The SIN of Sodom and Gomorrah was NOT what you think!

warning this video is for mature audiences what was the same Sodom and Gamora quotation is not found in the Bible so what was it whatever is going on in Sodom and Gomorrah is seriously not good sodomo Wicked City it rained far and brimstone from heaven before we jump into the video just a quick disclaimer this topic is obviously of interest to many people because of the modern ways this story has been used to attack people for their sexuality which I think is really wrong the focus of this video is purely academic what did the text

likely mean in its ancient context and how has that interpretation changed over time so let's start with the story in Genesis 18 to 19 God plans to destroy the city for its wickedness Abraham convinces God to spare the town if he can find 10 righteous people two angelic visitors go to investigate and meet lot at the Town Gate where he takes them in for the night that night the men of the Town come to lot's house and demand to have sex with the visitors lot instead offers up his virgin daughters the men refused this offer

but before they could break down the door the Angelic visitors miraculously rescue lot and his family Lot's wife looks backwards and turns into a pillar of salt the text itself doesn't say what exactly the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was that warranted destruction only that there was a great outcry against the cities and their sin was grave what is really interesting is that in the Hebrew Bible there are a wide variety of descriptions of what the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah were like Jeremiah 23 14 compares the sins of the prophets to Sodom and Gomorrah

listing adultery lies facilitating evildoers Isaiah 1 compares the cities to religious Hypocrites Ezekiel 16 49 describes their sins as Pride gluttony being unconcerned with the poor and needy arrogance and that they committed Abominations now regarding Ezekiel some have taken the term for Abominations or toeva to be a reference to homosexual practices because the passages in Leviticus describing male male sex acts use the same word however however this would be a misunderstanding of the word which is a general term to describe a range of behaviors or things that were considered bad or taboo for example in

Proverbs 6 16 to 19 we find the word Abomination describing a list of sins none of which are sexual and later in Ezekiel chapter 18 the word however is used in a similar list of sins where there is no suggestion that it is referring to something sexual so while male male sex could be described as toeva in the Hebrew Bible however on its own does not equate to same-sex activity so what about the story itself while it is true that the man wanted to rape the male visitors it is unlikely that this was viewed as

an act of homosexual desire in its ancient context the modern term homosexuality carries Notions of sexual desire and orientation in between equals however what happens in Genesis 19 is not about Mutual desire between equals it is about humiliating and dominating an enemy in the ancient near East the sexual humiliation of an enemy's men was a known practice particularly in Warfare we see a similar episode of sexual humiliation of foreigners in 2 Samuel 10 where a foreign Envoy tries to deliver a message to a town but they are seized shaved and stripped naked from the waist

down and sent home with their genitals exposed a known practice in the ancient world the wickedness on display in Genesis 19 was the act of rape itself coupled with a xenophobic attitude towards the two visitors because they were foreign it appears that even since Old Testament times Sodom and Gomorrah functioned as a metaphor for wickedness the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah could be whatever an author needed it to be in order to condemn different types of behavior but nowhere in the Old Testament is the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah described as homosexual desire so let's

move on to the New Testament several times in the gospels Sodom and Gomorrah is used as a metaphor for a bad group of people but the specific sin is not mentioned three times in the gospels Jesus uses the phrase on that day of judgment it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town in three instances Jesus juxtaposes Sodom with towns that would not welcome his disciples or would not repent it's clear that here Sodom and Gomorrah functions as a metaphor for a bad place deserving of God's judgment the final Biblical reference to the

sin of Sodom is found in Jude verses six to seven and the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority but left their proper dwelling he has kept in Eternal chains under gloomy Darkness until the Judgment of the great day just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued strange flesh so Jude describes the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah as something sexually immoral but explains that it was somehow like the sin of Angels the pursuit of strange or other flesh sarcos heterus while many assume

these strange flesh refers to homosexual practice this is unlikely in the Greek the phrase other flesh is a rare idiom that only ever appears in this passage so we don't really know what it means but the Greek word hederus indicates something other or different not the same which would be an odd choice of words if it was describing men who pursued men as many New Testament Scholars have argued these strange flesh more likely refers to the sodomite's desire to have sex with angels these strange flesh makes sense when read against the backdrop of the Book

of Enoch in The Book of Enoch Angels or Watchers are sent to watch over humans but they deserve their posts and start sleeping with women The Offspring of these unions became the Nephilim Giants who pillage the Earth and endanger Humanity we know the author of Jude is referring to this story because he quotes directly from The Book of Enoch in verses 14 and 15. either Jude is imagining that Sodom and Gomorrah was a town that the Watchers visited when they slept with humans or he's referring directly to Genesis 19 where the men tried to sexually

assault the Angelic visitors so when did the sin of Sodom become associated with same-sex desire more broadly well this is an idea that developed outside the canonical Bible the first Century book of two Enoch talks about Sin which is against nature which is child corruption in the anus in the manner of Sodom here the author connects Sodom to anal penetration more specifically to pedesty a practice where an older male would have sex with a youth or a young boy the first century Jewish historian Josephus had a similar interpretation he accused the men of Sodom of

hating strangers and avoiding all contact with others but he also hints at pederisty Josephus repeatedly emphasizes the youthfulness of the angels and the violence that would be done to them also highlighting that it was rape pederisty was a specific type of intercourse and it did not Encompass all same-sex relations in general but we start to see how the sin of Sodom had become associated with anal sex the first writer to explicitly connect the sin of Sodom with May male male sexual desire in a more General sense appears to have been Philo of Alexandria for him

the sin of Sodom was living in excess gluttony drinking adultery and male male relations philo's interpretation was heavily influenced by the ideas of his time Philo as did many of his contemporaries viewed women as inferior on many levels it's for this reason he detested the idea that men were assuming the sexual position of females it was typical in the ancient Mediterranean to view the penetrated partner as socially lower than the penetrator for a similar reason another author known as pseudo for kyladis wrote that it was inappropriate for a woman to sexually penetrate a man Philo

also believes such same-sex relations made men's semen impotent so that they could not produce children his condemnation of same-sex relations was steeped in these ancient assumptions philo's interpretation of sexual or excess would prove influential early Christian interpreters like Clement of Alexandria and chrysostom also held that Sodom sin was sexual excess but while Clement mentions pedrosity insane love for boys neither mentioned male homosexual lusts as Philo does in the Christian tradition Augustine in the year 420 CE was possibly the first to explicitly state that Sodom was destroyed for illicit sexual intercourse with men so we can

see how the scene of Sodom evolved over time originally Sodom appears to have been a metaphorical Wicked city which could have been accused of whatever sin the author needed it to be it was only later outside the Bible that the sin of Sodom became same-sex relations in a broader sense however even those later interpretations are steeped in ancient assumptions of a sexual hierarchy which are not equivalent to Modern Notions of homosexuality as such it's not appropriate to describe the men of Sodom as homosexuals though it's an idea that persists in modern discourse it's not inherent

to the text of Genesis 19 or to the world view of the text's earliest interpreters so what was the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah well in Genesis 19 it seems to have been a combination of rape and xenophobia but it also seems like over the centuries their sin could be whatever an ancient author needed it to be to make their point as always I will leave some sources in the description consider supporting us on patreon or join the channel as a member my name is Lachlan and you've been watching Bible unboxed commandment number 11 share

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