{"id":64,"date":"2009-05-01T13:46:02","date_gmt":"2009-05-01T13:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/05\/my-source-on-same-sex-marriage-in-ancient-canaan.html"},"modified":"2009-05-01T13:46:02","modified_gmt":"2009-05-01T13:46:02","slug":"my-source-on-same-sex-marriage-in-ancient-canaan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/05\/my-source-on-same-sex-marriage-in-ancient-canaan.html","title":{"rendered":"My Source on Same-Sex Marriage in Ancient Canaan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A number of <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/canaanites-for-same-sex-marriage.html\">readers asked for it.<\/a>\u00a0My source is a midrash (that is, a work of Biblical interpolation) called <span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">Sifra<\/span> that elaborates on Leviticus. The reference to same-sex marriage is unmistakable. Coincidentally, this particular note on the text comes in the context of this week&#8217;s Torah reading, <span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">Acharei Mot-Kedoshim<\/span>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">Sifra<\/span>\u00a0is ancient and authoritative.\u00a0A common traditional view attributes its editing to Rabbi Hiyya, who was active in Tiberias, Israel, a bit after 200 CE. The\u00a0<span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">Encyclopedia Judaica<\/span>\u00a0would push up the date of its authorship a couple of centuries. Either way, it&#8217;s very old and records interpretive oral traditions that are\u00a0older\u00a0still.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Some context: Leviticus 18 records the forbidden sexual relationships, including homosexual intercourse (v. 22). The list is prefaced with the statement, &#8220;Do not perform the practice of the land of Egypt in which you dwelled; and do not perform the practice of the land of Canaan to which I bring you, and do not follow their decrees&#8221; (18:3).<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">Sifra<\/span>\u00a0explains there about those &#8220;decrees&#8221;: &#8220;<span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-weight: bold\">And what did they do? A man would marry a man, and a woman would marry a woman<\/span>.&#8221;\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The end of the chapter in the Bible warns, &#8220;[T]he inhabitants of the land who are before you committed all these abominations, and the land became contaminated. Let not the land disgorge you for having contaminated it, as it disgorged the nation that was before you&#8221; (v. 27-28).<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>It sounds like such things were also done in Egypt, but it was the decrees of Canaan sanctioning same-sex marriage and similar relationships that resulted in the Canaanites losing their land and dying out as a people.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Please understand. My purpose here is not to condemn anyone. I am <span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">not<\/span> saying to gays, &#8220;You&#8217;re bad and I&#8217;m good.&#8221; As I&#8217;ve said\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/dont-look-there-introducing-this-blog.html\">from the beginning of this blog<\/a>, my hope is simply to be honest about classical sources like these. Look them in the face, and ask what we can learn from them that&#8217;s relevant today.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A number of readers asked for it.\u00a0My source is a midrash (that is, a work of Biblical interpolation) called Sifra that elaborates on Leviticus. The reference to same-sex marriage is unmistakable. Coincidentally, this particular note on the text comes in the context of this week&#8217;s Torah reading, Acharei Mot-Kedoshim.\u00a0 Sifra\u00a0is ancient and authoritative.\u00a0A common traditional&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hebrew-bible-oral-torah"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>My Source on Same-Sex Marriage in Ancient Canaan - Kingdom of Priests<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/05\/my-source-on-same-sex-marriage-in-ancient-canaan.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"My Source on Same-Sex Marriage in Ancient Canaan - Kingdom of Priests\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A number of readers asked for it.\u00a0My source is a midrash (that is, a work of Biblical interpolation) called Sifra that elaborates on Leviticus. The reference to same-sex marriage is unmistakable. Coincidentally, this particular note on the text comes in the context of this week&#8217;s Torah reading, Acharei Mot-Kedoshim.\u00a0 Sifra\u00a0is ancient and authoritative.\u00a0A common traditional&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/05\/my-source-on-same-sex-marriage-in-ancient-canaan.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Kingdom of Priests\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-05-01T13:46:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Klinghoffer\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"My Source on Same-Sex Marriage in Ancient Canaan - Kingdom of Priests","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/05\/my-source-on-same-sex-marriage-in-ancient-canaan.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"My Source on Same-Sex Marriage in Ancient Canaan - Kingdom of Priests","og_description":"A number of readers asked for it.\u00a0My source is a midrash (that is, a work of Biblical interpolation) called Sifra that elaborates on Leviticus. 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Coincidentally, this particular note on the text comes in the context of this week&#8217;s Torah reading, Acharei Mot-Kedoshim.\u00a0 Sifra\u00a0is ancient and authoritative.\u00a0A common traditional&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/05\/my-source-on-same-sex-marriage-in-ancient-canaan.html","og_site_name":"Kingdom of Priests","article_published_time":"2009-05-01T13:46:02+00:00","author":"David Klinghoffer","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/05\/my-source-on-same-sex-marriage-in-ancient-canaan.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/05\/my-source-on-same-sex-marriage-in-ancient-canaan.html","name":"My Source on Same-Sex Marriage in Ancient Canaan - Kingdom of Priests","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-05-01T13:46:02+00:00","dateModified":"2009-05-01T13:46:02+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#\/schema\/person\/6e6734f7e172e24221264a565e8f4454"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/05\/my-source-on-same-sex-marriage-in-ancient-canaan.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/05\/my-source-on-same-sex-marriage-in-ancient-canaan.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/05\/my-source-on-same-sex-marriage-in-ancient-canaan.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"My Source on Same-Sex Marriage in Ancient Canaan"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/","name":"Kingdom of Priests","description":"David Klinghoffer","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#\/schema\/person\/6e6734f7e172e24221264a565e8f4454","name":"David Klinghoffer","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/285\/28517f740f5d348f010a20178619ea6cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/285\/28517f740f5d348f010a20178619ea6cx96.jpg","caption":"David Klinghoffer"},"description":"David Klinghoffer is an author and senior fellow in the Religious, Liberty & Public Life program at the Discovery Institute. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Jewish Forward. A California native, he currently lives on Mercer Island, Washington, with his wife and five children.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/author\/dklinghoffer"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}