A Clos­er Look at the Sto­ry of Daniel : Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty in the Bible

Is there homo­sex­u­al­i­ty in the Bible ? The Bible endors­es homo­sex­u­al behav­iour and we shall pro­vide one such exam­ple, which is exem­pli­fied in the sto­ry of the rela­tion­ship between Daniel and the prince of the eunuchs. The verse is :

    Vayiten ha-Elo­him et-Daniyel leKHesed u’ler­aKHamim lifnei sar hasarisim” (Daniel 1:9)

    [i.e., Now God had brought Daniel into favor and ten­der love with the prince of the eunuchs” (KJV).]

The Hebrew words, which describe the rela­tion­ship between Daniel and the prince of the Eunuchs, are KHesed” and RaHamim”.

The first of these indeed means good­ness, kind­ness, faith­ful­ness”. The word RaHamim”, how­ev­er, derives from the Semit­ic root R‑H-M, which refers to a womb.1 The KJV’s ren­der­ing of RaHamim” as ten­der love” would there­fore entail and inde­spen­si­ble ele­ment of phys­i­cal love, or love which is man­i­fest­ed through phys­i­cal contact.

Now, look at our two char­ac­ters : The prince of the eunuchs is of course an eunuch. Daniel, in the opin­ion of the Jew­ish com­men­ta­tors, was also an eunuch.2 Hence an affair between them involv­ing phys­i­cal love would cor­rect­ly be termed as a homo­sex­u­al affair (i.e., between an eunuch and anoth­er eunuch).

Of course there is no twist­ing” done to the sense or mate­r­i­al of the verse, which are pre­sent­ed as they stand. Some may object that it is quite impos­si­ble for an eunuch to have any sex­u­al con­tact. I would like to high­light this argu­ment by point­ing out an even more ele­men­tary mat­ter : the depri­va­tion of the testes or exter­nal gen­i­tals in a man or boy does not result in the change of sex of the same to a woman or girl. Hence the ten­der love” between Daniel and the prince of the eunuchs would nonethe­less remain a homo­sex­u­al affair.

Sec­ond­ly, the terms eunuch” and cas­tra­tion” are invari­ably spo­ken of male sub­jects ; the cor­rect cor­re­spond­ing term for females is spay­ing”.

Third­ly, why should one enter­tain the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the eunuch (as in Daniel’s prince of the eunuchs”), would have to be the active sex­u­al part­ner, when the com­mon sense assigns to him the pas­sive role ?

Fourth­ly, it is also abun­dant­ly clear that this is not the only homo­sex­u­al affair from the Bible. It is also believed that Jonathan and David too (accord­ing to the Bib­li­cal account) were more than just the clos­est of friends”; they were pas­sion­ate homo­sex­u­al lovers.3

The Bible, like any rich and com­plex text, can be seen to con­tain mul­ti­ple lay­ers of mean­ing, some of which might indeed sug­gest an endorse­ment of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. Hence from this brief expo­si­tion, it is incon­ceiv­able that the word of God” would con­done such a hor­ri­ble and unnat­ur­al sex­u­al act, as the Bible obvi­ous­ly does.Endmark

  1. See The Brown-Dri­ver-Brig­gs Hebrew and Eng­lish Lex­i­con (Hen­drick­son Pub­lish­ers, 2001), p. 933 ; c.f. Strong’s no 7356[]
  2. The state­ment, that Daniel was a eunuch, is quot­ed by Ori­gen with appro­ba­tion in his Com­men­tary to Matthew”, Book xv, sec­tion 5 : For the chil­dren of the Hebrews say that Daniel and his three com­pan­ions Hana­ni­ah, Azari­ah, and Mishael were eunuchized in Baby­lon and thus was ful­filled what Isa­iah said to Hezeki­ah : They will take from your seed and make of them eunuchs in the house of the king of Baby­lon” [Isa­iah 39:7]”[]
  3. The inter­est­ed read­er can read 170-page book on this very issue.[]

Comments

6 responses to “A Clos­er Look at the Sto­ry of Daniel : Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty in the Bible”

  1. Ke Avatar
    Ke

    Wow, shad­owof­fears, if the all those Books are mis­in­ter­pret­ed, then you might as well throw the entire Bible away. Those pas­sages are trans­lat­ed direct­ly from the Hebrew and Greek pas­sages. I don’t see how you could have any proof that the trans­la­tions and inter­pre­ta­tions could be that erro­neous. You did­n’t even state any proof or evi­dence to sup­port your claims. You’ve been brain­washed by mod­ern day catholicism.

  2. Ke Avatar
    Ke

    I can’t believe you all are try­ing to jus­ti­fy what is clear­ly stat­ed as SIN in the Bible. First of all, did the Bible not say that God made mar­riage for man and woman ? Sec­ond, as Leviti­cus 18:22 states, Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with wom­ankind : it is abom­i­na­tion.” If God for­bid mar­riage between two of the same sex­es and for­bids pre­mar­i­tal sex, then how would it be pos­si­ble for homo­sex­u­al acts to be ok ?

    1 Corinthi­ans 6:9 states, Do you not know that the wicked will not inher­it the king­dom of God ? Do not be deceived : Nei­ther the sex­u­al­ly immoral nor idol­aters nor adul­ter­ers nor male pros­ti­tutes nor homo­sex­u­al offend­ers.” Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty isn’t a greater sin than any oth­er sin, but it is still sin. The act of lust in homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is indeed sin because after all, it is still lust and adultery.

    I sym­pa­thize with gays because of the dis­crim­i­na­tion and prej­u­dice that they must face. Any sin­ner that con­demns and crit­i­cizes you for being a homo­sex­u­al is a HYPOCRITE.

  3. shadowofears Avatar
    shadowofears

    if you’re won­der­ing if there are Bib­li­cal pas­sages which con­demn homo­sex­u­als and homo­sex­u­al acts, the answer is NO.

    Most peo­ple, even priests and schol­ars, are unaware that the pas­sages about homo­sex­u­al­i­ty have been either mis­in­ter­pret­ed or misunderstood.

    The sto­ry of Sodom and Gomor­rah ? That’s a warn­ing against rape and inhos­pi­tal­i­ty. The rea­son for Sodom’s destruc­tion is made clear in Ezekiel 16:48 – 50. Accord­ing to Ezekiel, the sins of Sodom were pride, lazi­ness, being inhos­pitable, neglect­ing the needs of the poor, greed, and idol­a­try (the wor­ship­ping of idols). Noth­ing about homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is mentioned.

    Leviti­cus ? Those pas­sages were part of the Holi­ness Code which has been done away with and is no longer bind­ing to mod­ern-day Christians.

    1 Corinthi­ans ? Mis­trans­la­tion — the word mala­kee in this pas­sage is used else­where in the Bible to mean some­one who lacks dis­ci­pline or one who is moral­ly weak, and nev­er is it used in ref­er­ence to sex­u­al­i­ty or gender.

    1 Tim­o­thy ? Also a mis­trans­la­tion. 1 Tim­o­thy was an admon­ish­ment against male pros­ti­tu­tion, not com­mit­ted, lov­ing same sex relationships.

    Romans ? In the pas­sage the Greek words physin and para­physin have been trans­lat­ed to mean nat­ur­al and unnat­ur­al respec­tive­ly. Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, the word para­physin does not mean to go against the laws of nature”, but rather implies action which is unchar­ac­ter­is­tic for that par­tic­u­lar per­son. An exam­ple of the word para­physin is used in Romans 11:24, where God acts in an unchar­ac­ter­is­tic (para­physin) way to accept the Gen­tiles. When the scrip­ture is under­stood cor­rect­ly, it seems to imply that it would be unnat­ur­al for a homo­sex­u­al to live as a het­ero­sex­u­al and vice versa.

  4. Sarah Avatar
    Sarah

    Accord­ing to the arti­cle, it is incon­ceiv­able that the word of God” would con­done such a hor­ri­ble and unnat­ur­al sex­u­al act, as the Bible obvi­ous­ly does.”

    I believe you are cor­rect about the Bible. Through a series of polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed mis­trans­la­tions, scrip­ture con­demn­ing acts such as child molesta­tion have been mod­i­fied to per­tain to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. Once these mis­trans­la­tions have been culled, the New Tes­ta­ment seems to be about love, tol­er­ance, for­give­ness, and non­judg­ment. Although I am not a Chris­t­ian, I respect this phi­los­o­phy and wish that you Mus­lims shared it. After all, hor­ri­ble and unnat­ur­al” are harsh words of judg­ment — YOUR judg­ment, not God’s. As an agnos­tic and as a les­bian woman, I assure you I could find a few harsh and intol­er­ant things to say about what you rep­re­sent, but I won’t. That would not be in the spir­it of peace and love.

    May you find tol­er­ance in your hearts towards oth­ers, and may your god have mer­cy on you !

  5. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    You all are wrong if you think the Holy Bible pro­motes homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. Have you nev­er read Romans ch.1 ?
    One of the arts of Bib­li­cal inter­pre­ta­tion is not to take a pas­sage out by itself but must be read in the con­text in which it is intend­ed” No scrip­ture con­tra­dicts any oth­er scrip­ture in the Holy Bible.

    Matthew

  6. shadowofears Avatar
    shadowofears

    Any­way gay mar­riages are get­ting approved and legal­ized all over Europe and USA, so whats new ?

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