Jonathan and David...and the Greeks, Part 1 by Bruce Gerig

Jonathan and David …
and the Greeks, Part 1
Jonathan and David Series — By Bruce Gerig

Today the most important Biblical passage relating to homosexuality is the Jonathan and David story, as scholars increasingly turn to the conclusion that the story in 1-2 Samuel does point to a homosexual relationship, especially when this story is compared to other ancient tales of heroic friendship, in Mesopotamia and in the Mediterranean world. For example, the Epic of Gilgamesh (the final Standardized Version dated ca. 1300 BC) was one of the most widely-disseminated pieces of Mesopotamian literature, with fragments even found at Megiddo, a major Israelite administrative center in lower Galilee from David’s reign on, just as the material for the scrolls of Samuel was being compiled. (One could expect that the small, elite group of royal history scribes in Israel would be interested in inspecting any new and rare scrolls.) As to its story, the Gilgamesh epic describes a handsome, virile young king of the city-state of Uruk named Gilgamesh, who has such unbridled energy and lust that the gods declare that a mate be specifically created for him—not an ‘Eve,’ however, but a ‘Steve,’ a wild, muscular man named Enkidu, like Gilgamesh himself but shorter. After they meet, Gilgamesh gives up lying with all of the new brides of Uruk; and the king with his new companion take on various heroic adventures, including killing Humbaba, demon of the Cedar Forest, and the mighty Bull of Heaven, which threatened Uruk. Gilgamesh is so beautiful that on one occasion when the goddess Ishtar sees him in the nude bathing, she wants to have sex with him; but Gilgamesh, complete with Enkidu, refuses. Still, with all this sexual energy in the air, throughout the story there are only hidden references, code-words and ambiguous clues that have been recently identified in the Akkadian text as pointing clearly to these two heroes being lovers. Yet, it is only after Enkidu dies unexpectedly that Gilgamesh speaks openly of the intensity and passion of his feelings for his lost partner. Likewise, in the Jonathan and David story, their love for each other replaces any interest David might have had in his new bride Michal, David’s passionate feelings for Jonathan only find voice in his eulogy after Jonathan dies, and to really understand the full story one must be sensitive to elusive, subtle clues in the Biblical text which reveal that they too fell in love and shared a sexual companionship.

As Thomas Römer and Loyse Bonjour write in L’homosexualité dans le Proche-Orient ancient et la Bible (2005), it is ‘totally possible’ that the editor of Samuel knew of the Gilgamesh epic. Moreover, on the question of whether it is valid to make comparisons between two texts which came from different epochs and contexts, one must remember that from the 3rd millennium BC on Mesopotamian culture greatly influenced all peoples living in the ancient Near East. Israel did not develop in a vacuum. Noticeably both the Gilgamesh epic and the David story focus on two pairs of heroes: A skilled warrior of a lower class appears in front of a king or crown prince, who is strongly attracted to him; then both pairs go to live at the royal court, which would only have been possible if there was a great intimacy between them. Near the beginning of the story, the prostitute tells Enkidu, “You will love him [Gilgamesh] like your own self” (Epic of Gilgamesh II line 15 Foster), just as when Jonathan meets David, and we are told that he “loved him as his own soul [nephesh = self]” (1 Sam 18:1). Then the male partners in each case develop a profound attachment, with an exclusivity which no one else can break—neither Ishtar in Gilgamesh’s case nor Michal in David’s case. In both narratives, one member is referred to endearingly as “my brother” (indicating something continuing and enduring). Also, one member is spoken of in feminine terms: Gilgamesh is told that he will love and ‘caress [make love to]’ his companion-to-come “like a woman” (I line 292 Foster); and David speaks of how Jonathan’s love for him was wonderful, “surpassing the love of women” (2 Sam 1:26 NEB). There is less intimacy revealed in the David story; yet “desire” (kaphets) in 1 Sam 19:1 probably implies an erotic, even sexual, dimension. Finally, the eulogies of both Gilgamesh and David clearly indicate that the departed partner was much more than just a confidant or ally. In fact, it is at this point that the despairing partner indisputably expresses the loss of a love which the survivor feels for no one else and which will never be forgotten. What is clear is that the Near East had no difficulty accepting an intimate and erotic relationship between two men; and could not the same have been true for Israel, as well? We need not focus here on such texts as Gen 19 or Lev 18, 20. Other recent comparisons of Jonathan and David’s relationship with Gilgamesh and Enkidu’s include Susan Ackerman’s When Heroes Love (2005) and Jean-Fabrice Nardelli’s Homosexuality and Liminality in the Gilgameš and Samuel (2007).

However, the close bond of David and Jonathan has also been compared to that of Achilles and Patroclus in Homer’s Iliad and to that of Alexander and Hephaestion (e.g., by Horner, Johansson, Halpern, and Schroer and Staubli), although no scholar has yet explored this aspect in depth. Of course, the period of ancient Greek history (800-323 BC, ending with the death of Alexander the Great) followed several centuries and more after David’s stay at Saul’s court, flight, and rule over Israel (1017-975 BC). Still, looking for such a connection should not be surprising, since both the Hebrew and Greek civilizations shared a “common East Mediterranean heritage” (Gordon); and there is even evidence of homosexuality present in the Mycenaean and Cretan civilizations in the second millennium BC. If important sexual viewpoints and elements of literary style are found circulating earlier out of Mesopotamia and then later also throughout the Mediterranean Greek world, this suggests that such characteristics might have seeped into Israelite scribal thinking and writing, as well. Fortunately, a new study of The Greeks and Greek Love (2007) has appeared, by James Davidson, a professor of ancient history at the University of Warwick, England, offering an important “reappraisal” of Greek homosexuality. This article (in 2 parts) will present some of his ideas, along with other references to Greek texts, to help us discover what light Greek homosexuality might shed on the Samuel story.

General interpretative issues. Davidson notes that although the Greeks were hesitant to detail their intimate sexual acts, many classicists today display a ‘pervasive’ interest in anal sex in ancient Greece, “most of them happily married men whose knowledge of sodomy tends to be what you get from books or dim rememberings of reckless nights at boarding school.” For these scholars, an erastēs was not a “love-struck admirer” but rather an “aggressive male who pursues and penetrates boys.” This is the wrong emphasis, for one reason, since Greek pottery suggests that what males preferred in the most intimate of sexual situations was intercural sex (between the thighs), with both figures standing up; and there are no scenes (of which I am aware) of one male anally penetrating another, as are sometimes shown with heterosexual couples. Markus Zehnder, who in a recent article (2007) argued that David and Jonathan did not have a homosexual relationship but were just good friends, makes a similar misjudgment in defining homosexuality only in terms of sex, but in this case “genital stimulation,” failing to recognize that homosexual love can exist as a real and powerful experience even apart from sex. Likewise, Greek Love (homosexuality) was not always about sex, but could be focused on love, love, love—although Davidson quickly adds, “I have never met anyone, outside modern Greece, at least, who believes that the [ancient] Greek men just held hands.”

Greek Love is one of the “knottiest subjects” a modern historian can tackle. However, Davidson takes the best from Michel Foucault (sexual expression is always culture-particular) while rejecting the worst (homosexuality did not exist prior to 19th century); and one of his major contributions in The Greeks and Greek Love is to distinguish between “homosexuality,” basic same-sex desire and/or orientation, in ancient Greece, and “Homosexualities,” those “peculiar and specific same-sex ways” that became associated with Athens, Sparta, Crete, Elis, Thebes and other autonomous city-states and places in the larger Greek world, and at different times between the 8th-4th centuries BC. Michel Foucault argued that Kenneth Dover showed that, on the one hand, the Greeks “had no notion of it [homosexuality] . . . , and, on the other hand, they had no experience of it. A person who slept with another of the same sex did not feel homosexual. That seems to me fundamental” (Foucault). However, people without a word for “green” still distinguished this color from other colors (Davidson); and the ancients knew what “gravity” was without knowing Newton’s term (Boswell). Likewise, the Greeks knew what homosexual desire was (strong sexual feelings for the same gender) without the label “homosexual.” Still, this does not mean that they experienced gay love exactly like today. For me, the point is not whether a male in history viewed or identified himself as “a homosexual,” or as a person apart, with or without a label (although these sometimes occurred in the past), but whether his words and actions reveal a dominant sexual orientation toward members of his own sex, combined with little or no expressed heterosexual interest. In fact, Davidson notes that what so is interesting about all of the forms of Greek Homosexualities (in various places) is how they combine basic elements of ‘ordinary’ homosexuality, including falling in love, pursuing someone, having sex, and becoming a couple in certain cases. Greek Love is difficult to understand because sometimes the ancient texts seem to approve of it, even celebrate it, while at other times they appear very anxious and condemning toward it. Also, at first glance it may seem like the superhuman Heracles, who performed the Twelve Labors, and Iolaus, his constant companion, were just best friends, engaged in a brotherly kind of love; yet later same-sex couples in Thebes looked to Heracles and Iolaus as models for their own relationships, which were clearly sexual. Homer (8th century BC) mentions no nights of passion between Achilles and Patroclus at the Trojan War (ca. 1200 BC); yet later the playwright Aeschylus (ca. 500 BC) clearly thought that “thighs” and “frequent kisses” featured in their relationship. Moreover, Phaedrus, in the Symposium by Plato (ca. 400 BC) viewed Achilles as the erastēs (pursuing lover), with his attendant the older Patroclus being the erōmenos (beloved one), even though Athenian Greek Love held that the erastēs should be the older partner.

Achilles and Patroclus. Although Homer mentions no sexual intimacies, Achilles’ love for Patroclus is central to the plot of the Iliad; and his grief over Patroclus’s death provides the emotionally intense conclusion of the poem. The champion Achilles, miffed at Agamemnon, leader of the Greek expedition to Troy, refuses to fight, until his companion Patroclus is killed by the Trojan prince Hector. When Achilles hears of this, he heaps dust on his head and sobs uncontrollably (Iliad 18.19-35). When Thetis, Achilles’ mother, hears her son’s crying, she comes from the sea depths to see what is wrong (18.36-77); and Achilles tells her, “[M]y dearest companion is dead, Patroclus, who was more to me that any other of my men, whom I loved as much as my own life . . . [Now] I have no wish to live” (18.81-82, 91-92 Rieu). Later Achilles speaks to his dead companion: “Oh, Patroclus, my heart’s delight! . . . How often you yourself, my most unhappy and beloved companion, have set a delicious meal before me in this hut, with speed and skill . . . . Not that I lack it [food]. I lack you” (19.288, 315-317, 320-321 Rieu). Then, Achilles goes on a rampage (chap. 20) and kills Hector (chap. 22), and then returns to camp, where he hosts a funeral feast to honor Patroclus (23.25-30), and afterward falls asleep. The ghost of Patroclus appears to him, asking him to bury their bones together, which Achilles agrees to do (23.82-85, 94-96). (As Boswell notes, mixing bones together in a burial urn was normally reserved for married couples.) Then Achilles asks, “But come nearer to me now, so that we can hold each other in our arms,” but when Achilles held out his arms, nothing was there (23.96-99 Rieu). En route to the funeral bier, Achilles cradles Patroclus’s head in his hands (23.136-138)—just as Andromache, wife of the slain Hector, will do later with her husband (24.722-724). After the funeral cremation, Achilles began to weep again, and sleep eluded him, as he “tossed and turned from side to side, always thinking of his loss, of Patroclus’ manliness and spirit” (24.3-7 Rieu). When Thetis appears to Achilles again, she asks, “My child, how much longer are you going to eat your heart out in lamentation and misery, forgetful even of food and bed? It must be a good thing to make love to a woman . . .” (24.128-131 Rieu, italics added). Here Achilles cannot sleep, “longing for Patroclus’s manliness and spunk [menos]” (24.6-7 Davidson), although Davidson notes that while menos in the broader sense can mean “courage, mettle” a long text by Archilochus shows that it can also refer to “semen” (in Britain “spunk” is used as a euphemism for “semen”). Scholars objected (of course), calling such a reading ‘cheap’—yet Thetis’s suggestion, “It is good to have loving intercourse even with a woman” (24.130 Davidson) can only refer to “sexual intercourse,” and this most logically points back to Achilles’ earlier tossing and turning in bed, yearning for Patroclus’s menos (sexual union).

A number of parallels can be seen here between Achilles and Patroclus’s relationship and David and Jonathan’s. It is only after one in each pair dies that the depth and primacy of their love becomes clear: Achilles cries out to the dead Patroclus, “O Patroclus, my heart’s delight! Oh, my misery . . . [my] beloved companion” (19.288, 315-316 Rieu) and he calls him “my dearest companion . . . whom I loved as much as my own life” (18.80-82 Rieu), which recall David’s tender words in his eulogy spoken to the dead Jonathan, telling him, “my brother Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful” (2 Sam 1:26 NRSV), as well as the Biblical narrator’s earlier words explaining how Jonathan “loved him [David] as his own soul [nephesh, or ‘life’]” (1 Sam 18:1 NRSV). Then there is the contrast in both cases of their same-sex love being ‘better’ than heterosexual love—noted when Achilles’ mother urges him to find solace in heterosexual sex while instead he dreams of the sex he had with Patroclus (24.5-7, 128-132), just as David recalls how the wonderful “love” and sex he had with Jonathan surpassed all heterosexual love (2 Sam 1:26c). At the same time, all four heroes on occasion have sex with women. Homer notes this specifically with both Achilles and Patroclus (9.663-668); and David, after leaving Jonathan, sometimes displays strong feelings for women (2 Sam 11:2-5), and Jonathan finally takes a wife after David leaves (2 Sam 4:4), although maybe under his father’s unrelenting pressure (1 Sam 20:30-31). Achilles never marries (most men under forty in ancient Greece would still have been unmarried); instead, Patroclus becomes the center of Achilles’ life, just as Jonathan becomes the center of David’s early life, totally sidelining his heterosexual wife Michal. Yet, intimate sexual relations between the male partners are only hinted at, in subterfuge ways: The distraught Achilles yearned for Patroclus’s menos (spirit = semen), while David in his emotional parting scene finally sunteleias magalēs . . . uperebalen (exceeded to a great finale = experienced an ejaculation, 1 Sam 20:40 LXX). Usually the champion Achilles takes the lead, giving instructions to Patroclus, e.g., to lay out food or run errands (9.202-220, 620-623; 11.611-617), although Patroclus, still a man and a warrior, later bravely fights and gives his life for Achilles. In the Bible Prince Jonathan usually takes the lead, although David later shows forceful leadership in taking the throne and Jerusalem.

Other wedded male couples. Not only did Homer place the devoted intimacy between Achilles and Patroclus at the heart of the Iliad, but same-sex couples remained prominent throughout the ancient Greek period. Diocles, from Corinth and victor of the stadion in 728 BC (a foot race of ca. 200 meters, the most prestigious event at the Olympics), eloped with Philolaus, his lover from Thebes, to escape his mother’s incestuous passion. This couple may be the oldest known ‘historical’ homosexual couple in Greece. Wedded couples, the oldest manifestations of Greek love, also include Heracles and Iolaus, who appear ca. 700 BC together on Boeotian brooches, Boeotia being the region around Thebes. Later male Theban couples visit Iolaus’s tomb to exchange oaths of love and loyalty with each other (Plutarch). Iolaus also was offered sacrifices, together with Heracles, at Marathon, north of Athens. Xenophon (ca. 400 BC) wrote of Boeotian men being “yoked together” using syzygenetes, a word for heterosexual “marriage” (suzeugnumi = “to yoke together,” syzygy = “a yoked pair”). Other same-sex couples include the Athenian city steward Leodamas and “his wife Hegesander,” the founders of Athenian democracy Harmodius and Aristogiton, and Sappho and her “yoke-mates.” What especially characterized same-sex yoking (or mating, or weddedness) was the exchanging of oaths, which automatically makes these pairs comparable to heterosexual married couples. In 4th-century Athens Socrates describes two males who, although they do not take the higher road (of divine love) and instead ‘consummate’ their love and go on “doing this for the rest of their lives,” even after “they have passed beyond it [sex],” because they have exchanged “such firm vows,” they will not be “sent into darkness” in the afterlife, but their lives will be “bright and happy as they travel together” (Plato, Phaedrus 256be Nehamas and Woodruff). In Crete committed male relationships came into being through an abduction ceremony; and in Sparta men after contracting a same-sex relationship were responsible for the behavior of their erōmenoi (beloveds), which means that these relationships were recognized by the authorities. Often the erastēs (lover) gave his youthful partner a one-and-only gift of weapons at his coming of age. Since opposite-sex marriages were often arranged by families without any wooing or courting, these same-sex weddings, based on falling in love, were more like modern Western marriages. One can clearly see certain comparisons here with Jonathan and David’s relationship, e.g., in the taking over of common words for heterosexual marriage: syzygy in Greek (= a yoked pair, marriage) and berit in Hebrew (= a covenant, pact, marriage alliance; cf. 1 Sam 18:3; 20:8,16; 23:18). Also, as with life-long Greek male yoking, it is Jonathan’s falling in love with David which leads to their sharing life-long oaths and pledges (1 Sam 20:16-17,42; 23:17-18). The Biblical story also contains a gift of weapons given to David as a youth entering into manhood (1 Sam 18:4).