The Sin of Sodom in Late Antiquity

Abstract

W h y d i d G o d d e s t r o y t h e cities of Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone? Since the High Middle Ages, there has been a clear and popular answer to that question: for the sin of male-male sexual congress. As a number of groundbreaking studies have demonstrated, however, the homosexual reading of the sin of Sodom was an addition of later commentators to the biblical narrative. The book of Genesis itself does not imply same-sex relations. In early Christian writings, too, the emphasis was not upon the sexual deviance of the Sodomites but upon their pride or their violation of guest rights. The reading of the Sodom narrative as a punishment for homosexual sin only began to develop in later centuries—this would culminate in the invention of a new word, “sodomy,” to refer to homosexual sin. Many scholars identify the writings of Augustine, the celebrated bishop of Hippo, as a particular turning point in the evolution of the image of Sodom’s sin. In book 16 of De ciuitate Dei (The City of God), composed in 420 CE, Augustine states that the reason God punished the citizens of Sodom was because of their sin, identified as “illicit sexual intercourse with men” (stupra in masculos). Historians have seen this statement as the first attempt in Latin Christian literature to explicitly link the sin of Sodom with homosexual sin. J. A. Loader believes that Augustine’s depiction set the