We've seen books like this before: slick covers, catchy titles promising to reveal never-before-heard-of contradictions in the Bible, and within the covers, questionable scholarship in the service of some predetermined agenda.
In order to understand why Knust's book shouldn't rattle anyone's faith, we need to understand both the agenda behind the scholarship, and the way she tries to use the scholarship to support her agenda.
To get right to these points, Knust doesn't want the Bible to be used to define and buttress traditional morality, so she does her utmost to show that the Bible actually both condemns and supports male-male intimate love, both condemns and supports the seducing woman, both condemns and supports adultery, both condemns and supports premarital violations of chastity.
There you have it—divide and conquer. Since the Bible is divided against itself, "Looking to the Bible for straightforward answers about anything, including s*x, can lead only to disappointment." It is therefore "up to readers to decide what a biblically informed and faithful…morality might look like." And in doing so, "the issue…is not whether a particular interpretation [of a biblical passage] is valid but whether it is valuable, and why."
When we find out what Knust means by "valuable," we see clearly her underlying interpretive agenda.
"Anyone who would use God and the Bible to deny touch, love, and affection to others has failed to present a valuable interpretation, not only of the Bible but also what it means to be human, whether or not some biblical passage somewhere can be found to support their claims. Those who attempt to belittle or demean a class of people, denying them rights on the basis of an unexamined interpretation of a few biblical passages, are expressing not God's will but their own limited human perspective, backed up by a shallow and self-serving reading of the biblical text."
In other words, using the Bible as an authority to reject same gender marriage, adoption by two women, lack of chastity, and so on is not valuable. Unfortunately, Knust does not provide any argument as to why we should find her view of what is valuable to be valuable. She just asserts it at the end (even while it provides the subtext all the way through).
Instead of a direct argument, Knust provides an indirect argument, purportedly showing that (for example) the Bible actually supports male-male intimacy in some places (actually, only one place) even while it merely appears to condemn it elsewhere. Since the Bible affirms it, Knust asserts, then no one can use passages from the Bible to condemn it. Therefore, biblical scholarship supports a secular agenda of complete tolerance for all views and lifestyles. That is what is "valuable" in the Bible for us today.
Let's look at a few examples of Knust's argument, beginning with male-male intimacy. The Bible states that "Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul" (I Sam 18:1-2), and that David laments Jonathan's death, saying "your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women" (2 Sam 1:26). Relying on liberal scholarship, Knust maintains that we can legitimately infer that "David ascends to the throne by means of an er*tic attachment to Jonathan." Therefore, the Bible affirms such things, Knust assures us, and does so in a big way—with the most famous king of Israel, the Messianic template for Jesus.
What about the Sodom and Gomorrah episode? No, we misunderstand it, says Knust. It ain't about what we've always thought it was: "the sin of Sodomites was horrific not because the men of Sodom sought to rape men but because they wanted to rape angels." So again, contrary to popular belief, such unnatural behavior is not being condemned (but only intimacy with angels).
Nor does the Bible condemn physical intimacy outside marriage, and or even just for sport. After all, David is seduced by Bathsheba, and the result, eventually, is the birth of King Solomon, and the continuance of the royal line running down to Jesus himself. Seduction and adultery can't be all bad. And the Song of Songs, with all its alluring imagery, "displays no interest whatsoever in defending marriage as the only appropriate setting for love. These lovers pursue their love urgently, without consulting the wishes of others. Marriage is beside the point."
The whole hang up about traditional families? Well look at "The Love Affair of Ruth and Naomi," which shows that two strong, independent women can cling to each other, even while using men (in this instance Boaz) to get a desired baby. The lesson of the "devotion of Ruth to Naomi" is for Knust that "through their love, boundaries of nation, age, and religion are crossed and a child is created who is raised not by a married couple, but by the women…To the book of Ruth, the family of Israel can include a family made up of two women and a baby, conceived at their initiative." Sounds a lot like female-female marriage with adoption rights.
Let these examples suffice to show Knust's general approach. The secular agenda should be obvious in the way that she treats the texts, trying to pull from them intimations of her own beliefs. Of course, that makes sense, given her advice about culling what is "valuable" from the text.
There are a number of problems with this approach. Again, much of it is based on liberal scholarship, which is (to put it mildly) questionable both in content and method. Some academics have been trying to squeeze an unnatural relationship out of David and Jonathan for some time now. This effort is obviously guided by the desire to find it, and not by the text itself. The need to stretch the text to fit the desire is proof itself that that it is an entirely contrived exercise that goes against the grain of the entire Old Testament.
Let's focus on that important point. The biblical rejection of such things, ensconced in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, is certainly clear. That should be the interpretive context. For the ancient Jews, the Law defined their culture. Because of the strong Leviticus prohibition of male-male physical intimacy, the Jews never became (as other peoples of the time) a culture that incorporated a connection between deep male friendship and physical intimacy. But they shared the common ancient understanding that deep friendship between men meant deep love, and such love is affirmed between Jonathan and David. In accepting the connection between deep male friendship and love, but rejecting anything unnatural, the Jews were the cultural exception.
The Greeks represent the cultural rule. The Greek proclivity for mixing deep male friendship with such activity occurs within a common acceptance of such practices in ancient Greek culture. We therefore find it throughout Greek literature. We have no trouble believing a possible intimate relationship between, say, Achilles and Patroclus in Homer's Iliad because Greek culture in general affirmed it. It doesn't go against the grain of the text.
Knust and others like her are guilty of trying to read Greek culture into Jewish culture and overrule the exception. But again, Hebrew culture was defined by Law, and the Law clearly defined male-male intimacy as wrong. Believing that Jonathan and David's love can be read as if it were Greek, rather than an expression of their deep friendship, means taking it out of its actual cultural and textual context, and interpreting it through an alien one.
The same is true in regard to her attempt to read a quasi-romantic subtext into Ruth and Naomi, to read a condemnation of unnatural relations between men out of the Sodom and Gomorrah episode, and to read a casual, non-marital liaison into the Song of Songs.
Such things exist in almost all cultures. The Jews were an exception. God chose them, not because they were already morally pure or could suddenly and permanently be made that way, but so that through a centuries-long struggle that culminated in Christianity, that exceptional morality could become the rule. In so doing they bore witness to God's authority to the surrounding pagan culture that knew nothing like it. It is against that rule and that witness that Knust, wittingly or unwittingly, rebels.
 
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