Authorizing marriage?: Canon, tradition, and critique in the blessing of same-sex unions

Authorizing Marriage?: Canon, Tradition, and Critique in the Blessing of Same-Sex Unions

Volumn , Issue , 2009, Pages 1-199

  Jordan, Mark D ^a   Sweeney, Meghan T ^b   Mellott, David M ^b  

^a EMORY UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b NONE

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EID: 84890709130     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
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References (291)

1. This volume grows out of a roundtable organized within a much larger project on "Sex, Marriage, and Family in the Religions of the Book." The larger project was undertaken during 2001-2003 by the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion, under the direction of John Witte Jr., with support from The Pew Charitable Trusts through a grant to Emory University. The authors are grateful to all and each of these for their indispensable support and assistance.
2. See especially John A. Thompson ("The Significance of the Verb Love in the David-Jonathan Narratives in 1 Samuel," Vetus Testamentum 24 [1974]: 334-338), who analyzes the Jonathan/David materials in light of William L. Moran's observations with respect to covenant love ("The Ancient Near Eastern Background of the Love of God in Deuteronomy," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 25 [1963]: 77-87); Wozniak, "Drei verschiedene literarische Beschreibungen," 213218; McCarter, IISamuel, 77; and Cross, "Kinship and Covenant," 9-10. See also Moran's comments on the love idiom in texts such as 1 Sam. 18:1-3, 16; 20:17 ("Ancient Near Eastern Background," 81, 82, n. 33).
3. On the use of the expression to love x as oneselfin treaty settings, see Moran ("Ancient Near Eastern Background," 80), who cites a parallel in Esarhaddon of Assyria's succession treaty. For the text, see Simo Parpola and Kazuko Watanabe, eds., Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1988), 6:266-268.
4. Cf. 1 Kings 9:13, 20:32-34, and the comments of Mordechai Cogan, I Kings (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 299, 468. There are also many examples of this usage in extrabiblical West Asian sources.
5. Though Wozniak ignores 2 Sam. 1:26, he finds in the narratives in 1 Samuel three different interpretations of the covenant between Jonathan and David. Whereas 1 Sam. 19:1-7 and 20:1-21:1 cast David as the subordinate partner and 1 Sam. 23:16-18 depicts Jonathan in the vassal role, 1 Sam. 17:12-18:4 suggests a treaty of equals ("Drei verschiedene literarische Beschreibungen," 217-218).
6. The classic treatment of covenant love is Moran's, and most of the following examples are taken from Moran's discussion ("Ancient Near Eastern Background").
7. On loving as establishing a covenant bond, see the comments of P. Kyle McCarter Jr., I Samuel (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), 282, on 1 Sam. 16:21, where Saul "loves" David and appoints him his weapon-bearer: "The king has given official recognition to the young man, has made a kind of legal commitment to him; that is, he has loved' him."
8. See William L. Moran, The Amarna Letters (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 41, for the translation. The Akkadian text in transliteration may be found in Hans-Peter Adler, ed., Das Akkadische des Konigs Tusratta von Mitanni (Kevelaer: Butzon &Bercker Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1976), 122.
9. See Moran, Amarna Letters, 43, for the translation; Adler, Akkadische, 128, for the transliteration of the Akkadian text.
10. See Moran, Amarna Letters, 125, for the translation; Jorgen A. Knudtzon, Die el-Amarna-Tafeln, Vorderasiatische Bibliothek 2.1 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1915), 326, for the text in transliteration.
11. See Moran, Amarna Letters, 200; Knudtzon, el-Amarna-Tafeln, 526.
12. See Gary Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 133,135, for the translation. For the Akkadian text in transliteration, see Albertine Hagenbuchner, Die Korrespondenz der Hethiter, 2. Teil, Texte der Hethiter 16 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1989), 281, 283, 284.
13. See Parpola and Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties, 6:207, 266-268; 9:18, 32.
14. On "the love of women" as sexual or sexual-emotional love, see the argument later in this essay.
15. See Moran, Amarna Letters, 41, for the translation; Adler, Akkadische, 122, for the Akkadian transliteration.
16. Moran, Amarna Letters, 43; Adler, Akkadische, 128.
17. Moran, Amarna Letters, 85; Adler, Akkadische, 208.
18. A similar pattern of comparison of members of the same class is found in 1 Kings 1:47, though it concerns the reputation of a king rather than his love in covenant. In this text, the servants of David bless David at the time of Solomon's accession as follows: "May God give Solomon a greater name than your name, and may he exalt his throne above your throne."
19. For another, more negative, view of Israel's youth, see, e.g., Ezek. 20:513; 23.
20. Moran, Amarna Letters, 71, Gernot Wilhelm's translation of the letter from the Hurrian. For the text in transliteration, see the references listed in Moran, Amarna Letters, 63.
21. Though the expression the love of women does not occur elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, a number of texts suggest that it should have a significant sexual or sexual-emotional component. On this, see the discussion later in this essay. In any case, it is unlikely that the love of women is an expression for covenant love, given the usual sexual-emotional connotations of love when it is associated with women, and given that covenant partners are typically male and the discourse of covenant is cast in masculine terms (brother, brotherhood, father/son) in biblical texts antedating the sixth century BCE. Note, however, the later exceptions to this pattern with respect to marriage and personal relations (Mal. 2:14; Prov. 2:17; Ruth 3:10).
22. Because the word nashim can mean either "women" or "wives," contextual considerations must determine how it is to be translated.
23. My thanks to William Gilders, whose questions and suggestions have helped me to strengthen the argument at this juncture (oral communication).
24. Ackerman ("The Personal Is Political," 452-453) understands only 1 Sam. 18:20, 28, to speak of a woman as the lover of a man, though I believe Prov. 5:19 is another example of this.
25. Note the explicit sexual dimension of the love of Jacob indicated by the verb to come to (bo le-).
26. On this hypothetical apologetic source document, see McCarter (I Samuel, 27-30), who, like previous commentators, compares the Hittite "Apology of Hat-tusili III."
27. Saul and Jonathan are presented as idealized warriors, the women of Israel as mourners who weep over their deaths.
28. Zehnder, "Exegetische Beobachtungen," 155-156. See, similarly, McKenzie, King David, 85; Parker, "Hebrew Bible," 11; and others.
29. McKenzie, King David, 85; cf. Zehnder, "Exegetische Beobachtungen," 173-175.
30. See especially Nissinen, "Liebe von David und Jonatan," 251-252, 260-261, 262, for a critique of such anachronistic practice among biblical scholars. The language of both Zehnder, and Schroer and Staubli, is similar to McKenzie's (e.g., "homosexuelle Beziehung"). A classic statement of the "constructionist" position is that of Halperin, One Hundred Years, 15-40, 154-168.
31. Saul M. Olyan, "'And with a Male You Shall Not Lie the Lying Down of a Woman': On the Meaning and Significance of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13," Journal of the History of Sexuality 5 (1994): 179-206. The argument has been accepted by Nissinen ("Liebe von David und Jonatan," 258), among others (e.g., Bernadette J. Brooten, Love between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996], 61; Jerome T. Walsh, "Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13: Who Is Doing What to Whom?" Journal of Biblical Literature 120 [2001]: 201, 204, 208). Though the date of the Holiness Source is debated, even advocates for an early date place the origin of H no earlier than the last half of the eighth century (e.g., Israel Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995], 204-212; Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16 [New York: Doubleday, 1991], 27); conventionally, it is dated much later.
32. Though the law of Lev. 20:13, like other laws in Lev. 20, betrays signs of redactional expansion (see Olyan, "And with a Male," 186-188), there is no evidence to suggest that a proto-form of it was or even might have been in existence in the tenth century, very likely the time of the composition of the Lament.
33. See, e.g., James C. Vanderkam, "Davidic Complicity in the Deaths of Abner and Eshbaal: A Historical and Redactional Study," Journal of Biblical Literature 99 (1980): 521-539; McCarter, I Samuel, 28-30; and Steven Weitzman, "David's Lament and the Poetics of Grief in 2 Samuel," Jewish Quarterly Review 85 (1995): 354-355.
34. On this, see my full argument in Biblical Mourning: Ritual and Social Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 53-54.
35. The same literary technique is repeated in 2 Sam. 3:31-37 with Abner's death. There, David orders public mourning for Abner and composes a dirge for him. His actions lead the people to believe that he is innocent of Abner's death. For the lament's function in the larger literary context of 2 Samuel as a whole, see the perceptive observations of Weitzman, "David's Lament," 354-359.
36. Olyan, "And with a Male,"
37. E.g., to the unions identified by John Boswell in Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (New York: Villard, 1994), if they were indeed what Boswell claimed.
38. See Kathy Rudy, Sex and the Church: Gender, Homosexuality, and the Transformation of Christian Ethics (Boston: Beacon, 1997), 119.
39. On the novelty and aberration of the 1950s ideal family when compared to most of human history and most cultures, see Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 25-29.
40. Byron R. McCane, "Let the Dead Bury Their Own Dead': Secondary Burial and Matt. 8:21-22," Harvard Theological Review 83 (1990): 31-43.
41. T. W. Manson, The Sayings of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1957), 131; Francois Bovon, L'Évangile selon Saint Luc (9,51-14,35) (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1996), 471.
42. "Q," from the German word Quelle, which means "source," is the designation given to a hypothetical document many scholars believe was used by both Matthew and Luke in the writing of their own Gospels. If they both used it, it obviously would represent a source earlier than their own texts.
43. Elizabeth A. Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 242-250.
44. John Chrysostom, On Virginity., 14.6.
45. Or that of Thomas in the precise sense. Thomas has a man excuse himself in order to arrange the wedding of someone else (Gospel of Thomas 64).
46. Francois Bovon, Luke: A Commentary on the Gospel of Luke 1:1-9:50 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002), 1.114.
47. I take it that Barnabas is not married because no wife or family is ever mentioned for him, he travels around with Paul, likewise unmarried, without a family, and he is mentioned in this capacity by Paul in 1 Cor. 9:6. Though the precise verse in which Barnabas is mentioned refers to working for a living rather than living off contributions from the churches, the context also includes "traveling around with a sister-wife" as Peter and other apostles had done. I take it that Paul then includes Barnabas with himself as someone who has not taken advantage of that "right."
48. Commentators generally note that Barnabas serves as a positive example and Ananias and Sapphira as negative examples of the communalism expected of early Christians in Acts. See, e.g., C. K. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles (Edinburgh: T. &T. Clark, 1994), 2.257-271; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles (New York: Doubleday, 1964), 315.
49. They are not "normal" for several reasons. They have no children, nor a "stable" household, but rather are themselves fairly itinerant; Prisca (or Priscilla, as in Acts) is often mentioned first, implying higher status for her, at least for the author, than her husband; their "household" is permeable enough to include Paul in it at times. Paul moves in with them, works with them, and relocates with them. Their relationship, in any case, cannot be made into a "nuclear family," and neither does it look like the traditional extended family of antiquity.
50. For the activities of Satan in Luke-Acts, see Susan R. Garrett, The Demise of the Devil: Magic and the Demonic in Luke's Writings (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989).
51. The "togetherness" of Ananias and Sapphira "violated the togetherness of the Christian community" (Ben Witherington III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998], 218). Ananias and Sapphira represent a "counter-community. . . over against the spirit-community that shares its possessions" (Luke Timothy Johnson, The Acts of the Apostles, Sacra Pagina Series, vol. 5 [Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992], 87; see also 89).
52. For most people in the Greco-Roman world, separation meant divorce, even legally. According to Roman family law, which may not have even applied to nonRoman Christians and Jews, divorce was effected simply by one of the partners "willing" to be no longer married. Abandonment was almost always sufficient for divorce. Moreover, without marriage laws to regulate the daily lives of most inhabitants of the Greco-Roman world, "divorce" most normally would have been effected simply by "separation."
53. Tina Pippin, Death and Desire: The Rhetoric of Gender in the Apocalypse ofJohn (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), 57-86.
54. References to pollution: 14:1-5; filth or dirt: 22:11; "abomination" (bdelygma = bdelysso, meaning "rot" or "stink"): 21:8, 27; see also 7:14; 16:13; 17:4; 18:2; 19:2. One can also discern the obsession by noting the many references to fire and sulphur, i.e., "purifying" substances.
55. See Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999); and Martin, "Paul without Passion: On Paul's Rejection of Desire in Sex and Marriage," in Constructing Early Christian Families: Family as Social Reality and Metaphor, ed. HalvorMoxnes (London: Routledge, 1997), 201-215.
56. I have elsewhere shown that modern attempts to read Paul as a "gender egalitarian" do not stand up to scrutiny, though such claims do continue to be made, presumably by those wishing to "save" Paul from his fairly obvious, and natural for his time, hierarchical view of gender. See, e.g., Martin, Corinthian Body, 230-233; contrast James D. G. Dunn, "The Household Rules in the New Testament," in The Family in Theological Perspective, ed. Stephen C. Barton (Edinburgh: T. &T Clark, 1996), 55.
57. See R. P. Reardon, Collected Ancient Greek Novels (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989); and Judith Perkins, The Suffering Self: Pain and Representation in the Early Christian Era (London: Routledge, 1995), 44-76.
58. See Andrew S. Jacobs, "A Family Affair: Marriage, Class, and Ethics in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles," Journal of Early Christian Studies 7 (1999): 105-138.
59. J.N.D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), 102.
60. David Hunter provides a collection of early church writings on marriage: David G. Hunter, ed., Marriage in the Early Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992). It is telling that although Hunter clearly attempted to balance the "negative" views with the few available "positive" views of marriage, the book is rather thin. There just are not enough "positive" views in early Christianity to balance out the "negative" ones.
61. These translations are from Hunter, "Rereading the Jovinianist Controversy," 453; for the Latin, see Siricius, Epistolae, 7.4-6 (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesia-sticorum Latinorum 82/3:301).
62. Hunter, "Rereading the Jovinianist Controversy," 453.
63. Hunter, "Resistance to the Virginal Ideal."
64. Jerome, Against Jovinian, 1.7, 2.35, and 1.33, respectively.
65. Jerome, Against Jovinian 1.40; trans. W. H. Fremantle, with G. Lewis and W. G. Martley, The Principal Works of St. Jerome, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., vol. 6 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979).
66. See, e.g., Augustine, The Good ofMarriage, chapter 6. For the English of this as well as other excerpts from Augustine's relevant writings, and including an excellent introduction, see Elizabeth A. Clark, St. Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996). See also Elizabeth A. Clark, ".Adam's Only Companion': Augustine and the Early Christian Debate on Marriage," Recherches Augustiniennes 21 (1986): 139-162; and Philip Lyndon Reynolds, Marriage in the Western Church: The Christianization ofMarriage during the Patristic and Early Medieval Periods (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 259.
67. Augustine, Good ofMarriage, chapter 9; translated in Clark, St. Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality, 51.
68. Edmund Leites, The Puritan Conscience and Modern Sexuality (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), 80-83.
69. Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977), 135.
70. Christopher Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (New York: Schocken Books, 1964), 453.
71. Guerra, Family Matters, 30.
72. Stone, Family, Sex and Marriage, 136.
73. See Stone, Family, Sex and Marriage, 141.
74. William Perkins, Works (Cambridge: Cantrell Legge, 1618), 3.671. Perkins goes on to say that had the Fall not occurred, the single life should have no place in the world at all, but because of the exigencies of existence after the Fall, some people, no doubt only a few, may do better to remain single ifthey "have the gift of continence."
75. Edmund S. Morgan, "The Puritans and Sex," in The American Family in Social-Historical Perspective, 2nd ed., ed. Michael Gordon (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978), especially 364, 371.
76. Thomas Taylor, Works (London: Printed by T.R. &E.M. for J. Bartlet the elder and J. Bartlet the younger, 1653), 190.
77. William Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties: Eight Treatises (London: John Havi-land, 1622), 18.
78. Levin L. Schücking, The Puritan Family: A Social Study from the Literary Sources, 2nd ed. (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 65-66.
79. Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Family: Essays on Religion and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth-Century New England (Boston: Boston Public Library, 1944), 85.
80. Morgan, Puritan Family., 86-89; Guerra, Family Matters, 43.
81. Morgan, Puritan Family, 9-14; Schücking, Puritan Family, 67; Hill, Society and Puritanism, 458-462.
82. For other Christian ethical critiques of the Puritan family model, see Lisa Sowle Cahill, Family: A Christian Social Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 51.
83. Much of my point here is dependent on Michael Warner, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (New York: Free Press, 1999).
84. The focus on the family is ultimately antisocial. It is politically quietistic, opposed to social reform, and "tolerant of economic injustice." The "private family" is therefore socially irresponsible. See Coontz, The Way We Never Were, 97-98. Or as Jessie Bernard has put it, "Marriage is a cheap way for society at large to take care of a lot of difficult people. We force individuals-a wife or a husband-to take care of them on a one-to-one basis" (The Future of Marriage [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982], 161; quoted and affirmed by Brian W. Grant, The Social Structure of Christian Families: A Historical Perspective [St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2000], 147).
85. Even an author intent on affirming the normativity of marriage for Christians (though she does suggest that it should now be balanced with "a favourable account of celibacy") admits that "the Christian family' makes plenty of people feel excluded, not strengthened" (Helen Oppenheimer, Marriage [London: Mowbray, 1990], 87, 110).
86. For an historical review of the many forms marriage as an institution has taken over the past two millennia, see John Witte Jr., From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition (Louisville, KY: Westminster/ John Knox Press, 1997).
87. Those who wish to argue that the presence of these codifications of marital order in and of itself substantiates the status and positive regard the New Testament holds for marriage are also required to argue that same positive regard is held for slavery, because the passages regulating household order include not only husbands and wives, parents and children, but also masters and slaves. If the mere existence of the household codes endorses marriage, it also endorses slavery. That dual endorsement would seem to me to undercut in a serious way the moral standing of the views on marriage in these texts.
88. For a somewhat different reading ofMark's position, see Dale B. Martin's essay in this volume.
89. For thorough discussions of this issue, see J.T.A.G.M. van Ruiten, "The Creation of Man and Woman in Early Jewish Literature," in Creation of Man and Woman, 34-62; and Benjamins, "Keeping Marriage out ofParadise," 93-106. See also Gary Anderson ("The Garden of Eden and Sexuality in Early Judaism," in People of the Body: Jews and Judaism from an Embodied Perspective, ed. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992], 47-68), who argues that the Rabbis did see marriage in the Garden whereas the Church Fathers did not.
90. Philo, De Opificio Mundi, 151-152. See also the discussion in Thomas H. Tobin, S.J., The Creation of Man: Philo and the History of Interpretation, Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series 14 (Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1983); and Annewies van den Hoek, "Endowed with Reason or Glued to the Senses: Philo's Thoughts on Adam and Eve," in Creation of Man and Woman, 63-75.
91. See Mathew Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 255-273.
92. For a fuller discussion of this Aggadic tradition of creation of male and female, which also appears in Leviticus Rabbah 14:I, see Jacob Neusner, Judaism's Story of Creation: Scripture, Halakhah, Aggadah (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 219-264; and Kristen Kvam, Linda Schearing, and Valarie Ziegler, eds., Eve and Adam: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Readings on Genesis and Gender (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 69-85.
93. Philo, De Opificio Mundi, 152. Some early Christians, as the Coptic Gospel of Thomas indicates in its exegesis of Genesis 1, also understood original human creation as being undivided and singular, which then quickly devolves into a duality that mars the true undivided image of God. Returning to that undivided, singular state becomes the purpose of Jesus and the goal of Christian life. For this analysis, see Elaine Pagels, "Exegesis of Genesis 1 in the Gospels of Thomas and John," Journal of Biblical Literature 118,no. 3 (1999): 477-496.
94. Plato, Symposium, 191-192. Consider also Laurence Paul Hemming's essay in this volume.
95. Early Christian and Jewish exegetes recognized the presence of two somewhat conflicting creation stories in Genesis 1-3, and resolving this exegetical problem encouraged many of them toward creativity and theological expansion.
96. Complementarity has become the preferred term for the created relationship of male and female in the writing of some recent conservative commentators. See, e.g., Robert Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001). What exactly complementarity might mean for that relationship is rarely touched on or explained. In my opinion, the reason it is not explained is that complementarity-beyond a sort of low-level assumed genital anatomical "fit"-almost certainly requires defining the broader female role in the "complement" as the more traditional passive and subordinate position to the male's dominant, purposeful, and decision-making role. Being clear and open about the meaning of complementarity would almost surely lose popularity for the term and the idea behind it.
97. Demosthenes, Against Neaera, 122.
98. For more discussion on the fictive nature of New Testament family, see the essays in Halvor Moxnes, ed., Constructing Early Christian Families: Family as Social Reality and Metaphor (London: Routledge, 1997).
99. David Konstan, Friendship in the Classical World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1.
100. For studies on the importance of friendship in antiquity and in the New Testament, see John T. Fitzgerald, ed., Greco-Roman Perspectives on Friendship, Society of Biblical Literature Resources for Biblical Studies 34 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997); and John T. Fitzgerald, ed., Friendship, Flattery, and Frankness of Speech: Studies on Friendship in the New Testament World (Leiden: Brill, 1996).
101. For a full discussion of Ben Sira's views on friendship, see Jeremy Corley, Ben Sira's Teaching on Friendship, Brown Judaic Studies 316 (Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2002).
102. The idea of friendship with God was fairly common in antiquity. See David Winston, ed., The Wisdom of Solomon, Anchor Bible 43 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), 188-189.
103. Gregory E. Sterling, "The Bond ofHumanity: Friendship in Philo ofAlexan-dria," in Greco-Roman Perspectives on Friendship (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 203-223.
104. Philo, De Specialibus Legibus, I:52.
105. Whereas Aristotle's classic understanding of friendship delineated three forms of friendship-the altruistic, the utilitarian, and the pleasurable-Ben Sira, Philo, and the New Testament authors clearly seem to value the altruistic as the only true meaning of friendship.
106. Jean Bethke Elshtain, "Happily Ever After? Sex, Marriage, and Family in National and Global Profile" (speech given at the conference "Sex, Marriage, and Family and the Religions of the Book," Emory University, Atlanta, March 27, 2003).
107. See, e.g., Thomas E. Schmidt, Straight and Narrow? Compassion and Clarity in the Homosexuality Debate (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 45; or John Stott, Our Social and Sexual Revolution: Major Issues for a New Century, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 200.
108. In both rabbinic and Christian writing, this chapter is understood as the contrast between true religious wisdom, "wife of one's youth," and heresy. I shall be expanding on this point in another context, Deo volente.
109. See the near-classic Claudia V. Camp, Wisdom and the Feminine in the Book of Proverbs, Bible and Literature Series (Decatur, GA: Almond Press, 1985); and Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 1-9: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 331-359.
110. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).
111. Michael L. Satlow, Jewish Marriage in Antiquity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 13-14; and Musonius Rufus, for whom see page cited in next note.
112. Satlow, Jewish Marriage, 33.
113. Daniel Boyarin, "Literary Fat Rabbis: On the Historical Origins of the Grotesque Body," Journal of the History of Sexuality 1, no. 4 (April 1991): 551-584; Daniel Boyarin, "Homotopia: The Feminized Jewish Man and the Lives of Women in Late Antiquity," Differences 7, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 41-71; Daniel Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man, Contraversions: Studies in Jewish Literature, Culture, and Society (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), 127-150.
114. See the remarks of David Cohen, Law, Sexuality, and Society: The Enforcement of Morals in Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 174. On this point, I could not agree more with Cohen: "A culture is not a homogeneous unity; there was no one. Athenian attitude' towards homoeroticism" (Law, Sexuality, and Society, 201).
115. My colleague Ronald Hendel has emphasized this point, which will be taken up, Deo volente, further when I attempt to consider the relations between Hellenic Sophism and Near Eastern (and Egyptian) Wisdom.
116. David M. Halperin, "Why Is Diotima a Woman?" in One Hundred Years of Homosexuality and Other Essays on Greek Love (New York: Routledge, 1990), 113-151 and 190-211, is, of course, a notable exception to this generalization. I shall be building on this landmark essay immediately below.
117. Halperin, "Why Is Diotima a Woman?" 124.
118. Cf. Martha Nussbaum's version of Halperin's point: "Here, then, Socrates too, takes a mistress: a priestess instead of a courtesan, a woman who prefers the intercourse of the pure mind to the pleasures of the body, who honors (or is honored by) the divine rather than the merely human." Martha Craven Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 177. While still emphasizing Aspasia as hetaira, Nussbaum does hint at the point that I would make: Diotima is the woman-philosopher-who "prefers the intercourse of the pure mind." From Diotima to Hypatia is not, I think, such an enormous epistemic leap. And let us not forget the strong ancient traditions that there were (a few) women in the Academy. See Konrad Gaiser, Philodems Academica: Die Berichte uber Platon und die Alte Akademie in zwei herkulanensischen Papyri (Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1988), 154, cited in Pierre Hadot, What Is Ancient Philosophy? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 61.
119. Halperin, "Why Is Diotima a Woman?" 124.
120. My colleague, G.R.F. Ferrari has pointed out to me that only recently he has come to realize that this is not a necessary conclusion; neither the text explicitly, nor Greek custom, would demand that a priestess be celibate. However, the very fact that it is only recently that such an assiduous reader of Plato has sensed this suggests to me that it is, indeed, deeply encoded within the text that she is, in fact, a virginal or celibate woman (if not qua priestess, then qua philosopher). Whether or not Lady Diotima had children, the tradition could hardly be faulted, I think, for assuming that it is implied in the text that she had none.
121. Which in the end, is quite different from Halperin's in its end. For Halperin, Diotima turns out to be "not so much a woman as a woman,' a necessary female absence" ("Why Is Diotima a Woman?" 149). Forme, Diotima is exactly a woman but a woman who represents the absence of another woman, not for specific political reasons having to do with gender, but for reasons having to do with the reproduction of the democratic polis as opposed to the philosophical academy.
122. See the briefest of hint in this direction in Nicole Loraux, The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 323.
123. Plato, Gorgias: A Revised Text, ed. and trans. E. R. Dodds (1959; reprint, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 23-24; Dennis Proctor, The Experience of Thucydides (Warminster, Wilts, England: Aris &hillips, 1980), 6; Loraux, Invention of Athens, 311-327; M. Pohlenz, Aus Platos Werdezeit (Berlin: Weidmann, 1913), 264-292; A. E. Taylor, Plato, the Man and His Work (London: Methuen, 1960), 42.
124. Plato, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Gorgias, Menexenus, trans. Reginald E. Allen, The Dialogues of Plato (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), 329.
125. Halperin, "Why Is Diotima a Woman?" 138-139.
126. Plato, The Republic, ed. G.R.F. Ferrari, trans. Tom Griffith, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 200-201.
127. Andrea Wilson Nightingale, Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 43.
128. It is only recently that the enormous gap between Pausanian erotic theory in the Symposium and that of Diotima/Socrates/Plato has come clearly into focus. Not long ago, it was easy to find statements of the following sort in the literature: "in the Symposium Plato feels no necessity to make Socrates or Diotima speak about it [heavenly eros], but entrusts to Pausanias the task of explaining the difference between what he calls vulgar ( πáv§ημoç) Eros' and heavenly ( oćpávioç) Eros.'" Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, trans. Philip S. Watson (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 51. This leads, of course, to a total and totally misleading conflation of the view of Pausanias (the Athenian demotic view of love) and that of Plato. For this argument at length, see Boyarin, "What Do We Talk About."
129. Pierre Hadot writes: Socrates' task-entrusted to him, says the Apology., by the Delphic oracle (in other words, the god Apollo)-was therefore to make other people recognize their lack of knowledge and of wisdom. In order to accomplish this mission, Socrates himself adopted the attitude of someone who knew nothing-an attitude of naivete. This is the well-known Socratic irony: the feigned ignorance and candid air with which, for instance, he asked questions in order to find out whether someone was wiser than he... .
130. According to Cicero, "Socrates used to denigrate himself, and conceded more than was necessary to the interlocutors he wanted to refute. Thus, thinking one thing and saying another, he took pleasure in that dissimulation which the Greeks call irony.'" (Hadot, What Is Ancient Philosophy? 26-27, emphasis added)
131. See Eugene Rogers's essay in this volume and Rogers, Sexuality and the Christian Body: Their Way into the Triune God, Challenges in Contemporary Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999).
132. Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, vol. 2 of The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1986), 240.
133. Cf. K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality, updated and with a new postscript (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 164-165.
134. Benjamin Jowett, trans., The Dialogues of Plato (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1875), 2:18.
135. Although, of course, the Stranger in the Laws would dearly like it to have been so (835c1-8); see the discussion in Seth Benardete, Plato's "Laws": The Discovery of Being (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 239.
136. Cf. G.R.F. Ferrari, "Platonic Love," in The Cambridge Companion to Plato, ed. Richard Kraut (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 256: "the transition from the Lesser to Greater bears comparison, then, with the crucial shift of focus in the Republic from institutions grounded in the honor code (Books II-IV) to those derived from rule by philosopher-kings (Books V-VII)."
137. Boyarin, "What Do We Talk About."
138. Raw materials are not subject to ritual impurity, but finished implements or vessels are. The question that this text asks is, then, what constitutes the completion of production for these various weapons.
139. This sentence is not in the manuscripts and is clearly an addition in the text, but I cite it from the printed edition because it is very revealing of the meaning of the narrative as a whole, and indeed supportive of my reading. (It would seem to be an ancient gloss.) R.Y. is not made to say that he profited R.L. by providing him with a wife but only by having provided him with the spiritual female object of desire, the Shekhina.
140. That is, there is the class of the ignoranti (the 'ammei h'arasot), but the Sages are enjoined not to separate themselves from this crowd. Much more can and will need to be said on this point, but it approximates my thinking at present.
141. A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 1:430.
142. Cf. "This movement [from family to polis] is recapitulated in the Republic, with its noble lie, myths, and bizarre sexual regulations, where first the family is annihilated in the name of the city, and then the philosophers, who are to be its rulers, do not want to turn away from their contemplations to descend to the city's cavelike darkness." Allan David Bloom, "The Ladder of Love," in Plato's Symposium, trans. Seth Benardete (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 66.
143. Fascinatingly, however, when this same metaphor is used with reference to a non-Jewish male, Ahasuerosh, it seems that his pleasure in having sex with Esther was similar to that of the buck with the doe: "Rav Zeirah said [a parable]: For what Esther, [the person] was compared to a young female deer?-[It was done in order] to tell you that as the young female deer has a tiny vagina and her husband always loves [her] as if it would be their first time, so also [the king] Ahasuerosh always loved Esther as if it were their first time" (TB Yoma 29a).
144. Shlomo Naeh, "Freedom and Celibacy: A Talmudic Variation on Tales of Temptation and Fall in Genesis and Its Syrian Background," in The Book ofGenesis in Jewish and Oriental Christian Interpretation: A Collection of Essays, ed. Judith Frishman and Lucas Van Rompay, Traditio Exegetica Graeca 5 (Louvain: Peeters, 1997), 73-89; Naomi Koltun-Fromm, "Yoke of the Holy-Ones: The Embodiment of a Christian Vocation," Harvard Theological Review 94, no. 2 (2001): 205-218; Michael Satlow, "And on the Earth You Shall Sleep: Talmud Torah and Rabbinic Asceticism," Journal of Religion 83 (2003): 204-225; Eliezer Diamond, Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
145. Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism, The Lancaster/Yarnton Lectures in Judaism and Other Religions for 1998 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 56-58.
146. As pointed out already in Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 65, but with much greater clarity and power in Rosen-zvi, "Evil Instinct."
147. Let us not forget, then, that Socrates himself was married with children (perhaps his children were very naughty). Plato, most assuredly, was not.
148. Satlow points out a Pehlevi text from about the time of the redaction of the Babylonian Talmud that indicates that if a woman does not marry it is a "sin worthy of death; because for a woman there is no offspring except by intercourse with men, and no lineage proceeds from her; but for a man without a wife, when he shall recite the Avesta, as it is mentioned in the vendida, there may be a lineage which proceeds onwards to the future existence" (Satlow, Jewish Marriage, 33-34).
149. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons (June 3,2003), in Acta Apostolicæ Sedis 100 (2004): 2, p. 42. "L'insegnamento della Chiesa sul matrimonio e sulla complementarita dei sessi ripropone una verita evidenziata dalla retta ragione e riconosciuta come tale da tutte le grandi culture del mondo."
150. John Paul II, Apostolic Letter MulierisDignitatem (August 15, 1988), in Acta Apostolicæ Sedis 80 (1984): 7, p. 1666. "Ex unitate duorum' vir et mulier inde ab exordio vocati sunt non solum ut vivant alter apud alteram,' vel una sint, sed vocati sunt etiam ut vicissim alter pro altero vivat." Emphasis is in the original.
151. Gen. 1:15-25.
152. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons, I, p. 42. "La dignita del matrimonio, fondamento della famiglià, e la solidità della società."
153. Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (London: Routledge, 1993), 54.
154. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 1990), 31. This position has been delightfully amplified in an unpublished paper by Ferdinand Knapp, "Walk the Walk, Talk the Talk': Blokes, and Why It Doesn't Matter That They Think They Are Real" (Peterhouse Theory Group, Cambridge, UK, April 1998), which develops the notion of "heterosexual camp" to illustrate the phenomenon of the British "lad" culture, now with its parallel among women, or "ladettes."
155. For a fuller description of the heterosexual matrix as she understands it, see Butler, Gender Trouble, 35-78.
156. It is unsurprising, therefore, that Butler has continued to explore the effects of gender in the political. See her Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (London: Routledge, 1997).
157. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, in his Gesamtausgabe, vol. 2, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1977), especially 25-27, pp. 153-173.
158. Martin Heidegger, Metaphysische Anfangsgründe derLogik, in his Gesamtausgabe, vol. 26, ed. Klaus Held (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1990), 174ff.: "Das Dasein Mitsein mit Dasein ist. Dieses Mitsein mit. . . entsteht nicht aufgrund eines fak-tisches Zusammendaseins, es erklärt sich nicht nur auf dem Grunde eines vermeint-lich ursprünglicheren gattungshaften Seins der geschlechtlich gespaltenen leiblichen Wesen, sondern dieses gattungshafte Zusammenstreben und die gat-tungshafte Einigung hat zur metaphysischen Voraussetzung die Zerstreuung des Daseins als solchen, d.h. das Mitsein überhaupt."
159. Heidegger, Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik, 173: "Die Kennzeich-nung der Mannigfaltigung (nicht Mannigfaltigkeit'), die je in jedem vereinzelten faktischen Dasein als solchem liegt."
160. Martin Heidegger, Einleitung in die Philosophie, in his Gesamtausgabe, vol. 27, ed. Otto Saame and Ima Saame-Speidel (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1996), 145ff.: "Das Miteinander ist also nicht durch die Ich-Du-Beziehung und aus ihr zu erklären, sondern umgekehrt: Diese Ich-Du-Beziehung setzt fur ihre innere Moglichkeit voraus, daβje schon das Dasein, sowohl das als Ich fungierende als auch das Du, als Miteinandersein bestimmt ist, ja noch mehr: Sogar die Selbsterfas-sung eines Ich und der Begriff von Ichheit erwächst erst auf dem Grunde des Miteinander, aber nicht als Ich-Du-Beziehung."
161. See, for instance, Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), especially pp. 53ff.
162. Plato, Symposium, 189D: "ten anthropinen physin kai ta pathemata autes."
163. Plato, Symposium, 189D: "ton allon didaskaloi esesthe."
164. In contrast to the interpretation I have suggested, Leo Strauss notes the connection that this names with the original divinities, different from the Olympian gods. The three kinds of human already referred to each of the most primordial of divinities and corresponded to them. See Leo Strauss, Leo Strauss on Plato's Symposium, ed. Seth Bernadete (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 74ff. The missing fourth element (in that the middle elements, water and air, are middle-up and middle-down) could be construed as present in terms of the missing fourth which I later indicate.
165. Cf. Plato, Symposium, 189E.
166. Plato, Symposium, 191 C-D: "esti de oun. . . ten anthropinen."
167. Plato, Symposium, 192 C: "oudeni gar an. . . sunousia."
168. The dictionaries often suggest that active and passive referred respectively to male and female but this is-to give it the kindest reading possible-disingenuous, since the passive form could be used with regard to men and, although with normally shameful implications, the active form with regard to women.
169. Cf. Plato, Symposium, 191C.
170. Hence the possibility of referring all the forms of the original human being to the elements.
171. It is actually this even more original relation to logos, or language that, one might argue, forms the basis of Aristotle's critique of Plato's relation of being to number.
172. Cf. Plato, Symposium, 190A: "kai prosopa dun ep' auchei kukloterei."
173. Plato, Timaeus, 33B: "panton teleotaton omoiotaton te autho e auto."
174. Although there are traces of a different tale in the reference to begetting in the manner of crickets (cf. Plato, Symposium, 191B).
175. Genesis Rabbah 8:1.
176. For the fuller exploration of the intersection between the halakhah and homosexuality, see Steven Greenberg, Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality and the Jewish Tradition (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004); and Chaim Rapoport, Judaism and Homosexuality: An Authentic Orthodox View (Ilford, U.K.: Valentine Mitchell, 2004).
177. My attempt at creating a same-sex Jewish marriage ritual is surely not the first. For other attempts, see Rachel Adler, Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1998); Elizabeth Resnick Levine, A Ceremonies Sampler: New Rites, Celebrations, and Observances of Jewish Women (San Diego: Woman's Institute for Continuing Jewish Education, 1991); Suzanne Sherman, Lesbian and Gay Marriage: Private Commitments, Public Ceremonies (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992); Kittredge Cherry and Zal-mon Sherwood, eds., Equal Rites: Lesbian and Gay Worship, Ceremonies, and Celebrations (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1995); and Becky Butler, ed., Ceremonies of the Heart: Celebrating Lesbian Unions (Seattle: Seal Press, 1990).
178. Nonetheless, were the wedding to be canceled, a divorce bill (get) would still need to be served as in an ordinary marriage.
179. Some translate erusin as "betrothal," which is misleading because erusin is more than a promise to marry; it is a completed marital contract. Here I have followed Rachel Adler's good sense and have referred to erusin as "espousal." See Adler, Engendering Judaism, 251.
180. A variant blessing was preferred by the eleventh-century authority Rav Hai Gaon. His blessing ended with, "Blessed are you, O Lord, who sanctifies Israel," omitting the phrase, "by means of huppah and kiddushin." For Rav Hai, "the sanctity of Israel is not dependent upon this," i.e., on rituals of huppah and kiddushin. Rav Hai insisted on this difference because Jewish marriage was not considered a sacrament. See Isaiah M. Gafni, "The Institution of Marriage in Rabbinic Times," in The Jewish Family, ed. David Kraemer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 14.
181. M Kiddushin 1:1.
182. BT Kiddushin 4b.
183. It is interesting that Jewish law does not give a person absolute rights in his own property. A person is not permitted to wantonly destroy his own property. The prohibition is derived from Deut. 20:19, which prohibits the destruction of fruit trees during a military siege. The rabbis derive from this text a prohibition against destroying or wasting one's own material resources. See Maimonides, Yad, Kings 6:10.
184. BT Kiddushin 2a, Tosafot d.h. d'asar.
185. The Ashkenazi ban was attributed to Rabeinu Gershom of the eleventh century, but Falk suggests that it was erroneously ascribed to R. Gershom but was developed in the twelfth century under pressure from the church, the government, and women themselves. See Zev Falk, Jewish Matrimonial Law in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 13. In Muslim lands, polygamy was formally permitted until the modern era. Where polygamy was practiced, an aristocratic family would often stipulate in their daughter's marriage contract that the husband not take on a co-wife in order to protect their daughter from the inevitable degradations a second wife would bring.
186. Adler, Engendering Judaism, 174-180.
187. The language of lover as friend derives from the Song of Songs, which, according to Phyllis Trible, is itself a text of healing of all of the fractures of the Fall. See Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1978), 144-165.
188. BT Hulin 60b.
189. Halakhically speaking, Kiddush Levanah can be recited from seventy-two hours after the appearance of the new moon, referred to as the molad, until midmonth, which is fourteen days, eighteen hours, and twenty-two minutes after the molad.
190. BT Sanhedrin 42a.
191. In Siddur Abodat Israel, 338, Yehuda Baer suggests that this addition to the Kiddush Levanah is a tradition from the medieval German pietist R. Yehuda HaHasid. However, in the five-volume commentary on Jewish liturgy Netiv Binah, the author, Issachar Jacobson, admits not being able to find the origins of this prayer but believes that it derives from a mystical source. See Netiv Bina, 3:343.
192. Rashi on Megilah 22b, dh. roshei hodashim. I thank Rabbi Pinchas Klein for bringing this source to my attention.
193. John Boswell, Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (New York: Villard Books, 1994). Until otherwise noted, parenthetical citations will refer to the pages of this book. I have considered Boswell's book twice before, once in an extended book review and again in a constructive argument about rites for blessing same-sex unions. See Jordan, "A Romance of the Gay Couple," GLQ 3 (1996): 301-310, and Blessing Same-Sex Unions: The Perils of Queer Romance and the Confusions of Christian Marriage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 132-136. I repeat only some of my earlier points here, since the other pieces had quite different purposes-and audiences.
194. Jacobus Goar, comp., Euchologion, sive rituale Graecorum. . . (Venice: Bartho-lomaeus Javarina, 1730; reprint, Graz: Drucku. Verlagsanstalt, 1960).
195. Boswell's interpretation of the text in Grottaferrata MS Gamma.B.II (and from it to all other manuscripts) depends on ignoring a scribal line that would appear to mark off the marital ceremony of crowning from the rite of adelphopoiesis. Because I have not handled the manuscript myself, my sense that the reading may be doubtful comes from Boswell's strained arguments in support of it (296-297, n. 80).
196. Codex iuris canonici (1983), 1101 §, in Code of Canon Law: Latin-English Edition, New English Translation (Washington, DC: Canon Law Society of America, 1999), 346. For one analysis of the kinds of "positive act of the will" that will invalidate marriage under this canon and the sorts of evidence needed to establish it, see Lawrence G. Wrenn, The Invalid Marriage (Washington, DC: Canon Law Society of America, 1998), 122-125.
197. Wrenn, Invalid Marriage, 90-91.
198. Gary Trudeau's comic strip Doonesbury ran a short series on Boswell's book beginning June 8, 1994. In the strip, the character Mark says that a Yale professor has written a book proving that "for 1,000 years the church sanctioned rituals for homosexual marriages."
199. Cf. Don E. Saliers, Worship as Theology: Foretaste of Divine Glory (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), on the eschatological character of liturgy and its elements.
200. Compare Boswell's labored explanation for translating the various rites into something like the English of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer (Same-Sex Unions, 283-284).
201. Until otherwise noted, parenthetical citations will refer to the pages of Alan Bray, The Friend (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
202. Leo Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
203. Bray recounts a variety of ways for performing the ceremony before communion. See the summary in Bray, Friend, 242-243.
204. Bray's fullest explanation of these connections comes in his interpretation of the great east window at Holy Trinity, Goodramgate (Friend, 246-253).
205. Boswell had searched for something just like this rite, but somehow missed its publication by Zaninović in 1971; see Bray, 8-9, 316-317. Bray reprints and translates the Ordo, 130-133.
206. John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
207. Derrick Sherwin Bailey, Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition (London: Longmans, Green SCo., 1955; reprint, Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1975).
208. See, for example, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "Notification Concerning Certain Publications of Prof. Dr. Reinhard Messner" (November 30, 2000), Acta Apostolicæ Sedis 93 (2001): 385-403, especially proposition no. 9: "Between the magisterial forms of the definitions of the faith (Regula fidei, Sym-bolum, Dogma) and their actualization in the liturgy there cannot be any contradiction. The defined faith runs through every liturgy, through interpretation, and through new formulations of the liturgy."
209. Compare the ever-expanding notion of "juxtaposition" in Gordon W. Lathrop, Holy Things: A Liturgical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993).
210. Michel Foucault, Surveiller etpunir: Naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975).
211. See, for recent Catholic liturgies of engagement in France, Baptiste Coul-mont, "Politiques de l'alliance': Les créations d'un rite des fiancailles catho-liques," Archives de Science Sociale des Religions 199 (2002): 5-27; and, more generally, Michael P. Foley, "Betrothals: Their Past, Present, and Future," Studia Li-turgica 33 (2003): 37-61.
212. Michel de Montaigne, Journal de Voyage en Italiepar la Suisse et l'Allemagne en 1580 et 1581, ed. Charles Dedeyan (Paris: Société des Belles Lettres, 1946), 231. Boswell takes this as evidence for the use in western Europe of a Latin liturgy of adelphopoiesis (Same-Sex Unions, 264-265); I read it rather as evidence of the appropriation for same-sex purposes of existing wedding rites.
213. Bray, Friend, especially 241-243.
214. See, for example, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Women-Church: Theology and Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities (San Francisco: Harper Sow, 1985), 196-200; Kittredge Cherry and Zalmon Sherwood, eds., Equal Rites: Lesbian and Gay Worship, Ceremonies, and Celebrations (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1995), 89-109; Becky Butler, ed., Ceremonies of the Heart: Celebrating Lesbian Unions, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Seal Press, 1997); Geoffrey Duncan, ed., Courage to Love: Liturgies for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2002), 286-306; William G. Storey, A Book of Prayer: For Gay and Lesbian Christians (New York: Crossroad, 2002), 80-86; and Diann L. Neu, Women's Rites: Feminist Liturgies for Life's Journey (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2003), 106-120.
215. Compare Jean-Guy Nadeau and Manon Jourdenais, "La performativité des rites de la communauté gay confrontée au VIH/sida," in Rites et ritualités: Actes du congrès de théologiepratique de Strasbourg, ed. Bernard Kaempf (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2000), 27-43, especially p. 43.
216. See the remarkable analysis by Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 55-79; and the exposition by Nathan D. Mitchell, Liturgy and the Social Sciences, American Essays in Liturgy (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999), 64-80.
217. For efforts similar to mine, see Don H. Compier, "Hooker on the Authority of Scripture in Matters of Morality," in Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community., ed. Arthur Stephen McGrade (Tempe: Arizona State University, 1997), 251-259; and Stephen Sykes, "Richard Hooker and the Ordination of Women to the Priesthood," in his Unashamed Anglicanism (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 81-98.
218. See M.E.C. Perrott, "Richard Hooker and the Problem of Authority in the Elizabethan Church," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 49, no. 1 (1998): 36-39.
219. Parenthetical references in the rest of the essay will be to Ofthe Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, citing book, chapter, and section, according to the most easily accessible edition, The Works of.. . Mr. Richard Hooker, ed. John Keble, R. W. Church, and F. Paget, 7th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888).
220. Francis Paget, An Introduction to the Fifth Book of Hooker's Treatise of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), 214.
221. "Issues in Human Sexuality: A Statement by the House of Bishops of the General Synod of the Church of England" (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1991), 2.28.
222. All quotations are taken from the presentation of February 13, 2003, as published on the Web site of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops at www.cccb.ca
223. "The Council proclaims man's high vocation, insists on a certain seed of divinity he carries within him." "Ideo sacra synodus, altissimam vocationem hominis profitens et divinum quoddam semen in eo insertum asseverans." Gaudium etspes, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 2, ed. Norman P. Tanner, SJ (London: Sheed and Ward, 1990), no. 3.
224. Gaudium et spes, no. 9: "Men and women are becoming conscious of having to give direction to the powers which they have created, which can either enslave or serve them, and as a result are questioning themselves." "Praeterea, homo con-scius fit ipsius esse recte dirigere vires, quas ipse suscitavit et quae eum opprimere aut ei servire possunt. Unde seipsum interrogat."
225. Gaudium et spes, no. 11: "The Council's first aim is to subject the values most highly regarded today to this light and to relate them to their divine source, since these values are very good insofar as they proceed from the God-given character of the human person." "Concilium imprimis illos valores, qui hodie maxime sti-mantur, sub hoc lumine diiudicare et ad fontem suum divinum referre intendit. Hi enim valores, prout ex hominis ingenio eidem divinitus collato procedunt, valde boni sunt."
226. Gaudium et spes, no. 12: "vera hominis condicio," "capacem suum creatorem cognoscendi et amandi."
227. Gaudium et spes, no. 15: "Recte iudicat homo, divinae mentis lumen partici-pans, se intellectu suo universitatem rerum superare.. . . Intelligentia enim non ad sola phaenomena coarctatur, sed realitatem intelligibilem cum vera certitudine adipisci valet."
228. Gaudium et spes, no. 47: "Salus personae et societatis humanae ac christianae arcte cum fausta condicione communitatis coniugalis et familiaris connectitur."
229. Gaudium et spes, no. 48: "Ipse vero Deus est auctor matrimonii, variis bonis ac finibus praediti; quae omnia pro generis humani continuatione, pro singulorum familiae membrorum profectu personali ac sorte aeterna, pro dignitate, stabilitate, pace et prosperitate ipsius familiae totiusque humanae societatis maximi sunt momenti."
230. Gaudium et spes, no. 48: "e divino caritatis fonte exortae et ad exemplar suae cum ecclesia unionis constitutae, abundanter benedixit." "Germanus amor coniugalis in divinum amorem assumitur atque virtute redemptive Christi et salvifica actione ecclesiae regitur ac ditatur"; "magis et magis ad propriam suam perfectio-nem mutuamque sanctificationem, ideoque communiter ad Dei glorificationem accedunt."
231. Gaudium etspes, no. 49: "Hunc amorem Dominus, speciali gratiae et caritatis dono, sanare, perficere et elevare dignatus est. Talis amor, humana simul et divina consocians, coniuges ad liberum et mutuum sui ipsius donum, tenero affectu et opere probatum, conducit totamque vitam eorum pervadit; immo ipse generosa sua operositate perficitur et crescit."
232. Gaudium etspes, no. 52: "Ita familia. . . fundamentum societatis constituit"; "praesens tempus redimentes atque aeterna a mutabilibus formis discernentes"; "Ipse denique coniuges, ad imaginem Dei vivi facti et in vero ordine personarum constituti."
233. These have been collected into a single volume, along with Humanae vitae of Paul VI, Mulieris dignitatem, and Evangelium vitae, in John Paul II, The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan, reprinted from the English edition of L'Osservatore Romano (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1997).
234. Matt. 19:4: "He answered, Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female?'" "ho de apokritheis eipen, ouk ane-gnote hoti ho ktisas ap arches arsen kai epoiesen autous." "qui respondens ait eis non legistis quia qui fecit ab initio masculum et feminam fecit eos."
235. JohnPaulII, "Original Unity ofMan and Woman," in Theology of the Body,29.
236. The discussion of this question begins at 506B and the connection is disclosed at 508E. "Touto toinun to ten aletheian parechon tois gignoskomenois kai toi gignoskonti ten dunamin apodidon ten tou agathou idean pathi einai."
237. John Paul II, "Original Unity," 35.
238. John Paul II, Mulieris dignitatem (Apostolic Letter of Pope John Paul II on the Dignity and Vocation of Women, August 15, 1988), no. 7, in Theology of the Body, 450.
239. "Ou kalon einai ton anthropon monon," "non est bonum esse hominem solum."
240. John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, 450.
241. John Paul II, "The Sacramentality of Marriage," in Theology of the Body, 350.
242. John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, 450-451.
243. Fergus Kerr, OP, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 124.
244. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book Z.
245. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1a-2ae, prologue.
246. 1 Cor. 7:14: "hegiastai gar ho aner ho apistos en tei gunaiki, kai hegiastai he gune he apistos en toi adelphoi."
247. 1 Cor. 7:29, 31: "touto de phemi, adelphoi, ho kairos sunestalmenos estin. To loipon hina kai hoi echontes gunaikas hos me echontes osin" and "paragei gar to schema tou kosmou toutou."
248. Eugene F. Rogers Jr., "Sanctification, Homosexuality, and God's Triune Life," in Sexual Orientation and Human Rights in American Religious Discourse, ed. Saul Olyan and Martha Nussbaum (New York: Oxford, 1998), 134-160; Rogers, Sexuality and the Christian Body: Their Way into the Triune God (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999); Rogers, "The Liturgical Body," Modern Theology 16 (2000): 365-376; Rogers, "Introduction," in Theology and Sexuality: Classic and Contemporary Readings, ed. Eugene F. Rogers Jr. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), xviii-xxii.
249. I owe my attention to the transformative perceptions of others to Thomas Nagel, "Sexual Perversion," and its application in Rowan Williams, "The Body's Grace," both in Rogers, Theology and Sexuality, 125-136, 309-321.
250. See the history in Adrian Thatcher, Marriage after Modernity: Christian Marriage in Postmodern Times (New York: New York University Press, 1999).
251. Judith Butler, "Contingent Foundations," in Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange, ed. Seyla Benhabib et al. (London: Routledge, 1995), 51-52, paragraph boundary elided; emphasis in the original.
252. For a classic discussion of white crows, see A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (New York: Dover, 1952).
253. For example, "The Order of Marriage, or of Crowning," in Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, ed. and trans. Isabel Florence Hapgood, 6th rev. ed. (Englewood, NJ: Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese, 1983), 293-305, especially 293-294.
254. Paul Evdokimov, The Sacrament of Love: The Nuptial Mystery in the Light of the Orthodox Tradition, trans. Anthony P. Gythiel and Victoria Steadman (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985), 65-84; for a shorter version, see the selection in Rogers, Theology and Sexuality, 179-193.
255. Clifford Kraus, "Free to Marry, Canada's Gays Say Do I?'" New York Times, August 31, 2003.
256. Kate Zernike, "The New Couples Next Door," New York Times, August 24, 2004.
257. Cf. Michel de Certeau, "The Weakness of Believing: From the Body to Writing, a Christian Transit," in The Certeau Reader, ed. Graham Ward (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 218.
258. See Sebastian Moore, "The Crisis of an Ethic without Desire," in Jesus the Liberator of Desire (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 89-107, reprinted in Rogers, Theology and Sexuality, 157-169.
259. For a longer account, see Sexuality and the Christian Body, 249-268; and Rogers, "Nature with Water and the Spirit: A Response to Rowan Williams," Scottish Journal of Theology 56 (2003): 89-100; especially 92-96.
260. Jacob of Serugh, translated as "Jacob of Serugh II," in Sebastian Brock, The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1987), 287.
261. Jacob of Serugh, Homily on the Veil of Moses, 11. 141-151, translated in Sebastian Brock, Studies in Syriac Spirituality, Syrian Churches Series 13 (Poonah, India: Anita Printers, 1988), 95.
262. Jeffrey Stout, "How Charity Transcends the Culture Wars: Eugene Rogers and Others on Same-Sex Marriage," Journal of Religious Ethics 31 (2003): 169-180, quotation on 173-174.
263. Hosea 2:19a, 20. For argumentative context, see Rogers, Sexuality and the Christian Body, 219-236.
264. Matt. 22:2 (parallel Luke 14:16-24).
265. Luke 5:34.
266. Matt. 25:1 (parallel Luke 12:35, Mark 13:34).
267. Rev. 19:6-9.
268. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T. 8T. Clark, 1961), vol. III, pt. 1:318.
269. Evdokimov, Sacrament of Love, 16-43. For this use of Evdokimov, cf. Sexuality and the Christian Body, 67-86.
270. Williams, "Body's Grace," 317.
271. Contrary to reviewers who have supposed that any means must be a means only.
272. David Matzko McCarthy, "The Relationship of Bodies: A Nuptial Hermeneutics of Same-Sex Unions," in Theology and Sexuality, ed. Rogers, 206.
273. For more on this topic, see Eugene F. Rogers Jr., After the Spirit (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005).
274. These two sentences come from Rogers, "Nature with Water and the Spirit," 99, and depend on Sergei Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb, trans. Boris Jakim (Edinburgh: T. ST. Clark; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 65-66. The exegesis can stand even without the conceptual context.
275. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I.47.1. For commentary, see Willis Jenkins, "Biodiversity and Salvation: Thomistic Roots for Environmental Ethics," Journal of Religion 83 (2003): 401-420.
276. Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguum 7: On the Beginning and End of Rational Creatures, in On the Cosmic Mystery ofJesus Christ: Selected Writings from St Maximus the Confessor, trans. Paul Blowers and Robert Louis Wilken (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2003), 54. Greek, Patrologia Graeca 91:1068D-1101C. For commentary, see Polycarp Sherwood, The Earlier Ambigua of Saint Maximus the Confessor and His Refutation of Origenism, Studia Anselmiana 36 (Rome: Herder, 1955), 155-180.
277. This sentence comes from Rogers, "With Water and the Spirit," 99-100. Among human beings, this diversity does not yield a common vocation for gay and lesbian people as a group, but one that demands discernment by each person if it is not to be washed out. So John of the Cross counsels the discernment of loves, if recent research is correct; see Christopher Hinkle, "ADelicate Knowledge: Epistemology, Homosexuality, and St. John of the Cross," Modern Theology 17 (2001): 436; for a critique of more prescriptive readings of John, see Sarah Coakley, "Traditions of Spiritual Guidance" in her Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy and Gender (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 40-54. The vocation to sanctification, even on Catholic accounts, depends on individual discernment, so that it does not follow that homosexually oriented Catholics ipso facto have a call to priestly or religious celibacy.
278. Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguum 7, 59-60, pronouns modified.
279. Williams, "Body's Grace," 312.
280. Kendall Soulen, "YHWH the Triune God," Modern Theology 15 (1999): 25-54.
281. Peter Brown, The Body and Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 225-226, citing Athanasius, Life of Anthony, 67.
282. Susan Harvey, "The Stylite's Liturgy: Ritual and Religious Identity in Late Antiquity," Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998): 523-539.
283. Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. III, pt. 4.
284. Nicomachean Ethics DÎ.2, 1172a11-14; John 15:15.
285. On the Lament of the Mother of God 13, in Kontakia on the Life of Christ, by St. Romanos the Melodist, 148. I owe the insight that Christ is both physician and patient to Stephania Gianulis.
286. See Williams, "Body's Grace," for reflections on the positive moral possibilities of both.
287. McCarthy, "Relationship ofBodies," 212-213.
288. But see Stanley Hauerwas, "Why Gays (as a Group) Are Morally Superior to Christians (as a Group)," in The Hauerwas Reader, ed. John Berkman and Michael Cartwright (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 519-521.
289. McCarthy, "Relationship ofBodies," 214, n. 12. See also Dale B. Martin, "Sex and the Single Savior," Svensk exegetisk arsbok 67 (2002): 47-60.
290. A shorter version of this essay appeared as "Sanctified Unions," The Christian Century 121, no. 12 (June 15, 2004): 26-29, with a response to a letter to the editor in The Christian Century 121, no. 17 (August 24, 2004): 42-43.