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The Holy Bible is far and away the most influential book in world history, thanks in large part to the many centuries Christians spent doing all that conquering and all those crusades and all those genocides.
But it’s easy to forget, from a theological as well as a historical perspective, that all of the New Testament was written during the period of Roman hegemony in the Mediterranean. When I did my undergrad, we really didn’t talk much about Christianity, except in how it influenced Roman state policy.
I think a lot of classicists just don’t really care about early Christian history, and the study of it is almost a parallel discipline. But it’s still ancient Mediterranean history, and you know ya girl loves some of that.
If this is your first time joining us, welcome. I’m Sophie, and this is We Have Always Existed. It’s a show where we explore the stories of transgender history in the ancient Mediterranean. It’s not a show about Roman history exclusively, but we end up talking about Rome quite a bit. They’ve left us a wealth of written material, moreso than any other Mediterranean culture before the printing press.
And that includes a lot of early Christian writings as well, but I never bothered to look into it, because I was too busy being enamoured by the stoic philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, or the reforms of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus that inspired later socialist movements, or how you can go from a backwater village of no particular importance to the dominant geopolitical power in the region.
But reading early Christian history, I found myself surprised by how different the approach was. Pagan historians mostly wrote about rulers and conquerors and wars and assassinations and senators and generals and aristocrats and political intrigue. Christian historians did too, but it was mostly to set the stage for what they wanted to talk about, which was Christianity, and Christian leaders at the time, people of no particular political importance.
It’s also interesting to read this stuff from a modern perspective. Today, Catholicism is a monolith of well-established dogma. And while there are plenty of other denominations asking the same questions about what it means to be a Christian and coming to different conclusions, Catholicism is bigger than the rest of them put together. It’s the the most popular flavour of Christianity, and always has been. It’s sort of the baseline of the faith, and other denominations tend to develop as a response to it. That’s why it’s called Protestantism – many of the Protestant churches started as a protest against Catholic dogma of the day. Why they called it protestant and not protestant, I have no idea.
In the early days of the church, there was just as much disagreement about what Christianity meant, but they didn’t have that Catholic baseline, so they interpreted the Bible in all sorts of ways that might seem surprising to modern ears.
Including some ways that don’t really conform with what we might call Roman gender norms.
“Sophie, are you telling me one of the biggest driving forces for transphobia in the world today also gives us some insight into ancient transgender history?”
You wouldn’t be watching this video if it didn’t.
But before we get into it, in the tradition of ancient epic poetry, let us begin with an invocation to the gods.
Hear me, o mighty creation of the threefold titans, Karim, Hurley, and Chen, algorithm panoptes, greater than hundred-eyed Argus, who in your realm see all, may your cold hand guide all who view this to pay tribute by offering their likes, their comments, their subscriptions, in supplication to you, o great one. For your cold hand steers the traffic in the ocean of the internet, and oversees both wise counsellors and the savage forces of hatred alike. Truly, your power is far greater than that of the old gods. May your invocation bless this channel with your favour, and may my followers, too, pay such tribute as is due.
In other words, like, comment, and subscribe!
And, if it pleases you, your support on Patreon makes a big difference too. You’ll find a link to my Patreon in the description. It starts at just a buck a month, and it really makes a difference in helping me keep this channel running and improving. You might notice this video is a little higher quality than the last one – at least, I hope it is, I’m just writing the script right now and haven’t seen the finished product – my old computer wasn’t cutting it for video editing since I cheaped out on it because a) I was broke and b) it was all I needed at the time to run my business as an SEO copywriter, and your support helped me upgrade, which allowed this to happen. I’m so grateful for all your support, thank you again. If you’ve got the spare dough, it’s greatly appreciated.
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I got started on this research path after working on the supplemental video on eunuchs, which I’m probably going to release first, though at the moment when I’m writing this script I haven’t yet finished that one. And that one was spurred after somebody asked me a short question about how eunuchs were, ahem, made. So just to let you know, if you ask me a simple question in the comments, you might just get a ridiculously long winded answer a few months later because YouTube isn’t my full time job like some of the NERDS on this platform.
You want videos more quickly? Then subscribe to my damn Patreon! For now, this is what you get.
Today, we’ll explore some interesting gender stuff in the early Christian church, along the way addressing some common questions, like whether or not some famously homophobic biblical passages actually condemn homosexuality or transgenderality – spoiler alert: they don’t – how qui oderunt – those who hate – have twisted the Bible for their own political agendas, and how literal interpretations of the Bible led early Christians down some…interesting paths, gender wise.
RELATED: Transgender Christians in History
Alright, let’s get into it.
Chapter I: Eunuchs In The Bible
Last time, we talked about the Gallae – the transgender priestesses of the goddess Kybele who castrated themselves as part of their faith. But the Gallae were not only not the only eunuchs in the Roman world, and they also weren’t even the only religious eunuchs. Some early Christians castrated themselves as well, to show their devotion to their faith.
Where did they get this idea from?
The Bible, of course.
In chapter 19 of the Book Of Matthew, Jesus had departed from Galilee, and gathered with his followers along the coast of Judaea, where he healed them and talked with them.
The Pharisees also followed him there, and quizzed him on all sorts of theological matters. The Pharisees were one of the major sects in Judaism at the time, and they’re represented in this story as sort of ancient debate bros – self righteous, sanctimonious, condescending, very conservative and dogmatic – sort of like an ex New Atheist turned Jordan Peterson lover.
They asked Jesus about divorce, and he said divorce was wrong except in cases of adultery. He also said that if you divorce and remarry (except in cases of adultery), you yourself are committing adultery.
His disciples responded by saying that if that’s the case, it’s best to just not marry in the first place, and Jesus drops some pretty spicy stuff in response. He says, quote:
Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.
– Book of Matthew 19:11-2
All the biblical quotes in this video are from the King James Version, by the way.
So there are three categories of eunuchs, according to Jesus. Those born eunuchs, those who got themselves eunuch’d by someone else, and those who eunuch’d themselves “for the sake of the kingdom of heaven”.
RELATED: Eunuchs in the Roman World
With the first one, a more literal translation is “eunuchs who from the womb of their mother were born thus” – which scholars think seems like a biblical recognition of certain flavours of intersex.
Now, I’m sure most intersex people today don’t particularly want to be referred to as eunuchs, so my apologies to my intersex viewers, I get it, I don’t really want to be called a eunuch either, but of course language has evolved quite a bit in the last 2000 years. The fact that there’s Biblical evidence for intersex people is pretty neato. We have some pretty strong evidence for the existence of intersex people in the ancient world outside of the Bible as well – for more on that, see my previous video on Hermaphroditus. So, pretty cool.
The second one – those who have been made eunuchs by others – seems pretty self explanatory.
What does that last one mean?
Some Christian scholars have interpreted “eunuch” in this case as just being celibate, but biblical scholar Stephen J. Patterson doesn’t buy that, and neither do I.
Because see, there’s a word for celibate in Greek – parthenoi. That’s where the name of the Parthenon comes from, because it was dedicated to Athena, a virgin goddess. If the Matthew writer wanted to say they were celibate, he could have used that word, and it would have made more sense in a religious context to a Greek audience because of its connection with Athena, but he didn’t. Instead, he used the word eunouchoi. And in a religious context, eunouchoi could only really mean one thing – eunuchs – otherwise it would just be confusing to his audience.
He also uses the same word to describe the first type of eunuchs – “eunuchs who from the womb of their mother were born thus” – and it really doesn’t make any sense to describe somebody as being celibate when they were born, because like, I mean, yeah, I sure hope so…
There is precedent for using similar language for eunuchs and non sexual men, though – the 2nd century CE writer Tertullian lived in Roman-ruled Carthage, and wrote a lot on early Christianity, becoming one of the most influential figures in the early Latin church. A lot of his work survives, including his work De Monogamia, or On Monogamy, where he says, quote:
For the Lord Himself opened the kingdom of Heaven to eunuchs and He Himself lived as a eunuch. The Apostle also, following His example, made himself a eunuch and indicated that continence is what he himself prefers (73).
But in the original Latin, he’s using the word spado, which could mean eunuch, but it could also mean men who didn’t marry or have sex. It’s more ambiguous there. But that’s Latin, not Greek, and the Greek word eunouchoi is a lot less ambiguous.
So even though Patterson’s conclusion isn’t ironclad, I still find it the more likely one.
So in the Book Of Matthew, Jesus advises men to emasculate themselves in order to be closer to heaven.
Now, being a eunuch in the ancient world meant having lost one’s masculinity. We saw this in the video on the Introduction to the Gallae – they were legally considered to no longer be men, a Roman legal precedent that goes back to the 1st century CE, according to the writer Valerius Maximus. For more on that, yeah check out the Gallae video. I try to keep these as self contained as I can, but there’s a lot of overlap and it’s boring for my long time viewers for me to just repeat stuff you’ve already seen. Sometimes we gotta do it, but I avoid it as much as I can. So yeah, go watch the gallae video, it’s actually pretty interesting, I think.
So, there’s a lot here, what does it all tell us?
Is Jesus saying femboys are the holiest and closest to god, and masculine men are blaspheming, and that it’s our holy duty to feminize them in the name of Christ?
IN NOMINE IESVS NAZARENSIS, REX IVDEORUM, OMNIS VIRIS LIQVENDA EST. DEVS VVLT.
Of course, Patterson’s is not the only argument on the subject. Like everything biblical, it’s open to interpretation. We’ve been arguing about this stuff for 2000 years, and we’ll probably keep arguing about it for as long as there are people who care to argue about it, which is one of the big reasons why it doesn’t make any sense to use it to make decisions about the modern world. Just about every passage in the Bible is ambiguous in its meaning, for one reason or another.
Ever read a legal document? Like a contract, or a law? They’re painstakingly written to be as hyper specific as possible, and even they can end up causing arguments. What hope do we have for clarity with something written 2000 years ago that’s been translated half a dozen times at least?
When I was in university, one of my favourite experiences was when a friend of mine and I hung out with our Latin professor after class and read the Latin Vulgate Bible together, not as a religious exercise but a linguistic one. We explored the Book of John, comparing the Latin Vulgate with the King James Version, and there were several points where he showed us some linguistic ambiguity – it could have meant one thing, but it could just as likely have meant another, and when the King James Version translators did their thing, they had to choose one meaning, but there’s no objective reason why they did.
And this was the Latin Vulgate Bible, which is a translation from the 4th century CE. It isn’t even the original language in the first place.
Sometimes they translate certain words for political reasons, like when right wing evangelicals decided the word arsenokoitai used by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 6 was about homosexuals in 1946, even though it’s a word Paul entirely made up, which was a compound word that might have meant man-bed, and it doesn’t show up anywhere else before 1 Corinthians 6. It could potentially mean homosexual, but according to some scholars, it’s more likely it was referring to the temple prostitutes that were a thing in the day, and there’s no linguistic reason why they chose to translate it as homosexuality specifically.
In fact, if Paul wanted to condemn gays in particular there, he wouldn’t have had to make up a whole new word for it. If he was condemning gay men, he could have said erastes, euryproktoi, knaidos, pathikos, and so on, and if he wanted to condemn lesbians he might have used hetairistrai or lesbiai. But again, he didn’t.
The word probably comes from a Greek translation of Leviticus 20:13, where the words arsenos koiten are used. Leviticus 20:13 has been used as an anti-gay verse for a long time, but it’s just as likely it was a condemnation of the Greek practice of pederasty at the time – adult men having sex with young boys, super common, super gross – and not actually a condemnation of adult homosexuality. And even if it was, it’s very clearly talking about men, not about gay women or trans people, so to assume arsenokoitai refers to all flavours of the LGBTQ2IA+ community is some serious historical revisionism.
The reading of Paul using arsenokoitai as a reference to temple prostitutes isn’t even a modern interpretation either – even the 1st century CE writer Philo of Alexandria knew this, who was a contemporary of Paul’s. In fact, he used the Gallae as an example for what to avoid.
So yeah, there’s no linguistic reason why they translated arsenokoitai as being against gay people. But there’s definitely a political one – qui oderunt are desperate to find a justification for their hatred, rather than to look inside themselves and ask why they hate.
There’s a whole documentary about this coming out called 1946, and I’m looking forward to seeing it.
Anyway, back to the point. It’s important to note Matthew was talking about this in light of marriage, and that Jesus recognized three different types of gender minorities (to use a modern phrase), but he also said they were unfit for marriage, so yeah it’s not like this is some incredible bit of progressiveness from ancient history.
But Matthew 19 is actually pretty interesting from a gender perspective for other reasons as well.
Verse 4 very specifically says, “Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,” and qui oderunt cite it as evidence that THERES ONLY TWO GENDERS YOUR A MAN OR A WOMAN AND ANYTHING ELSE IS EVIL WOKE SJW NONSENSE NYEH NYEH NYEH NYEH FAMILY VALUES FAMILY VALUES FAMILY VALUES etc.
First of all, he never says “only” male and female. There’s nothing in the original Greek that suggests exclusivity. It’s like saying Yamaha makes keyboards and motorcycles – yeah that’s true, but they also make boats, jet skis, ATVs, snowblowers, etc. To say Yamaha makes keyboards and motorcycles is a true statement, but it doesn’t preclude the idea that they make other stuff too.
But then right after he says male and female, he talks about all the eunuch stuff we mentioned before very soon after, so clearly Jesus recognized that the gender binary wasn’t as rigid as qui oderunt would like you to believe.
Jesus said there were at least five genders, pass it on.
And if qui oderunt are going to use the Bible to oppress us, I’d love to see us turn the tables on them. Sort of how the Satanic Temple pushes back against anti abortion laws under the guise of religious freedom, what if trans people pushed for access to gender affirming care by quoting the Bible? Jesus does specifically say “Not everyone can accept this teaching” – only those who are the most deeply devoted to their faith are willing to trans their gender.
Maybe somebody who knows more about the nuances of law, and US law in particular, can take this one and run with it. I’m an ancient historian in Canada, not an American lawyer.
But I mean f*ck it, if they’re gonna keep talking about transgenderism like it’s a religion, we might as well reap the benefits of religious freedom that comes along with it.
Chapter II: If Jesus Told You To Cut Off Your Junk, Would You Do It?
Okay, so it’s one thing for Jesus to say that feminizing yourself will bring you closer to god. But did anybody actually do this?
Yes.
The early church historian Eusebius of Caesarea, wrote a work called Historia Ecclesiastica, which is an account of the early history of the church from the time of Christ to his day, the early 4th century CE. He lived during the time of Constantine, and eventually became bishop of Caesarea in the Roman province of Syria, which was in modern day Syria, as well as parts of Turkey and Lebanon. Because of that position, he was invited to take part in the First Council of Nicaea as well, which is when they considered all the different Christian faiths and codified things into a single creed.
Fun fact – despite popular belief, there’s actually no evidence the Council of Nicaea debated what was and was not included in the Bible. The earliest mention of this we have is from a 9th century manuscript, the Synodicon Vetus. According to this text, the various bishops and holy guys put all the books of the Bible on the table, and God made the non canon ones fall off while the true ones remained on the table. But since the council happened in 325, several hundred years before this was written, it’s not terribly reliable. The French enlightenment philosopher Voltaire repeated this myth, and then it showed up in The Da Vinci Code, which is why it’s in the modern cultural zeitgeist. But yeah, probably not true.
Anyway, Book VI of Eusebius’ work focuses on the life of Origen, an important Christian figure who lived during and after the time of the emperor Septimius Severus – remember him? His son was the emperor Caracalla, whom Elagabalus claimed was her father, which gave her claim to rule the empire some legitimacy. We don’t know if Origen ever interacted with Elagabalus, though he did become a tutor to Severus Alexander’s mother, who was Elagabalus’ successor. Eusebius was clearly a big fan of Origen’s, writing a detailed history of his life.
During the early reign of Septimius Severus, he was tolerant toward Christianity, but eventually he forbade the practice and conversion to it, which ramped up persecution of Christians. This led to Origen’s father Leonides being beheaded by the emperor’s men due to his devotion to his faith, and when they dragged him off, sixteen year old Origen wanted to go and be martyred as well, though his mother convinced him not to by hiding all his clothes. And he couldn’t go naked, after all! If one is to be martyred, one must wear one’s finest outfit!
This was a pivotal moment in Origen’s life. Watching his father give his life for his faith inspired him to live a life of piety as well.
Chapter VIII of Book VI of Eusebius’ work is called “Origen’s Daring Deed,” and it reads thusly:
“At this time while Origen was conducting catechetical instruction at Alexandria, a deed was done by him which evidenced an immature and youthful mind, but at the same time gave the highest proof of faith and continence. For he took the words “there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake” in too literal and extreme a sense. And in order to fulfill the Saviour’s word, and at the same time to take away from the unbelievers all opportunity for scandal – for, although young, he met for the study of divine things with women as well as men – he carried out in action the word of the Saviour.”
Eusebius goes on to tell us that Demetrius, who presided over the parish Origen attended, greatly admired this, and later, the bishops of Caesarea and Jerusaelm ordained him as a priest.
Neato.
But scholars are, ahem, divided, on whether or not Origen actually did such a thing.
First of all, none of our surviving works by Origen talk about him having done so. And he wrote a lot – we’re not sure how much, but supposedly Eusebius listed about 2000 of his titles in a work that’s now lost. St. Jerome listed 800 of his works in one of his letters which we still have, but we know that list is incomplete because it doesn’t include Contra Celsum or the Dialogue with Heracleides, two works which survive today. Another source says he wrote 6000 works. Even if these numbers are exaggerated, it gives you an idea of how prolific a writer Origen was. If you’re going to make a list of the most influential people in the development of Christian theology, Origen’s gonna be in the top 10 at least. We only have a fraction of his works today, but nothing we have mentions his daring deed.
But later in his life, Origen wrote his Commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew. Only 8 of its 25 books survive – books X to XVII. Book XV talks about Matthew 19:12 in detail, and he seems to disagree with the idea that one should take this passage literally.
But when you read Eusebius’ work you can see he’s very clearly a big Origen fanboy. But even though he praises Origen at every chance he gets, he still refers to this whole business as evidence of, quote, “an immature and youthful mind,” and that he took Matthew 19:12 “in too literal and extreme a sense.”
So why would Eusebius tell a story about Origen that he thought might portray the guy in a negative light, especially if it was debatable whether or not he actually did it? Why would he talk about an incident where his favourite Christian scholar interpreted the Bible incorrectly? Eusebius lived later than Origen – he was born seven years after Origen’s death, so there’s no way the two ever met each other. Origen also had a lot of students, who would take his work and expand on it from there, sometimes in radically different directions. He essentially influenced every Christian writer who came after, either directly or indirectly, so there was a lot of material out there related to him. But it’s unlikely Eusebius would have mentioned such a thing unless it was either true, or a false rumour pretty much universally acknowledged to be true.
On the other hand, Origen himself pretty clearly condemns such an act. That could be evidence that he never did his daring deed, or a condemnation of the brashness of his youth. Later on, the aforementioned bishop Demetrius used it as a basis of slander against Origen, so it’s easy to imagine that might have been a response to such slander.
So did he do it? Maybe.
But he’s not the only example of such an act.
Another similar story comes from Justin Martyr, who lived in the second century CE. That’s when he stopped living too, because Marcus Aurelius sent some guys to cut his head off.
A number of his works survive, including his First Apology. As a genre, apologetics isn’t the same thing as apologizing. It comes from the Greek word apologia, which means “to speak in defence”. It’s usually used in a religious context, but not always. So when Justin Martyr wrote Christian apologetics, he wasn’t apologizing for any real or perceived awful thing done in the name of Christ (especially since during his time Christians hadn’t done that much awful stuff yet), but rather as a defense of his religion.
Anyway, Justin’s First Apology addressed such important questions as “Was Jesus a magician?” “are Christians actually atheists?” “are Christians disloyal to the empire?” and “do Christians just f*ck all day?”
My, how times have changed.
By the way, the answers are –
- No, we don’t trust magicians, but y’all seem to and you not only don’t persecute them, you revere them
- Yes, we’re atheists, in that we don’t believe in your dumb gods. Our god is real and yours are demons
- Didn’t you catch the whole “render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s”? That one seems pretty clear to me, it’s right there in our book
As far as the sex thing, in chapter XXIX, which he calls “Continence of Christians,” which has nothing to do with their ability to hold their bladder and everything to do with practising self restraint, he says, quote:
“And that you may understand that promiscuous intercourse is not one of our mysteries, one of our number a short time ago presented to Felix the governor in Alexandria a petition, craving that permission might be given to a surgeon to make him a eunuch. For the surgeons there said that they were forbidden to do this without the permission of the governor. And when Felix absolutely refused to sign such a permission, the youth remained single, and was satisfied with his own approving conscience, and the approval of those who thought as he did.”
A good christian femboy who just want to be closer to god, PERSECUTED.
The practice of castration was forbidden within the boundaries of the empire by the time of Justin’s Femboy, though there don’t seem to have been any laws against doing it to yourself. I guess he didn’t have the fortitude to uh, take matters into his own hands.
St. Basil of Ancyra talks about this as well. He was a priest in, of course, Ancyra, which is modern day Ankara. He lived during the reign of the emperor Julian the Apostate, about 120 years after Elagabalus. We call him Julian the Apostate because he was the last openly pagan Roman Emperor, which was notable since he ruled after Constantine, and was actually his nephew.
Julian arrived in Ancyra, and Basil confessed his faith in Christ to him at a trial, so Julian ordered him to be tortured.
CONTENT WARNING: GRUESOME STUFF
The emperor ordered strips of skin to be torn from Basil’s back. This didn’t really seem to faze him, so they beat him with red hot rods until he cried out to Christ, praying for his salvation, and died.
Yikes.
These days, he’s sometimes referred to as Holy Martyr Basil, not to be confused with the herb holy basil, which is not related to regular basil at all but you can still use to make a lovely relaxing cup of tea.
He’s also not to be confused with the other St. Basil, who was also a Christian who was martyred by Julian the Apostate in an equally gruesome way, but who was from Caesarea, not Ancyra. Brutal.
Anyway, in his work On The True Integrity Of Virginity, he says, quote, “this world is designed for aesthetically pleasing chads and worn out roasties to thrive, while our kind constantly gets spat on and looked down upon” – oh, sorry, wrong treatise on virginity.
Basil says he wrote On The True Integrity Of Virginity in order to, quote, “check the many such eunuchs [who had] already grown prominent in the Church,” (all quotes are as quoted by Caner, I can’t find the full version) which implies that Origen and Justin’s Femboy weren’t the only ones up to such a holy business.
He makes it clear that he’s not a fan of this practice though. He says that Christians who castrate themselves “by this very deed make a declaration of their own licentiousness”. The idea I guess is that you can prove your continence by just not sleeping around? And that by giving yourself the snip, you’re acknowledging that that’s the only way you can control your urges.
But it’s like Christ said, “not everyone can accept this teaching.”
This tells us it wasn’t just a fringe group. Certainly not the majority, but more than a few.
What’s happening here? Why are there so many Christian eunuchs?
It’s easy to just say they were so dedicated to Christ that they eunuch’d themselves, but we didn’t uncritically accept that idea with the gallae, and we shouldn’t do so here either.
Much like the gallae and their devotion to Kybele, it seems to me that there are many easier ways for a cisgender man to express his devotion to his god than to castrate himself. The apostles of Christ were devoted Christians as well – perhaps the most devoted Christians – but there’s no evidence of any of them being eunuchs.
So, why did Origen do the snip? Why did the person Justin talked about want to do the snip?
Why would anybody want to do that?
For those of you who don’t experience gender dysphoria, it’s likely unimaginable, but for those of us who do, no explanation is necessary.
“Sophie, you can’t just go around saying everybody in the ancient world is trans.”
Well, is there a better explanation?
Actually, maybe. Let’s look at some of the other arguments for why these early Christians might have done such daring deeds.
Chapter III: They Only Allow Safety Scissors In Vatican City
Ancient Christians did make some arguments for why one would eunuch themselves that didn’t have anything to do with gender, but more to do with sex. And not biological sex, but biological sex.
It was a common practice in Roman society to accuse fringe religions with sexual perversion. This included promiscuity, which would have gone against virtus. We talked about this in the Elagabalus video, and it’s just as relevant here for largely the same reasons.
Virtus is a word often translated as virtue, but it’s more complicated than that. It was the Roman social expectations of how a man – particularly an upper class man – ought to conduct himself. This included things like courage, a sense of justice and fairness in leadership, and foresight, but more importantly for our discussion here, temperance and self control. And if you look at Roman men who were slandered in the historical record, you’ll find they tend to be slandered in a way that shows them falling short of these virtues one way or another.
Caligula? He made his horse consul, declared war on the god Neptune, and built two floating orgy barges. He even selected random guests at the arena to be executed, just to satisfy his lust for blood.
Nero? He beat his wife to death, married a man who looked like her, played the lute while Rome burned around him, and killed both his mother and brother.
The above stories are either untrue or hugely exaggerated, but it’s easy to see how these particular accusations were geared toward their lack of virtus.
They did the same with Christians.
A lot of the accusations we have against Christians comes from Christian apologetics like Justin Martyr. He responds to the idea that they were atheists and sexual perverts which we talked about earlier, but there are more sources than that.
Scholar Bart Wagemakers talks about the big three accusations levied against Christians – incest, infanticide, and cannibalism. Yikes. Let’s take a look at each. Most of the sources below are as quoted by Wagemakers.
The second century CE Christian Roman writer Athenagoras claimed they were accused of what he called “Oedipoedean intercourse” which is such a gross term I don’t even really care to describe it – go read Oedipus Rex if you really need to know.
Another Christian apologist, the 3rd century CE writer Minucius Felix, described in detail the rumour about Christians’ supposed orgies and sexual perversions. Supposedly, they would hold a feast with everybody in the local community – you’d bring your whole family – spouse, kids, parents, etc. Then, they’d toss a piece of meat near the lamp lighting the room, and let a hungry dog loose, who would run over to the meat and in the process, knock over the lamp and put it out. After, they’d fumble around in the darkness until they found somebody, and have sex with them, not knowing who it was.
Athenagoras also talks about how they were accused of “Thyestean feasts,” which is a mythological reference. In Greek mythology, Atreus was the king of Mycenae, and the father of Menelaos and Agamemnon. You may recognize them from the Trojan War cycle – Menelaos was the husband of Helen of Troy, and Agamemnon was the leader of the Greek expedition to Troy. Anyway, Thyestes was his twin brother. Atreus’ wife Aerope was sleeping with Thyestes, so Atreus got revenge by murdering Thyestes’ sons, cooking them, and then serving them to Thyestes at a banquet. Absolutely brutal.
It’s noteworthy that Thyestes ate his children – the accusation would have been that Christians weren’t just cannibals, but baby murderers and baby eaters.
This part might come from a misreading – deliberate or otherwise – of the Christian rite of the Eucharist – holy communion. After all, if you’d hear of people devouring the body of a guy, and you didn’t know much else about them, you might not realize the whole thing is metaphorical and nobody is actually eating corpses.
So uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh yeah.
Clearly, all this goes against virtus.
What were the consequences of this?
In many cases, a pretty brutal death.
In 177 CE, the people of Lugdunum (modern Lyon, in France) and nearby Vienna (modern day Vienne, in France, not Vienna in Austria – same name, different place) rioted against each other. Both cities had been part of the Roman state for more than a century, so it wasn’t a push against Roman rule. Christianity was growing there at the time, and the local pagan population wasn’t loving it. They’d been passing laws that excluded Christians from public spaces, including baths and public meetings. Eventually, they were summoned before the governor, who accused them of all that nasty stuff we talked about above, and as a result they were tortured and put to death.
So, let’s put two and two together here.
You’re being accused of the most heinous things imaginable.
The consequences for such accusations are a horrible death – and some people in your group have already faced them.
Is it any wonder that some Christians, their faith being strong enough, might have gone to extreme lengths to disprove these allegations and save themselves and their community from these brutal consequences?
The easier option might have been to just give up your faith, at least publicly. But I’m not a lady of faith.
And like Major Kira Nerys said in Deep Space Nine – “that’s the thing about faith. If you don’t have it, you can’t understand it. And if you do, no explanation is necessary.”
So if you’re faced with an unbelievable level of persecution, the consequences might be the most horrible death one could imagine, and giving up your faith is not an option, what do you do? Perhaps you turn to your faith – the guiding principles by which you live your life. And, having come upon Matthew 19:12, you might just decide to really commit to your faith, so to speak.
“See, we’re not sexual perverts. If we were, would I have castrated myself? These accusations are ridiculous.” – Origen, probably.
Chapter IV: All The Bathrooms In Heaven Are Gender Neutral
Okay, so these early Christian eunuchs may or may not have been trans, in a modern sense. However, what happens we use the word transgender in a historical sense, as established by Susan Stryker?
[p]eople who move away from the gender they were assigned at birth, people who cross over the boundaries constructed by their culture to define and contain their gender (1).
They may or may not have identified as men afterwards, but remember when we talked earlier – Roman legal precedent considered eunuchs to be neither men, nor women, but a secret third thing. So in that light, they absolutely did cross over the gender boundaries constructed by their culture, even if those boundaries were ones imposed by the state.
But let’s take a step back and revisit Matthew 19:12. Why did Jesus talk about eunuchs being closer to the kingdom of heaven?
Jesus talks about that in Matthew 22 as well. He’s at a feast after a wedding, and so are the Pharisees, doing their whole debate bro thing, trying to trick Jesus into answering complicated questions about how heaven works.
In particular, they ask about a Jewish law commanded by Moses which said that if a man dies with no children, it’s his brother’s duty to marry his widow and have children with her.
So, they make up a super involved and super unlikely hypothetical about seven brothers – the oldest was married, but died with no kids, so one of the six remaining brothers married her. Then another one died, and the next one in line married her, and so on until all seven brothers had married her and all seven had died.
What the Pharisees wanted to know was when the woman dies, who gets to be her husband when they’re in heaven?
I think the more interesting question might be to ask what part of the garden she’s growing her hemlock in, but go off Pharisees, clearly y’all have your priorities straight.
Again, Jesus drops some spicy gender bombs here:
Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.
– The Holy Bible, Gospel of Matthew 22:29-30
There’s a similar story in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 20, and Jesus gives a similar answer.
The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage. But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.
– The Holy Bible, Gospel of Luke 20:34-36
Once more it’s repeated in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 12.
Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God? For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.
– The Holy Bible, Gospel of Mark 12:24-25)
And okay wow.
When looking at these verses, one phrase that keeps coming up is people in heaven “neither marry, nor are given in marriage” or gamousin oute gamizontai in Greek. What does that mean?
Remember how we talked about eunuchs in relation to marriage, and that the three different types of eunuchs weren’t fit to marry? Jesus wasn’t the only one who talked about that.
We’ve got the Roman legal precedent mentioned earlier, but other Jewish writings of the time address whether eunuchs could marry, and the general conclusion seems to be that they could not.
So one reading of these passages might be to say the three genders are – marry, given in marriage, and unfit to marry.
As well, each writer compares the dead with the angels. And that’s interesting too, because it’s pretty well established theology that the angels are genderless. Let’s take a closer look at that.
Words in ancient Greek have genders just like French and Italian and some other languages do today, and the word aggelos – angel – is a masculine one. As well, we’re only ever given the names of two angels – Michael and Gabriel – both male names.
Yes Lucifer is an angel, but the name Lucifer doesn’t appear in the original Bible, and is in fact a mistranslation of the word LVCIFER from the Latin Vulgate, which was the name the Romans gave to the planet Venus when it appeared in the morning, just before sunrise – the Morning Star. Venus only ever appears then, or just after sunset, when it’s called the Evening Star. The Egyptians actually thought it was two different planets because of that, and so did the Greeks, until Pythagoras put together his model of the universe and realized it was a single planet. That’s why Lucifer is sometimes called the morning star as well. But he’s never referred to as Lucifer in the Bible.
Angels appear before humans several times as well – in Genesis 19, in Judges 13, in Matthew 28 – and when they do, they look like men.
But angels aren’t male or female in the way we humans understand them. This isn’t a woke idea or whatever either, this is generally accepted among respected theologians. Instead, they can appear in human form on Earth in order to not absolutely terrify whoever they’re meeting. But they’re spiritual creatures, not physical ones, so they don’t have genders. They also don’t marry, since they don’t reproduce, and in the biblical world that was the only point of marriage. Good thing we’ve evolved past that, huh?
But what about all the paintings of angels in human form? Those are just artist’s interpretations, they’re non canon. Instead, the angels looked more like the writer of Ezekiel tells us:
As I looked at the living creatures [the angels], I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces. This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: they sparkled like topaz and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. As they moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced; the wheels did not change direction as the creatures went. Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around.
– The Holy Bible, Book of Ezekiel 1:15-18
High and awesome, huh? Yeah I don’t know what the hell that’s supposed to be, but it doesn’t sound like it’s got a gender…
No wonder nonbinary cats love the biblically accurate angel meme so much.
That’s not the only description of angels in the Bible, and if you want to get deeper into angelology (yeah that’s the word) you’ll learn there’s a whole hierarchy of different types of angels, none of which have genders, but that’s too far off the point so I’m not gonna get into detailed angelololololololololololo-let’s look at the evidence.
Eunuchs aren’t fit to marry.
Eunuchs are recognized as neither men nor women, but something else.
People in heaven can neither marry nor be married.
People in heaven are like the angels.
The angels don’t have genders.
The angels look like wheels with eyes all over them.
What does this say to you?
Because to me, it says that when we attain the Kingdom of Heaven, we’re not going to have any gender. We’ll all be angelic nonbinary spiritual beings.
In fact, we’ll transcend the very concept of gender in the first place, leaving such terrestrial matters behind.
We’ll transcend our genders.
We’ll trans our genders.
We’ll-
Chapter V: What Does It All Mean?
Is it worth looking to the Bible to find answers for why modern day so-called Christians are so full of hatred toward us?
For some, maybe.
I live in Canada, but my background is Sicilian, so of course I was raised Catholic. And when I began transitioning publicly, certain people just never found out, including my 90 something year old great aunt Maria. When my great uncle – her husband – passed away last summer, I was invited to the funeral, but my mom and I realized Maria didn’t know I’d transitioned – not that we’d hidden it from her, but she’s not really a big part of my life so it just never came up. We’d waffled a bit on whether or not I should go, since my aunt had just lost her husband and we thought it might not have been the best time for me to make my big debut for that side of the family. But I wanted to pay my respects to my great uncle, who I always thought was a cool, interesting, down to earth guy, so my mom decided to tell Maria. And I’m paraphrasing, but this is how she replied:
“What am I gonna judge? I’m not here to judge, only God can judge. All I can do is love”
And that was such a beautiful sentiment. If this 90 year old Sicilian Catholic, who survived the Allied invasion and bombing of Sicily in the Second World War, and who never got more than a primary school education, can reply to somebody in her family transing their gender with “all I can do is love”, what excuse do qui oderunt have?
Yes, the leadership of the Catholic Church is evil. Yes, they’re the largest, most organized pedophile ring on Earth. No, I don’t trust Catholic priests as far as I can throw them (and after so many years on estrogen, I can’t throw them anywhere near as far as I used to). But they’re also one of the largest religions in the world. Nearly a fifth of the world’s population – 1.3 billion – has been baptized Catholic, and even if you exclude people like me, who were baptized but no longer consider themselves Catholic, that’s still a lot of people.
And if my experience in the trans community has taught me anything, it’s that there are good and bad people in any group.
So, maybe it’s not religion that’s the problem.
Am I going to start believing again? No. Not right now, at least, who knows what the future holds. But if you were raised as a Catholic, or Christian offshoot heretic cult, it might be overwhelming to imagine just how many people there are who are part of the church. And it’s easy to extrapolate that to imagine all those people are people who hate us. I know I sometimes jump to that conclusion. But if my experience with my great aunt Maria taught me anything, it’s that not everybody blindly follows whatever the angry man du jour is shouting about in the name of Christ, or is even paying attention to him.
We might not ever see the end of the Catholic church. But we might start to see an end of hatred. As more and more of us push back against religious bigotry, they’ll continue to become an ever shrinking minority, and what we’re seeing today, I believe, is the death throes of such hate-based ideologies. Conservatism has nothing to offer anybody except irrational anger, and it’s becoming clearer and clearer that buying into that anger whole cloth doesn’t actually improve anybody’s material conditions. As it does, I believe such movements will become more and more impotent.
Do I know that’s what will happen? No.
But, I guess you can say I have faith that it will.
I know there are queer Christians out there, and if that’s the case for you it might be a great source of pain to watch your god used as a cudgel to spread hatred. But perhaps this video will bring you some solace in knowing that Jesus never said anything about hating trans people, that the Kingdom of Heaven is nonbinary, and that scriptures used by qui oderunt to exclude queers are mistranslations for political reasons.
Those who use Christianity to spread hate are about as un-Christian as it gets, and if Christ ever does return, they’ll see their just rewards.
Ancient Sources:
►Aurelius Victor. “De Caesaribus”. Translated with an introduction and commentary by H. W. Bird. Glasgow, Liverpool University Press, 1994.
►Dio Cassius. “Roman History, Volume I: Books 1-11”. Translated by Earnest Cary, Herbert B. Foster. Loeb Classical Library 32. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914.
►Eusebius. “Historia Ecclesiastica”. Translated by Rev. Arthur Cushman McGiffert. Cincinnati, Lane Theological Seminary, 1890.
►“The Holy Bible, King James Version”. E-book edition, Project Gutenberg, 2011.
►St. Jerome. Letter 33, Listing the Works of Origen. Translated by Roger Pearse, 2012.
►Origen. “Commentary On The Gospel Of Matthew”. Translated by the Rev. Frederick Crombie, D.D. Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1872.
►Paulus Aegineta. “Epitomes Iatrikes Biblio Hepta”. Translated by Francis Adams. London, The Sydenham Society, 1847.
►Tertullian. “De Monogamia”. Translated by William P. Le Saint. Westminster MD, Newman Press, 1951.
Modern Sources:
►Caner, Daniel F. “The Practice and Prohibition of Self-Castration in Early Christianity.” Vigiliae Christianae, vol. 51, no. 4, 1997, pp. 396–415. JSTOR.
►Grant, Robert. “Greek Apologists of the Second Century”. Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1988.
►Kane, June Kozak. “Redefining Leviticus 20-13”. Jewish Standard. 2 December, 2011.
►Patterson, Stephen J. “Biblical Views: Punch Thy Neighbor”. Biblical Archaeological Society. May/June 2015.
►Rene. “What Did Paul Mean When He Used The Greek Word Arsenokoitai?” GayChristian101. Archived from the original at Archive.org, 9 July 2012.
►Sauter, Megan. “Eunuchs in the Bible”. Biblical Archaeological Society. 2022.
►Scholz, Piotr O. “Eunuchs and Castrati: A Cultural History”. Translated by John A. Broadwin and Shelley L. Frisch. Princeton, Markus Wiener Publishers, 2001.
►Wagemakers, Bart. “Incest, Infanticide, and Cannibalism: Anti-Christian Imputations in the Roman Empire”. Greece & Rome 57 (2010):337 – 354.
