Philo, Josephus, and the Testaments on Sexuality: Attitudes Towards Sexuality in the Writings of Philo and Josephus and in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs by William Loader (review)

William Loader, Professor Emeritus of New Testament at Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia, has focused his research and books in recent years on sexuality as discussed in the Jewish and Christian literature of late antiquity. This is his fourth book in this topic, all published by Eerdmans. The first three were Enoch, Levi, and Jubilees on Sexuality (2007), The Dead Sea Scrolls on Sexuality (2009), and The Pseudepigrapha on Sexuality, forthcoming. They are the product of a five-year project of the Australian Research Council on attitudes toward sexuality in Judaism and Christianity in the Hellenistic Greco-Roman era. Loader is a minister in the Uniting Church in Australia.

There is considerable value in learning from the writers of late antiquity who thought and wrote about “the elephant in the room,” that is, human sexuality, an appetite that more than the other bodily appetites has a spiritual aspect to it. Loader included in this volume an exploration of the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, a second-century Christian editing of a Jewish work usually included among the pseudepigrapha, along with Philo and Josephus, because they all share attitudes toward sexuality and ethical philosophy (437).

We who are the heirs of the Bible, the Puritans and the Victorians, of Kinsey and Updike and Lawrence and the internet, cannot escape the pulse of this driving force that makes the generations keep coming, leaving in its wake such turbulence. Here is found the outworking of the first command given by our Creator in the Bible, “be fruitful and multiply,” that works as well with gnats and giraffes and the rest of the created order to which this command was given.

The first and longest section of Loader’s newest book investigates Philo’s take on sexuality. This Alexandrian Jew, born in the Augustan age, knew the libidinous ways of Roman aristocracy, as evident in Egypt as in Rome. He refers to the ways of the Persians, who marry their mothers, Egyptians, whose siblings marry each other, and Greeks and barbarians who practice homosexuality as examples of inappropriate sexual expression for Jews. These were the peoples in whose lands the Jews lived. Philo’s writing seems to target primarily a Jewish audience that lives in this highly sexualized climate. He is a teacher for his people. As he tried to explain the justice of God when writings Against Flaccus, the Roman governor who orchestrated the horrendous pogrom in Alexandria in the year 38, so throughout his other writings he sought to instruct his people on how Jews, informed by their Scriptures, should manage their sexuality.

As Loader informs us, Philo touched on virtually every aspect of sexuality, its aberrations of pederasty and bestiality as well as its more approved forms with their various deviations from the moral guidance of the Bible. Philo confesses that both he and his wife were virgins when they got married, which is the ideal.

Loader remarks in summarizing the vast detail he gathers, “Matters sexual are scarcely peripheral to Philo’s concerns” (252). These concerns include the role of women quite apart from sexual matters. Women are types of the aesthetic element of our humanity, by contrast with men, who typify the rational. He reflects the common view of ancient Jews that women are the source of the temptation that often overcomes reason. Philo wrestled with the issue of the pleasure that accompanies sexual expression, including the pleasure it affords but which, uncontrolled, leads to dominating, even destructive passions. Sexuality is part of God’s creation, hence is in itself good. But when delight in the pleasure accompanying sexual expression is not governed by reason, it has harmful effects.

Josephus’s writing differed from Philo’s. He was not nearly so concerned with explaining appropriate sexual ways...