_______________ WAS JESUS GAY? BY HANK HYENA (04/10/98)

I enjoyed reading Hank Hyena's article on the "gay" Jesus controversy. I live in South Carolina, where Baptists are as fecund as sparrows. I have asked several friends about the scenario in John 13:23 -- the reclining-bosom thing with "the disciple he loved" -- just to observe their reaction. At no time did I ever use or even suggest the word "homosexual." But in every case, my Baptist friends urgently supplied it, along with revolted responses. A very curious and telling phenomenon. I don't think, however, that settles the matter about Jesus' sexuality. Nor do I know anything about King James' sexuality. I also don't know if the Christian Coalition has said it will stop using the King James Bible -- though I strongly doubt that. I do know, however, that King James was a 17th century ruler and not a 15th one, as the article erroneously stated. Lance Grider Aiken, S.C. Thank you for Hank Hyena's sincere, if halting, attempt to discover the sexual orientation of Jesus. He is to be commended for taking up the subject, and also for avoiding any definite conclusions. He is also to be commended for resurrecting the "Secret Mark" controversy in the public press, which has too long languished in academe. I wish, though, that he had mentioned what John Dominic Crossan says about Secret Mark in his magnum opus, "The Historical Jesus." Crossan suggests that Secret Mark is the original form of Mark, but that the passage quoted by Hyena led to erotic distortions of Jesus' message, both among enemies of the early church and among Christian groups who used it to justify homosexual practices. Crossan suggests that, in order to combat such distortions, the author of Mark, or a nearly contemporary editor, excised the controversial passages, but not completely: He cut them up and mixed them back into the book, so that one could point to the revised text and say, "Here is the passage you're talking about, and look -- it has nothing to do with homosexuality." This theory does much to explain some features of canonical Mark which are otherwise bewildering. Dr. Mary A. Tolbert, whom Hyena quotes as saying, "Homosexuality's a concept that didn't exist in Biblical culture," is completely wrong on that score. Homosexuality was well known, and considered an abomination among the ancient Jews (see Leviticus 18:22). The Apostle Paul wrote about men who "gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men ..." (Though let it be said, Paul considered homosexuals just as eligible for salvation as anybody else, and warned those who would condemn them that they were just as guilty.) On the other hand, nudity during religious initiation, as in the baptism described in Secret Mark, was common in the ancient world, including among the Jews, and had no necessary sexual connotation. Usually it spoke more of purity and innocence -- childlike freedom from sexual passion. Still, Tolbert has a point when she refuses to characterize Jesus' sexuality. It is a symptom of our own sexual insecurity that this generation insists on categorizing everybody in every age according to modern ideas of sexuality. I see no reason to think Jesus was homosexual, and much evidence suggesting he would have been celibate. But regardless of all this interesting speculation, I believe Jesus would have welcomed gay and straight alike into the Kingdom of God. No matter how you read the scriptures, there is not a single instance of Jesus' turning away anybody who sincerely wished to follow him. For me, that's the bottom line. Jim Crutchfield Norfolk, Va. SALON | April 16, 1998