When a Thing Doesn't Have a Name

Were they or weren’t they?

Well, Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times weighed in on Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s opera “David et Jonathas,” and the verdict? Yeah, David and Jonathan were an item.

We’ll never know, of course, and there are days I wonder whether we should care. It’s also true that nothing exists in a vacuum, and the culture and mores reigning in tribal Jewish culture over two millennia ago are completely distinct and separate from ours today.

So what was between Jonathan and David? Well, whatever it was, it was major; here’s 2 Sam 1:17….

Now it came about when he had finished speaking to Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as himself. Saul took him that day and did not let him return to his father's house. Then Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him and gave it to David, with his armor, including his sword and his bow and his belt. So David went out wherever Saul sent him, and prospered; and Saul set him over the men of war.(NASB)[6]

Strong stuff. And of course there are the famous words that David spoke after Jonathan’s death:

Saul and Jonathan, beloved and pleasant in their life, And in their death they were not parted; They were swifter than eagles, They were stronger than lions... "How have the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! Jonathan is slain on your high places. "I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; You have been very pleasant to me. Your love to me was more wonderful Than the love of women. "How have the mighty fallen, And the weapons of war perished!"

Wikipedia presents several views on the question of what was up between these two guys. The traditional view is that it was platonic, but it may have been homosocial. And yes, my red squiggling computer, I didn’t know the term either. After wading through a lot of psychological jargon, I happened on the common name for a homosocial relationship….

…bromance.

Right. So they were intense friends, but that never turned physical. Or did it? Some scholars argue that it was edited out of the Bible—don’t turn to me for any answers.

Whatever it is, or was, guys have had strong relationships for thousands of years. Remember all that gushing stuff that Lincoln wrote to his friend Joshua Speed? Do that today, and everybody will assume that you’re gay, but it may have been the custom of the time.

I think today of my father, who had a deep relationship of decades with John Bunch, the chief engineer of the City of Madison. They spoke daily, they saw each other about every week, both families went camping together. And though, yes, the two wives got on well enough, it was the two men who were the emotional heart of the relationship. As I write, I can see my father sitting on the floor—something he never did—next to John Bunch, sitting in a big easy chair. Bunch is repetitively caressing Jack’s knee. I, 17 and very closeted, am wondering—what’s up with these guys?

The truth is I don’t know, though I very much land on the side of “nothing sexual.” But then there was my mother, who did have a lesbian relationship for a year. And that would have been in the early ‘40’s—not particularly enlightened years. So maybe Jack and Bunch, on one of those bourbon-drenched nights, did get it on; it wouldn’t surprise me.

OK—it would.

Nor do I think it likely that David and Jonathan got it on.

Just don’t get me started on Walt Whitman….