Some of you may not know that I have documented Jesus’ acceptance of gays and lesbians, and that for him, the acceptability of gays and lesbians had nothing to do with whether they were sexually active or not. This is the primary lesson of the Q Apocalypse in Luke 17.  Verse 34 and 35 of that passage read:

Some readers have been offended, a handful enraged, by the idea that Jesus would talk about sexual intercourse in terms that, today, seem to them so vulgar.  These responses are quite understandable. When I discovered that the “grind” language was used for sex in Greek in the time of Christ (click here), and that Jesus was using this language, I was appalled.  I’ve never stood around in a locker room talking with the guys about sex.  Even though I was researching the idea that the two couples in Luke 17:34-35 might be gays and lesbians, the evidence still upset me.  It was hard to imagine my Lord and Savior using what sounds to some of us today like gutter language.

We sometimes forget that Jesus was a Jew living in first century Palestine.  At the wedding in Cana in Galilee he ate the same food as other people.  On the hillsides of Galilee he squat down and eliminated that food like other people.  He slept in the same kinds of beds as other people.  If he was a woodworker like his dad, used the same wood-working tools as other people.  And he spoke the same language as other people.  The phrase “grinding together” was as acceptable in Jesus’ day and the phrase “making love” is in ours.

To read more about the sexual use of “grinding” in Jesus’ day, click here.

Jesus didn’t make up new words when he spoke, the way Paul might have done. Whether Jesus was speaking in Aramaic or Greek, the words he used were the same words everyone else used.  And like all languages, every word had a semantic range, several different acceptable meanings.  Every word had multiple meanings and usages.  Jesus’ words were often filled with unique spiritual significance, but the words themselves were just ordinary words.

Semantic Range of “Dogs” and “Grinding Together”

For example, Matthew 15:21-28 contains the story of a Canaanite mother who came to him, pleading with him to help her daughter who had a demon.  Although Jesus eventually helped her daughter, his first response was, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”  In addition to literal canines, “dogs” also signified gentiles.  Both meanings are included in actual words Jesus used, literal dogs and figurative dogs.

Likewise, we know that Jesus’ statement, “Two women shall be grinding together,” has two literal meanings in the words themselves, the literal grinding of two stones and the equally literal grinding of two bodies.  Just as we know in Matthew that the word “dog” referred to gentiles (because of the preceding five verses), so too we know that “two women grinding together” in Luke referred to lesbian love-making (because of the preceding seven verses).

The Earthiness of Language in Scripture

Jesus, Paul, Solomon, Moses–they all used everyday language.  It should come as no surprise that this is quite typical.  Both testaments use everyday language.  One similarity between New Testament language and Old Testament language is especially important in this regard: both languages are much earthier than modern church people realize.  Christian academics know this.  Average church members don’t know about the earthiness of Biblical language because their translations hide it from them.

Philippians 3:8: σκυβαλα = shit

Because of Him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them filth, so that I may gain Christ.

For example, in Philippians 3:8, where Paul denigrates everything he once took pride in, he says those old things are skybala (σκυβαλα), what we would call “shit.” [N.T. Wright’s Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision, InterVarsity Press, 2009, (p 149); and Michael R. Cosby’s Apostle on the Edge: An Inductive Approach to Paul, Westminster John Knox Press, 2009 (p 192)]  For commercial reasons translation committees are reluctant to translate σκυβαλα literally.  One translation reads, “I consider them rubbish.”  Elsewhere σκυβαλα is rendered: garbage, filth, refuse, useless rubbish, and dung. In 1382 John Wycliffe rendered the word σκυβαλα as “turds.”

2 Kings 18:27 — שְׁתֹּ֛ות = piss

The Hebrew word מַשְׁתִּ֥ין (mashthin) is rendered “pisseth,” “pisses,” or “urinates.”  The phrase “pisseth against the wall” is a euphemism for “man,” and is used some six times in the Hebrew historical books (I Samuel 25:22; 25:34; I Kings 14:10; 16:11; 21:21; II Kings 9:8).  It seems always used in a context of people slated for destruction by opposing forces.

Ruth 3:7 — מַ רְגְּלֹתָ֖יו = foot: euphemism for male & female genitalia

Ruth Uncovers the Feet of Boaz

Foot, Feet,  (“foot, feet”) [מַרְגְּלֹתָ֖יו (mrglthi ‘u)] is a common euphemism for the penis.  Urine is called “foot water” (2 K. 18:27 and Isa. 36:12;). Pubic hair is called “hair of the feet” (Isa 7:20; cf. also Ezk. 16:7)….  Ruth’s action of “uncovering [Boaz’s] feet” (Ruth 3:7) // was a marriage proposal….  Each of the seraphim in Isaiah’s temple vision had siz wints: two to cover the face, two to fly, and two to cover the feet (Isaiah 6:2); ….  “Feet” can also refer to female genitalia, as in Dt. 28:57: “her afterbirth that comes out from between her feet.”  Ezekiel’s vivid pictures of Israel’s harlotry contains the phrase “you opened wide your feet” (RSV “offering yourself to any passer-by,” 16:25).   (pp 432-3)

Isaiah 64:6 — בֶ֥גֶד עִדִּ֖ים = stained rags (stained with menstrual blood or semen)

The phrase is translated “filthy rags,” “polluted garment,” or “grease-stained rags,” which doesn’t carry the same impact as what is conveyed in the original Hebrew.  To read more, click here.

Ezekiel 23 — Bible Porn

The book of Ezekiel contains a chapter-long denunciation of Samaria and Jerusalem which Hebrew scholars and casual readers alike consider pornographic.  Ezekiel 23 denounces “Oholah, and her sister Oholibah” in an extended metaphor of prostitution and harlotry as spiritual unfaithfulness and apostasy.  The prophetic denunciation is fever-hot in verses 19 and 20.

Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.  

Song of Solomon — Erotic Love Poetry