What we learn from Sapho, the Greek Poet.

I was listening to Melvyn Bragg’s “in Our Time” on Radio 4 this morning. Yes, this means I am officially middle aged! (For readers not familiar with the programme, Melvyn gathers a group, usually university professors, and they discuss something highly intellectual and academic like the Cynics movement in ancient Greece, the development of Anarchist philosophy, etc)

This time the erudite discussion was about Roman and Greek poetry and how it addresses the subject of love.

A key figure in moving poetry away from epics like the Iliad to this more day to day topic was the Greek poet Sapho. It is from Sapho, the first famous female poet, that we get our language of love today.

They were saying that many of her poems were love triangles; she is watching the person she loves being chatted up by a rival, and describes her turmoil as this happens.

I found out this morning from the programme that Sapho was a lesbian, and in fact the object of her love in the love triangle was often a woman, being chatted up by a hunky man.

The discussion moved on to Roman poetry, and apparently one of the Roman poets whose name escapes me (it had a C in it, and he was related to Julius Ceaser and to Lesbia), more or less copied some of Sapho’s work but as well as translating it to Latin he swapped the gender’s of the parties, so now he was watching a woman getting frisky with his boyfriend. The poet’s relative Lesbia was attached to the Greek island Lesbos and the lesbian group there, from which Lesbianism gets its name.

So why am I writing all this stuff here? Because you will be aware that I have already written some posts on the topic of homosexuality and how to interpret the Apostle Paul’s writings on the topic. I have been genuinely seaching for the truth, trying to do so with an open mind and to lay down my prejudices.

According to the Church of England newspaper, Bishop Ingham has stated that ‘arsenokoitai’ refers not to adult consenting homosexual relationships, but to pederasty, and that the modern concept of homosexual love was virtually unknown at the time.

It is clear from the scholar’s discussion of Sappho, the Roman Poet, etc, that in fact the concept of homosexual love was not only known but was socially acceptable. Not as a marriage, because marriage was for raising babies not for sexual pleasure. You wouldn’t subject your wife to your lust, you would satisfy that elsewhere.

So that is the context into which Paul was writing.

And having wondered about this topic for some time in a genuine search for the truth, I now consider that Bishop Ingham’s bluff has been called. I am now convinced that Paul, in writing ‘arsenokoitai’ was writing about men who sleep with men (in the sexual sense).

And in as much as homosexual love was known and accepted by the Greek society but Paul called the church OUT of that society, so in today’s society when homosexual love is known and accepted the call to us all including homosexual people today is the same. Come out of that society, and into the Kingdom of God. “For such some of you were”. If we continue to act that way, we will not inherit the kingdom. I want to share the Kingdom with homosexual people. This is the path given by God through Paul.