2026/06/23 by Tom de Bruin · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Biblical Studies and Interpretation #Classical Antiquity Studies #Development, Ethics, and Society
paper · doi:10.1163/15685152-bja10082
Abstract Many contemporary scholars, when interpreting early Christian texts about Sodom’s sin, refer to ‘homosexual practice’ or ‘homosexual activity.’ In this paper I present a meta-critique of contemporary scholarship on texts that refer to the sins of Sodom, focussing specifically on scholarship that engages with the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. This highly patriarchal and famously misogynist second-century text contains several references to the sins of Sodom. Though the text does not associate sexual activity between men with Sodom, many interpreters explicitly read this in the text. In this paper, I argue that these interpreters assume views of human sexuality and anthropology informed by modernism, heteronormativity and patriarchal thinking, including conceptualisations of ‘homosexuality’, ‘natural sex’ and the male-female sex binary. Thus, they project contemporary homophobia into the second century and wrongfully reinscribe modern configurations onto the complex sexual imagination of ancient Christianity.