכב זכר in Num. 31:17-18, 35 and Judg. 21:11-12, Olyan argues that Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 specifically refer to intercourse. Observing that in biblical law the verb “to lie down with” always has the penetrative partner as its subject, he concludes that Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 address the one who penetrates. He argues further that the emphasis on the guilt of both parties in Lev. 20:13 is the result of later editorial activity of the sort also evident in Lev. 20:10.

Olyan then notes

“The general proscription of male-male intercourse in Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 is striking in light of the evidence from Athens, Rome, and the Middle Assyrian Laws. In the classical cultural contexts, status plays a significant part in determining licit and illicit couplings between males and in the bounding of the receptive and insertive roles: a nonfreeborn male could be legitimately penetrated by any man; in contrast, a freeborn male could not be penetrated by another of equal status, nor by a male of lower status. In the Middle Assyrian Laws, , status, coercion, and repeated acts of receptivity appear to play a part in constructing the boundaries between sanctioned and prohibited behaviors among men. In contrast, Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 ban all male couplings involving anal penetration, seemingly those coerced and those voluntary; those with men of higher status, equal status, or lower status; those with men of one’s own community or another community. The comprehensive character of the prohibitions appears to antedate the activity of the final H redactors; there is no evidence that the two formulations were anything but general in scope” (pp. 194-95).

Olyan observes that “a rhetoric of inclusivity permeates much of H’s material” (p. 195) and suggests that this emphasis on equal status before the law “may be one reason why the prohibition of male-male intercourse…[is] apparently unrelated to the status of the insertive and receptive partner” (p. 196). He notes the use of the general designation “male” rather than the more specific “your neighbour” (which would point to equal status).

Walsh appreciates and accepts Olyan’s argument for reading these two verses as specifically prohibiting anal intercourse but takes issue with the claim that Leviticus is distinctive within the ancient world for its general disapproval of male-male intercourse without regard to status or role.

Walsh observes that Olyan made no distinction between the verb used in Num. 31:17-18, 35 and Judg. 21:11-12 (“to know,” i.e. “to experience”) and the one used in Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 (“to lie down,” namely with someone). Walsh argues that we must contrast “know” (experience of someone else’s action) with “lie down” (perform the action implied in משכב). In other words, to know משכב זכר (experience the penetration of a male) is the same as to perform משכבי אשה (act as the receptive partner) and to know משכבי אשה (experience a receptive partner) is the same as to perform משכב זכר (act as the male who penetrates). On this view, the prohibition in Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 could have been phrases as “You must not know משכב זכר“ (in analogy to Num. 31:18, 35; Judg. 21:11) or “You must not know a man למשכב זכר“ (in analogy to Num. 31:17; Judg. 21:12).

Walsh believes that the “male” with whom the addressee of Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 is forbidden to lie down must be the penetrator and hence “the person addressed by the laws is the receptive partner” (p. 205). In other words, what Walsh believes to be at stake in the law is not male-male sexual intercourse generally but the feminisation (surrender of male status and authority) of the free, male citizen of Israel who allows himself to be penetrated.

In fact, Olyan’s philological analysis lacked precision also in another respect which was overlooked by Walsh. Olyan observes that when a woman experiences משכב זכר, she can be said to experience “male penetration.” It is easy to conclude from this that משכב זכר means “male penetration” and therefore should be rendered along the lines of “a male having sex (with her)” but this is a fallacy because the alternative rendering “she having sex with a male” is also possible. The experience is the same but the grammatical description is different.

In terms of Num. 31:17 and Judg. 21:12 where the phrase is introduced with ל, i.e. “every woman who has known a man with regard to having sex with a male / a male having sex,” we could say that Olyan has failed to raise the question whether the construct chain משכב זכר specifies the object of the verb (knowing a man, namely knowing him as a male going to bed [with you]) or the verb itself (knowing a man, namely knowing a man in the sense of going to bed with a male). He apparently assumes the former but both ways of describing the experience would seem possible. On Olyan’s reading of the texts, it is not necessary to rule out decisively one of the options because the law condemns both the action of penetrating a male and a male being penetrated. But for Walsh’s argument it is absolutely critical that the construct chain can only be understood in one way, namely with the second noun (the postconstructus) specifying the performer of the action implied in the first noun (the constructus).

In favour of reading the construct chain משכב זכר with the male (זכר) as the agent of the verbal act implied inמשכב  is the observation that it is more commonly a man who is said to lie down with a woman rather than the other way round. But in Gen. 19:32-33 and 2 Sam. 13:11 women are said to lie down with a man, so it is clear that the idiom can work both ways. In favour of the more conventional reading “has known a man by sleeping with him” (NRSV, by way of example) is the observation that in every single occurrence in which the verb שכב refers to sexual intercourse in the Hebrew Bible the verb has an object, either in the form of a direct object (marked with את) or a complement, i.e. an oblique object introduced with a preposition (את or עם, the latter nearly always in direct speech, maybe suggesting a different register). Therefore, given that along with the act the agent is implied in the construct noun, we may expect the postconstructus to offer the complement. If so, the construct chain would work similarly to the one in 2 Sam. 4:5 which seems to be the only place other than the ones mentioned above in which משכב carries a strong verbal notion and is used in a construct chain.[1]

If משכב זכר can be read either way, as “bedding a male” (male = object) or “the bedding that a male does” (male = subject), it is difficult to argue that משכבי אשה cannot mean “the beddings of a woman” (woman = object) but must be read as “the beddings that a woman does” (woman = subject), as Walsh assumes.

In fact, the argument above in favour of reading משכב זכר as “the bedding that a male does,” namely the observation that it is more commonly the man who is said to bed the woman, now works against reading משכבי אשה as “the beddings of a woman” and especially so given the surrounding legal context in which the subject of the cognate verb is always a man. This leaves Walsh’s parsing of the construct chain without an argument in its favour, while the argument against remains, namely that in cases where משכב  refers to sexual intercourse we would expect a complement to be specified.

In sum, Olyan’s philological analysis can be questioned but his conclusion that  Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 ban all male couplings involving anal penetration appears to be sound.

I have offered a similar line of reasoning, focused on Walsh’s essay, in a guest blog post on Ian Paul’s blog.

---

[1] Ishboshet is said to “lie down the lying-down-of-noonday.” So if משכב הצהרים is the lying down “at noonday,” it should not be difficult to read משכב זכר as the laying down “with a male.” Elsewhere משכב refers to a place rather than an action, e.g. in 2 Sam. 4:7, 11.  

The (So-Called) Three Kings in Matthew's Nativity Story

Who were “the three kings” who came to worship Jesus? A few meditative reflections prompted by a comment in a sermon preached by Oliver O'Donovan and reprinted in The Word in Small Boats (Eerdmans, 2010), pages 16-18, on the wise men as intruders.

First, (verse 1) they seem to be the wrong people from the wrong place.

Magi from the East = magicians / astrologers, likely from Arabia or maybe Babylonia or Persia. The translation “wise men” may be an attempt to make them more respectable than they would have been in the eyes of loyal Bible readers at the time (Daniel 1:20; Isaiah 47:12-13). And note that the only other reference in the NT to someone of that profession is in Acts 13 (verses 6 and 8) and it’s not complimentary.

It is more than 1200 km from Babylon to Jerusalem, and another 800 km, if you came from further East, say Esfahan; in these cases it would have been a long, difficult, perilous and expensive journey. Even from Arabia it is a major journey. 

We, too, may consider some fellow worshippers the wrong sort of people from the wrong place. This report questions such an attitude and maybe encourages us to remember that for some the journey to Christian worship has been a very difficult one.

Secondly, (verses 1-3) they seem to be asking questions in the wrong place.

What are they doing in Jerusalem? Maybe their reasoning got in the way (“surely a child born to be king of the Jews must be in Jerusalem!”). Maybe the star had left them to their own devices for a moment, or maybe the star first led them to Jerusalem in order to get another part of the story going.

Certainly the confrontation with Herod highlights some of the implications of the kingship of Jesus. A different sort of king but one that does threaten (and frighten) the existing political establishment.

We may be tempted to put Jesus in a separate box, reserved for Sundays maybe. No, he must affect everything everywhere, not only in Bethlehem but also in Jerusalem.

Thirdly, they arrive in Bethlehem in a roundabout way and apparently at the wrong time.

If they had been truly wise, they could have gone to the Jewish Scriptures in the first place to find out that they had to go to Bethlehem. No need for a star, king Herod  and chief priests and scribes. Ok, they did need the star for the timing of the fulfilment of the prophecy. Except that they arrive not to find a newborn but a “child” (verses 9 and 11) already one year or so old. Too late to congratulate the parents on the birth of a child; too early to see the child enthroned.

But then our own journey to Christ was likely roundabout and in a sense we, too, arrive in the midst of time. The decisive event has happened (not only the birth but for us also the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ) but we do not see Jesus enthroned yet. The magi did not come to congratulate the parents but to offer homage to Jesus and it’s not too late for that. They offer homage to one who does not yet command homage.

We are in a similar situation. We have better reason, and maybe even a command, to pay homage to Jesus but he does not yet command worship with force. He invites worship and like the magi we need to trust the testimony before we see the full reality of his kingship and indeed divinity.

Fourthly, they are apparently doing the wrong thing.

They bring gifts. They are the only ones in the biblical nativity stories to bring gifts. And gifts which most people consider to be not particularly practical. In other words, they are responsible for the commercialisation of Christmas. All these gifts – all these things we don’t truly need…

I’m of course not entirely serious. Gifts that communicate joy are great, and the less they are needed the more they speak of grace. But gifts can be problematic.

If you’ve seen the Christmas Special of the BBC drama series Call the Midwife, you will have seen how Cynthia struggles with her call to the religious life in Nonnatus House, a High Anglican mission in the East End of London. She wants to become one of the sisters, but simply can't understand why Christ would want her when, as she admits, “I have nothing to give, nothing to sacrifice, nothing to offer up in exchange for all his love for me.” But that is grace, and we are closer to grasping it, if we realise that there is in reality nothing we can give Jesus that is not already his.

He could just take all the gold, frankincense and myrrh of the world, all the time and money we have, and he would not even need to ask our permission, but he loves to receive them as a gift because at its best giving and receiving presents is about relationships.

Finally, they are apparently still the wrong people on the wrong track.

If Jesus is “born king of the Jew” (verse 2), the Messiah (verse 4) “who is to shepherd my people Israel” (verse 6), what’s that got to do with people who are not Jews? What’s their relationship? And if they have a relationship with this king, why go back to their own country at all?

Matthew puts a lot of emphasis on Jesus being the son of David, the son of Abraham. It’s because the promises belong to the Jews but Gentiles can be fellow-heirs. And that is of course very encouraging for us who are not Jews. We don’t have the first claim on Jesus but we, too, have a claim. And we don’t have to become Jewish, we don’t have to be in a particular place with a particular people to belong to king Jesus. From now on every journey we make can be a route taken with Christ.

The Three Kings of Luke’s Second Nativity Story

Prefatory remark 1: The three kings of our nativity plays have their origin in the Gospel of Matthew where they are wise men and not necessarily three.

Prefatory remark 2: Luke’s first nativity story is that of John the Baptist.

The first king to be mentioned looks more than just a king – he is in fact an emperor. He was born as Gaius Octavius on 23 September 63 BC and came to power after a period of political unrest following the murder of his maternal great-uncle Julius Caesar who in his testament designated Octavian as his heir. Soon after his death, Julius Caesar was officially deified and Octavian began to style himself “son of the divine”.

“Celebrated as a hero after the strife of civil war, Augustus was considered the great source of peace for Rome. After defeating the enemies of Rome, he was celebrated as a great “saviour” to the people who would have likely been hopeless had victory not been achieved. The themes of freedom, justice, peace and salvation permeated his reign. Whenever the great deeds of Augustus were proclaimed, they were presented with the Greek term euangelion, which is translated, “good news” or, “gospel”.”[1] 

He looks like the one in charge because it is desire for a census that gets our story going. And, indeed, is it not one of the marks of a king or any comparable ruler that they determine the movements of little people even at great distance? There he is in Rome, a long way away from the backwaters of his empire here in Syria, Galilee and Judea but his decree impacts directly on the daily life of Mary and Jospeh and countless others.

The second king is easily overlooked because he has long ceased to be on the throne by the time our story begins. But David is in fact mentioned three times in the story. Bethlehem is said to be the “city of David” (twice) with regard to his origins (Jerusalem also holds a claim to being city of David, as the place from which he ruled over all of Israel) and Joseph is introduced as being of the family of David. No longer being on his throne, David’s impact on the story is more indirect but no less significant for it. In fact, the divine promises made to David got all this going to a more significant extent than a mere Roman decree. The Roman decree was the starting pistol but David, his life and the words he said, the words that were given to him, and the words attributed to him were the training over many years that preceded the race.

But who runs the race? It is of course the third king; “a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” When his birth had been announced to Mary he was introduced as Jesus (Saviour), the one who “will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” (Luke 1:32-33). Jesus is of course not yet enthroned as king within the nativity story but he is born to be king and the only one of the three who is still on the throne.

How does kingship work? I think we can say that all kingship is mediated through words. The King of the universe created the world through his word (Genesis 1) and upholds it through his word day by day (cf. Hebrews 1:3). We and everything else exist because of his command. He put what we call “natural laws” in place and he created humanity in his image to rule over the earth (Genesis 1:28). If God’s kind of rule is mediated through words, it is maybe no surprise that one of the key differences between humans and other animals seems to be our quantitatively and qualitatively different use of language but that’s for another day.

Augustus is introduced to us as an emperor who rules by his word. His decree is the starting pistol, as we have observed. The other two kings in the story are very closely related with words as well, even if not in the nativity story itself. Kind David is most famous for his psalms. They remind us that proper rule is exercised relationally, and especially in relation to God. Those are the best rulers who know themselves servants of God and are in a genuine relationship with him. (Religion, knowing oneself bound to God, like every good thing, has been put to wicked purposes. Not everyone who is or claims to be religious is in a genuine relationship with the living God. But, again, that’s for another day.)

David’s kingship is superior to the rule of someone who does not know himself accountable to God. True kingship does not rest on brute force to back up commands people have to obey but with words inspires others to follow.

Augustus is counting people so as to get the most out of them – both in terms of taxes, it seems, and in terms of propaganda. (Augustus seems to have been keen to show that during his rule the population decline was reversed.[2]) David governed God’s people by inspiring them to follow in God’s ways. His exercise of authority was not flawless but in many ways exemplary nevertheless.

So what about baby Jesus? He is of course, as John’s Gospel tells us, the Word of God that came to tabernacle among us.Words can be powerful, especially when backed up with force. It seems that God’s Word cannot but be powerful, given the unlimited resources at his disposal. But what seems impossible to us has been made possible in Christ. God takes on human flesh, becomes vulnerable, mortal.

To be sure, there is a great deal of power at work in Christ. Not for him meek acquiescence to demonic forces or gentle tolerance of illness and disease. He has taken on flesh to allow himself to be victimised but he decides when and how. (He was not going to die falling down a cliff in Nazareth.) Yes, there is power at work in Jesus and never more so than in his resurrection (and ascension) which is the moment at which he became king (e.g., Acts 13:33; Romans 1:4; Ephesians 1:20). If his word were not powerful, we would have no hope of resurrection life being spoken into us.

But the power is creative rather than coercive. If, put simplistically, Augustus ruled by counting people and David ruled by inspiring people, Jesus rules by drawing people to himself, the source of life. David prefigures Jesus in his vulnerability (especially during the significant period between anointing and enthronement) and in using words to inspire as much as command. But Jesus inspires by drawing people to himself, promising eternal life. While Augustus used the threat of death to secure obedience and David’s rule was limited by death (cf. Acts 2:29), the rule of Christ gathers his people in resurrection life.

As we stand again before the crib, we may reflect on our own use of words. Do we use words mostly to get what we want? Do we encourage and inspire others? Do we make room for the voice of others by our vulnerability?

Even more importantly, we may reflect on what it is that governs our lives: the demands out upon us by other forces, the inspiration offered to us, or the promise held out by the one born to be king? Where for us the emphasis lies will shape our experience of 2015 and beyond.

---

[1] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/thepangeablog/articles/unpublished-papers/behind-lukes-gospel-the-roman-empire-during-the-time-of-jesus/. One spelling mistake corrected (“Augustus”) and one instance of US spelling changed to UK spelling (“saviour”).

[2] Augustus counts his censuses among his great achievements, see http://classics.mit.edu/Augustus/deeds.html.

Believing in God and believing in fairies

Believing in God and believing in fairies are two completely different things. David B. Hart puts it well:

To speak of “God” properly, then—to use the word in a sense consonant with the teachings of Orthodox Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, Baháí, a great deal of antique paganism, and so forth—is to speak of the one infinite source of all that is: eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, uncreated, uncaused, perfectly transcendent of all things and for that very reason absolutely immanent to all things. God so understood is not something poised over against the universe, in addition to it, nor is he the universe itself. He is not a “being,” at least not in the way that a tree, a shoemaker, or a god is a being; he is not one more object in the inventory of things that are, or any sort of discrete object at all. Rather, all things that exist receive their being continuously from him, who is the infinite wellspring of all that is, in whom (to use the language of the Christian scriptures) all things live and move and have their being. In one sense he is “beyond being,” if by “being” one means the totality of discrete, finite things. In another sense he is “being itself,” in that he is the inexhaustible source of all reality, the absolute upon which the contingent is always utterly dependent, the unity and simplicity that underlies and sustains the diversity of finite and composite things. …

Yet the most pervasive error one encounters in contemporary arguments about belief in God—especially, but not exclusively, on the atheist side—is the habit of conceiving of God simply as some very large object or agency within the universe, or perhaps alongside the universe, a being among other beings, who differs from all other beings in magnitude, power, and duration, but not ontologically, and who is related to the world more or less as a craftsman is related to an artifact. …

At a trivial level, one sees the confusion in some of the more shopworn witticism of popular atheism: “I believe neither in God nor in the fairies at the bottom of my garden,” for instance, or “All people are atheists in regard to Zeus, Wotan, and most other gods; I simply disbelieve in one god more.” … Beliefs regarding fairies are beliefs about a certain kind of object that may or may not exist within the world, and such beliefs have much the same sort of intentional shape and rational content as beliefs regarding one’s neighbors over the hill or whether there are such things as black swans. Beliefs regarding God concern the source and ground and end of all reality, the unity and existence of every particular thing and the totality of all things, the ground of the possibility of anything at all. Fairies and gods, if they exist, occupy something of the same conceptual space as organic cells, photons, and the force of gravity, and so the sciences might perhaps have something to say about them, if a proper medium for investigating them could be found. … God, by contrast, is the infinite actuality that makes it possible for either photons or (possibly) fairies to exist, and so can be “investigated” only, on the one hand, by acts of logical deduction and induction and conjecture or, on the other, by contemplative or sacramental or spiritual experiences. Belief or disbelief in fairies or gods could never be validated by philosophical arguments made from first principle; the existence or nonexistence of Zeus is not a matter that can be intelligibly discussed in the categories of modal logic or metaphysics, any more than the existence of tree frogs could be; if he is there at all, one must go on an expedition to find him.

The question of God, by contrast, is one that can and must be pursued in terms of the absolute and the contingent, the necessary and the fortuitous, potency and act, possibility and impossibility, being and nonbeing, transcendence and immanence. … Evidence for or against the reality of God, if it is there, saturates every moment of the experience of existence, every employment of reason, every act of consciousness, every encounter with the world around us. (The Experience of God, pp. 30, 32, 33-34)

Cited from https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/god-elves-and-silly-atheists/

Studying Theology

“Theology is primarily speaking about God; but, since God is by definition not available for inspection as an object in the laboratory, this entails speaking about the imprint of God on human lives – and thus what humanity looks like when exposed to an active, intelligent transcendent reality. Many who study theology may not believe for sure that this sort of language describes a real state of affairs in the universe rather than just a state of affairs in the human mind; but they study because the images of humanity and its world that come from such language remain fertile, provocative and significant at many levels.

For those who do believe, for whom the biblical languages and the history of religious reflection and action still represent a world to inhabit, theology has the added excitement of being the exploration of a relationship more comprehensive and transforming for human beings than anything else.”

The Right Reverend Dr Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Canterbury, in a letter dated 26th November 2009 commending the first issue of The Oxford Theologian. He expresses “the conviction that what is done here in the name of theology really has the capacity to help build that critical and creative spirit without which no culture can live – and, for those of us who do think it’s about a reality greater than the human mind alone, the capacity to open us further to a transfiguring grace, a worship of intellect and heart together.”

Dreams in the Joseph Story

There are three sets of dreams in the Joseph narrative. Each set contains one dream relating to grain (bread/wheat) because the provision of food plays a key role in the story.

The first set are Joseph’s dreams. They foreshadow his eventual rule (cf. Genesis 37:8). The first dream has sheaves of grain bowing to Joseph's bundle of sheaves. Its duplicate reinforces the aspect of rule by featuring sun, moon and stars (cf. Genesis1:16; see also Psalm 136:8-9).

The second set of dreams belong to people who used to serve the king. The dreams feature bread and wine. Given that the dreamers used to be Pharaoh’s baker and chief cupbearer, this is not surprising. But bread and wine are significant in their own right (cf. Genesis 14:18). They speak of sustenance and gladness (cf. Psalm 104:15). There is arguably nothing in Biblical theology that encapsulates God’s provision for his people better than bread and wine.

Pharaoh’s dreams are the final set. They feature cows and grain. As with the previous set, grain/bread comes in the second position, as if to underline that the theme introduced in the very first dream of the narrative is the one towards which everything is heading. But why does its duplicate feature cows? Most likely because the Hebrew word for cow relates to the word for being fruitful (already used ten times in the book of Genesis; see also 41:52; 47:27; 48:4). The final use of the root in the book of Genesis is to describe Joseph as a fruitful vine (49:22, twice).

The dreams tell a fuller story than it might at first appear to the eye. Joseph’s dreams are not simply about him ruling over his siblings, let alone ruling it over them. The dreams speak of God’s provision being offered in leadership that is fruitful for others.

PS: "Pharaoh" comes from the Egyptian for "great house" but this designation of the king of Egypt sounds a little like the Hebrew for "fruitful".

NB: When the King gives life, he gives abundanlty (wine), hence the cupbearer is restored. When the King withdraws life, even the basics (bread) are gone, hence the baker is executed.