Jesus' Praise For The Centurion Soldiers Pederastic Love Of His Slave Boy

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Note: Liberated Christians is a primarily about heterosexual relationships. While we are supportive of all sexual orientations, the leaders do not have the resources to assist them in their special issues. Thus, our Fellowship groups are not appropriate for gays/lesbians. However, individually Dave (an extreme heterosexual - Kinsey Scale= 0) has done extensive biblical research and has been active supporting biblical homosexuality for many years. However, there is no "official" stand as an organization on homosexuality other than general support.

Jesus' Praise For The Centurion Soldiers Pederastic Love Of His Slave Boy

In Matthew and Luke Jesus is portrayed as tolerant of a pederastic relationship between the centurion and his "boy." A centurion had a slave (doulos) whom he valued highly (or who was very precious); this slave was ill and near death. Hearing about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders with to request Jesus to save his slave's life. The centurion had faith He could cure him. Jesus said "I tell you, nowhere, even in Israel, have I found faith like this." and healed the slave boy. (Luke 7:2-10).

The slightly different version in Matthew (8:5) refers in each instance to the boy as "boy" (pais), not slave (doulos). "Boy in Greek connotes a catamite or youth in a homosexual/pederastic relationship in the Greco-Roman world. These relationships were socially acceptable and not uncommon in that culture. The boy would not be trained to become a lifelong or adult homosexual if he was naturally heterosexual but often would remain bisexual. This public acceptance of pederasty, an institution which the Romans inherited from the Greeks, was accompanied, however, by a measure of public anxiety. Effeminacy and submissiveness, for example, were viewed with contempt. Roman aristocratic families increasingly protected their young men by law from such assignments. Hence the pederastic relationship was increasingly assigned to slaves, who had no social reputation to lose.

The practice was very common in Jesus' day. Plutarch, the Greek biographer, who traveled widely and taught in Rome, was born about a decade after Jesus died. He discusses in his "Dialogue on Love" the question whether the love of boys is superior to the love of women, a critical question of the day. The tradition of the Greeks held the love of boys to be superior to a women.

Readers or hearers of the story in the first century would unquestionably conclude, given the language that is used that the centurion was a pederast and his boy a catamite. Luke reinforces that impression by characterizing the boy as "very precious" to him.

This supports a picture of Jesus as one who was tolerant of such relationships, a picture that is congruent with the rest of the New Testament. However, it is not enough to say that Jesus was merely tolerant of this apparent pederastic relationship. More then that, he was deeply impressed with the centurions faith as to make it a prime example in his teachings recalled by both Matthew and Luke.

Internet Reply to My Centurion Discussion: From Cliff Hammond Internet Subject "Where does which Bible condemn Homosexuality":
"Dave, your discussion of the centurions servant is very interesting. It raises some interesting questions. First, if the ministry of Jesus was to the Jews, as we are told in the Gospels, it is not surprising that the subject of homoeroticism did not present, given that the Jews universally considered homoeroticism (among males) to be a purity issue (toevan, but not zemia) and a practice of the "unclean Gentiles" with whom the Jews refused to mix socially. Therefore, when the opportunity DID present - in a setting in which the writers of the Gospels were not only recalling the incident of faith and healing to Jewish Christians but also to "Gentile" Christians - one would think that the writers of the Gospels would have desired to clarify the issue IF IT WERE AN ISSUE. Because, in their choice of words to label the functional relationship of the young male servant with his master, they did not rule out the possibility of homoeroticism (The Greek word, pais, connotes inclusion of homoeroticism within the scope of the master-slave relationship), they have - perhaps unintentionally - proffered a very strong argument from silence that such a homoerotic relationship simply was not an issue for them and their Hellenic culture.

A discussion of the synoptic process might hold a key. If it is true that Q Source and the original Aramaic Gospel of Matthew was used as an outline for the Gospel of Mark, which was then used together with the original Aramaic Matthew as outlines for the Greek version of Matthew, it is interesting that the story of the Centurian's pais does not appear in Mark. That the story *does* appear in Luke using the Greek word duablos (sp?) argues for the possibility that Luke also used Aramaic Matthew (or Q) in addition to Mark as its outline. The Question then becomes why did Luke use diablos and not pais?

If Luke used the gospel of Mark as an outline, where did he get the story of the healing of the Centurian's servant? From Aramaic Matthew? Luke's use of the Greek duablos for "servant" could be circumstantially explained as translation bias due to Luke's close association with Paul, a Pharisee who did address homoeroticism in his Letter to the Romans as a consequence of the Gentiles' idolatry.

Why did Peter's secretary, Mark, choose not to use the story in his own gospel if he were truly using as his outline the Aramaic Matthew and the stories of Jesus' messianic ministry related by the Apostle Peter?

Why did the author of the Greek version of Matthew choose the word pais translating from the original Aramaic Matthew and using the Gospel of Mark as its outline?"

Nowhere in the NT did Jesus say a word, even mistranslated about this pederastic practice, much less anything about today's far different loving equal homosexual relationships. That such an understanding of this text would surprise the modern reader simply demonstrates the gulf that separates the world of the biblical times and modern days in the area of sexual values.

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