The Film 1946: Where Dr. Jeffrey A.D. Weima Gets It Wrong
This is in response to Dr. Weima’s article found here:
He begins his article quoting from Proverbs 26:4-5. Ironic for him to be arguing from a position of “clarity”.
1 Peter 3:9 offers this additional wisdom:
Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.
I do not think that Dr. Weima is a fool, nor, in fact, evil. I am often astounded by his brilliance and commend his scholarship highly. In his article, The Film 1946: Hollywood Gets the Bible’s Teaching on Same-Sex Acts Wrong, I respectfully disagree with his interpretation of Paul.
I will agree with Dr. Weima that the “more important point, however, is that it ultimately does not matter what the translation committee of the RSV did in 1946 or, for that matter, what any other translator either before or after 1946 has ever done in rendering the Greek word arsenokoitai in 1 Cor. 6:9. What matters is the meaning of this word intended by Paul, the inspired biblical author who was divinely led to use it.”
This is the point where we diverge.
The Judaism of Paul’s Day
Dr. Weima asserts that “the Judaism of his day was unanimous in denouncing homosexual activity.” It is difficult to see where this assertion is supported as there are very few extant Jewish writings from and before the first century beyond the Scriptural witness, the Apocryphal writings, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. In order to reach his conclusion one has to employ a circular argument (I believe the Old Testament says X and thus the Judaism of Paul’s day must have certainly believed that it said X.) One must also stretch the Sodom and Gomorrah story beyond gang rape and broken Bedouin hospitality laws in a way that Jewish commentary on the text consistently rejected in order to approve the few Apocryphal references (Jasher 19:1-7, 19:45-53, Jubilees 16:5-9). One must also pretend that the Talmud (500 CE) compiled from Mishnah (up to 200 CE) and Gemara (500 AD) give us an accurate picture of Rabbinic thinking in the time of Paul and that they spend a substantive amount of effort addressing the topic of homosexual behavior. This simply isn’t the case. The testimony of the early texts are sparse and deal with situations that do not address same-sex intimacy.
The most that we can say is that it is quite likely that homosexual behavior would have been considered taboo in the time of Paul, that it would have been so for the religious community of his day, and that he would have certainly lived within the reality of that culture but that to infer that this was what Paul intended in his corpus is an argument from silence. The fact that the Apocryphal writings don’t deal with it at all and that Talmud doesn’t address anything approaching the issue until centuries later implies that homosexual behavior is not on the religious or cultural radar. History from all external sources demonstrate that homosexual relationships and sex are happening but certainly not in the abundance or with the cultural broadness that would require a New Testament response.
This brings us back to “the meaning of this word intended by Paul.”
There is a word for something but it ain’t that.
Dr. Weima is betraying a little bit of cynicism in his argument. He knows, as most competent Biblical scholars know, that the word arsenokoitai is a difficult word to translate. He also knows that the majority of pastors and those in the pew are largely unaware of that and tend to be guided by their translations and appeals to the authority that he has as a 63-year-old seminary professor of New Testament. He also is very selective in his use of language by drawing only from Septuagint sources.
Right away I am going to grant the following assertions: Paul is certainly drawing from Leviticus 18 and 20. Arsenokoitai is a compound word that means “male” and “bed”. The people of his day would have understood what he meant.
What does not follow, however, is that this “euphemistically refers to sexual acts that take place on a bed”. This is an imposition on the text based on a wooden translation (into English) of what is ultimately a wooden translation (into Greek).
The Hebrew for the text in Leviticus 20:13 is וְאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר יִשְׁכַּב אֶת־זָכָר. The words of importance here are ISH (man) and ZACHAR (male). There are two problems here. The first is that it should be ISH and ISH if the text was talking about sex within a same-sex relationship. It makes absolutely no sense for the Hebrew text to diverge in its word choice if it were talking about same bedding same. The inclusion of ZACHAR rather than ISH is conspicuous.
We could, as Dr. Weima is wont to do, translate this in a literal wooden fashion: man and male. That stilted approach still ignores the fundamental question: why the difference?
This is where we interpret Scripture within Scripture and rather than travel outside of the sitz im leben to make an appeal to texts unrelated (ie. Dr. Weima’s assumption that Romans 1:27 is directly related to the definition of arsenokoitai when there are significant reasons to doubt that Paul is addressing the same subject matter in the text. As an example see Robert Gnuse, Romans 1:26-27 condemns the Cult of Isis, not Homosexuality, https://doi.org/10.22259/2694-6296.0803004, also this: https://theleftreverendlebowski.substack.com/p/romans-1-doesnt-say-what-you-think ) we ought situate ourselves within the text of Leviticus itself where the use of the term and later Jewish interpretation give a different context.
ZACHAR is used in the book of Leviticus in the context of Tabernacle and Temple. It refers to the offerings (male animals without blemish, Leviticus 1,2,3,4), children (Leviticus 12) ceremonial cleanliness (Leviticus 15) and those dedicated for religious duty (Leviticus 6, 27). The word conveys more than a simple question of biology but innocence and purity. It draws us into the sacrificial system, closeness to the Holy of Holies, those things that must not be defiled. Now one can certainly say that this is true for all of God’s people but within the book of Leviticus the word ZACHAR is being reserved for specific purpose.
Evidence for this is certainly available in the Jewish tradition. Shlomo Yitzchaki (also known as Rashi whose medieval commentary on the Tanakh and the Talmud is considered an essential interpretation of the ancient Jewish texts) looks to the precepts of Leviticus 18 and 20 and offers the same idiomatic comment for both verses: as paint in a tube. The euphemism being an obvious reference to the practice of applying makeup to boys for the purpose of prostitution either for feminization or to create an illusion of innocence/virginity/cleanliness/freedom from disease (techniques employed by sex traffickers for centuries).
Dr. Weima is correct in stating that Paul is making an Old Testament allusion but the more plausible understanding of that allusion is that he is not referring to the question of sex within a same-sex relationship but instead to something heinous: prostitution, child abuse, sex trafficking, rape. These were things that were going on in the world and specifically the religious world around him. These were the things that the Gentile converts were coming out of (and likely falling back into). These were the temptations that the Jewish Christians were beginning to explore with their newfound freedom and access to a larger relational community.
Same-sex marriage, relationships, and sex were certainly a part of the world that Paul lived in, but those things would have been a small and hardly controversial topic within the church that he addressed. Cultic prostitution from those exposed to Isis in Rome, Aphrodite in Crete, or Demeter in Athens? Those would have been pastoral concerns in everyday life. It makes little sense that Paul would address specks when planks were before him.
This brings us to Dr. Weima’s argument: that if Paul was going to specifically talk about exploitive relationships, he would have used the Greek word for it: paiderastês. Why would Paul have done that? Certainly, he was fluent in Greek and could have used that term but he was also a Rabbi, trained in the Law, and they had their own word for that. A Levitical word. One that explained the deep offence, the abomination if you will, in desecrating those whose innocence ought to be preserved and defended from those men who would violate it. One that did so in the fuller context of relationship with a holy God in holy places: arsenokoitai.
The Teachings of Jesus
Dr. Weima is, once again, tapping into a cynical argument in his treatment of Mark 7:21-23. He will insist that porneia means “sexual immoralities”. He will also draw a line between this teaching of Jesus and Leviticus 18 and 20 even though there is no specific, textual or linguistic connection between the two passages. He, again, knows that this rendering of the word is a little more nuanced than that.
I’ve treated it here in greater depth: https://theleftreverendlebowski.substack.com/p/unchastity
The TL;DR: Porneia in the Bible means prostitution. The first time you find it in all of antiquity being used in a broader sense was by Gregory of Nyssa hundreds of years after the fact.
He betrays his complementarian reading of Scripture (a hermeneutic that has never been affirmed by a Synod of the Christian Reformed Church and one that certainly cannot be used to bind the conscience of our officebearers – we have simply said that there are two different conclusions that one can draw from the Bible regarding women in church office) in his treatment of Matthew 19 and divorce (again a tenuous connection of issues held together by the cynical need for evidence making).
I’ve treated that here: https://theleftreverendlebowski.substack.com/p/the-natural-order-of-things
The TL;DR: Dr. Weima’s complementarian treatment of the text falls flat.
Jesus did not deal with the question of same-sex intimacy. Not because the Judaism of his day was clear on the matter (see above) but because he had real problems to solve. He did deal with the unfaithfulness of Israel in their covenant relationship with God. He was there at the creation of all things and certainly had access to the complexity of the universe beyond the knowledge of his day. The stretching of the text to make Jesus say what he did not say betrays Dr. Weima’s rhetoric.
Concluding Remarks
Dr. Weima is a brilliant scholar. I have learned a lot from him. He has been an important part in the formation of my pastoral and my Christian identity. I am grateful. I do not consider him to be foolish or evil.
I do think that his arguments in this case fail to rise to the occasion. There is simply too much textual and historical evidence that provides a better accounting of what Paul meant.
Is the movie without flaws? No.
Are there parts of the textual argument that they make that have weakness? Sure.
Is the overarching point the movie – that we ought take a good-faith look at our translations and our assumptions to see if we’ve made a mistake – an important one? I don’t think that is an unreasonable request from a 21-year-old seminary student. It is certainly the job of a 63-year-old seminary professor who knows better.
An endnote: Anonymous or not, dear Abide critic, I have dealt with the content of Dr. Weima’s article Biblically, in good faith and reasonable scholarship. There are a number of men within the Abide community who do not deal in good faith and have, in fact, dealt dishonourably with those who disagree with them. I’d rather deal in frank and open communication but this is what some of yours have left for us.
Endnote #2: I’ll deal with Philo and Josephus in a future post. My initial response: they are following in the same tradition of dealing with prostitution and pederasty. In fact, their treatment of porneia is essential in understanding the references to Jezebel and Balaam in the book of Revelation not as a sex problem and rather a prostitution problem vis a vis prophetic imagery around Israel and their harlotry with other gods. Reading same-sex relationship, as Loader does, into their work is the fruit of modern assumptions on translation.