Judging (Gay) Men & the Manner of Women

I'm reading a big swath of text (especially in Hebrew, then Greek, then Englishes).  There's much I can't say in just 15 minutes (on the Greek only).

So here's an overview of that big swath:  the section headers of the HCSB English translation, because I like those headers, more or less.  Where I think the Greek emphasizes something else, I strike the HCSB header and offer my own:

Genesis 18:9 - 21:21  
--Sarah Laughs, 
--Abraham's Plea for Sodom, 
--The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah 
Lot Offers his unnamed Daughters to the Sodomite Men, who'd rather have the Visiting Men, 
--The Origin of Moab and Ammon 
Lot's unnamed Daughters "Sleep" with Him to get "Sperm-Seed", 
--Sarah Rescued from Abimelech 

Abraham Lies Again About Sarah Being His Sister not His Womb-Wife which Closes Up -- Really Closes Up -- all of the wombs of the women of Abimelech, 
--The Birth of Isaac 
Sarah Laughs Again and this time she gets to ask the rhetorical question, 
--Hagar and Ishmael Sent Away)


SO ON TO THE COMMENTARY:

By the homophobic and the homophilic alike, this passage may be one of the most commented on texts of the bible.  The former use it as a prooftext against gays in Judaism and in Christianity.  The later use the text to respond.  

If you're looking at the Greek text of Genesis 18:9 - 21:21 for prohibitions against or for permissions to engage in certain sexual behaviors, then I'd say several things.  First, there are lots of different sorts of sexual relations described in this particular passage that do and do not typify the varieties of sexual mores of the Greeks in their literatures.  Second, since some readers are insistent on regulating sex in marriage between one heterosexual man and one heterosexual woman by Sarah's and Abraham's example in this Bible, then this couple's dysfunctions sometimes do seem fairly aberrant even compared to Greek behaviors.  Third, if you're looking for some definitive gay or anti-gay prooftext of some sort in the Greek bible, then I'd recommend looking at Ann Nyland's translation work and commentary. What Nyland does, that few other English bible translators have done, is to consider the Greek words in the New Testament in light of their uses in many other extra-biblical contexts. On page 22 of her NT translation, for example, Nyland mentions that she's looked through "all Greek literature, as well as the Septuagint" for a particular use of a particular Hellene word.  Fourth, when you get the time, you might look at the various Greek verbs in this big section of Genesis to see how the men and the women and the narrator(s) who are the translators describe the sexual behaviors.  Fifth, among the horrors of Sodom and Gomorra and of its destruction and of incestuous relations and the like, there's some very funny stuff, laughable (such as the different ways the text views the unbelieving laughter of Abraham and of Sarah, who gets the last laugh in her son, whom she names). This is the women who in Greek calls Abraham what he calls the god: "Master" (i.e., κύριος). What's funny about that is the New Testament writers, using Greek, notice.

Today, I'm only going to look at how the Jews translating Genesis into Greek decided to duplicate barbarous wordplay. I'm interested in this here for a couple of reasons. First, there are three repeated words in this relatively tight context. Aristotle would accuse the Hebrews of duplicating their Bar-Bar-isms into Hellene. (He didn't care much for those who sounding to him like they were saying bar bar bar, and he followed the Greek practice of disparaging foreigners by calling them barbarians (οἱ βάρβαροι).

Second, Hebrew and Arabic poetry seems to key in on the repetitive, to play off of it, even in Greek translation.  These non-Greeks may sound to the ancient Greeks as if they've stammered.  Moses stammer twice when complaining about having to speak in Egypt. 

"Perhaps the repetition [in the complaint of Moses that he had 'uncircumcised lips'] signifies that the phrase has more than one meaning," suggests Dan Judson. In addition, Suzanne gives some compelling reasons why "The translators of the Septuagint could not write that Moses was of 'uncircumcised lips'." Perhaps they didn't want their translation, as barbaric as it sounds in Genesis, also to sound so weirdly feminine in their Greek Exodus (i.e., where Moses in translation speaks Hellene). Repetition, especially around a man claiming to have uncircumcised lips, signifies many suggestive meanings.

The men of sodom repeat a phrase. So the Jewish (heterosexual male?) translators have them repeating the phrase in Greek too.  

The narrator repeats a phrase to show a problem for the women of Abimelech.  So the Jewish men translation repeat the phrase in Greek too.

And when the translating men want to describe Sarah's menopause, they repeat a Greek phrase for women.  This they do without much help from the original Hebrew narrator of the story.


Here's the barbarous stammering, the doubling of words for doubling of meanings:

וַיִּשְׁפֹּט שָׁפֹוט

κρίσιν κρίνειν

Is this man (Lot) here to judge to judge us? ask the men of sodom (19:9)


עָצֹר עָצַר

συγκλείων συνέκλεισεν

God shut up, he shut up the wombs of the women of Abimelech (20:18)


Αβρααμ δὲ καὶ Σαρρα πρεσβύτεροι προβεβηκότες ἡμερῶν,
ἐξέλιπεν δὲ Σαρρα γίνεσθαι τὰ γυναικεῖα.

Abraham and Sarah were old, old, in days,
Gone out of Sarah birthed her wombly-womanly-ness

וְאַבְרָהָם וְשָׂרָה זְקֵנִים בָּאִים בַּיָּמִים חָדַל לִהְיֹות לְשָׂרָה אֹרַח כַּנָּשִׁים׃

(18:11)