the queer bible
November 23, 2017 9:04 PM   Subscribe

David and Jonathan by Anthony Oliveira
David and Jonathan’s love is the apotheosis of this redemptive love; despite centuries of embarrassed and embarrassing exegesis, their relationship is explicitly romantic, explicitly “surpassing the love of women” (2 Samuel 1:26), and its power is the means by which God (in his usual manner of favouring the outcast, the second son, the marginalised) remakes and renovates the collapsing and decadent reign of the paranoiac Saul, bringing rain to a parched landscape.
posted by the man of twists and turns (21 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
Wow. This is new to me but also not surprising.

“And they kissed one another, and wept with one another, until David exceeded” (1 Samuel 21:41). Grief-stricken, they part, renewing their vow: “The Lord be between me and thee, and between my seed and thy seed forever”

It's hard to know what this means out of literary and historical context, filtered by translation, editing and time, but it would be wrong to assume this is not describing a romantic, sexual or familial love.
posted by latkes at 9:53 PM on November 23, 2017


I mean, I hear you, but the common objections to that assumption are also pretty solid - definitely outside of the realm of automatic wrong-ness. This isn't a new discussion by any means - Oscar Wilde was fond of this interpretation. I wish it were truly queer, that would be rad, but as atheistic and queer as I am, I find the counter-arguments more convincing.
posted by lazaruslong at 9:59 PM on November 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


Wow. This is new to me but also not surprising.

I had the same reaction. I was raised evangelical, and although I have read the story of David and Jonathan dozens of times, this interpretation never ever occured to me. It's totally in keeping with my experience of christianity though, which ties itself up in knots in order to avoid unfavorable interpretations of the Bible, i.e. the wine that Jesus and the disciples drank was actually grape juice, non-alcoholic, see verses x, y and z for proof. Or David and Jonathan were giving each other passionate kisses of platonic friendship, nevermind that my (male) bible teachers would have died rather than kiss their own friends that way.
posted by lollymccatburglar at 11:07 PM on November 23, 2017


I'll have to relisten to the Belle & Sebastian song in light of this.
posted by acb at 5:44 AM on November 24, 2017


Anthony Oliveira is also one of my favourite people on Twitter, at @meakoopa .
posted by ITheCosmos at 6:30 AM on November 24, 2017 [3 favorites]


Many lesbians feel that the relationship between Naomi and Ruth (Book of Ruth) is erotic love, not mother/daughter-in-law. And the use of Ruth's pledge in modern heterosexual weddings iseems decidedly odd to me.

“Where you will go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge, your people shall be my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die– there I will be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you.”
posted by Carol Anne at 6:54 AM on November 24, 2017 [6 favorites]


I wish it were truly queer, that would be rad, but as atheistic and queer as I am, I find the counter-arguments more convincing.

I spent a long time looking for genuinely pro-LGBT texts in the Bible, and I couldn't find them. I read the arguments for queer interpretations of David and Jonathan, or the centurion and his servant, and I hassled my biblical scholar friends with annoying questions about the culture and language. At the end of the day, I thought the most honest conclusion was that (1) anti-gay texts in the Bible are inevitable written in a context of coercion, rape, pederasty, or orgies (and never in a context of adult, consensual committed relationships), and (2) there aren't clear depictions of healthy gay relationships in the Bible.

Part of the confusion is that Western men don't typically express strong emotion with one another as they once did, making it easier for modern readers to assume that the expression of strong emotion indicates a relationship other than friendship. The other part is that many of us don't experience that kind of deeply committed, "I am with you, do or die" relationship except in the context of marriage, and it's hard for us to picture a culture that is, in some ways, almost opposite of our own, where trust, loyalty, and commitment were more likely to be found among friends (deep, lifelong friends) and marriages were acts of convenience or economic advantage. Not that there wasn't romance and affection in marriage--there certainly could be! But David, for example, had seven or eight wives, plus about ten concubines. There seems to be a measure of affection with some of them--Michal and Abigail--and he definitely was attracted to Bathsheba (enough to have her husband killed so that he could have her). But those were women, not friends, and this was all long before "I married my best friend!" was a thing anyone could imagine. (And, I should mention, we tend to equate kisses with romance in Western culture, whereas kisses of greeting and friendship are common in other parts of the world, and certainly in the ancient near east.)

So when the text says that David's love for Jonathan surpassed the love of women, we need to read that in a context where 1) a man's love for a woman wasn't necessarily a life-long deep romantic partnership and 2) epically loyal friendship among two straight men were more prevalent than they are not.

And the David/Jonathan story is certainly epic. In the scene in I Samuel 20 when they kiss and weep together, Jonathan has finally realized that after a long time of rising tension his father, King Saul, intends to kill David, who he sees as a rival to his throne. Jonathan is his father's oldest son, in line to be king, but when his father turns against his friend, Jonathan sides with David. This tension--Jonathan's loyalty to his family versus his loyalty to David--underlies perhaps the greatest story in this Bible. Eventually, Saul and Jonathan are both killed in battle with Philistines, preventing a full-on Saul versus David fight that the text seemed to be moving toward. When David learns of their deaths, he mourns them both in a long lament that is worth reading in full. It should be noted that David mourns both the unstable king who wanted him dead and the king's son who was his beloved friend, and speaks of them both in glowing terms.
From the blood of the slain,
from the fat of the mighty,
the bow of Jonathan did not turn back,
nor the sword of Saul return empty.
23 Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely!
In life and in death they were not divided;
they were swifter than eagles,
they were stronger than lions.
24 O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,
who clothed you with crimson, in luxury,
who put ornaments of gold on your apparel.
25 How the mighty have fallen
in the midst of the battle!
Jonathan lies slain upon your high places.
26 I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan;
greatly beloved were you to me;
your love to me was wonderful,
passing the love of women.
27 How the mighty have fallen,
and the weapons of war perished!
This is wonderful poetry, powerful and affecting, yet it can't be divorced from its context as a funeral lament, with typical emotive language. And in the end, when David chooses a word to describe his relationship with Jonathan, it is "brother." When all is said and done, although I would love to have a story of queer love in the text, the story is most likely a story of a remarkably deep friendship, a closeness that was the purest and most defining relationship in either man's life--true brotherhood. And that is also a good story, and one that we need.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 7:12 AM on November 24, 2017 [34 favorites]


Really thoughtful comment...

I guess what's complicated about interpreting old descriptions of love is that the whole concept of gay and straight are contemporary, as are definitions of marriage and romantic love. What does it mean to be gay? If you were an ancient man who felt a deep commitment to, passion for, perhaps even shared a sexual bond with another man, that didn't put you in the same boxes socially as it does now. In a sense it's meaningless to put our modern labels on this. But on the other hand, it's problematic to assign contemporary ideals of heterosexuality and gender to ancient people. Just because men are now expected to only feel and express romance and commitment and sexuality toward women doesn't mean that was always the case.
posted by latkes at 7:39 AM on November 24, 2017 [11 favorites]


Having good, meaningful stories about friendship is a good thing. They don't have to be reinterpreted into being anything other than what they are and doing so takes away from the message that friendships can be very powerful forces.
posted by koavf at 11:30 AM on November 24, 2017


great_radio, that's a pretty uncharitable reading of a person reaching a conclusion that differs from the original article
posted by kokaku at 11:43 AM on November 24, 2017 [17 favorites]


great_radio, there's "Well, Actually" and there's providing a competing argument for an interpretation of a text. A difficulty I've had with modern queer analysis of older texts and art is the way an interpretation can be skewed by modern (and often Western) assumptions about how one expresses friendship versus love. If kissing, physical affection, hand-holding, and deep, poetic expressions of adoration between members of the same sex are inherently queer, well, there are people in a number of cultures from the Middle East and across Asia who have something to say about that. Similarly, even a century ago in the West men were comfortable with levels of physical affection that we only associate with gay men today.

This isn't to say there aren't explicit or implicit queer overtones in ancient texts--but when doing that analysis you have to account for the cultural differences between then and now. And though this essay is incredibly lovely, if the author intended to make the case I don't believe they did.

------------

Also, this is an extremely good point:

What does it mean to be gay? If you were an ancient man who felt a deep commitment to, passion for, perhaps even shared a sexual bond with another man, that didn't put you in the same boxes socially as it does now.

I did some research on the history of homosexuality in the Middle East, and what I learned from it is that the idea of labeling people "gay" or "straight" or "queer" by the modern, Western definition does not really fit with how men (most of the research out there is on men) thought of themselves in the pre-colonial era in a great number of Middle Eastern and Asian cultures as well. You had sex with, were attracted to, and made babies with women--that's what you do. But if you also had sex with your bro--well, that's what bros did, too! I remember a particularly interesting essay written 15-20 years ago by a man who'd been born in Egypt and now lived in the USA who was deeply frustrated by how the move meant he was now a Gay Man and he was unable to have relationships outside Gay Culture. While homosexual sex was ostensibly illegal where he was from, it certainly wasn't uncommon and he and other men didn't necessarily classify themselves as gay based on whether or not they practiced it. (note: in many areas that were victims of colonization, the strict definitions of homosexual and violent homophobia were a product of colonial powers that swept in and were just horrified by the bros who did it with their bros)

This gets to larger questions of how we define queerness, what it means to be queer, whether pointing out the ubiquity of queerness in human history means that all of those things are not a part of "queer culture" and, if so, which queer culture, etc . . . But I'm not really sure this is where the author was going with this.
posted by Anonymous at 12:01 PM on November 24, 2017


But I'm not really sure this is where the author was going with this.

I mean, he's pretty up front with that:

This stark, laconic effect is aggravated if your encounter with the text is in the fragmentary mosaic of community readings. The stories can come like shafts of light through stained glass, slivers whose larger picture is obscure: who is it who begat who? Who speaks? Who knocks? Who loves? Our work – as it was for me, when I was a small, confused, and wholly enrapt child listening from a narrow pine church pew – becomes forensic.

This archaeological rescue is exacerbated particularly for queer readers, for whom even the most forthright stories of gay love are too often occluded and tissued over by censorious and apologetic theologians and critics and preachers: “a different culture”; “mistranslated”; “just friends.” The work of a community that does not wish to acknowledge us either in its text nor in its bench.


But his point is, as I read it - and you can argue with the scholarship on it if Biblical scholarship is your wheelhouse - that certain people have been trying to take away figures we as queer people might see ourselves in for a long, long time and that's pretty fucked, so here's a re-reading. And you know what? Really - it's o.k. if some people find that a book about a mythical sky-god reads kinda gay in parts.

And given that this book has been used extensively and systematically as a justification for erasing our existences - either in the here and now or on a post-hoc basis - as queer people, we're allowed to try to take some of these stories back if we want to.

That's kind of how I read where he's going with this, YMMV.

On a lighter note - while also speaking of queer readings - Anthony Oliviera's appearance on the Sewers of Paris podcast is pretty great.

Because HOW GAY IS HE-MAN?

Spoiler: Do you really need to ask?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:45 PM on November 24, 2017 [3 favorites]


anti-gay texts in the Bible are inevitable written in a context of coercion, rape, pederasty, or orgies (and never in a context of adult, consensual committed relationships)

If the relationship between David and Jonathon were a sexual one, wouldn't it be essentially pederastic? That is, consensual and committed, but the kind of coupling that Oscar Wilde described as "the love that dare not speak it's name," where the significant difference in age between the older and the younger partner is a key component?
posted by layceepee at 3:48 PM on November 24, 2017


It might be the lesser explanation but the bible quotes are "real enough" to paste into breitbart and fundy-forums online.
posted by Fupped Duck at 3:54 PM on November 24, 2017


great_radio, I honestly don't know what you're talking about. I'm not a biblical scholar, I haven't studied this stuff in depth. I am a queer atheist. I also don't buy this interpretation of the Jonathan and David story, and this author didn't invent this interpretation. It's been put forth by many people going back a long time. I also find the counter-arguments to the queer interpretation more convincing, but didn't feel like elucidating them in depth. Pater Aletheias took the time to dive in deeper on those ideas, which I appreciate.

I'd love it if the Bible actually contained positive queer role models. I don't buy that it does. You seem to be suggesting that disagreeing with the author on their interpretation is resorting to cliche and inappropriate somehow. That's not true.
posted by lazaruslong at 5:29 PM on November 24, 2017 [4 favorites]


David's lament was beautifully set to music by 17th-century composer Robert Ramsey - it's one of my favorite motets, and unfortunately rarely done.....
posted by Thomas Tallis is my Homeboy at 5:44 PM on November 24, 2017 [3 favorites]


Oh man. If we can tell if someone in an old fucking testament story is gay, maybe we could also tell if they are republicans or democrat.

Or if they like iPhones or Android phons.
posted by Index Librorum Prohibitorum at 7:40 PM on November 24, 2017


There's all kinds of ideas in this sentence that seem poorly defined if you pretend you are a space alien:

Huh. I guess I feel like I am a space alien when it comes to imagining the experience of an old testament character. Love, affection, commitment, sexuality, marriage, gender itself, these concepts vary quite significantly over time and culture. I'm a non gender conforming queer person... Someone who is read as queer immediately, so I have real skin in this. I am certain that what I know as queerness has always existed. There have always been women loving, fucking, devoted to other women. Always been men loving, fucking, devoted to other men. If anything my limited read of history and anthropology leads me to conclude that what I think of as queer has in other times and cultures been just a part of normal, average human expression. In a sense, modernity created queerness by othering us. So I don't know, I guess there's an implication that it's homophobic or something to say that interpreting the Bible as gay is not quite right. But if anything, I'm wondering if the characters in the Bible lived in a world where everyone was in a sense gay... It may not have been an other identity in the way it is today.
posted by latkes at 8:08 PM on November 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


If anything my limited read of history and anthropology leads me to conclude that what I think of as queer has in other times and cultures been just a part of normal, average human expression. In a sense, modernity created queerness by othering us. So I don't know, I guess there's an implication that it's homophobic or something to say that interpreting the Bible as gay is not quite right. But if anything, I'm wondering if the characters in the Bible lived in a world where everyone was in a sense gay... It may not have been an other identity in the way it is today.

Yes! This was what I was trying to express, but poorly. That's what I was trying to get at with "bros doin' it with bros"--it was normal. Men who exclusively had relationships with men, and who formed long-term partnerships like marriage, and who never married, were seen as different. But men who had a wife, had sex, made babies, but also had deep, long-lasting friendships with other men that involved sexual activity and extremely emotional poetry wherein one confessed deep and undying feelings--it was just a variety of normal. I'm not saying everywhere that wasn't Europe was a big ol' queer puppy pile with no analogous sexual mores--but I think there is a lack of appreciation for exactly how much influence Western culture had in shaping the definitions of "homosexual" and "heterosexual" and demonizing any activity or relationship that were categorized as the former.

When it comes to examples like David and Jonathan, how do we classify it? Because their expressions of affection were normal for men who may not have felt romantic love or engaged in some form of sexual activity with one another--and they were normal for men who loved one another platonically, but shared a handjob here or there--and they were normal for men who truly, deeply did love one another in a romantic sense. There are people who sweep this all under the rug to pretend like homosexuality didn't exist. And in a way, they're right--simply because our modern understanding of homosexuality didn't exist, because queerness was so much more integrated into different cultures across different times that attempting to classify people like that would've been weird.
posted by Anonymous at 9:32 PM on November 24, 2017


Actually, I think our present culture is more of an outlier when it comes to men expressing affection for other men. That's not to say that gay/straight/queerness didn't exist, but people exhibiting the straight male norms of our culture would have been seen as peculiar and unfriendly.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:28 AM on November 25, 2017 [1 favorite]


the only reason this story still exists is the refusal of most scribes and editors over the years to acknowledge the same-sex love interpretation was even possible

I'm not sure who you think refused to recognise same-sex love in the story:
Pirkei Avot 5:19 Whenever love depends upon something and it passes, then the love passes away too. But if love does not depend upon some ulterior interest then the love will never pass away. What is an example of the love which depended upon some material advantage? That of Amnon for Tamar. And what is an example of the love which did not depend upon some ulterior interest? That of David and Jonathan.
Pirkei Avot is a foundational Jewish text that was composed about 2000 years ago. This passage uses David and Jonathan as the exemplar of platonic love. In contrast, the obsession of Amnon (David's son!) with his half-sister Tamar turned to hatred as soon as his desires were consummated. So it's not accurate to say that this story wasn't seen as being about love; it was seen as being about precisely the sort of gooey starry-eyed romantic love that people write poems about. It just wasn't necessarily about sex.

I know many people would say that either sex would be a given in that sort of relationship, or that it would be unremarkable in a society in which that relationship could be commonplace, but that's not my reading of the story. There are a lot of reasons (e.g., Leviticus) to think that gay sex was not socially accepted. That's what King Saul seems to be implying with his slur about Jonathan's behaviour being "to the shame of his mother". Also, since David was married to Jonathan's sister Michal a doubled familial sexual relationship seems like it would be higher stakes than the narrative can bear. But thematically, sex is a constant theme in David's story and it almost always implies exploitation/subjugation. The single exception, as far as I know, is when David comforts Bathsheba. Every other time it's an act of overt or covert violence. And from that one act of compassion David's son Solomon is born, the one son who doesn't die young or rebel against him. In a way, this is the redemption of David's life, and it breaks the story if it isn't unique.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:47 PM on November 25, 2017 [3 favorites]


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