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One of the most striking characteristics of Jesus’s ministry is how boldly and consistently he reached out to those on the margins, inviting them into the kingdom—into a family of God that was to welcome all who wanted to join it. In shared meals foreshadowing the heavenly feast, he befriended tax collectors and sinners as well as scribes and Pharisees.[1] He conversed freely with women and men, old and young, Galileans and Judeans and Samaritans and gentiles, the able-bodied and the infirm, the confident and the unsure, the self-satisfied and the suffering, the “clean” and the “unclean.”[2] He called upon social elites, religious authorities, and his own disciples to see others as fellow humans made in the image of God, and to care for the vulnerable and disadvantaged.[3] He bluntly confronted those who were being less welcoming and gracious than the kingdom called for.[4]

Following in this pattern of inclusive family building, the Savior’s modern apostles and Church leaders have made similarly bold calls for inclusiveness in the Church today. During BYU’s fall semester in 2017, President M. Russell Ballard addressed the student body and discussed an urgent matter of belonging in the modern-day Church—the inclusion and support of LGBTQ[5] Latter-day Saints:

I want anyone who is a member of the Church who is gay or lesbian to know I believe you have a place in the kingdom and I recognize that sometimes it may be difficult for you to see where you fit in the Lord’s Church, but you do. We need to listen to and understand what our LGBT brothers and sisters are feeling and experiencing. Certainly we must do better than we have done in the past so that all members feel they have a spiritual home where their brothers and sisters love them and where they have a place to worship and serve the Lord. . . . Always remember that every life is precious—a gift from a loving Heavenly Father.[6]

Elder Ballard was not compromising any gospel truths; he was urging Latter-day Saints to live the gospel better by listening to their fellow Saints, understanding them, and loving them.[7] In a similar vein, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland had spoken in general conference earlier that year about how the Church is like a choir with room for all who wish to sing redeeming love: “There is room for those who speak different languages, celebrate diverse cultures, and live in a host of locations. There is room for the single, for the married, for large families, and for the childless. There is room for those who once had questions regarding their faith and room for those who still do. There is room for those with differing sexual attractions.”[8]

More recently, at the BYU Women’s Conference in April 2021, the Church’s Relief Society General Presidency spoke about the importance of fostering belonging in the Church, and first counselor Sharon Eubank introduced her friend, Jessica Livier (Liv) Haynes, who told the conference, “I’m a Young Women’s president. I’m a daughter, a sister, a returned missionary. I am queer. I am a person who loves going to the temple. And above all of those things, I am a daughter of heavenly parents who strives every day to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.” Addressing any who might feel a lack of belonging in the Church, Liv said, “We are all a family in Christ, and we are here for each other.”[9]

As I have reflected on these and similar teachings, I have asked myself what I can do to help create a “spiritual home”—a welcome place of authentic, supportive, meaningful belonging in the Church—for LGBTQ Latter-day Saints. I don’t know personally what it feels like to be an LGBTQ person. As a cisgender, heterosexual, married man, I recognize that my own life has not included many of the complexities, needs, and sometimes painful experiences known by my LGBTQ sisters and brothers. Yet with many others, I sense that my baptismal covenant “to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light” calls me to step out of my insulated space and turn my heart to any who are suffering (Mosiah 18:8). As I have grown in my awareness, I have had to unlearn some misconceptions and listen more carefully and compassionately than I once did. I have been deeply moved by what LGBTQ friends and allies in and out of the Church have taught me. In recent years many thoughtful Latter-day Saints have produced books, articles, blog posts, podcasts, and other resources to help Latter-day Saints understand LGBTQ individuals, dispel myths and stereotypes, and foster the kind of inclusion Church leaders have called for.[10] I have read and listened to as many of these resources as I can, and I intend to keep doing so.

As a lifelong student of the scriptures, I have been particularly moved by resources that identify passages in our sacred canon that can inform our thinking and spur our efforts to create a more inclusive Church culture.[11] Scriptures with special relevance include the following:

• The command to love: “Love thy neighbour as thyself” (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:39); “Love one another; as I have loved you” (John 13:34); “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. . . . There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear. . . . We love him, because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1 John 4:8, 18–20).
• The idea of Zion: “The Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them” (Moses 7:18); “They were all made free, and partakers of the heavenly gift. . . . They were in one, the children of Christ, and heirs to the kingdom of God” (4 Nephi 1:3, 17).
• The metaphor of the Church as the body of Christ: “Now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. . . . The eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. . . . And those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour” (1 Corinthians 12:18, 21, 23).[12]
• The Golden Rule: “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Matthew 7:12). President Linda K. Burton beautifully applied this to encouraging compassion for refugees with the question “What if their story were my story?”—a question we cisgender heterosexual Latter-day Saints might equally well apply to foster empathy for our LGBTQ sisters and brothers.[13]

This essay presents another potential scriptural resource for the construction of a “spiritual home” in the Church for LGBTQ Latter-day Saints: the biblical story of the inclusion of eunuchs—an ancient sexual minority—within the family of God. Though the ancient category “eunuch” (a male who was surgically castrated or born sexually atypical) does not correspond perfectly to the diverse identities and experiences encompassed in our modern acronym LGBTQIA+, it was nevertheless a nonbinary, sexually ambiguous category that was known in antiquity, analogous in some ways to modern sexual minorities. I will begin by examining Jesus’s affirming statement about eunuchs in Matthew 19:12. There are limits to the ways Jesus’s statement might be relevant to our modern circumstances, and there are important cautions and sensitivities to keep in mind. One author (who has studied this passage and advocacy for intersex individuals) wisely and good-naturedly objected, “Who are you calling a eunuch?!”[14] We need to be clear that we are not drawing a one-to-one correlation. Further, the importance of being inclusive and welcoming in the Church does not hinge on the passages I examine here—scriptural commandments to love neighbor, bear one another’s burdens, and listen to every member of “the body of Christ” are more than sufficient mandates for us. Yet it may be helpful to recognize that what we are facing today is not entirely without precedent. We may wonder, how would Jesus have treated a nonbinary person? We don’t have to wonder, for we do have some indication of that.[15] I believe an analysis of Matthew 19:12 and related biblical passages will illuminate several important points. Jesus’s statement about eunuchs indicates his awareness of individuals whose sexuality did not neatly fit the usual male-female paradigm. He shows no fear of them nor any sign that he perceived them as a threat, and there is no indication that he “healed” them. Rather, despite some negative stereotypes and attitudes about eunuchs in ancient society, Jesus surprisingly held them up as exemplary and symbolic of devotion to the kingdom of God. Jesus’s statement can be read as a crucial turning point in a longer biblical trajectory from exclusion to inclusion of this sexual minority among God’s people. The story starts with exclusionary statements in the Torah, moves to the assurance in Isaiah 56 of a time when eunuchs would have a place of belonging and honor in Israel, and culminates with a dramatic realization of Isaiah’s vision and Jesus’s statement in the story of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. Understood as a biblical trajectory from exclusion to inclusion of an ancient sexual minority, these passages can be a compelling scriptural resource to guide our thinking and encourage our own efforts to make a spiritual home, a place of belonging, for LGBTQ Latter-day Saints. Collectively, all of us in the Church—whatever our sex, gender, nationality, ethnicity, language, or culture—can find in these linked Bible passages a call to include all who wish to join the family of God.

This selection of biblical passages has received attention from theologically and pastorally minded scholars in other religious traditions,[16] but little to no attention from Latter-day Saints. At the time of this writing, Jesus’s statement in Matthew 19:12 has never been cited in general conference, and to my knowledge no Church materials or commentaries published by Latter-day Saints have discussed its potential relevance (with Isaiah 56 and Acts 8) to the issue of LGBTQ inclusion.[17] So, mindful that I am venturing into some uncharted interpretive territory, I offer this reading of scripture in the spirit of posing questions for consideration (rather than asserting any kind of authoritative interpretation): If we let ourselves think of these scripture passages in this way, how might it help us? What begins to open to our view, and what does the Spirit of the Lord bring to our attention? I hope this promotes positive, constructive conversation. My thoughts here are limited in scope: I am reading selected biblical passages as a basis for likening their overall arc to our efforts to listen to, understand, and love LGBTQ Latter-day Saints as Church leaders have encouraged. I am not addressing questions of same-sex marriage, past or present Church policies, ways of life available to LGBTQ Latter-day Saints, or a host of other important issues that are worthy subjects for thoughtful, careful, and sensitive discussion. Rather, like President Ballard, Elder Holland, Sister Eubank, Liv Haynes, and many other good Latter-day Saints, I am focusing here on the urgent need to create an inclusive spiritual home for our LGBTQ sisters and brothers, and in so doing I am drawing upon some untapped passages in our scriptural inheritance that might help us catch that vision.

Matthew 19:12: Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven

Jesus’s saying about eunuchs appears in the Matthean expansion of Mark 10:2–11 (Matthew 19:10–12). In both Mark and Matthew, some Pharisees approach Jesus and pose a question to him about the permissibility of divorce (Mark 10:2; Matthew 19:3). Rather than debate which circumstances might justify divorce, Jesus changes the subject to the original intention of marriage. Referring to the biblical stories of creation, Jesus quotes Genesis 1:27 (“God made them male and female”) and Genesis 2:24 (“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”), and states, “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate” (Mark 10:6–8 NRSV; parallels Matthew 19:4–6; compare Luke 16:18). Jesus’s statement emphasizes an ideal permanence to marriage. His disciples seem to have been surprised at the strictness of his teaching against divorce, and in Matthew’s version, they say, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry” (Matthew 19:10 NRSV). They may have said this in jest, as if shaking their heads and muttering, “Divorce is that serious?! Better not to get married at all!”[18] Jesus seizes on their offhand remark in order to introduce an important idea: “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given” (Matthew 19:11 NRSV). It’s uncertain whether “this teaching” refers to Jesus’s statement against divorce and remarriage (Matthew 19:9 NRSV) or to the disciples’ quip that it’s better not to marry (Matthew 19:10 NRSV). Likely it refers to the latter, more proximate statement, turning what was initially a jest into a point worth considering.[19] In either case, the saying that follows compares the unmarried (whether permanently so or following divorce) to eunuchs and is framed before and after by a proviso limiting its application:

Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given.

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. (Matthew 19:11–12 NRSV)

Jesus refers to three kinds of “eunuchs.” The first is those who “were so born from their mother’s womb” (Matthew 19:12 KJV). This translation closely approximates the Greek: hoitines ek koilias mētros egennēthēsan houtōs (literally “who from [the] womb [of their] mother were born thus”). The New International Version (NIV) rendering of the phrase succinctly captures its sense: those “who were born that way” (emphasis added). Jesus, like others of his time, was aware that some people are born with sexual ambiguity or divergence from the male-female paradigm, people for whom heterosexual marriage and procreation (just discussed in Matthew 19:3–9) are not options. A eunuch “born that way” might have been understood to refer to “one who had been born with defective male organs or one who had otherwise been rendered impotent by the circumstances of his birth.”[20] Rabbis in the centuries after Jesus used the term sěrîs ḥammâ, literally “eunuch of the sun,” to refer to a baby discovered to be sexually atypical from the moment it came into the sunlight of this world.[21] An early Christian priest named Dorotheus was remembered as “by nature a eunuch, having been so from his very birth.”[22]

In modern terms, “eunuchs born that way” would include, at the very least, many intersex individuals (the “I” in LGBTQIA+). “The ancients had many names for intersex—hermaphrodites, androgynes, barren women, and eunuchs.”[23] The modern term intersex is an umbrella term used to refer to “a wide range of variations in sex development” and “persons who do not fit into standard medical descriptions of male or female.”[24] A further possibility is that “eunuchs born that way” could also be taken metaphorically, encompassing a broader range of persons whom we might now recognize elsewhere along the spectrum of experiences encompassed in the acronym LGBTQIA+—persons who “[lack] sexual attraction or a desire for partnered sexuality,” or who experience gender or attraction in ways that differ from social expectations of “assigned birth sex” and “the man/woman binary.”[25] As one LGBTQ reader wondered, “I do know that I did not intentionally choose my sexual orientation. . . . Could Jesus not be referring to a broad category of people who, from their birth, have not ‘fitted’ into the predominant expectations of gender and society?”[26]

The second kind of “eunuchs” Jesus referred to were those “who have been made eunuchs by others” (NRSV). This category, disturbing for modern readers, refers to males who were surgically castrated or emasculated. In the ancient world, “the deliberate castration of men, particularly in order to provide ‘safe’ attendants of a married woman or custodians of a harem, was widely practiced.”[27] Eunuchs could be trusted not to sire illegitimate offspring with a ruler’s wives and concubines—the Greek word eunouchos transliterated “eunuch” may derive from ��ܲ�ŧ (“bed”) + �𳦳�ō (“have,” i.e., to have responsibility to guard).[28] Surgical castration was sometimes inflicted violently upon war captives, slaves, or young boys in attempt to preserve their desired youthful appearance and render them suitable for service in royal courts and positions of responsibility. Still others were made eunuchs for religious reasons; for example, in the Greco-Roman world, priests of the cult of Cybele or the Magna Mater (Great Mother) were ritually castrated and were known as the galli.[29]

Among elites who owned slaves, eunuchs were sometimes seen as “perfect servants”:[30] “Eunuchs handled everything from powerful administrative functions and military command to cup bearing and guarding the intimate spaces of their masters and mistresses. Cut off from their families of origin, raised to see the family of their master as their own family, and prevented from fathering children of their own, eunuchs owed their entire identity, complete loyalty, to their masters. . . . Their gender ambiguity also enabled them to mediate between men and women, elite and public, sacred and secular.”[31]

However, despite being regarded as trusted servants, “luxury items,” and “status symbols” in the courts of the powerful,[32] eunuchs were often spoken of with disgust, disdain, and suspicion in the ancient world. Greek and Roman writers refer to eunuchs as subhuman—“no man, but a thing of nought”; loyal servants to their masters but “objects of contempt for the rest of mankind”; “neither man nor woman but something composite, hybrid, monstrous, alien to human nature”; “a third sex of the human race”; “not to be seen or employed by men and scarcely by women of noble birth.”[33] According to the first-century Jewish historian Josephus, eunuchs were to “be had in detestation” and to “be driven away”; people were to “avoid any conversation with them.”[34] In rabbinic writings, eunuchs were sometimes “the butt of derisive taunts or disparaging jokes” and discussed in pejorative terms.[35] Eunuchs were “despised and ridiculed” because they could not fulfill the command to “be fruitful, and multiply” (Genesis 1:28) and were associated with heathen cults.[36] Summarizing ancient attitudes and negative stereotypes about eunuchs, one scholar uses the phrases “morally dubious,” “the nightmare embodiment of men’s worst fears,” “an object of tremendous suspicion,” and “an object of scorn.”[37]

Given the eunuch’s paradoxical status—trusted and mistrusted, victimized yet feared, ideal servant yet suspect, sexually ambiguous—it is all the more striking that Jesus holds up eunuchs as exemplary when he refers to a third kind of “eunuch”: those who “have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.” Most interpretation has understood this phrase “not as a literal prescription but as a metaphor for making the choice to remain unmarried.”[38] The NIV conveys this sense by rendering the phrase “those who choose to live like eunuchs.” For some people—those “to whom it is given” (Matthew 19:11)—devotion to the kingdom involved a single-mindedness that excluded marriage and family life, either temporarily or for an extended time. Such individuals were “not literal castrates nor impotent by nature” but lived in voluntary celibacy “because the duty placed upon them by the kingdom of heaven [was] such that it [was] best discharged outside the confines of marriage. . . . For these people, the good and valuable thing that marriage undoubtedly is (cf. vv. 3–9) must be turned down, surrendered or sacrificed in view of the demand made upon them by something greater.”[39]

Those who “made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven” might have included John the Baptist, perhaps Jesus himself, and Jesus’s followers who had left their homes and families (at least for a time) to travel with him. “We have left everything and followed you,” Peter said (Mark 10:28 NRSV; compare Matthew 19:27). To this, Jesus responded, “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life” (Matthew 19:29 NRSV; compare Mark 10:29–30). Some ancient manuscripts add “or wife” to the list, as does the KJV (Mark 10:29; Matthew 19:29), supporting the implication that “those who made themselves eunuchs” were those who lived in voluntary celibacy.

One possibility proposed by a growing number of scholars is that some of Jesus’s opponents may have derided him and his followers by calling them “eunuchs” as an insult, intending to disparage their masculinity, character, or trustworthiness by alluding to the fact that they were either single or traveling singly, without spouses.[40] The New Testament does not give any clear indication that Jesus himself was married. As I have written elsewhere, “During his ministry Jesus had no home of his own (Matthew 8:20; Luke 9:58), and it is not unreasonable to guess that his sacrifice of home and property extended also to marriage so that he might give single-minded devotion to his atoning mission (see Luke 12:50).”[41] Other scholars have observed that the term eunuch “was liable to be derisively directed at single men (cf. b. Yeb. 80b)” and that “Jesus frequently picked up on the names he was called—glutton, drunkard, blasphemer, friend of toll collectors and sinners—to turn them around for some good end” (see Matthew 9:10–13; 11:16–19; 12:22–29; 21:28–32). Therefore, it may be that Matthew 19:12 “was originally an apologetical counter, a response to the jeer that Jesus was a eunuch.”[42] In other words, though the New Testament says nothing conclusive about whether Jesus was single or married, it does hint that Jesus was ridiculed for being a single man traveling with other single people and that his detractors called him a “eunuch” as a slur. In this scenario, Jesus responded by saying, in effect, “You call me and my followers and John the Baptist eunuchs? Very well. In fact, we are so dedicated to the kingdom of God that we have forsaken everything for it. We are the kingdom’s servants, devoted wholly to its cause, devoted to our Father in Heaven above everything else.” Just as Jesus applied the term slave to himself in order to teach that he came “not to be served but to serve” (Mark 10:44–45 NRSV), he may have applied the term eunuch to himself too, drawing an example from a despised, victimized member of his social world in order to illustrate in stark terms the depth of his devotion as God’s servant.

Such a reading, intriguing and plausible as it is, is ultimately speculative; the Gospels do not narrate any specific instance of someone overtly calling Jesus or his followers eunuchs. What is clearer is that Jesus spoke of eunuchs in a way that indicates his awareness of a sexual minority in his social world, and he did so without invoking the negative stereotypes that were in circulation about that minority group. Instead, he affirmed that maligned group in significant ways (consistent with his overall solidarity with the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized; see Matthew 25:31–46; Luke 4:16–21). Just moments after referring to the biblical story of the creation and “marriage” of Adam and Eve, and invoking it as a model for an ideal marital permanence, Jesus acknowledged in a positive way the existence of people whose sexuality and lives did not neatly fit the male-female binary or the paradigm of heterosexual marriage.[43] At one moment Jesus alluded to what we might call a heteronormative model, and in the next breath he spoke of an exception. This invites us to consider how both the normative model and its exception have place in the kingdom. Further, Jesus did not speak of “healing” eunuchs, and the Gospels contain no such healing accounts. Though we should be cautious not to conclude too much from a silence in the record, or from the scant evidence of just two New Testament passages mentioning eunuchs (Matthew 19 and Acts 8), the fact that both those passages regard eunuchs not as disabled or flawed, but exemplary and included, ought to beckon us at least to make room in our minds and hearts for regarding sexual minorities in our own time with similar openness. Perhaps Jesus regarded them not as defective or wrong but just different—and, because of that difference, laudably illustrative of distinctive service to the kingdom.[44]

Another valuable aspect of Jesus’s statement becomes clear as we consider it among other biblical passages about eunuchs. In speaking affirmingly of eunuchs, Jesus was participating in a longer Jewish conversation in which early, exclusive views began to give way to a later, more inclusive vision. Jesus was signaling the fulfillment of that vision.

The Broader Biblical Context: From Exclusion to Inclusion

Deuteronomy 23:1: Excluded from the assembly of the Lord

For ancient Israel, the Torah contained a fairly straightforward statement excluding eunuchs. The exclusion is translated delicately in the New International Version, and a little more explicitly in the English Standard Version:

No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord. (Deuteronomy 23:1 NIV)

No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord. (Deuteronomy 23:1 ESV)

This statement is the first in a longer passage (Deuteronomy 23:1–8) listing those who are not permitted to enter “the assembly of the Lord.” Along with eunuchs, people not to be admitted include those of illegitimate birth, Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, and their descendants. “The assembly [��������] of the Lord” refers to “the covenant people of God,” “Israel as a worshiping community. . . . Thus to enter the assembly of the Lord would indicate a person who became a true Israelite and who therefore shared in the worship of the Lord.”[45] Scholars have expressed uncertainty over whether this prohibition applied to all kinds of eunuchs or only to those who became eunuchs voluntarily. Its reasons too are unclear: Deuteronomy “may exclude emasculated men from the Assembly because of the association of emasculation with paganism or because of revulsion against mutilation. Since emasculation also disqualifies priests from officiating [Lev. 21:20], and invalidates animals for sacrifice [Lev. 22:24], such defects may have been considered incompatible with the holiness demanded of Israelites.”[46]

Isaiah 56:3–5: To the eunuchs who hold fast to my covenant

Standing in tension with Deuteronomy 23:1 is a later passage in Isaiah 56:3–5 that assures faithful eunuchs (and foreigners) that they will have a place of belonging among the Lord’s people:

³ Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say,

“The Lord will surely separate me from his people”;
and do not let the eunuch say,

“I am just a dry tree.”
⁴ 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[47]

better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name

that shall not be cut off. (Isaiah 56:3–5 NRSV)

The image of the “dry tree” that produces no fruit alludes to the eunuch’s lack of progeny and evokes the deprivation we may well imagine eunuchs experienced, severed from familial life and connection. In the reversal of this situation, the Lord spells out terms of admission—inclusion is to be based not on perceived sexual wholeness but on covenant loyalty (epitomized here by the Israelite distinction of keeping sabbath). The Lord promises eunuchs who “hold fast” to his covenant a place of belonging in his “house,” alluding to both God’s family (household) and the house of the Lord—the Jerusalem temple, Israel’s most sacred space, where God dwelt with his people.[48] There faithful eunuchs will have a place “better than sons and daughters,” not simply equal with them. We might sense here a foreshadowing of Jesus’s words, “the last shall be first” (Matthew 19:30; 20:16), and the dramatic reversals of the kingdom of God. God will give faithful eunuchs an “everlasting name,” reversing their former status as individuals with no offspring or family name; that isolation is to be replaced by everlasting bonds of the covenant family. The everlasting name “shall not be cut off”—a vivid image suggesting that the violence and deprivation that had formerly been inflicted upon the bodies of eunuchs would be replaced by the eternal belonging and flourishing they would experience in the kingdom to come.

This dramatically inclusive vision, in which the temple is “a house of prayer for all peoples” and the Lord “gathers the outcasts of Israel” (Isaiah 56:7–8 NRSV), speaks to the needs of God’s people during the period of reconstruction after the traumatic crisis of the Babylonian exile (late sixth–early fifth centuries BC), and may date to that period.[49] At this time when the Lord’s people were trying to rebuild their society, they wrestled with the pressing questions of how they were going to shore up and maintain their distinctive identity and faith commitments while living under foreign rule, amid foreign influences. Israel’s postexilic literature preserves multiple perspectives in the debates and conversations of the time. Ezra and Nehemiah, for example, favored the strict exclusions of Deuteronomy as a necessary means of expressing covenantal faithfulness and living in God’s favor, while Ruth, Jonah, and Isaiah 56–66 expressed more moderate views welcoming foreigners who allied themselves with Israel’s God.[50] The passage in Isaiah 56:3–8 prophetically addresses foreigners and eunuchs in Israel who may have been hearing messages of exclusion in these circumstances, reassuring them that because of their faithfulness, they had a place of full belonging in Israel (or would yet have such a place in the coming messianic age). The case of eunuchs is particularly relevant at this time, for there were likely men among the returning exiles who had undergone forced emasculation during the Babylonian captivity (for example, Jewish tradition remembered Daniel and his three friends as eunuchs).[51] What was to be the status of these individuals in the restored community? Were they, who had suffered so much for their Jewish identity, to be excluded from the worship community? How could that be just? The earlier, exclusive view meant to uphold an idealized, holy society now seemed too rigid as it collided with the realities of people’s lives—faithful, devout people who loved the God of Israel. What was the way forward—strict adherence to selected Torah restrictions, or the living word through a new prophecy that better expressed the divine compassion also found in the Torah? People in ancient Israel had different answers to that question. Jesus stood with the vision of Isaiah 56.[52]

Acts 8:26–40: The Ethiopian eunuch

It is not until Acts 8, however, that we see the hope of Isaiah’s vision begin to be realized with the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch.[53] This episode takes place at a key moment in the narrative of Acts, which relates how the gospel message spread incrementally throughout the Mediterranean world, radiating outward from Jerusalem. As Jesus foreshadows in Acts 1:8, his disciples would bear witnesses “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (NRSV). After the events of Acts 1–7, set in Jerusalem, persecution causes Jesus’s followers to be “scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria” (Acts 8:1 NRSV). The narrative next follows the ministry of Philip, one of the seven chosen by the apostles (see Acts 6:1–6), as he preaches in Samaria (Acts 8:4–13, 25) and then is directed by an angel of the Lord to travel southward (Acts 8:26), where he meets and eventually baptizes the eunuch from Ethiopia—a distant land often depicted by ancient authors as “the ends of the earth.”[54] This conversion story, then, is the first one in Acts to illustrate the gospel reaching “the ends of the earth” as Jesus had foretold.[55] Further, as both a foreigner and a eunuch, this man embodies both groups promised a place of belonging in Isaiah 56:3–8.[56]

Philip meets the Ethiopian on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza; as Philip walks, a chariot comes along carrying “an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah” (Acts 8:27–28 NRSV). As a eunuch, this man would have been excluded from the worshipping community in Jerusalem; he was not fully a Jew, nor a proselyte, but one of the believing gentiles on the margins of Judaism whom Acts refers to as God-fearers.[57] Despite his lack of full inclusion in the community, his devotion ran so deep that he made the long journey to Jerusalem in order to worship there.[58] In Jerusalem he would have been able to enter the outer court of the temple—the Court of the Gentiles—where he would have been within sight of the temple structure but would not have been permitted to venture beyond the balustrade, the low wall demarcating the line beyond which gentiles were not to pass upon penalty of death. Ironically, this Ethiopian eunuch would find the place of belonging promised in Isaiah 56:3–8 not in the temple of Jerusalem but in the “temple” of the church (1 Corinthians 3:16)—not in the physical “house of the Lord” but in the spiritual household or family of God (Ephesians 2:13–14, 19).

Now on his return journey, his continuing piety and thirst to draw near God are evident as he reads from a scroll of Isaiah.[59] The Spirit urges Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it” (Acts 8:29 NRSV). The Greek verb translated join connotes close association, as in cling to or attach to, which the KJV aptly renders “join thyself to this chariot.”[60] The eunuch’s opportunity to belong, to join the family of faith, hinges upon Philip first joining himself to the eunuch’s chariot. Reading that, we may sense that in a similar way, creating a place of belonging for LGBTQ Latter-day Saints hinges on our own willingness to be like Philip, to join ourselves to those Saints—to direct our hearts, minds, and attention to them.

Philip runs to the chariot and hears the Ethiopian reading from Isaiah (Acts 8:30); anciently, people who could read typically read out loud, even in private.[61] The passage he was reading was from Isaiah 53, the moving “Suffering Servant” song that early Christians read as fulfilled in Christ.[62] For readers of Acts, this detail may have called to mind the material shortly to follow in Isaiah 56, prophesying of the time when foreigners and eunuchs would have a place of belonging in the divine family—it might have prompted readers to begin seeing connections between the passages. We might also wonder, knowing the violence that was inflicted on many eunuchs, whether this man found himself relating in some ways to Isaiah’s description of the suffering servant: “In his humiliation he was deprived of justice. Who can speak of his descendants? For his life was taken from the earth” (Acts 8:33 NIV). Perhaps this man could remember the traumatic experience when he was made a eunuch. Perhaps he had felt deprived of justice—that his life, and the possibility of descendants, had been taken from him. Perhaps this man’s own experience of suffering was part of what prompted his question to Philip: “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” (Acts 8:34 NIV). If the Ethiopian did find himself relating personally to the suffering servant, then as Philip began to teach him about Jesus and how Jesus had been deprived of justice, the Ethiopian eunuch would have discovered a redeemer who, in addition to suffering for the sins of the world, also understood his own experience of deprivation, injustice, and violence (compare Alma 7:11–12). The Ethiopian, bereft of descendants of his own, could nevertheless become one of Christ’s descendants, one of “the children of Christ” by spiritual rebirth (Mosiah 5:7). He could belong to this family.

We can sense the Ethiopian’s excitement, hope, and newfound faith as his chariot approaches a body of water and he exclaims, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” (Acts 8:37 NRSV). The phrasing of the question “What is to prevent me?” prompts us to understand not merely a request for baptism but also a reference to the earlier time of exclusion, bringing recognition that in Jesus Christ, the Suffering Servant, there is no longer anything to prevent this Ethiopian servant from full belonging within the family of faith.[63] Here the eunuch is not merely a metaphor symbolizing single-minded devotion to the kingdom of heaven (as in Matthew 19:12) but an actual person—a life, once shut out, now holding a place of belonging.

After Philip baptizes him, the Spirit leads Philip onward to the Mediterranean coast, and the Ethiopian never sees him again but “went on his way rejoicing” (Acts 8:39–40 NRSV).[64] I am taken by the phrase “went on his way” and the concluding word, “rejoicing.” We might reflect upon how the term “The Way” (hē hodos) is used in Acts to refer to the church, the community of those who followed Jesus Christ (see John 14:6; Acts 9:2; 18:25; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22)—yet when the Ethiopian joins “The Way,” he still journeys on his way (hodon autou). Perhaps part of supporting new converts (including LGBTQ members) is supporting them on their way—supporting them in being themselves, living with a healthy acceptance of the realities of their own lives, and expressing their own unique gifts as they grow in their spiritual development as disciples of Jesus Christ. What is the outcome for those who join “The Way” and are then able to continue their own way? Rejoicing. What is the result when a disciple of Christ, led by the Spirit, joins himself or herself to one who has been excluded, and enables that person to join God’s family? Rejoicing. What is the last word in this chain of scriptural passages tracing a journey from exclusion to inclusion? Rejoicing.

Concluding Thoughts and Questions

Returning to the question I posed at the outset, what begins to open to our view if we let ourselves read these passages in this way, thinking of how they might apply to building a spiritual home in the Church for LGBTQ Latter-day Saints? I can speak only for myself. As someone who has found life-changing strength, comfort, and purpose in realizing that Jesus Christ sees me, knows me, and has a place of value for me in the kingdom, I can imagine that if I were an LGBTQ Latter-day Saint, I would feel deeply reassured to learn that Jesus saw people in his own time who were different from the majority in sexuality and gender, and yet did not join in disparaging them, but spoke positively of them. I imagine I would rejoice to see that the Spirit of the Lord rested upon an Old Testament prophet and a New Testament missionary, moving them to do important work to create a spiritual home for a sexual minority of their era, and that beautiful passages of scripture preserve some memory of their work. I can imagine that if I were LGBTQ—if their story were my story—I would also feel myself rejoicing with the Ethiopian as he traveled home, having discovered his Redeemer along the way.[65]

I find myself inspired by Philip. Every semester I have wonderful students in my classes, some of whom are LGBTQ Latter-day Saints. I feel the Spirit of the Lord speaking to me as it did to Philip, saying, “Run to them! Go join this child of mine, sit with them, talk with them, listen to them, hear their questions, read and discuss scripture together. Help them find me. Let them help you find me. Search for me together.” I feel led to say in my heart, “Let’s travel together and see what grows from that.”

These scriptures from the past invite all of us living in the era of Restoration to carry forward the work of Restoration,[66] gathering “the outcasts of Israel” (Isaiah 56:8 NRSV), welcoming into the family of God all “who join themselves to the Lord” (Isaiah 56:6 NRSV).

Notes

[1] For example, Matthew 11:16–19; Mark 2:14–17 and its parallels: Luke 14:1–24; 15:1–2; 19:1–10.

[2] For example, Matthew 16:15–25; 19:13–15; Mark 1:40–45; 2:1–12; 5:1–19, 25–34; 7:32–37; 8:22–25; 9:14–27; 10:17–22; Luke 8:1–3; 10:38–42; 11:27–28; 17:11–19; John 1:43–51; 3:1–15; 4:4–29; 5:1–15; 8:1–11.

[3] For example, Matthew 5:42–48; 6:11–12; 7:1–5, 12; 20:1–15; 23:1–14; 25:31–46; Luke 6:30–38; 10:25–37; 14:7–14; 16:19–31; 18:1–14.

[4] For example, Matthew 9:10–13; 12:1–8; 23:23–24; Mark 7:1–13; 11:15–17; Luke 7:36–50; 9:51–56; 15:1–32.

[5] I will be using the acronym LGBTQ as an inclusive, umbrella term encompassing the spectrum of identities represented in the longer LGBTQIA+. The following definitions (which are evolving in meaning and have different connotations for different people) are drawn from Richard H. Ostler, Listen, Learn, & Love: Embracing LGBTQ Latter-day Saints (Springville, UT: Cedar Fort, 2020), 3, except where indicated (for a more comprehensive resource, see University of California, San Francisco > Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Resource Center > Education & Training > Terminology > General Definitions, ):

• LGBTQ: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer; those who are not heterosexual or cisgender
• Lesbian: female with sexual orientation to same sex
• Gay: male or female with sexual orientation to same sex
• Bisexual: male or female with sexual orientation to both sexes
• Transgender: person whose gender identity or gender expression does not match their biological sex
• Cisgender: person whose gender identity matches their biological sex
• Nonbinary: person whose gender identity is not exclusively masculine or feminine
• Cishet: person who is both cisgender and heterosexual
• Queer: umbrella term for someone who is not straight and/or not cisgender, or is questioning
• Intersex: “persons whose bodies do not line up clearly with the medical norms for biological maleness or femaleness (e.g., chromosomes other than XX or XY, ambiguous genitalia, internal reproductive structures of one sex with external sex features of the other sex, just to name a few possibilities).” Megan K. DeFranza, Sex Difference in Christian Theology: Male, Female, and Intersex in the Image of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015), xiv.
• Asexual: person who does not feel sexual attraction or a desire for partnered sexuality ().

[6] M. Russell Ballard, “Questions and Answers” (Brigham Young University devotional, November 14, 2017), speeches.byu.edu. The Church’s stance is stated on its website: “The Church distinguishes between same-sex attraction and homosexual behavior. People who experience same-sex attraction or identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual can make and keep covenants with God and fully and worthily participate in the Church. Identifying as gay, lesbian, or bisexual or experiencing same-sex attraction is not a sin and does not prohibit one from participating in the Church, holding callings, or attending the temple. . . . We may not know precisely why some people feel attracted to others of the same sex, but for some it is a complex reality and part of the human experience. The Savior Jesus Christ has a perfect understanding of every challenge we experience here on earth, and we can turn to Him for comfort, joy, hope, and direction (see Alma 7:11–12). No matter what challenges we may face in life, we are all children of God, deserving of each other’s kindness and compassion (Romans 8:16–17). When we create a supportive environment, we build charity and empathy for each other and benefit from our combined perspectives and faith.” .

[7] Compare Eric D. Huntsman, “Hard Sayings and Safe Spaces: Making Room for Struggle as Well as Faith” (Brigham Young University devotional, August 7, 2018), speeches.byu.edu: “Without diluting the doctrine or compromising the standards of the gospel, we must open our hearts wider, reach out farther, and love more fully. . . . We should never fear that we are compromising when we make the choice to love.”

[8] Jeffrey R. Holland, “Songs Sung and Unsung,” April 2017 general conference; emphasis added.

[9] Rachel Sterzern Gibson, “How to Make Relief Society a Safe Place for Every Sister, the General Presidency emphasizes at BYU Women’s Conference,” Church News, April 29, 2021. See also Gerrit W. Gong, “Room in the Inn,” April 2021 general conference.

[10] For example, see Ty Mansfield, ed., Voice(s) of Hope: Latter-day Saint Perspectives on Same-Gender Attraction—An Anthology of Gospel Teachings and Personal Essays (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2011); Ty Mansfield, “Homosexuality and the Gospel,” in A Reason for Faith: Navigating LDS Doctrine and Church History, ed. Laura Harris Hales (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2016), 203–19; Tom Christofferson, That We May Be One: A Gay Mormon’s Perspective on Faith and Family (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2017); Ostler, Listen, Learn, & Love; Charlie Bird, Without the Mask: Coming Out and Coming into God’s Light (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2020); Ben Schilaty, A Walk in My Shoes: Questions I’m Often Asked as a Gay Latter-day Saint (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021); “Dialogue Topic Pages #6: LGBT Issues,” June 18, 2021, , which overviews thirty years of Dialogue articles on subjects related to LGBTQ Latter-day Saints; Ryan J Wessel, “Understanding and Including Our LGBT Brothers and Sisters,” Liahona, October 2021; and the website confirminghope.com, run by Latter-day Saint Meghan Decker.

[11] For example, see Christofferson, That We May Be One, vii, 22–28, 29–41 and so forth; Ostler, Listen, Learn, & Love, 17–29; and Schilaty, A Walk in My Shoes, 1–2, 4, 6, 17–18, 27, 30–33, 41, 46–47, 51, 55, 71, 75, 78, 80, 87, 95, 98, 103, 109, 112–13, and so forth.

[12] In applying this scripture to modern circumstances, I take the line “those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable” to refer to members who might sometimes be treated as if they were less honorable—that is, treated by others with disrespect—not that those so mistreated actually are less deserving of honor and respect. Paul’s use of the word “we” is rhetorical here, as if to say, “Even if some of us think certain members are less honorable. . .” And, of course, he is speaking of the metaphor of the community as a human body, some parts of which are treated with “honor” (that is, clothed). Compare “Elusive Unity at BYU: A Conversation with Tom Christofferson and Patrick Mason,” Faith Matters podcast, September 11, 2021.

[13] Linda K. Burton, “I Was a Stranger,” April 2016 general conference.

[14] Joseph A. Marchal, who discusses some of the advocacy- and theory-related cautions involved in applying biblical passages about eunuchs to modern circumstances in “Who Are You Calling a Eunuch?! Staging Conversations and Connections between Feminist and Queer Biblical Studies and Intersex Advocacy,” in Intersex, Theology, and the Bible: Troubling Bodies in Church, Text, and Society, ed. Susannah Cornwall (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 29–54. Whether we find ourselves agreeing or not with some of the approaches taken or conclusions reached by scholars working in this field, we can become more informed, sensitive, and responsible participants in larger conversations by considering their work thoughtfully and applying an Article of Faith 13 approach: “If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.”

[15] With thanks to my colleague Charles Swift for helping me think through this.

[16] The literature is vast and growing, but a few representative examples of scholarship by scholars of other faith traditions include Frederick J. Gaiser, “A New Word on Homosexuality? Isaiah 56:1–8 as a Case Study,” Word & World 14, no. 3 (1994): 280–93; Halvor Moxnes, Putting Jesus in His Place: A Radical Vision of Household and Kingdom (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003), 72–90; Marianne B. Kartzow and Halvor Moxnes, “Complex Identities: Ethnicity, Gender and Religion in the Story of the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:26–40),” Religion & Theology 17 (2010): 184–204; DeFranza, Sex Difference in Christian Theology, 68–106; the collected essays in Cornwall, Intersex, Theology, and the Bible.

[17] However, Kerry Muhlestein, Learning to Love Isaiah: A Guide and Commentary (American Fork, UT: Covenant, 2021), 456, does list people with same-sex attraction among those to whom Isaiah 56:3–5 might apply in a modern context.

[18] R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 723; compare the NLT: “If this is the case, it is better not to marry!” Of course, the early church recognized that there were circumstances justifying divorce; see Mark D. Ellison, “Family, Marriage, and Celibacy in the New Testament,” in New Testament History, Culture, and Society: A Background to the Texts of the New Testament, ed. Lincoln Blumell (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, 2019), 540–41; the modern church, too: see Dallin H. Oaks, “Divorce,” Ensign, May 2007, 70–73.

[19] France, Matthew, 723; compare a counterargument in Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8–10, Hermeneia—A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 499–500.

[20] W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 22.

[21] Yeb. 79b, 80a; Davies and Allison, Commentary on Matthew, 22; DeFranza, Sex Difference in Christian Theology, 71.

[22] Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 7.32; LCL 265:228–9; τὴν φύσιν δὲ ἄλλως εὐνοῦχος, οὕτω πεφυκὼς ἐξ αὐτῆς γενέσεως.

[23] DeFranza, Sex Difference in Christian Theology, 17.

[24] DeFranza, Sex Difference in Christian Theology, 23–24. These variations in sex development include Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS), Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH), ovo-testes, alternative chromosome combinations, other genital anomalies, naturally occurring sex change/5-Alpha Reductase Deficiency Syndrome (5-ARDs): DeFranza, Sex Difference in Christian Theology, 23–44. The percentage of people with intersex conditions is uncertain, but even conservative estimates suggest that intersexuality is no less common than Down syndrome or schizophrenia and more common than albinism: DeFranza, Sex Difference in Christian Theology, 45–46.

[25] University of California San Francisco, LGBT Resource Center, Glossary of Terms, ; see also Ostler, Listen, Learn, and Love, 3–4.

[26] Thomas Bohache, “Matthew,” in The Queer Bible Commentary, ed. Deryn Guest, Robert E. Goss, Mona West, and Thomas Bohache (London: SCM Press, 2006), 510 [487–516]; also suggested in France, 724–5: “In the context of modern discussions about homosexual orientation it might be suggested that [those ‘born a eunuch’] includes also those who are psychologically disinclined to heterosexual intercourse and thus debarred from fatherhood, but evidence for such an understanding of homosexuality in the ancient world is hard to find.” This is an important caution—“sexual orientation” and “homosexuality” are modern concepts; ancient people knew about some same-sex sexual acts, and human diversity that we would now recognize as LGBTQIA+ existed (though closeted or understood differently), but “the idea of an innate and irreversible homosexual orientation belongs to modern Western psychology rather than to the world in which Jesus lived.” France, Matthew, 725. Although some past statements of Latter-day Saint leaders assumed or implied that sexual orientation was a choice, the Church no longer teaches that. President Dallin H. Oaks stated that “susceptibility or inclination to one behavior or another” is among “things that we’re born with.” He further stated, “The Church does not have a position on the causes of any of these susceptibilities or inclinations, including those related to same-gender attraction. Those are scientific questions—whether nature or nurture—those are things the Church doesn’t have a position on.” “Interview with Elder Dallin H. Oaks and Elder Lance B. Wickman: ‘Same-Gender Attraction,’” . For discussions of this subject that address common misconceptions and includes perspectives from LGBTQ Latter-day Saints on their own experience, see Ostler, Listen, Learn, & Love, 35–79; Schilaty, A Walk in My Shoes, 8–11; Scott’s story at , Laurie’s story at , the Mackintosh family’s story at , and Andy’s story at . Erin Eldridge, Born That Way? A True Story of Overcoming Same-Sex Attraction, with Insights for Friends, Families, and Leaders (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1994), does not consider Matthew 19:12 in answering the question of whether LGBTQ people are “born that way,” though she does argue, based on her own and other people’s experiences, that same-sex attraction is not chosen. Some perspectives in the book are now out-of-date, though I believe that when it was written it represented the author’s good-faith effort to address the subject in an honest, constructive way. The author has published a second volume: Laurie Campbell, Reborn That Way: The True Story of One Woman, One Faith, and Countless Miracles (Wilmington, DE: North Star Harbinger, 2013), in which she tells more of her own story of faith and clarifies that she does not mean to imply that others should try to emulate her but hopes instead to encourage faith in Jesus Christ.

[27] France, Matthew, 724.

[28] Frederick William Danker, ed., A Greek-English Lexicon on the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (hereafter BDAG) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 409, s.v. “εὐνοῦχος.” See the discussion in DeFranza, Sex Difference in Christian Theology, 74.

[29] DeFranza, Sex Difference in Christian Theology, 77.

[30] Kathryn M. Ringrose, The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).

[31] DeFranza, Sex Difference in Christian Theology, 74.

[32] DeFranza, Sex Difference in Christian Theology, 76; compare J. David Hester, “Eunuchs and the Postgender Jesus: Matthew 19.12 and Transgressive Sexualities,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 28, no. 1 (2005): 22: “Objects of status.”

[33] Herodotus (ca. 484–425 BC), Histories 8:106, LCL 120:107; Xenophon (ca. 430–354 BC), Cyropedia 7.5.61–65; LCL 52:289–91; cf. Diogenes (ca. 404–323 BC) Epistle 11; Abraham J. Malherbe, The Cynic Epistles: A Study Edition (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977), 104–5; Lucian (second century AD), The Eunuch; LCL 302:337; and Historia Augusta, Severus Alexander (third century AD) 23.7–8; LCL 140:221.

[34] Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 4.290–91, in William Whiston, trans., The Works of Flavius Josephus, Complete and Unabridged (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1987), 123.

[35] Davies and Allison, Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 3:25; b. Sanh. 152a; b. Yeb. 80b; however, see m. Yebam. 8.6, “Rabbinic traditions accept eunuchs serving as priests,” in Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds., The Jewish Annotated New Testament, 2^nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 240, notes on Acts 8:26–40.

[36] Luz, Matthew, 501.

[37] Hester, “Eunuchs and the Postgender Jesus,” 18, 20, 21 (with cautions regarding the conclusions reached).

[38] France, Matthew, 724; compare other nonliteral mutilation metaphors in Matthew 5:29–30; 18:8–9; see also Justin, First Apology 15; Jerome, Commentary on Matthew 3.19.12; Craig A. Evans, Matthew, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 342: those who “choose to remain single”; and Mathew Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 268. Bruce R. McConkie proposed that those who “made themselves eunuchs” were “men who in false pagan worship had deliberately mutilated themselves in the apostate notion that such would further their salvation,” apparently thinking of the galli (priests of Cybele): Doctrinal New Testament Commentary, 3 vols. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1965–73), 1:549. However, Jesus’s phrase “for the kingdom of heaven’s sake” would seem to weigh against this interpretation, since Jesus never used the phrase “the kingdom of heaven” to refer to pagan aspirations. Ellison, “Family, Marriage, and Celibacy,” 551n47.

[39] Davies and Allison, Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 3:23. The Greek preposition διὰ translated “for the sake of” in διὰ τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν (“for the sake of the kingdom of heaven”) implies cause; it refers to people who voluntarily live in celibacy (as figurative “eunuchs”) because of the kingdom, to serve it, not to enter it. Compare Gong, “Room in the Inn”: “Our standing before the Lord and in His Church is not a matter of our marital status but of our becoming faithful and valiant disciples of Jesus Christ.”

[40] See Josef Blinzler, “Eisin eunouchoi,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der Älteren Kirche 48, nos. 3–4 (1957): 254–70; Johannes Schneider, “eunouchos, eunouchizō,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 2, [Δ″ŗ], ed. Gerhard Kittel (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964), 768: “In this saying [regarding the third kind of eunuch] Jesus is thinking primarily of Himself, and perhaps of the Baptist”; Moxnes, Putting Jesus in His Place, 72, 75; Luz, Matthew, 502; Ben Witherington III, Matthew, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2006), 365; David L. Turner, Matthew, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2008), 463 (voluntary celibates for the kingdom include John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul, Philip’s four daughters); and Davies and Allison, in Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 3:25, who also cite additional studies by Kodell, Matura, and Moloney (see 25n132); and Karen L. King, “Jesus,” in The Oxford Handbook of New Testament, Gender, and Sexuality, ed. Benjamin H. Dunning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 415–16.

[41] Ellison, “Family, Marriage, and Celibacy in the New Testament,” 541. On New Testament and Latter-day Saint views on whether Jesus was married, see Ellison, “Family, Marriage, and Celibacy in the New Testament,” 541, 548n2, 551–52nn48–52; Dale C. Allison and Annette Merz, “Jesus’s Marriage, Theories of / New Testament / Christianity,” in Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception, vol. 14 (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2017), 107–10; Davies and Allison, Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 3:25: “Paul, in 1 Cor 9.5, refers to the wives of the rest of the apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas. He certainly would also have named Jesus in this context if he had known he was married. Note further the loud silence of Mk 3.31–5; 6.3 par.” For a discussion of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latter-day Saint speculation on whether Jesus was married, see Christopher James Blythe, “Was Jesus Married?,” BYU Studies Quarterly 60, no. 3 (2021): 75–84.

[42] Davies and Allison, Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 3:25.

[43] DeFranza, Sex Difference in Christian Theology, 79: “Eunuchs did not fit into traditional Roman, Jewish, or Christian ideals regarding gender.”

[44] A further implication of Jesus’s saying, important but tangential to the topic here, is how it affirms a valued space for single/unmarried individuals in the kingdom. France, Matthew, 724: “In first-century Jewish culture, . . . eunuchs were the object of pity if not of horror. . . . The choice of this striking metaphor perhaps reflects a culture where marriage and the procreation of children was so much taken for granted as the norm that strong language is needed to question that assumption. The ‘abnormality’ in that culture of a man’s not being married meant that there was little room in popular thinking for a middle way between marriage and being a eunuch. Jesus’s saying is framed against that black-and-white background.” This saying could have also supported a greater measure of gender parity among Jesus’s disciples and the early Jesus movement. Compare Witherington, Matthew, 365: Jesus’s saying “legitimized singleness in a way that allowed women to play roles in the community of Jesus . . . as traveling disciples of a famous sage.” Given the emphasis we Latter-day Saints place upon family and marriage, the balance and correction of Jesus’s statement is valuable for our time, too. As President Howard W. Hunter taught, “The Church is for all members. . . . This is the church of Jesus Christ, not the church of marrieds or singles or any other group or individual.” Howard W. Hunter, “The Church Is for All People,” Ensign, June 1989. Dallin H. Oaks also taught, “Mortality is filled with frequent struggles, heartaches, and suffering. . . . [One] painful affliction is the circumstance of singleness. Those who suffer this circumstance should remember that our Savior experienced this kind of pain also and that, through His Atonement, He offers the strength to bear it.” “Strengthened by the Atonement of Jesus Christ,” Ensign, November 2015, with thanks to Frank Judd for bringing this to my attention. See Gong, “Room in the Inn.”

[45] Peter C. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976), 296; emphasis in the original.

[46] Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy, The JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996), 210.

[47] The state of Israel’s official memorial for Jewish and gentile Holocaust victims is named Yad Vashem, the Hebrew phrase translated “a monument and a name” in Isaiah 56:5. Those killed during the Holocaust, like the eunuchs Isaiah addressed who would never have posterity, will not be forgotten but will be remembered forever and blessed by God. Thanks to Frank Judd for calling my attention to this connection.

[48] Compare Wisdom of Solomon 3:14, written ca. 250–150 BC: “Blessed also is the eunuch whose hands have done no lawless deed, and who has not devised wicked things against the Lord; for special favor will be shown him for his faithfulness, and a place of great delight in the temple of the Lord” (NRSV).

[49] A majority view in current biblical scholarship holds that the book of Isaiah in its present form has a complex history, with most of its early chapters authored by Isaiah of Jerusalem in the late eighth/early seventh centuries BC, and later additions by writers of the “school of Isaiah” comprising sections that have come to be known as “Second Isaiah” (Isaiah 40–55) and “Third Isaiah” (Isaiah 56–66); see Michael D. Coogan, A Brief Introduction to the Old Testament, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 273–80, 336–41, 354–55, 361. Among Latter-day Saints, these findings have had mixed reception, since the Book of Mormon contains quotations from Second Isaiah, believed to have been written during the Babylonian exile and therefore not likely to have been written on the brass plates from which Nephi quoted. For a variety of faithful, believing responses to this problem from Latter-day Saint scholars, see Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, Dana M. Pike, and David Rolph Seely, Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2009), 295; Grant Hardy, Understanding the Book of Mormon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 69, 291–92n31; Joseph Spencer, The Vision of All: Twenty-five Lectures on Isaiah in Nephi’s Record (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2016), 13–24; and Ann M. Madsen and Shon D. Hopkin, Opening Isaiah: A Harmony (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2018); compare views dissenting from the scholarly majority in Kent Jackson, “Authorship of the Book of Isaiah,” in Studies in Scripture, vol. 4, 1 Kings to Malachi (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1993), 80–85; and Muhlestein, Learning to Love Isaiah, 453–54. The Book of Mormon contains no quotations from the “Third Isaiah” chapters, which might be seen to support the Book of Mormon’s historical claims and the scholarship supporting a postexilic authorship of Isaiah 56–66: see Spencer, The Vision of All, 22–23; compare Muhlestein, Learning to Love Isaiah, 453–54. On questions of the authorship of biblical books, President J. Reuben Clark Jr. of the First Presidency stated, “I am not really concerned, and no [one] of faith should be, about the exact authorship of the books of the Bible. More than one Prophet may well have written parts of books now collected under one heading. I do not know. There may have been ‘ghost writers’ in those days, as now. The Lord gave Aaron to Moses in an equivalent capacity, and spoke to Israel through Moses by the mouth of Aaron. He may have done the same in other cases.” On the Way to Immortality and Eternal Life (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1949), 209–10.

[50] For helpful discussions of these and other intracanonical debates—the “multivocality” of scripture or “theological diversity” of the Old Testament—see Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 71–112; Matthew Richard Schlimm, This Strange and Sacred Scripture: Wrestling with the Old Testament and its Oddities (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015), 139–59; and Julie M. Smith, ed., As Iron Sharpens Iron: Listening to the Various Voices of Scripture (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2016).

[51] Josephus, Antiquities 10.186; compare Isaiah 39:7; Daniel 1:3, 6, 7, 11, 18. Harold W. Attridge, ed., HarperCollins Study Bible (San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 2006), 1353n3.14 (Wisdom of Solomon): In Isaiah 56:3–5, “the prophet refers to the Jewish youth who were castrated at the hands of the Babylonians and consequently despaired of sharing in Israel’s future redemption.”

[52] In addition to the affinities between Isaiah 56:3–5 and Matthew 19:12, note Jesus’s quotation of Isaiah 56:7, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples,” in Mark 11:17. For more discussion of how Jesus espoused the inclusive vision of Isaiah 56, see Sean Freyne, Jesus, A Jewish Galilean: A New Reading of the Jesus Story (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 110–21.

[53] For the likelihood that Luke understood this episode as the beginning of the fulfillment of Isaiah 56, see Darrell L. Bock, Acts, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 342; J. Bradley Chance, Acts, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2007), 140; and Craig S. Keener, Acts, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 269.

[54] Herodotus, Hist. 3.25.114; Strabo, Geogr. 1.1.6; 1.2.24; Philostratus, Life Apoll. 3.20; 6.1; Heliodorus, Aethiopica; Homer, Od. 1.23; Bock, Acts, 339; Robert W. Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke–Acts: A Literary Interpretation, and (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 2:107–100.

[55] Acts also traces the journeys of Paul all the way to Rome (Acts 28:11–30), the center of the “worldwide” empire, additionally fulfilling the Savior’s words about apostles bearing witness to the ends of the earth.

[56] Chance, Acts, 136. Cornelius (Acts 10) is often regarded as the first Gentile convert to Christianity who did not first convert to Judaism, but as Acts presents the narrative, the Ethiopian eunuch comes before him. One possibility is that these two accounts may preserve two different traditions stemming from the “Hellenists” (KJV “Grecians”) and the “Hebrews,” two communities of early Christians at Jerusalem (Acts 6:1); the story of the Ethiopian represents the Hellenists’ tradition of the first Gentile convert (which involves Philip, one of the seven assigned to the Hellenists; Acts 6:5), while the story of Cornelius preserves the Hebrews account of the first gentile convert (which features Peter, the “apostle to the circumcised [Jews]”; Galatians 2:7–9); see Hans Conzelmann, Acts of the Apostles, Hermeneia Bible Commentary (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 67–68. Another consideration is that only the Ethiopian and Philip knew of the first episode, while a larger group, including the believers in Jerusalem, learned of Cornelius; thus readers of Acts “can watch the Jerusalem Christians come to realize what they already know: God has granted repentance and life to the Gentiles,” and the story in Acts 10–11 marks the occasion when this truth becomes known and accepted by the church. Chance, Acts, 137.

[57] References to God-fearers in Acts include Acts 10:2; 13:16, 26; 16:14. For the Ethiopian as a gentile God-fearer and not an Ethiopian Jew, see Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 2.1.13; Bock, Acts, 338, 342; Chance, Acts, 135; and Conzelmann, Acts of the Apostles, 67. For the probability that this man was literally a eunuch and not merely a court official, see Bock, Acts, 341; Chance, Acts, 136; and Keener, Acts, 272.

[58] The round trip could have taken the better part of a year, approximately five months each way; see Bock, Acts, 342.

[59] Richard N. Longenecker, The Acts of the Apostles, in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein vol. 9 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1981), 363: “It might even have been Isaiah 56:3–5 that first caught his [the Ethiopian eunuch’s] attention and caused him to return to Isaiah again and again.”

[60] κολλάω (��DZ���áō); BDAG, 556. The same verb appears in Acts 10:28, where Peter says, “It is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company [κολλᾶσθαι, the infinitive of κολλάω, ‘to unite/join himself’], or come unto one of another nation” that is, a gentile. Keener, Acts, 272: “Although stricter Judeans might refrain from ‘associating’ with gentiles (10:28), the Spirit instructs Philip to ‘join’ (reflecting the same Greek term) this chariot (8:29), as the Spirit will soon direct Peter to accompany Cornelius’s messengers (10:19–20).”

[61] Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 203–4.

[62] See Matthew 8:17; Mark 15:28; Luke 22:37; John 12:38; Romans 10:16; 1 Peter 2:21–25; compare Mosiah 13:34–15:1.

[63] For this insight I am indebted to the conversation between Peter Enns, Jared Byas, and Megan DeFranza in the episode “Interview with Megan DeFranza: The Bible and Intersex Believers” of The Bible for Normal People podcast. See Richard I. Pervo, Acts: A Commentary, Hermeneia—A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), 226; Keener, Acts, 273; and Chance, Acts, 140–41: “This Ethiopian traveled hundreds of miles to Jerusalem to stand in the outer courts and pray to God. His disqualification from full participation was rooted not in some kind of blind Jewish prejudice, but in the written word of God (Deut 23:1). The tough task for us is to decide how we respond to those who want to worship with God’s people, but whom our traditions, even scriptural traditions, seem to disqualify. . . . Are we the ones who send the . . . homosexuals off to read their Bibles alone on a deserted road? Or are we the ones who track them down, join them in the chariot, and talk about how Scripture finds its meaning in the gospel of Jesus Christ?”

[64] ἐπορεύετο γὰρ τὴν ὁδὸν αὐτοῦ χαίρων; emphasis in the original. “For he went on his [own] way, rejoicing,” Acts 8:39.

[65] To read thoughts by LGBTQ Christians and allies about ways they identify with Philip and/or the Ethiopian, see Mona West, “The Story of the Ethiopian Eunuch,” in The Queer Bible Commentary, ed. Deryn Guest, et al (London: SCM Press, 2006), 572–74.

[66] See Patrick Q. Mason, Restoration: God’s Call to the 21st-Century World (Meridian, ID: Faith Matters Publishing, 2020).