Speaking as the original poster, I am seeing many fascinating points being brought up here, and I thank you all for that. While I am at it, the subject of the prohibition of homosexuality during the Old Testament brings up another question, and I am going to post it now. I welcome everybody’s viewpoints.
The Bible tends to make a big deal about David doing things that were forbidden. Why would it not also make an example of him doing homosexual acts, which are also forbidden?
All this crap about what the Greeks do is irrelevant, as they did not have such prohibitions. It doesn’t matter how much you use one verse that literally means something different to connect you to one culture that you assume is connected to another culture in which a practice is common. I can make connections that tenuous with any verse in the Bible. To claim that that’s using Occam’s razor is ridiculous. It’s three levels of tenuous connections being used to prove something, when the simple answer is that, it was forbidden, and violations were usually recorded.
Except where he does stuff that’s forbidden and it doesn’t make a big deal about it - as in the example of getting his son to murder his enemies he’s sworn not to kill shows.
Also, it is not known whether homosexuality was forbidden at the time of David.
We have no idea if it was forbidden at the time. The Bible was redacted some five hundred years after David’s death. The prohibition appears in Leviticus, but we have no idea when Leviticus was drafted.
Also, it was not I who was using the Occam’s Razor argument, but the other poster.
Using “sex” would only be out of context if they did not have a sexual relationship.
We aren’t talking about a Platonic friendship between a man and a woman, but one between two men. David can be seen as drawing a contrast - “Jonathan’s love for me was stronger and deeper than even a sexual relationship with a woman would have been”.
I am not familiar with Philistine military culture - on what do you base the idea that homosexual relations in the military were common?
Well, sure - Solomon was condemned for letting himself be drawn into the worship of other gods thru his marriages with foreign women. But the Bible mentions that specifically, to give the rationale for the condemnation. There is no mention of homosexual connections in the story of David, even though they mention other of his sins - his murder of Uriah, his taking of the census, etc.
How much contact was there between Greek and Hebrew culture during the period running up to the establishment of the Hebrew monarchy?
Serious question - I don’t know the answer.
Regards,
Shodan
It can of course be read both ways. It is entirely possible that all that was meant here is that Jonathan and David had a very close comerades-in-arms type of relationship.
Do not misunderstand - I am by no means arguing that they must have had gay sex. Not at all. I am simply arguing that the interpretation that their relationship was sexual isn’t an absurd anachronism.
Not much is known for certain about Philistine culture, particularly at that early date. The current thinking is that the Philistines were, essentially, Greek in culture and origin. This is drawn from their pottery and early building remains, which are the same as those of Mycenaen Greece.
The Hebrews clearly had much contact with the Philistines (in the Biblical account, for example, David himself ends up working as a mercenary for them).
The existence of homosexual relationships between warriors at that early date is suspected, but not of course known for sure. It is speculated that the origins of [well known, later] “classical period” homosexuality in the Greek military lay in the initiation of aristocratic youth into miltary duties in tribal times predating the classic period, and presumably predating even the Mycenaen period: there is some hard evidence for this (see The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations In Human Societies By James Neill).
The Iliad, insofar as it accurately reflects this Mycenaen world, is in large part about just such a relationship - between Achillies and Patroclius. That is certainly how later Greeks interpreted it. While the Iliad was written down some 200 years after David’s time, it is supposed to reflect events occurring some two hundred years before that.
So, on the assumption that Philistine culture around the turn of the millenium was similar to Greek, and on the further assumption that it had a military structure similar to theirs, and on the yet further assumption that this aristocratic military culture would have been known to the Hebrews who were busy both fighting against it an acculturating to it, it is not wholly anachronistic to postulate that such relations would have been known at the time.
Thinking it might have been seems like more than a stretch to me.
Thanks for this, but, as you mention, the well-known period where the younger “squire” serves as a lover to his superior “knight”, as seems to be the case with Achilles and Patroclus, might be equally an anachronism. Or at least a case of Greeks projecting an aspect of their present culture back into the mythic stories supposedly set in the past.
ISTM that those who wrote down the stories about David would have had much more of the same point of view as those who wrote down Leviticus and the story of Sodom and so forth - for them, homosexual behavior would have been a scandal. And would be condemned in the same way the other kings of Judah and Israel were condemned, for falling into the ways of the sinful peoples around them, “worshiping at every high grove and under every green tree” as the phrase goes.
The notion that the scribes would have put it into the story of David and Jonathan that they were lovers, without any apparent comment or condemnation, seems unlikely.
This is especially so because of an argument I have heard elsewhere - that condemnations of homosexuality in the OT are based in part in reaction against the homosexual cult prostitution in cultures surrounding the Hebrews. Why the scribes would have singled out that aspect of surrounding culture to condemn it in Leviticus, and allowed it to pass uncondemned in Samuel, is hard to understand.
They had no problem pointing out many of his other sins, like adultery and murder. And not just for David - Jonathan was the one who violated his father’s oath not to eat anything during a critical battle with the Philistines, and Saul’s famous encounter with the medium at Endor are both mentioned in the text of the OT.
As well as even more horrifying examples of what the OT called “sins”, and what we would think of as “not committing war crimes”. As when Samuel hews some luckless defeated king to pieces before the Lord, because Saul wanted to save him for ransom. And you have already mentioned David making up a hit list for Solomon as wise advice as to what to do to consolidate his position upon attaining the throne.
Adultery, murder, war crimes, a hit list like a Mafia chieftain - “David was a man after God’s own heart”.
But whatever you do, don’t take a census, because God will get you for that!
:eek:
Regards,
Shodan
“The lady doth protest too much” is from Hamlet, not Othello. Gertrude says it while watching the play within a play.
Carry on…
It is certainly possible. However, the academic I cited appears to believe this was not the case - that the custom existed at least in Mycenain times, if not earlier. Clearly, the issue is not settled, as determining sexual practices in time periods that effectively predate writing is going to be difficult.
Not necessarily. Indeed, the negative evidence argues otherwise - it is hard to believe that throughout hundreds of years of Hebrew kingly history, not one single King ever had a homosexual relationship - yet none are condemned for this.
As you say, the OT is hardly silent on the transgressions of Hebrew kings. We have to either assume that (a) none ever transgressed in this manner; or (b) the OT does not bother to condemn them for it.
Well, that’s pretty easy to understand - because they are two very different things. If (say) the real “offence” is acting “like a woman” (that is, acting gender-inappropriate to the time), the very same person could find an “effeminate” (or even eunich) male prostitute horribly offensive, while celebrating without a qualm the comradely love between two (undoubtedly macho) warriors. It is only our own time that considers these two to be, basically, the same category - both “homosexual”. It is obvious that, whatever else David was, he was not “homosexual” in the meaning of “effeminate”. Indeed, he most certainly loved him some women - which fact gets him in trouble!
That is even assuming, which is not proven, that the Leviticus rule existed at the time of David. The OT is a collection of disparate materials written at different times and redacted hundreds of years after David’s time.
I think the larger point is that stuff commonly gets condemned in the OT if it is in the interests of the (presumably, priestly) redactors to condemn it. Where the OT is merely telling a ripping good yarn, or adding to the chronicles of the kings, the story may be told “straight” without moral commentary - hence, no comment on David’s “hit list”. Clearly, someone (probably some priest liable for taxes! :D) found census-taking horribly offensive.
cmkeller and others will almost certainly deny “redaction.” 
Agreeing with your point, but just emphasizing, there is fairly strong evidence that the redactor only added connected sentences and small bits here and there, not whole laws or sections. There are lots of different theories, and no way to verify any of them, but most common is the assumption that (1) David (if he existed) lived around the year 1000 BCE, (2) Leviticus existed in oral tradition but was probably written down around 700 BCE, and (3) the redaction of the Torah (first five books of bible, including Leviticus) was probably around 450 BCE.
See: Who wrote the Bible? (Part 1) - The Straight Dope about the writing of the Torah including Leviticus; and Who wrote the Bible? (Part 2) - The Straight Dope about the book of Kings (et al), which contain the David stories
First of all, I apologize for my long absence from this thread. Normally, I try to respond within a reasonable amount of time to threads I’m involved in, but my workload has been extremely large, with the Jewish holidays interrupting every week, I really have not, until now, had the kind of time to browse the Dope.
Rather than going back to quote everything that’s been said until now, I’m just going to respond to the main gist of Malthus’s most recent message that had responded to mine, as it relates directly to the OP:
The OP asks how gays were treated in OT times, and asks if there’s any evidence that it was different from the harsh measures described in Leviticus.
The only way that possible hints of a homosexual relationship between David and Jonathan are relevant to that question is if we assume that it is being portrayed as a good, or at least a morally neutral thing. If we allow for the possibility that aspects of David’s life that are mentioned without explicit condemnation might have indeed been condemned (as you posit regarding his “hit list” for Solomon), then it gives no indication of the acceptability or non-acceptability of homosexuality in OT times.
Therefore, if one was to use the David-Jonathan verse, one must be using it only to prove that homosexuality was not condemned in all Israelite circles during OT times.
However, this is where Occam’s razor comes in:
Occam’s razor says that one should not needlessly multiply assumptions. The only known texts we have that tell us anything about ancient Israelite sexual ethics are the ones in the Torah, which unequivocally state that male homosexuality is forbidden. You want to argue that those sources might not be reflective of David’s tribe or times? Fine. (Yes, Dex, of course I don’t believe in “redaction,” but I’m not fool enough to use that belief as a basis for argument here.) Then you have no sources that state one way or the other. There is certainly no source which indicates an attitude of permission for homosexuality in ancient Israel.
To imply that the verse which speaks of David’s love for Jonathan is a non-condemnatory reference to a homosexual relationship makes the unfounded, and unnecessary assumption that there existed a permissive (toward homosexuality, at least) sexual ethic in ancient Israel, that some proto-Biblical sources which are permissive had existed which were excised by the later redactors. Or perhaps you wish to say that “cultural diffusion” is a known factor universal to all cultures, and therefore not an assumption. Still, there is the unnecessary assumption that the culture diffused in the specific direction that takes one from ancient Greece in an era that we have no textual knowledge of, but for which we know something of their homosexual practices centuries later, to the Philistines, to the Isralites. (And BTW, the idea that Achilles and Patroclus had that sort of relationship - either in the context of the Iliad, or in the factual context of which the Iliad may or may not be entirely representative - is also rather controversial.)
On the other hand, one can interpret David’s and Jonathan’s love to be entirely emotional and not at all sexual, without making any unnecessary assumptions. And, if one wishes to consider that Leviticus might indeed be reflective of the sexual ethics of all Israel of the era, that reading in the text is entirely consistent as well. Hence, Occam’s razor.
cmkeller, you’re a Torah scholar and everything, but . . . uh . . . Samuel 18:
I don’t know how to read this except as just after David killed Goliath, and was thus a manly war hero, Jonathan set eyes on David, fell head over heels, and took off all his clothes. The passage practically hits me in the face with a big, gay rainbow trout.
I think the writer is describing this as a covenant friendship:
Cite.
Cite.
A modern equivalent expression of the exchange of clothing mentioned is “giving you the shirt off my back”. Gift giving was a sort of symbol of the bond. Jonathan and David were such good friends that they held everything in common, even clothing and weapons.
Seeing it as a prelude to a sexual relationship is projecting back onto a different culture, if you don’t mind my saying so.
Regards,
Shodan
I do not believe David and Jonathan had a homosexual relationship, but at least I can understand why some people would disagree.
On the other hand, I have absolutely NO idea why so many lesbians claim that Ruth and Naomi were lovers… especially since Ruth got married to a MALE at the first opportunity.
Well, if we are going strictly by Leviticus - there is in fact absolutely nothing in it which prohibits lesbianism. 
In fact, to this day, Orthodox Jews treat lesbianism as totally different from male homosexuality - it is merely lewd behaviour (because lesbians can’t be married), not an “abomination”.
Why can’t lesbians be married?
Orthodox Catch-22: no provision made for marriage aside from heterosexual. Therefore, lesbian sex is immoral, because unmarried. Mind you, it is no worse than other unmarried sex.
Note that many non-Orthodox Jewish groups cut this gordian knot by simply allowing homosexual marriage - but then, these same groups also tend to be the ones who ignore the prohibition against male homosexuality in Leviticus anyway …
I’m still confused. You said that lesbianism is different than male homosexuality because the two women can’t be married (to each other, I assume.). But two men can’t be married either so why isn’t their horizontal mambo-ing categorized as simply immoral as well?
No no no. Traditionally, marriage is unavailable for either gays or lesbians.
The difference is that, in Leviticus, male homosexuality is specifically labeled as bad.
However, there is no such specific prohibition on female homosexuality in Leviticus.
So there is no religiously-based reason, in the OT itself, for lesbianism to be “bad”. Other than the fact that, by definition, under traditional rules two women can’t be married.
I know that the Orthodox hold that lesbianism is also bad, according to the oral law - but it is not mentioned in Leviticus.
I see.
Thanks I’m glad you like it. Sorry for the delayed response.