Today some experts deliberately reject their professional field to become amateurs in another subject—Christianity—where they can speculate to their hearts content.

Who Lies Sleeping?

Lesser Puzzles of Jesus’s Ministry 3

Was Jesus Homosexual?

Abstract

Were the disciples of Jesus fishermen or were they appointed by him as fishers of men? The gospel explicitly says, “I will make you fishers of men”. It is code. The disciples were never fishermen but all were fishers of men whatever their jobs beforehand. Evidence that Jesus was homosexual, like the evidence for his being married, is circumstantial. Nazarenes were converts to Essenism mainly from apostasy, and might normally have become village Essenes. They accepted Essene teaching, but were not willing to put up with the hard celibate and monastic regime of the devout Essene leader. Pious Essene leaders like Jesus could not indulge in heterosexual activity, something impure given by God as a punishment. Homosexuality did not lead to procreation. Jesus’s circumstances as an Essene fit better with his being homosexual than with his being married. If he were one of the village Essenes that did marry, then plainly he could have done, but then he could not have been an Essene leader.

Was Jesus Homosexual?

Jesus’s sexuality is utterly ignored by Christians. Why are Christians—like those represented by the Christian Coalition International Canada Inc—so upset to think that their incarnated God, Jesus, might have been homosexual? Though the gospel image of Jesus is that of a tolerant pacifist, a large proportion of Christians do not recognize this as Jesus, certainly in the way they think and behave themselves. Of course, the gospel image of Jesus is most likely concocted by the early Christians, but literal biblicists are supposed to believe in the bible literally read, and the bible literally read is ambiguous about the sexuality of Jesus. Indeed, the impression given of Jesus is that he had no interest in sex at all, and if that were so then he must have been a god, because no normal man could possibly not be sexually inclined.

If God appeared incarnate on earth as a true man, and not just the appearance of a man, then he had all the characteristics of a man—all of them. Jesus had to eat and drink. In other words he had a penis and an anus, and they were not just for appearance's sake, they were true human organs that worked. The idea of it shocks many Christians who never actually think about their so-called beliefs. Beliefs they never think about, or draw inferences from. They are so trained into believing impossibilities that they believe a god can be a true man while being simultaneously a god. Jesus was a “true” man but because he was a god, he did not need to defaecate, urinate or have orgasms! This denial of the humanity of Christ is at the root of Christian homophobia.

The Bible tells us that Jesus was born a man and therefore presumably had male sexual feelings. It would have been more or less impossible, biologically, for him not to have an element of erotic arousal—even if only having the normal male response of waking with an erection.
Peter Tatchell

Jesus could not have been homosexual because he was not a true man but a god disguised as a man. Christians, in short, do not think of their Christ as ever being a man, and so human suffering he seemed to endure could not have applied to him. It was a sham, if Christ remained a god. That, of course, Christians also cannot accept, so it remains a mystery of God, another impossibility to believe, and be resolved by ignoring the humanity of Christ as too awful to imagine.

Of course, a man can eschew sexual activity in practice, but he cannot suppress it completely, mentally. The obvious historical explanation of Jesus not being sexually active is that he was a member of the order of Essenes, one branch of which did not indulge in sexual activity because it was considered to be symptomatic of humanity and not the angels, who were not sexual creatures, being immortal. The Essenes aspired to be angels, and so gave up sex. Thus they believed they were purer, more perfect and more adjusted to the heavenly life.

Now, it is possible that even this concept of sexual purity did not prevent the Essene monks from indulging in homosexuality. The reason is that they could have justified homosexuality as being non-procreative, and the angels were asexual because they had no need of procreation. Humans needed sex to procreate the human race because immortality had been denied them by God as a consequence of primeval sin, probably seen as sexual activity anyway. Let the punishment fit the crime, was God’s principle in this reasoning. The human race were condemned to being sexual so that they could propagate themselves. A forbidden pleasure, stolen contrary to God’s wishes, had led to sex being a necessity with all the anguish it produced. Homosexuality was not a necessity however. It was not part of the punishment because it was not for procreation.

It is quite irrelevant to argue that most men are heterosexual and so Jesus was unlikely to have been queer. Christianity has always frowned upon heterosexual sex as well as homosexual sex, and for that reason—the tradition of the Essene monks carried on into Christianity—the most pious of men and women eschewing sex, and the chaste state being the one praised by such men as S Paul, for whom marriage and sex was the lesser of the options. Even though sexuality is perfectly natural, pious people abstain from it.

Equally, the Essene monks might well have been predominantly heterosexually inclined but they suppressed it for their own theological reasons. But they need not stop homosexuality, and most men, forced to abstain from heterosexual relations will subvstitute homosexuality. That is why matelots were traditionally considered to be homos. So, even if Jesus was an average man and normally heterosexual, he could have been forced into satisfying his sexual urges in a celibate community by adopting homosexuality, just like traditional sailors. It is therefore no argument to say that the likelihood from population statistics is that Jesus was not homosexual.

Nor is it any argument to claim that none of Jesus’s critics accused him of being queer. It was probably well known that Jesus was an Essene, and, indeed, he is always called a Nazarene—not “of Nazareth”—and that was apparently a type of Essene, so the accusations would have seemed absurd. Homosexuality was accepted by the Greeks in the east, and Greek culture—Hellenism—was the overwhelming culture of the time and place.

Although the Romans were Hellenized in culture, homosexuality was one aspect of it they did not like. Romans liked to be men, as coarse and brutal as they come, not nancy boys like Greeks, so the authors of the gospels, whose aim was to spread their novel religion in the Roman empire, would not have been ready to include any allusions to homosexuality. It is quite different from drinking and feasting that Romans were fond of, so Jesus was readily depicted as a drinker and a glutton, even though the drink and food spoken of was as sure as certain the very meal that Christians still ritually practice—it was a sacred repast of bread and water (called new wine)!

Nor is it a valid criticism to say that Jesus was an orthodox Jew, and they were required to marry and to have children. Jesus was not an orthodox, Jew, if, indeed, anyone at the time could have had any such description. The evidence is strong that he was an Essene, and only Christians, determined that he was God’s revelation, will deny it, and, as we have seen, Essenes at the senior level of Jesus were celibate monks. The Essenes had no interest in the additional laws that the Pharisees introduced to safeguard what they considered to be the law of Moses. They had their own interpretation of the Mosaic law and homosexuality might have been a part of it, allowed perhaps as the lesser of two evils. Nor is it an argument that Jesus said:

What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
Mark 10:2-12; Matthew 19:3-12

Jesus is making a point that has nothing to do with marriage. It is that God and Judah are a metaphorical betrothed or married couple, and yet the Romans were putting them asunder by taking over the governance of the country meant to be God's own. His general point is not that people must marry, but that when they do, or even commit themselves to it, no one should stand in their way. It is their own decision to marry, but the implication is equally that those who chose not to should have their view respected too, and that was the Essene view.

Nor is it a fact that Jesus must have accepted the Mosaic law in the sense that modern Christians and some Jews would like to, in that homosexuality is banned. To pretend that homosexuality was an unthinkable crime is like pretending adultery was unthinkable. Proof is the self-same quotation by Jesus about the permanence of marriage. Jews certainly allowed divorce, except for the sect that Jesus belonged to—the Essenes, if Jesus’s advice on marriage is anything to go by. In other words, if Jesus could differ from the Pharisees on divorce and marriage, then he could certainly differ with them on the legality of homosexual sex.

Nor is the supposed sexual involvement of Jesus with Mary Magdalene anything to go by. The evidence for any close sexual relationship is non-existent, certainly in the canonical gospels. Some later gospels suggest otherwise, but they are also full of all sorts of fancies that are hardly credible, and difficult to see in the context of the time. The explanation is that they were written later and were meant to create legends suitable to the many different sects that sprang up on the back of the death of Jesus. It might be very romantic to think that Jesus sired sons and heirs out of Mary Magdalene but the evidence for it is entirely mythical.

Some of the myths are pretty obviously propaganda too. Kings and heroes always wanted to show they were exceptional because they were demi-gods, and that gave them a right to found a dynasty. Hellenistic heroes, like Alexander, Julius Caesar and subsequent caesars, claimed descent from the gods or even to be gods themselves. Later, European monarchs tried to establish themselves as sons of God by being sons of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene was the obvious choice of wife. So the legends of Mary Magdalene getting to the south of France by boat with her daughter were invented, and the Merovingian dynasty claimed descent from that young girl. Every proper historian knows this and discounts the likelihood of any truth in such myths, especially as the Essenes at top level were strict about their celibacy and chastity in respect of heterosexual sex.

Of course, to claim that if Jesus were a homosexual he would have nothing at all to do with the opposite sex is absurd. Most women like homosexuals and most homosexuals like women. Nothing suggests they could not or would mix in each other’s company, then or now, especially if the company was of a Jewish sect that recognized homosexuality as being necessary for angelic men.

The evidence for Jesus even having a typical family is negligible. The evidence far better fits a man living in a brotherhood. But just as the same sex communities of Christians that followed were for both men and women living separately, so too it probably was for the Essenes. They are believed by many historians to have been connected with the Therapeutæ, who had such monastic communities for both sexes. The members of such communities call each other brother and sister.

Moreover, evidence can be read to suggest that even then Essenes came of age within the community by a “born again” ceremony requiring a surrogate mother. Many of the men in the Essene camps were waifs and strays, abandoned kids who never knew any family, but they had a ceremonial mother. This might be how the Mary’s came into the story legitimately. There are so many of them among the few women mentioned that it is most likely a title, the equivalent of Lord—in other words, Lady. Jesus had no natural family, but he had a brotherhood and a ceremonial mother, and out of allusions to these, the authors of the gospels have given the illusion that he was a family man, even though he had no wife or family, or even a father. Joseph is a sop to the Samaritans.

Nothing can be deduced from the stories about Mary Magdalene attending the cave tomb, as if acting as a wife. If she were his wife, why should the gospel writers have hidden it? The alleged jealousy of the apostles cannot be relevant. The gospels were written over forty years later, and by then it was far more important to bring women into the story because it was the women of Rome who were most impressed by the myth. To have given Jesus a wife would have been helpful to the acceptance of the stories. So, we can be sure Jesus had no wife, and as a top Essene he could not have had. The women went to the cave to embalm Jesus in the story, and women went again on the Sunday morning, led by Mary Magdalene, if the stories are to be believed. What this suggests is that senior Essenes would not want to get near a corpse, and the women members of the order had the task of washing and emblaming, and so on.

So, all of the Da Vinci Code speculation spawned by The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail offer poor responses by Christians to the accusation that Jesus was homosexual. And to try to ameliorate the idea by suggesting that he might have been bisexual but not homosexual is patently silly. A bisexual is homosexual—he enjoys sex with men!

The evidence of a homosexual Jesus is rather better than the evidence that Jesus was married. John speaks often of “a disciple whom Jesus loved”. In John 13:23 the beloved disciple reclines on Jesus’s breast. John was written in Greek, experts think in the Greek city of Ephesus. As everyone must know, homosexuality was not disgusting to a Greek, rather, scholars took pretty, clever young boys under their wing to teach them. A “beloved disciple” suggests just this sort of relationship. Now, from the time of Alexander the Great almost 400 years before Jesus, Palestine had been Greek, and many Macedonians of Alexander’s army and Greeks subsequently had settled there. Just across the river Jordan from Judæa was Decapolis, a confederation of ten Greek city states, and Jesus in the gospels is even noted as visiting there. Jesus might have been thoroughly opposed to Greek rule, but after 400 years many aspects of Greek culture had been absorbed. Perhaps homosexuality was one.

Moreover, people did not sit on chairs to dinner, but the rich reclined on sofas around a table, and the poor reclined around a mat on the floor. Either way, if a disciple had his head on his master’s chest (John 13:23), the two were reclining together. We also read:

And a young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body, and they seized him. But he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.
Mark 14:51-52

It is a puzzling and somewhat embarrassing passage for Christians, especially those strongly opposed to homosexuality. This naked youth might have been the same “disciple whom Jesus loved” in John. The US Biblical scholar, Morton Smith, of Columbia University, found at the Mar Saba monastery in 1958, an unknown fragment of Mark, which read:

And the youth, looking upon him, loved him [Jesus] and beseeched that he might remain with him. And going out of the tomb, they went into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days, Jesus instructed him and, at evening, the youth came to him wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God.

It seems to enlarge upon the two verse story of the fleeing youth, looks extremely suggestive of homosexuality, but at the same time says nothing explicit. As the well known British homosexual campaigner, Peter Tatchell, writes on his website:

The standard, accepted biblical narrative gives us no information at all about Jesus’s sexuality.

It seems careful not to. What is certain is that this cageyness leaves open the possibility that Jesus was homosexual, and, if Christians are to accept with Paul that there should be neither Greek nor Jew, then the whole point of it might be to suggest that Jesus, like the Greeks, might have been homosexual, or at least indulged in homosexual practices, and Jews ought not to sweat about it. It is not relevant when the central message is that everyone should love one another, the very message that modern evangelicals have forgotten or never noticed in the first place.

Since nothing in the Bible points to Christ having erotic feelings for women, or relationships with the female sex, the possibility of him being gay cannot be discounted.
Peter Tatchell

There is evidence that Jesus was homosexual, but, like the evidence for his being married, it is circumstantial. All you can say is that his circumstances as an Essene fit better with his being homosexual than with his being married. If he were one of the village Essenes that did marry, then plainly he could have done, but then he could not have been an Essene leader. If anything, the implication is that the Nazarenes were converts to Essenism from other forms of Jewry or apostasy, and it was the Nazarenes who might have been the village Essenes of Josephus. They accepted Essene teaching, but were not willing to put up with the hard celibate and monastic regime of the devout Essene leader. The really pious Essene leaders, like Jesus were, but could not indulge in heterosexual activity, something given by God as a punishment and which made people impure. Homosexuality did not lead to procreation, and so could not be regarded in the same way.