So what if Mike Pence’s whole life is based on an editing mistake (as opposed to a genetic mistake, which has been my working theory up until now)?
A new hypothesis from Harvard biblical scholar Idan Dershowitz argues just that. (Well, not the part about Mike Pence and the three uranium-235 Manhattans his mother had every afternoon for nine months while his virulently homophobic Jiffy Pop brain gestated in her womb).
In a recent New York Times guest column, Dershowitz argues that the famous gay-sex prohibition in the book of Leviticus that’s caused our world so much trouble over the past few millennia may have been added up to 100 years after the book was originally written:
Like many ancient texts, Leviticus was created gradually over a long period and includes the words of more than one writer. Many scholars believe that the section in which Leviticus 18 appears was added by a comparatively late editor, perhaps one who worked more than a century after the oldest material in the book was composed. An earlier edition of Leviticus, then, may have been silent on the matter of sex between men.
But I think a stronger claim is warranted. As I argue in an article published in the latest issue of the journal Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel, there is good evidence that an earlier version of the laws in Leviticus 18 permitted sex between men. In addition to having the prohibition against same-sex relations added to it, the earlier text, I believe, was revised in an attempt to obscure any implication that same-sex relations had once been permissible.
Dershowitz’s argument may seem a bit byzantine if your knowledge of scripture comes from anthropomorphic cucumbers and squashes rather than Harvard, but it’s internally consistent, and it makes sense. More sense, of course, than the notion that a god who created a mind-bogglingly vast universe with at least 1 billion-trillion stars is obsessively concerned with your pee-pee.
Dershowitz claims there are clues about the scripture writers’ original intent in Leviticus’ incest laws. Changes were apparently made to these laws to obscure the original prohibitions against same-sex incest. Not because the later editor(s) wanted to permit homosexual incest, but because those laws wouldn’t make sense if there was already a strict prohibition against all gay sex:
The key to understanding this editorial decision is the concept of “the exception proves the rule.” According to this principle, the presence of an exception indicates the existence of a broader rule. For example, a sign declaring an office to be closed on Sundays suggests that the office is open on all other days of the week.
Now, apply this principle to Leviticus 18: A law declaring that homosexual incest is prohibited could reasonably be taken to indicate that non-incestuous homosexual intercourse is permitted.
A lawmaker is unlikely to specify that murdering one’s father is against the law if there is already a blanket injunction against murder. By the same token, it’s not necessary to stipulate that sex between two specific men is forbidden if a categorical prohibition against sex between men is already on the books.
It seems that with the later introduction in Leviticus of a law banning all male homosexual intercourse, it became expedient to bring the earlier material up-to-date by doing away with two now-superfluous injunctions against homosexual incest — injunctions that made sense when sex between men was otherwise allowed.
If there’s a lesson here that applies to us today — other than that God, if he exists, probably thought gay sex was just peachy — it’s that one asshole can screw up the world for millennia to come.
Some guy who didn’t like what other people did in the privacy of their tents changed scripture, and that’s caused untold misery for thousands of years.
Don’t let the assholes win this time.
#Vote
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