Bisexuals in the Bible? Really?
Scholars are pointing a few things out
To be a Christian, one wouldn’t be thinking the figures in the sacred text even have ‘sexuality’, exactly. Aren’t they—Christian?
They wouldn’t be drawn to members of both sexes. Or would they? If Christians read one way, scholars have been reading the New Testament with the cultural psychology of the time.
In three gospels of the New Testament there’s a story about a Roman centurion and his slave.
They seem to have a rather close relationship. The centurion calls his slave a Greek word, παῖς, that can suggest a sexual relationship. In Luke 7:2, the slave was “dear” or “precious” him. This man seems to really love his slave.
For decades, there’s been suggestions that it reads as an erotic relationship. That wouldn’t be unusual for the time. “Roman society almost unanimously assumed that adult males would be capable of, if not interested in, sexual relations with both sexes,” as John Boswell noted in Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality.
And a Roman soldier, barred from marrying, might be particularly open to having sex with a slave. As…
