Does the Bible show a same gender romantic relationship between King David and Jonathan?

Does the Bible show a same gender romantic relationship between King David and Jonathan? #bible #bibleverse #biblestudy #samuel #1samuel #david #jonathan #deconstruction #deconstructiontiktok #lgbtq #lgbtqchristians #progressiveclergy #progressivechristian #progressivechristianity

[@AurorXZ]

This debate is fascinating, and I'm glad you emphasized the "we don't know!" aspect. I was firmly in the No Way Gay camp before, but the more I looked into the actual scholarship, the uncertainties grew. Saul Olyan and Thomas Römer have excellent work on this, and Joel Baden explores it too. The ambiguity of the text appears to be part of the point: the texts were written prior to the taboo against same-sex activities; the texts received have plausible deniability (which likely allowed their textual transmission); the deep kinship language imitates ANE political rhetoric; the clothing/armor demonstrations were crafted to echo Elijah and Elisha. Similarly, the narratives bear traces of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. These texts are complicated with many, many layers of meaning.

[@nerowolfe929]

I may be way off-base here, and you can tell me so, but if you interpret Paul's "thorn in the flesh" as the self-hatred of a closeted gay man, a lot of things that he writes begin to make a whole lot of sense.