I was recently in an interesting discussion over whether the church should accept homosexuals into their congregation and the Bible was quoted many times. So the question came to my mind of whether the Bible even speaks to the topic of homosexuality and whether or not it even existed at the time of the Bible's writing.
So the question came to my mind of whether the Bible even speaks to the topic of homosexuality and whether or not it even existed at the time of the Bible's writing.
to summarize a million of longer posts i've written and seen about this: No, the concept didn't exist in biblical times, it emerges with a move twoards making things scientific in the late 18th or 18th century. The prohibitions on what we might call homosexuality today were prohibitions on sodomy aka the sexual act. You would be defined by your actions ie a sodmite instead of a question of personal mental identity.
a good way of thinking about the difference is to imagine a gay version of the film Indecent proposal. Accepting the million dollars by definition cannot change your sexual identity because nothing about your personal identity changed but it would for instance make you guilty of Sodomy.
some good sources are Foucault and his history of sexuality (the counter intuitive repressive hypothesis), Backstory's episode on gays in American life: http://backstoryradio.org/shows/outed-2/ which includes a four minute segment summarizing this move from actions to identity (backstory is a podcast run by three historians initially all at the University of Virginia on how issues have come up over the last three centuries of American history), and others.
While you wait for a more targeted answer, there's some background information in these threads from the FAQ section on "Historical views on homosexuality":
General Historical Sexuality
Roman Times and Homosexuality