Jewish gay men near me
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Oddly, to say the least, Jewish Law does not explicitly ban sex with boys under the age of nine (Talmud,Yevamot 51b, and Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, Biah 1:14, where he adds that in his opinion, the men should be flogged). The all-important book of Jewish Law, the Talmud, contains statements to the effect that anal sex among men causes solar eclipses (Sukkah 29a) and earthquakes (Jerusalem Talmud, Berachot 13:3), but also distinguishes between two forms of pederasty - anal sex that warrants a penalty of death by stoning, and homosexual sex that doesn’t involve penetration, about which the rabbis were more lenient (Niddah 13b). This turns out to be a very difficult question to answer. The question is how tolerant the rabbis were of these practices. From the end of the 4th century BCE, and later under the Romans, Jews found themselves living in cultures that practiced homosexuality between men and boys as a norm. But does this mean that ancient Jews stopped engaging in homosexuality? Whatever the reason and whenever it was decreed, once it was codified in Leviticus, it became Jewish law. Others think it was an effort to limit contact between Jews and gentiles, but the fact is no-one knows. Some speculate that it was an expansion on the ban on sacred prostitution. Nor can we know what led to this prohibition. Most scholars believe these verses were written either during the Babylonian Exile or during the early Second Temple period, so sometime during the 6th to the 4th century BCE (2600 to 2400 years ago), but when exactly in this period, we do not know. The ban only appears in two verses, both in the same section of Leviticus (18:22 and 20:13). So the question is, when was sex among men banned? If so, it doesn’t seem unthinkable that David and Jonathan were more than just friends.ĭeuteronomy does not ban homosexuality, only sacred prostitution. These verses (and a few others) indicate that the men of ancient Judah not only engaged in homosexual sex, but that they may have even done so in the Temple itself. Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images Found in the collection of the National Gallery, London. The words rendered as “whore” and “sodomite” are the female and male versions of the Hebrew word for sacred prostitute (qedesha and qedosh).Įither way, this verse led Josiah to ”break down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of the Lord" (2 Kings 23:7).ĭavid and Jonathan, c.1508. However, the translation is not accurate. The sentence in 2 Deuteronomy 23:17 is traditionally translated as: “There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel”. Scholars believe the book was an early version of Deuteronomy, which explicitly bans sacred prostitution.
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In the Book of Kings, we learn that early in the reign of King Josiah, at the very end of the First Temple period, a sacred book was found in the Temple, and that Josiah based his reform of the Yahweh cult on it. The question is when the practice was stamped out. So the Bible tells us that sacred prostitution was practiced in First Temple-era Judah. Whether sacred prostitutes were plied in the name of Yahweh or his "wife" Asherah, who were widely worshipped together at the time, is not known. It seems to have been ubiquitous in the ancient Near East, among the Canaanite cultures, and in the cultures of Mesopotamia.īased on what the writings of these neighbors of Israel, we may surmise that the male temple prostitutes of Jerusalem were probably dressed in women’s clothing, and may have been castrated. We should not be surprised that worship through sacred prostitutes was practiced in ancient Israel some 2700 years ago. These “sodomites,” as the King James Bible has it, were male and female sacred prostitutes: men and women who reside in temples and have sex with patrons as a form of deity worship. "And there were also sodomites in the land: and they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the Lord cast out before the children of Israel" (1 Kings 14:24), the Bible says of the reign of King Rehoboam, grandson of King David. Jonathan embraces King David, Caspar Luiken's 'Historiae Celebriores Veteris Testamenti Iconibus Representatae,' 1712. Various verses in the Book of Kings and elsewhere in the Bible seem to indicate that not only was homosexuality tolerated during the First Temple period - it was typical cultic behavior among the ancient Israelites at the time. Conservative commentators reject anything but a platonic interpretation, arguing that the chosen king of Judah could not conceivably have loved Jonathan physically, since homosexuality was already banned by Jewish Law.