Others sought to validate the presence of queer people in the military by appealing to the centurion as an exemplary queer military officer (one is reminded of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”). Some recent interpreters sought to legitimize gay marriage by making the relationship between the centurion and his pais resemble that of a marriage-a lifelong, monogamous commitment between two peers. Rather than attempting to resolve this debate here, we might notice how readers have interpreted the centurion in ways that are remarkably distinct from one another, usually bound up in the legal situation of queer people in an interpreter’s context. Is it plausible, for instance, to imagine the Jewish delegation at Capernaum praising a man flouting the torah prohibition on same-sex intercourse ( Luke 7:3-5)? Is the similar story in John 4:46-54, where the royal official’s son is healed, more original than that in Matthew and Luke? This interpretation of the passages from Matthew and Luke has been controversial, though, with other interpreters objecting to it on various historical grounds. Or one might consider a male brothel that seems to have been identified near the Roman fortress at Vindolanda. For instance, the playwright Plautus depicts characters teasing Harpax, an officer’s slave, for sleeping with his master: “When the soldier went to keep watch at night and you were going with him, did his sword fit into your sheath?” ( Pseudolus 1180–1181). Evidence for homoeroticism in the military abounds. Roman legionaries were prohibited from marrying while serving, and same-sex intercourse between two male Roman citizens (and thus between legionaries) was criminal, so soldiers commonly found liaisons among civilians living in or near their garrison.
Second, in Luke 7:2, the centurion says that the young man is entimos to him, a word commonly translated “dear.” Third, and finally, there was a pervasive culture of homoeroticism in the Roman military. Attic Greek pottery with homoerotic art, for instance, commonly uses the phrase ho pais kalos (“the young man is beautiful”), and the term retained such connotations in the first centuries CE. First, the Greek word used for the young man ( pais) was commonly used to refer to younger partners in a sexual capacity. There are three primary reasons that some interpreters believe this to be the case. But since 1950, a number of queer interpreters and their allies have argued that Jesus tacitly endorsed such relationships in his encounter with a centurion at the village of Capernaum ( Matt 8:5-13 Luke 7:1-10 ). There is a widespread sense that Jesus had nothing to say about same-sex romantic relationships, whether by way of endorsement or condemnation. Did Jesus endorse a same-sex relationship?
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