Jesus' Sexuality, What Was It?

[rjwould]

I was recently asked this by my friend Gary while having a cup of coffee with him. He told me he had been considering the question and had come down on the side of, 'yes', he thought Jesus may have possibly been gay. He laid out for me why he thought this and so I am offering it here for your consumption. I am going on memory so I may have temporarily forgotten some of his reasons, but if I remember them later I will add them to the thread.

He said that he and others he had spoken with about this have come up with a theory regarding Jesus, his sexuality and the truth behind the gospels.

I hope you give this an (virtual) ear before you dismiss it out of hand.

1) Gary claims it is possible that Jesus was not actually crucified for claiming to be the "son of god" or the "son of man", because many, many people at that time made similar claims, It was common language. He said he thought Jesus was murdered at the behest of the Jewish hierarchy because he was openly gay.

2) While the new testament gives clear evidence of Jesus' mother, both fathers, sisters, brothers, Aunt, Uncle, cousin and other acquaintances, there is not even a hint of any relationship with a wife or children of his own...not even a concubine.
I told Gary that while I agree with this fact, it does not prove he didn't have a relationship with any female.

3) The gospel of john section 21 states the following;

Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee?
[21] Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do?
[22] Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me.
[23] Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?
[24] This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true.

Gary says this is possible evidence that Jesus may have had an intimate sexual relationship with this disciple.

I informed Gary that the original Greek word for love here is "agapao", meaning "being fond of", not "eros", connoting a more sexual intimacy.

He said that he agreed with that but that in fact the gospels was written years later and was used as part of a cover up for Jesus' sexuality, and the original word may have been changed..

4) Jesus was in fact popular and very committed to the welfare of his community and religion. He loved his people...Gary insists that those in Jesus' village may have been aware of his open homosexuality and that was why none of them would or could commit to his new religion and take him seriously.
That, I thought was an interesting take on that part of the biblical account found in the gospels..

5) What broke the camels proverbial back in regards to the religious leaders turning the other cheek about Jesus' gay pride was when he went and got on that ass or colt (Matthew 21 and Mark 11) and finally became too flamboyant with that ride into Jerusalem with all the fanfare. They thought that he was just getting in their face with it at that point..
It is interesting..

So, what do you think about all this??

I personally am on the side of Jesus either not ever existing, or, at least, not as is traditionally portrayed in the Christian Bible.

I have read the Bible several times in years past when I was a "born again christian", and have since become very skeptical to say the least.

 

[rissablue]

Actually, I am glad you posted this. I've heard mentions of this before but only vaguely. It will be interesting to hear what comes up.

So, you are saying, Jesus was active in religion but had a posse of 12 disciples that may have accompanied him for religious reasons or other reasons.

 

[Madalch]

In a very similar thread, we will discuss what mithril tastes like.

 

[fishbob]

A $3 bill fictional character?
Kind of fun to make the argument to the fundies, but really - big frickin' deal.

 

[ceo_esq]

Several years ago there was a thread discussing this. It was prompted by a poster called Vinnie who, as I recall, appeared to have as solid a grasp of New Testament scholarship as almost anyone else on this forum. Vinnie had written a very clever essay the thesis of which was that the historical Jesus was likely a homosexual.

Sadly, the website where Vinnie had published the essay appears no longer to exist, and I can't find his essay anywhere else. However, you can read some snippets of it quoted in the discussion that ensued, and get the general gist from Vinnie's posts. Here's the original thread:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22813

It appears that Vinnie started similar discussions on several other internet fora as well, and you could probably glean even more of his argument from those boards.

 

[Darth Rotor]

I was recently asked this by my friend Gary while having a cup of coffee with him. He told me he had been considering the question and had come down on the side of, 'yes', he thought Jesus may have possibly been gay. He laid out for me why he thought this and so I am offering it here for your consumption. I am going on memory so I may have temporarily forgotten some of his reasons, but if I remember them later I will add them to the thread.

He said that he and others he had spoken with about this have come up with a theory regarding Jesus, his sexuality and the truth behind the gospels.

Depends on how you deal with Jesus.

As Divine?

Sexuality is rendered irrelevant.

A man who was martyred, but otherwise another Jew of old Judea, and a travelling rabbi?

Not enough info to determine.

So, speculate away, and enjoy the fun with circumstantial evidence.

I rather liked Holy Blood/Holy Grail, for all its shortcomings, as an attempt to figure that sort of thing out.

DR

 

[Mobyseven]

12"

 

[Horace Wheeljack]

With all the magic tricks he knew, whether male or female, he would have made someone very happy.

 

[plumjam]

Passionate cross dresser

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Passionate cross dresser

Looks closely at PJ's avatar.

Don't project.

 

[Oroborus]

I read the title to this thread an the only thing that popped into my mind was "Objection!, relevance.".

A bit like asking what conditioner Achilles used don'cha think?

 

[PAC]

On the slight chance that he existed (this is not to say he was the son of god) then he was human. Sexuality is part of the human experience.
Why would anyone think that he would not have been sexual except christianity which has a sad relationship with sexuality.

I agree with Fishbob that it would be fun to throw this at the fundies but I am already damed for eternity in thier eyes and I have little energy to play with them anymore! But maybe next week...

 

[the PC apeman]

12"

Oh no. He was hung like this... ::holds out hands about six feet apart::

 

[Olowkow]

Quoted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus'_sexuality

Jesus' praise for those who have made themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven has, for many centuries, been interpreted by Christian theologians as a metaphor for chastity, since the term "eunuch" normally referred to a castrated man.[1] Some Christians (including, according to a few sources, Origen) went farther than this by interpreting Jesus' words literally and hence physically castrating themselves as an act of devotion.[2] The early Church Father Tertullian, who wrote that Jesus himself lived as a eunuch,[3] likewise encouraged people to adopt this practice.[4]

Isn't this where Catholics get priest celibacy?

 

[Frozenwolf150]

There are numerous passages from the Gospels that, when taken with the same interpretive liberties that Christians often use to formulate their own arguments, could very easily be seen as evidence that Jesus was gay. While there may be accounts in non-canonical gospels that Jesus was married and had children, mainstream Christianity vehemently denies this theory. Therefore I can only work with what we already have. This is from my God Loves Dick list, which I can't post here in its entirety because I suspect it might violate a few rules, and is probably NSFW.

The Life of Jesus:

63. Jesus was never married, even though this would have gone against Hebrew customs as well as the Adamic covenant in Genesis. Christians even go to great lengths to argue against the theory that Jesus was married and had children.
64. Jesus spent most of his time hanging around single men in togas, often preaching in secluded areas. Mt 5-7, etc.
65. Jesus promises to teach his disciples how to attract other men. Mt 4:18-19, Mk 1:16-17, etc.
66. While speaking to a group of men, Jesus condemns lust for a woman as sinful and says to pluck out your eyes if it happens. Mt 5:28-29
67. Jesus permits divorce if the woman is unfaithful, but he doesn't care about an unfaithful husband. Why would Jesus want to encourage men to separate from their wives? Mt 5:32
68. Jesus says that a divorced man who marries another woman is just as bad as an adulterer. Apparently he has something against men marrying women. Mt 19:9
69. Jesus promises to "reward" men who abandon their wives and children for him. Mt 19:29
70. Jesus has his followers pretend to eat of his flesh. Mt 26:26
71. People always seem to greet Jesus by getting on their knees for him. Mk 1:29-41, 5:5-7, 10:17
72. When Jesus was arrested, Mark fled away naked after the Roman soldier grabbed his robe since he wasn't wearing any undergarments. You have to imagine that something strange was going on between Jesus and young men! Mk 14:51-52
73. When speaking of sexual immorality Jesus never once specifically condemns homosexuality, even though Mosaic laws strictly forbade it. Mk 7:20-23
74. When Peter was caught fishing naked (or possibly in his underwear) he had to dive into the water to hide when he saw Jesus approaching. Jn 21:7
75. God promises to make people get on their knees at even the mention of Jesus’ name. Php 2:10


So what was Jesus' orientation? You decide!

 

[Safe-Keeper]

Why would anyone think that he would not have been sexual except christianity which has a sad relationship with sexuality.

I was just going to point that out. Abrahamic fundamentalists consider everything to do with sexuality, even looking at other people, sinful (committing adultery in your heart and all that), and since Jesus never sinned...

They also for some reason get very agitated whenever someone points out Jesus might've been gay, even though they themselves are perfectly fine with Jesus, or at least His daddy, being genocidal, hateful, unforgiving and jealous. So apparently, it's OK to wipe out whole people and rape their women, but teh ghey, now that crosses a line, 'mysterious ways' and 'it's part of a greater plan we know nothing about' notwithstanding. Fundies are a strange bunch.

More on-topic, I couldn't really care less. What matters is His message, not His sexuality, skin colour, or degree of realness.

 

[devnull]

Orborus: I have a sneaking suspicion that the OP was designed to elicit a knee-jerk response rather than as the start of a conversation - rather like PJ's "so now youve decided to be morally bankrupt atheist, why arent you off killing babies?" thread.

 

[EatatJoes]

I don't know about Jesus, but Scott Bidstrup has a good theory on John, here is a snip-it from Scott's essay "The Bible and Christianity - The Historical Origins":

"The reasons for Paul's conversion is a question that deserves discussion here. Saul, the pre-conversion Roman Jew, was a man with an intense self loathing. He doesn't tell us why, but time and again, he describes himself as a sinner who was far beyond any possible redemption. A man who stood condemned in the eyes of God. A man clearly destined for hell, and there's nothing he himself could do about it, especially since his body's 'member' would not cooperate. It's not his persecution of the Christians that creates the self loathing; rather it is the other way around. Something was eating at Saul. It clearly related to behavior, because he describes himself as being a sinner. Over the centuries, many suggestions have been made as to what might have been the source of that self loathing. Few of them are really convincing, they all seem to have serious problems - except for one: the suggestion that Paul was a repressed homosexual. Homosexuality was not widely condemned in this region at the time, yet it could possibly have been a personal interpretation of Levitical proscriptions that drove him to consider himself a sinner for being a homosexual. Yet when he experiences his conversion, he realizes that by the grace of God, his homosexuality no longer matters, for God loves him, the same as all men. I say this after having read the references in the New Testament in which Paul speaks of his shame and his self loathing: his words have a startlingly deep resonance with every gay man who was ever brought up in a Christian environment. This theory alone to the exclusion of all others I've seen explains all the strange aspects of Paul's attitudes towards sexuality - the proclivity to a monastic degree of chastity, the extreme mysogony, the fact that he remained single and urged others in his situation, whatever that was, to do likewise, and the frequent discussions of how the 'members' of his body do not cooperate with his spiritual goals, and his despair over his inability to effect the changes he would like. All of these evidences are consonant with the repressed-gay theory; no other theory I know of account for them all."

You can read the whole essay here, I found it incredibly interesting.

 

[Vic Vega]

Not that there's anything wrong with that....

 

[ceo_esq]

I don't know about Jesus, but Scott Bidstrup has a good theory on John, here is a snip-it from Scott's essay "The Bible and Christianity - The Historical Origins":

[snip]

You can read the whole essay here, I found it incredibly interesting.

I found it very odd.

[Paul] doesn't tell us why, but time and again, he describes himself as a sinner who was far beyond any possible redemption.

First of all, on the (actually fairly rare) occasions when Paul describes himself as a sinner, he does tell us why (see below). He doesn't describe himself as "far beyond any possible redemption"; he says that he received the grace of his redeemer, albeit through no merit of his own.

It's not his persecution of the Christians that creates the self loathing; rather it is the other way around.

Nothing Paul says supports that speculation. Paul reproaches himself bitterly - and quite openly - for his cruel persecution of Christians and his blasphemy prior to his conversion. It's a perfectly reasonable explanation for feelings of guilt, and moreover it is the explanation to which Paul consistently refers.

It clearly related to behavior, because he describes himself as being a sinner.

That works just fine for the explanation Paul gave.

Over the centuries, many suggestions have been made as to what might have been the source of that self loathing. Few of them are really convincing, they all seem to have serious problems - except for one: the suggestion that Paul was a repressed homosexual.

Again, there are no obvious "serious problems" with the conventional explanation for Paul's self-recrimination. What on earth is this fellow talking about?

Homosexuality was not widely condemned in this region at the time, yet it could possibly have been a personal interpretation of Levitical proscriptions that drove him to consider himself a sinner for being a homosexual.

It's not clear exactly what region Bidstrup has in mind, but I'm a little skeptical of the suggestion that Paul's views on the sinfulness of homosexual acts materially diverged from the mores of first-century Christian or Jewish communities. At the very least, I'm not aware of any Christian or Jewish treatments of the subject from around the same time (e.g. Philo of Alexandria) that lend support to that suggestion. Paul's point of view doesn't require an unusual, "personal interpretation" of Leviticus in order to be accounted for.

Yet when [Paul] experiences his conversion, he realizes that by the grace of God, his homosexuality no longer matters, for God loves him, the same as all men. I say this after having read the references in the New Testament in which Paul speaks of his shame and his self loathing: his words have a startlingly deep resonance with every gay man who was ever brought up in a Christian environment.

No doubt this notion does resonate with gay men who have been brought up in a Christian environment. Yet that doesn't suggest in the least that Paul was gay.

The rest of that section of the essay goes downhill from there, from a critical-thinking perspective. Is it possible that Paul was homosexual? Sure. But this author, hearing hoofbeats, is looking around for zebras rather than horses.