David and jonathan gay

Scripture is filled with complex mysteries and modern scholars continue to struggle over the complexity of them. The story of David and Jonathan is one of those great mysteries of homoerotism in the bible. Since this infinity between the two happens prior to the philosophical era, it is difficult to describe or contend if the relationship between these two men was carnal or amicable. This essay identifies challenges in the text, the role King Saul played, and how the relationship amid David and Jonathan is queer.

The fact of the matter is that homosexual behavior was almost unheard of within Israel and even revisionist scholars have argued that in ancient Judaism and in early Christianity it would have been completely forbidden and not at all even a matter of controversy that homosexual activity was forbidden by Scripture. So clearly in Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20 there is already there in the Torah a proscription against a man lying with a man as with a woman. Homosexuality is listed as one of the types of sexual sin there in the holiness code. It makes more much sense to say the only reason that David and Jonathan can be presented with this intense male friendship is because it was so assumed and so understood that a same-sex intimacy between two men would have been severely frowned upon, to say the least.

That this message of hate stands full square in opposition to the teaching of Jesus, as witnessed in the Gospels, seems to be totally lost on them. It may surprise you, that in the heart of the Old Testament is the story of same-sex love involving King David, arguably one of the most important Jews to have existed and Jonathan a prince and son of the first King of Israel, Saul. They do not fit the erroneous homosexual trope of weakness and inferiority. David was the greatest King of Israel, the slayer of Goliath no less!

Despite the abundant textual evidence of a queer relationship between David and Jonathan — including King Saul openly accusing his son of sexual immorality in regards to David 1 Samuel — the existence of this queerness has been consistently ignored and denied for thousands of years. Of course, queer people have always been able to identify queerness, and intentional references to the homoeroticism of this story have been found from as early as the 12th century CE. Rather than attempting to prove a queer relationship between David and Jonathan here — this has been done by many Jewish and secular scholars before — I instead want to highlight some recent creators who have been brave enough to depict that queerness in their work. The relationship she depicts is beautiful, but also very frustrating — although David and Jonathan are in love, they never formalize or consummate their relationship.