Content Warning – Contains Descriptions of Sexual Acts and of Castration

We take for granted that the church is a community whose membership is constituted by faith alone. We are used to it. But when the church first burst into the world, it introduced something that no one had ever seen before.

The church was a community which did not depend on race, ethnicity, allegiance to a state or monarch, gender, or whether they were slaves or free. The only mark of belonging to the church was faith.

It is by faith that a person enters the church community.

Introduction – How Inclusion Created the Church

It is common to talk about Pentecost as the church’s birthday. The time when the Holy Spirit came and empowered the disciples. But I think it is the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch that actually started the church.

Until this point, the conversions were all people who were Jewish. Christianity doesn’t exist yet. It was a Jewish messianic movement.

But then comes an Ethiopian in a chariot, and suddenly, it is no longer a closed group of people. It has become something more. Something greater. The words, “What can stand in the way of my being baptized?” reveal the radically inclusive nature of the church.

In this post, I will highlight how the story of the Ethiopian eunuch can speak to the church today as a reminder of its original radical understanding of itself as a community of faith. I’ll set out the history and cultural context of eunuchs, then explore their portrayal in the Bible, and discuss what that means for us today.

One thing that cannot be ignored when thinking about this story is the fact that the Ethiopian eunuch is someone who underwent castration. Their gender status in the ancient world was confused, and they were often outcasts because of it.

Today, experts estimate that 2% of people in the world are born with intersex characteristics. In the ancient world, people would have regarded them as eunuchs. The church has a responsibility to understand itself in light of this story and how the understanding of gender has been developing.

The Cleveland Clinic has published a helpful page on understanding what being intersex is and what it means.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/16324-intersex

We should remember that most eunuchs underwent castration during their lives and were not born as eunuchs.

There were three forms that castration took: normally, the testicles were removed, sometimes the testicles and the penis were removed, and most rarely, just the penis was removed. It was a very dangerous procedure but was fairly widely practised in the ancient world.

In modern times we should not think that castration has ceased. The introduction of chemical castration, such as was used on the British scientist Alan Turing as punishment for his homosexuality, is an example of this. There have been suggestions that chemical castration should be used as a punishment for sex offenders. Whilst the surgery is no longer part of the procedure, castration still exists.  

My hope is that this post will start to get you thinking about what it means to belong, but also what it might mean to feel that you don’t belong (or to be told that you don’t).

This story underpins one of the most important moments in the church, and it is a story without which we cannot know ourselves today as the church.

The Scripture: Acts 8: 26-40

26 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” 27 So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian[a] eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, 28 and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet. 29 The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”

30 Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked.

31 “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

32 This is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading:

“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,
    and as a lamb before its shearer is silent,
    so he did not open his mouth.
33 In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
    Who can speak of his descendants?
    For his life was taken from the earth.”[b]

34 The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” 35 Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.

36 As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?” [37] [c] 38 And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. 39 When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing. 40 Philip, however, appeared at Azotus and traveled about, preaching the gospel in all the towns until he reached Caesarea.

This History of Eunuchs in the Ancient Near East

We begin by exploring the history of eunuchs more generally.

Persian and Assyrian Eunuchs.

It is not known when humans first castrated other humans. The Greek historian Hellanicus accredits the Achaemenid Empress Atossa with making the first eunuchs, whilst later Roman writings attribute the first Eunuchs to the Assyrian queen Semiramis.

Even if we do not know when eunuchs were first made, it is important that both Greeks and Romans believed it originated in ‘the East’ where they believed all kinds of strange beliefs lurked ready to corrupt decent societies.

It is also significant that it was an Empress and a queen who was thought to have begun the practice of emasculation.

In Persia and Assyria (and outside the scope of this blog in China and India), eunuchs were a common feature of court life. The first accounts suggest that eunuchs were the guards of royal harems. The word eunuch comes from the Greek word eunoukhos, meaning bedroom guard.

Eunuchs were not limited to being only guards of harems. They became significant figures in the imperial or royal courts. Being senior courtiers, advisers, and military officials including generals. Unfortunately, this was not the case with every eunuch, and many were used as sex slaves.

Others became eunuchs out of punishment. Castration was used as a punishment for rape or for those found in same-sex relationships in Persia and in Rome. It was sometimes inflicted on prisoners of war, such as the Egyptian Pharaoh Mermeptah, who boasted of castrating 6360 Libyan prisoners.

The use of castration lasted into the early modern period, where in the UK, it was part of the process of hanging, drawing, and quartering criminals.

The Hellenic World

Aristotle, the great philosopher, regarded women as inferior or defective men. Aristotle was obviously wrong.

This is why when he wrote that eunuchs were like women, it was a criticism. He wrote: When one vital part changes, the whole make-up of the animal differs greatly in appearance and form. This may be observed in the case of eunuchs; the mutilation of just one part of them results in such a great alteration of their old semblance, and in close approximation to the appearance of the female.

Artistotle’s own prejudice against women coloured his understanding of eunuchs. For Aristotle, anything that made a man seemingly less than man was to reduce him. Aristotle’s thought continued to influence Greek and Roman thinking and then, as a result of the Crusades, also influenced the medieval church.

Republican and Imperial Rome

In Imperial Rome, eunuchs were prised as household slaves or servants. They often served as chamberlains or heads of households.

Because they could not have children, they were regarded as not posing a threat to the head of the house. However, the existence of eunuchs in the Empire was not a given.

The emperor Domitian banned castration. The Roman historian Cassius Dio said that Domitian banned castration to get back at the memory of his predecessor Emperor Titus. However, Roman historian Suetonius wrote that Domitian kept his own personal supply of eunuchs despite his laws. This meant that the only source of eunuchs was outside of the Empire from barbarians.

The Roman writer Claudian said that Parthians used castration so that those who were castrated were: kept boys by artifice, to serve their lusts by thus lengthening the years of youthful charm.

Claudian criticises the Eastern Parthian empire, which incidentally was one of Rome’s old enemies, as a way of criticising contemporary Romans for indulging in what he saw as foreign practices. He links the sexual use of eunuchs to pederasty and condemns both as foreign and un-Roman.

Rhiannon Rowlands writes: The literary evidence shows that authors in the Roman Empire considered eunuchs to be sexual individuals. Young eunuchs are conceptually assimilated with young boys and as such are presented as a fitting object of desire in a pederastic relationship. Indeed, part of the rationale for the castration of slaves was to artificially extend the length of time their appearance would retain the adolescent look that was considered particularly sexually attractive.

Sex with eunuchs was common enough that they were desired in the Imperial bed chamber in particular. The poet Prudentius wrote about the emperor Hadrian’s young lover Antinous who was a eunuch.

The different uses of eunuchs for sex

There are two elements to the sexual use and abuse of eunuch slaves and servants. A same-sex perspective and a different-sex perspective.

First, fundamental to Greco-Roman concepts of sexuality is the dignitas of a man. Their power, honour, and authority are rooted in their role as active participants in everything they do.

Whether it was war, politics, or sex, to be passive was to be weak, soft, and ultimately to be regarded as feminine.

This meant that in sex, only the person who was penetrating was the person who maintained their dignitas. Even then, it was considered to be in bad taste when with a male of equal social standing. Cartledge writes: Males in Athens who in adult life willingly submitted to anal penetration were derided as kinaidoi, a term of abuse which had the connotation of effeminacy.

Slaves were one option, especially children or teens who hadn’t gone through puberty and thus seemed more feminine. However, eunuchs presented an option that was more fitting for a Roman or Greek male.

The eunuch was inherently unmanly. They were thought to be naturally passive and so naturally more feminine. As such, whilst it might provoke some tuts, there was far less social stigma to having any kind of relationship with a eunuch.

There are examples of eunuchs finding loving relationships in this fashion. The Greek sophist Philostartus wrote: Tomorrow, Damis, you shall learn that even eunuchs are liable to fall in love, and that the desire which is contracted through the eyes is not extinguished in them, but abides alive and ready to burst into a flame.

However, despite what examples of romantic relationships might exist, the reality is that slave eunuchs were frequently used by their masters and were sexually abused.

Second is the way that eunuchs were found to be good and safe sexual partners for women. As they could not get a woman pregnant but were (mostly) still able to have sex, they provided a way for women to have sex without having to worry about pregnancy.

Although the Roman author Matial suggests that they were mostly used to provide oral sex. The Dignitas of a man would prevent them from giving cunnilingus or fellatio as that would make them passive figures. The Roman writer Juvenal wrote: Some women are delighted by weak eunuchs with their always soft kisses and their hopeless beards—and no need for abortion drugs.

The Cybeline cult

Some eunuchs were made for serving in a court or running a household. Others were made for sex. Others made themselves into eunuchs later in life as an act of worship to the Great Mother Goddess, the Magnus Mater, sometimes more commonly known as Cybele.

Cybele was an Eastern goddess adopted early on by the Romans and who remained fairly popular until the 4th century and the Christianisation of the Empire, despite the Galli, the priest of Cybele, being required to castrate themselves by crushing with a vice.

The Roman writer Lucian gives an example of part of the ceremony for becoming a Gallus where the initiate: runs through the street with the severed objects and receives female clothing from the owners of whatever house he throws them into.

Romans treated the Galli with a strange mix of awe and hostility. In writing and painting they are depicted as effeminate, deformed, flabby, hideous creatures with long hair, extravagant jewelry, and yellow robes.

There was some general discussion about what the gender of the Galli was.

The Roman poet Catullus wrote about a devote of the Great Mother (Magnus Mater) called Atis. In the poem, Catullus changes the pronouns he uses to describe Atis once they become a Galli: he cast down from him with sharp flint-stone the burden of his members… when she felt her limbs to have lost their manhood, still with fresh blood dabbling the face of the ground, swiftly with snowy hands she seized the light timbrel…

However, whilst Catullus described the Galli as becoming female, the Roman moralist and essayist Valerius Maximus wrote about a certain gallus named Genucius: whose genital parts had been amputated by his own choice, should not be reckoned among either men or women.

The eunuch and liminal gender spaces

However, we might understand it today, at the time, it was clear that eunuchs were considered to have an uncertain relationship to gender.

Some considered them feminine men, others considered them women, whilst others said they were something altogether different.

Professor Katherine Crawford of Vanderbilt College writes: castrates were disabled and transgendered by those who observed them, although not named with those terms…The castrate only approaches normative masculinity to a point; and likewise, he only inhabits femininity to a degree. He will never settle on the normative male-female gender spectrum because the relationship between his altered body and his gender performance is both presumed and perpetually open to question.

We can see that throughout the ancient and classical periods, eunuchs have had a complicated existence. Some became powerful generals and important political figures. Others ran households, became treasurers, and ran businesses. Some were bodyguards and warriors, protecting the harem or fighting in wars. However, many were used as slaves for the pleasure of their masters. This is the context in which the Bible is written.

Eunuchs in the Old Testament

Genesis 38: 1-7 Joseph and Potiphar

Now Joseph was taken down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him down there. 2 The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man; he was in the house of his Egyptian master. 3 His master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord caused all that he did to prosper in his hands. 4 So Joseph found favour in his sight and attended him; he made him overseer of his house and put him in charge of all that he had. 5 From the time that he made him overseer in his house and over all that he had, the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had, in house and field. 6 So he left all that he had in Joseph’s charge; and, with him there, he had no concern for anything but the food that he ate.

Now Joseph was handsome and good-looking. 7 And after a time his master’s wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, ‘Lie with me.’

Philo, the Jewish philosopher from Alexandria, spoke about the relationship between Joseph, Potiphar, and Potiphar’s wife. Underpinning his writing about Joseph was the way he regarded circumcision as a kind of mini castration.

He emphasised the dialectic that circumcision is the mark of entry into the covenant, while castration bars a person from entry into the covenant.

He first asks whether Potiphar was a eunuch. The Hebrew term ‘saris’ is unclear and could mean administrative officer, but is also used elsewhere in the Bible to mean eunuch. It seems unlikely because he has a wife, but it could be the case that Potiphar was a eunuch and given a wife as a reward for service.

Philo later wonders whether Joseph might have been purchased to be a eunuch. Joseph is described as comely (Gen 36:9), the only person in the Bible to be described that way, and may have been purchased for catamite purposes.

Philo ends his discussion by suggesting that the eunuch may represent a higher former of life because they are no longer male nor sexual and so represent spiritual perfection.

Leviticus 21: 16-20

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 17 Speak to Aaron and say: No one of your offspring throughout their generations who has a blemish may approach to offer the food of his God. 18 For no one who has a blemish shall draw near, one who is blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long, 19 or one who has a broken foot or a broken hand, 20 or a hunchback, or a dwarf, or a man with a blemish in his eyes or an itching disease or scabs or crushed testicles.

The Jewish makes it clear that anyone who is deformed, including castration, is not to be allowed to make sacrifices to God. They were banned from the sacred places and were not allowed to participate in the religious practice of their faith. Physical imperfection was seen to be akin to spiritual impurity and could not be tolerated. This is key to understanding the story of the Ethiopian eunuch.

Deuteronomy 23: 1

No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.

Like Leviticus, this passage restricts the ability of anyone who has been castrated from entering the assembly. They were not allowed to participate in corporate worship or sacrifice. They were to remain outside of the community and were prevented from entering the sacred spaces of their people.

Isaiah 56: 4-5

For thus says the Lord:
To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths,
    who choose the things that please me
    and hold fast my covenant,
5 I will give, in my house and within my walls,
    a monument and a name
    better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
    that shall not be cut off.

This is the most central text for the story of the Ethiopian eunuch. The law of Leviticus and Deuteronomy is prophesied to come to an end.

When the time of the messiah comes, then those who were outcasts because of the Law will no longer be outcasts. The ones who have been faithful despite being made to exist outside of accepted society will be welcomed into the assembly and treated better than children. Their place in the world will be turned around so that they are right at the heart of God’s kingdom.

In a somewhat unfortunate translation, they will not be cut off from the people of God because they will have an everlasting name. The mark of the arrival of the messiah is that those who were previously cast out but who held fast to the covenant of God will be welcomed in.

Eunuchs in the Early Church

The role of eunuchs in the early church is interesting. Christianity was initially spread most quickly to women and slaves, including eunuchs.

There were even a few moments in the first couple of centuries when there were more than a few instances of Christians castrating themselves to show their devotion to Christ and their conquering any sexual temptations they might have.

However, others said that doing so was a sign of weakness for not being able to resist those temptations and that it was not a fit practice for Christians to be doing.

Matthew 19: 11-12   

¹¹ But he said to them, ‘Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. ¹² 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.’

Some interpretations argued that Jesus meant that the ones who made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom were simply meant to be celibate.

However, the word for eunuch differs from the word for celibate, which is agamos and was a well-known Greek word.

If Jesus had meant celibate, then why not use the word celibate?

I do not think that Jesus actually meant people to make themselves eunuchs in order to serve the kingdom of God. Jesus was not using the literal meaning of the word but the hyperbolic and symbolic meaning of people who are cutting themselves off from sexual sins and temptations.

What is important is that Jesus recognised there were people who were born eunuchs. As the word was used at the time, that meant people born with damaged, non-functioning, or disabled genitals but also those who were born with genitals which did not seem to match their other physical indicators of sex or their assigned gender.

An example of someone who did take Jesus seriously in Matthew 19 is the controversial church father, Origen. He famously castrated himself by crushing his testicles with a vice in order to become a eunuch and escape sexual temptation. He tried to obey what he thought Jesus was saying in Matthew 19. However, he later wrote to other Christians not to castrate themselves and to understand that text symbolically rather than literally.

Tertullian, the early church father, wrote: Christ is the great spado, elsewhere God himself is the anti-spado. The term spado is the Latin term for someone who has been castrated.

It was used less commonly than eunuch and had a more vulgar connotation. For Tertullian, Christ’s own sexual continence was such that he could be considered spado, castrated because he was not even tempted sexually.

We can see a mix of views but with a general position that Christians shouldn’t castrate themselves. However, the key to this story is that when Jesus spoke about eunuchs, he did not do so in a negative way but in relation to the Kingdom of God.

Interpretative Elements

The early church read the prophets and the rest of the Hebrew scriptures to be a grand narrative moving from Abraham towards Christ. The prophets critique and re-interpret the Law with their developing understanding of God.

The story of the Ethiopian eunuch needs to be read in the context of a biblical prophecy being fulfilled. The words of Isaiah came true with the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch and marked the church forever as something different.

The Narrative Arc of Acts

At first, the story seems to be fairly randomly placed in the narrative. However, Acts 8 is a turning point in the story of the book of Acts. Luke is telling a stylised account of the early period of the Church, glossing over some of the debates that took place about membership and bringing order to the messiness of a new movement that was erupting into life. Luke was a careful writer who took great pains over his prose and his structure. Everything in Luke’s writing is there for a reason.

The story of the Ethiopian eunuch is the turn from the mission to the Jews to the mission to the rest of the world.

The doors are flung open with a new and radical sense of inclusion based on faith as the only grounds for entry into the community. It is the moment when the church really comes into being as something more than a Jewish messianic movement; instead, it is something universal, given to the entire world, where everyone who was previously on the outside can be welcomed into the community.

Isaiah 53: 3

The text that the Ethiopian eunuch was reading is key to Philip’s understanding of the dynamics at play in this story. N. T. Wright describes Isaiah 53 as a job description for the kind of Messiah needed to resolve the problems Israel has ended up in.

A servant who could follow God’s commands for a new covenant (Isaiah 54). A blessing for everyone, not only Jews but Gentiles (Isaiah 55) and even eunuchs (Isaiah 56).

The quoted section from Isaiah is taken verbatim from the (Greek) Septuagint version of Isaiah 53: 7-8. The Hebrew version is slightly different from the Greek version.

This text was rarely used in Jewish messianic texts, but is quoted extensively in the New Testament (Matt 7:17; Luke 23:32; John 12:38; Acts 3:13; 1 Peter 2:22, 24; Rom 9:16; Heb 9:28; Rev 13:8, 14:5) which indicates where the divergence between standard Jewish messianism and Christian claims about Christ occurs.

The reading of Isaiah 53 allows Phillip to explain who Jesus is. However, the promises made in Isaiah 56 are obviously at play in this scene.

Ethiopia

In Biblical times Ethiopia was not an independent country as we think of it today. The term Ethiopian was used as a kind of shorthand for black people and Africans in general, particularly in Greco-Roman writing.

The person in question is likely to have come from the kingdom of Kush, which is mentioned in the Bible, and who conquered the area now occupied by Sudan. This was a rich and powerful kingdom with ties to the fertile crescent.

According to Pliny the Elder, the title Candace (or Kandake) for the Queen of Ethiopia was the name given in all Greco-Roman history to the queen or consort of the rulers of Kush. It was not a proper name but an inherited title. The capital city of Kush was Meroë. Kandake derives from the Meroitic word kdke which was used for any royal woman.

The point is that this was a person who was foreign. They were from another country and another culture, and, perhaps more importantly, they were from another race. They were different, and while they may have been powerful and influential at home, in Judea, they were looked down on.

The Ethiopian eunuch stands in as the example of how the Gospel was going to fulfil the promises of God to Abraham to give him more descendants than the stars but in a surprising way.

Gay L. Byron writes: The Ethiopian eunuch was used by Luke to indicate that salvation could extend even to Ethiopians and Blacks. The barriers which had been placed were being brought down. The Gospel was for everyone, even those whose race and culture had previously made them outsiders.

Gentile or Jew?

There are some questions as to whether the Ethiopian eunuch was a Jew or a Gentile. Was this the conversion of the first Gentile, or was it a Jew from another culture, or something else entirely.

There were two types of converts to Judaism.

Proselytes were Gentiles who had fully entered into the covenant by becoming circumcised if they were male or taking up the Law if female. They were considered as Jewish. Or there were the God-fearers. These were Gentiles who were not circumcised but who were allowed to sit at the back of the synagogues and who did their best to keep the Law even while not being brought into the covenant.

Being a eunuch means they could not have been a proselyte. They might have had a penis, but their castration meant that they were spiritually impure and so not eligible for circumcision. But was he a gentile?

Ferdinand Bauer writes: The author of Acts made the eunuch’s religious identity ambiguous intentionally.

We don’t know whether the Ethiopian eunuch was a Gentile or not. It is left up to us. However, since they were reading Isaiah and wanted to understand it, it seems likely that they were a God-fearer. Someone who worshipped the God of Israel but could not do so in the Temple or in synagogues. Someone who was forbidden from assembling with other worshippers because of their castration. Yet someone who still kept the covenant codes and who wanted to understand scripture.

Scott Shauf writes that the: primary point of the story is about carrying the gospel to the end of the earth, not about establishing a mission to Gentiles.

It is not specifically about Gentiles but about the movement of the Gospel out of Jerusalem and Judea and opening it up for everyone.

The Ethiopian eunuch stands at the crossroads for many things. Neither male nor female. Neither Jew nor Gentile. This is what makes this story the pivot point in the Book of Acts and in the life of the early church.

The baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch is the sign that the promises of Isaiah are coming true, that the Messiah has come. If it were not so, then the eunuch would not have been baptised. Their conversion to Christ was the start of something amazing and new.

A New Thing Happening

Something different is happening. When the eunuch asks Phillip what would prevent him from being baptised Phillip need only quote scripture. It was obvious what prevented him from being baptised. Leviticus and Deuteronomy both prevented the eunuch from being baptised.

Phillip could have easily said that the eunuch was allowed to follow Jesus, believe in Jesus, and worship Jesus, but was not allowed to be baptised. They were spiritually unclean. The Lord had said so in God-breathed scripture.

But Isaiah had already said something different to the Law. When the Messiah came, then even the eunuchs would receive a place in the Kingdom of God. No one was going to be left behind. Phillip had his answer.

The Messiah Jesus had come. The kingdom of God was here. The time for the prophecies of Isaiah to come true had arrived. So when asked what was to prevent the eunuch from being baptised, it was scripture which said nothing could prevent him from being baptised.

Because what had been prohibited by the law was made permissible by the Messiah. The fulfilment of the Law meant that those who were cast out by the law were brought in by grace.

The church of Christ was to be a place where people on the outside became part of the family. The only entry point into the church was faith in Jesus. The church was to be defined not by who it excluded but by who it included.

Jack Rogers writes: the fact that the first Gentile convert to Christianity is from a sexual minority and a different race, ethnicity and nationality together  calls Christians to be radically inclusive and welcoming.

Very often, membership in the church ends up being culturally conditioned. When the original radical message of the Gospel, as seen in Phillip and in Paul, is that the Gospel stands as a challenge to our assumptions.

Anticipating the Conversion of Cornelius

The text is not on its own. It’s part of a carefully constructed narrative arc. It prefigures the moment when Jesus tells Peter he no longer needs to keep Kosher and then the conversion of the Roman soldier Cornelius.

Acts 8 through Acts 15 is a mini-narrative arc of how the church came into existence. First the Ethiopian eunuch, then the end of dietary codes which kept Gentiles and Jews separate, then the conversion of Cornelius.

There were many people who were astonished at the idea that a Gentile, especially a Roman, could become a follower of Jesus. There are many today who ask themselves what prevents them from being welcomed into the church. Phillip might have an answer.

Questions of Inclusion

This text has often been used to try and legitimise a whole lot of theology without a lot of foundations. We need to take on board the challenge that the text holds up to us, without making the text do what we want it to do.

The story of the Ethiopian eunuch does not, on its own, provide a winning argument for same-sex marriage or for same-sex relationships more generally.

The story of the Ethiopian Eunuch is about how scripture is applied to someone whose physical sexual characteristics would prohibit them from collectively worshipping God. There are questions of gender identity and the difference between physical sex and gender, as well as issues of social discrimination and rejection of people who are different.

However, the text does not provide enough details to be able to provide a thorough argument on its own for questions of trans inclusion and gender identity. Other than the Ethiopian eunuch did not conform to culturally acceptable gender stereotypes, and the condition of their genitals meant they were considered to be impure.

The Ethiopian eunuch can, in that way, stand in for people who do not feel that their gender matches their physical sex, as well as for people who have been born intersex.

It is somewhat anachronistic to suggest whether the Eunuch considered themself to be any other gender than male. The text only uses male pronouns. But we have seen that eunuchs were not treated as males, and were often treated as being neither male nor female but something else entirely.

The obvious text to bring into play here is Paul’s writing that there is neither male nor female in Christ. For the Ethiopian eunuch, that may have been considered quite literally true. They were someone whose identity was under attack and was distracted to them through violence and social stigma. But in Christ, they had a new identity.

Perhaps this text points towards the idea that people whose gender does not match their physical sex for whatever reason are welcome and are part of the kingdom of God. In fact, not only are they welcome, but their welcome is necessary for the church to be the church. The resolution of the prophecies of Isaiah is necessary for the sign of the Messiah Jesus to be visible in the world.

Of course, Isaiah (or whoever actually wrote that bit of Isaiah as it is was written by more than one person) did not just say anyone and everyone who was a eunuch would be part of the kingdom. Only those who kept the covenant. But perhaps with Jesus and Phillip and Paul we might expand that to say anyone who has faith in Jesus will be welcomed into the kingdom. What would have led the Law to reject them is no longer the case through Jesus.

Without being open and inclusive to a broad understanding of gender identity and physical sex, then maybe the church cannot be the church.

Thinking Differently

A key factor in starting to think differently in response to this text is the way we approach scripture.

Phillip holds one part of scripture higher than another. The Law is clear. No eunuchs allowed. But Phillip has read Isaiah and knows that actually that law will come to an end when the Messiah comes.

The Messiah has come. Phillip’s personal experience of Jesus as Messiah means he interprets scripture through that lens. His reason then works to argue that since Messiah Jesus has indeed come, that means the Kingdom of God is at hand. Which means that the prophecies of Isaiah are coming true. So the Law about eunuchs has been superseded by the promises made through Isaiah.

The authority and inspiration of Scripture mean that some parts of scripture overrule other parts of scripture. Which can only be known by reading scripture through the lens of Jesus. Jesus came to fulfil the law, not do away with it.

But perhaps that also means that the job of the law has been completed, and the prohibitions it put in place are no longer restrictive for those who are in Christ Jesus. We should not be too quick to fall back upon the Law to try and give evidence for a point we are making about who is or is not in Christ.

My next post is following this up by looking at the story of Peter and Cornelius. There we will see the next step to understanding the radical inclusivity of the early Church as told through scripture.

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