Before I start, I’m simply looking at this topic from a historical perspective, with the express purpose of detailing what we can know about Jesus. I’m looking at this particular argument and that’s it.
Now to jump into the meme. When talking about sexuality in the ancient world, we have to be careful. We have to be careful as to not retroject our own views and understanding into the past. Sexuality wasn’t understood as it is today, and terms for homosexuality or heterosexuality didn’t exist. Those are new terms. Sexual norms in general could be very different in the past.
Same-sex coupling was known in the past. In Plato’s Symposium, there is an interesting story about early humans. They had four arms, four legs and two heads. Basically, the picture being painted is two humans combined at the belly button. Some were two men combined, others two women combined, and some a man and woman combined. They were able to move very quickly by spinning, and this ticked off Zeus. So Zeus put an end to that and split these humans into two. This explained the concept of soul mates and how we are trying to find our other half. The story is mythological in nature, but is meant to portray a truth.
The idea of same sex coupling was known in the ancient world, but it gets more complicated. There were different views, and different levels of acceptance. And it often mattered what sex you were, and what position in the relationship you were. For Roman society, same-sex relations among women often were just ignored as there was no penetration. For men, as long as you were the one penetrating another, it wasn’t that much of a problem, given that you were high enough in society. There was a hierarchy at play. And then you have pederasty among the Greeks, and later Romans (who just adopted it from the Greeks) which was often part of educating a young man, and at times, contained a sexual component, but not always. Most other cultures were not so understanding and it was something that a lot of criticism was leveled at both cultures.
Getting back to Roman society, same sex relations among men was based on an idea of unequal relationships. Simply, a male Roman could retain their masculinity as long as they were the one penetrating others. This quickly evolved into a relationship between the dominating figure and those being exploited. Those exploited often were prostitutes, slaves, or conquered people (non-Romans). However, this really is only true for the upper class. As we go down the social ladder, that power dynamic often vanished, and along with that, we get different views regarding what was acceptable.
The point is that ancient peoples didn’t have the same views regarding sexuality as we do. There often was a factor of hierarchy there, as well as some form of domination and exploitation. Simply, our idea of sexuality did not exist back then, and it’s not a straightforward idea. It was complicated.
That same-sex relationships existed before Jesus doesn’t really say much though when we consider the above. He doesn’t mention pederasty, even though the Roman Empire practiced it, and it had been around long before he was born. The world he lived in was formed by two cultures that practiced it, but he doesn’t mention it. That doesn’t lead to the conclusion though that he approved of it. It just means he never mentioned it, and there’s probably a very valid reason why.
There’s two main factors here. Jesus does teach about a lot of things. But he wasn’t creating an entirely new theology or philosophy. He had a much more focused message. So it was that message that he taught about. This isn’t uncommon for religious leaders or the like. They don’t touch on everything because it’s not necessary. There is often some background that can be relied on.
For Jesus, that background is Judaism. He was a Jew who was raised Jewish. He would have known the Hebrew scriptures, and probably quite well. It was the tradition he was raised in. And it was the tradition that he taught in. At times Jesus does interact directly with the Hebrew scripture and with Jewish ideology of that time. If he disagrees, he lets us know. Since Jesus does not bring up same-sex relationships, we can be certain that the most likely reason was because it wasn’t a topic he was concerned about. He simply fell back to the Jewish teaching on the subject. Or it may just have been something that never came up.
There is a second possibility though.
When we look at the Gospels we really only have a snapshot of the
life of Jesus. The vast majority of his life is never mentioned. And
we can be sure that the vast majority of his teachings have been
lost. Most put the ministry of Jesus at three years. That’s a whole
lot of preaching. When put into perspective, unless Jesus was just
repeating himself constantly, there’s a whole lot that we don’t have.
So we can’t be certain if he did say anything on the subject. All we
can say is that we have no record of it.
Where does this lead
the meme though? It’s speculative at best. We don’t know for sure if
Jesus ever brought it up. But based on the sources we do have, it
just wasn’t a topic that he dived into. And the assumption that we
have to come to is that the most probable reason that he doesn’t
mention it as far as we can see is because he had nothing to add. The
most probable situation here is that Jesus simply referred back to
Jewish ideology of that time.
But there’s a bit more. Enter Paul. Paul gives us the Jewish view of same-sex relationships. I’ll do another post on this later, but a note. If you have a Bible that has Paul using the term homosexuality, it translated the Greek there incorrectly. But Paul does talk about same-sex relationships being unnatural, and he says something about male anal intercourse, which he lists as a vice.
However, and this really is the key point that Paul was trying to make (and a point that we can see with the teachings of Jesus), is that we are not to judge. We all are guilty of different vices, we all come short, and because of that, we have no right to judge others. That is up to God.
When it comes down to it, this meme, and Jimmy Carter, are wrong. The argument simply doesn’t work. A better argument would have been that Jesus gave us the golden rule; love others as as you love yourself. Or, as Paul put it, we are in no place to judge others.