by zen nudist 24 Replies latest social humour
With all due respect, that is some of the most tortured exegesis I have ever seen. I applaud the author's motive--presumably to combat discrimination against homosexuals by Christians--but the argument is ridiculous.
Some arguments are better than others. I found a few sites on my own as well. http://www.whosoever.org/verses.html
http://www.queerme.com/index.html
Interesting links, Mysterious... thanks for those. I wasn't really aware of precisely how liberal Christians work around those verses.
It still seems to me slightly disingenuous, however, to deny that the Bible writers--OT and NT--condemned homosexuality. About Romans 1, for example, this is what the queerme.com site has to say:
Thus, it can be demonstrated that despite Paul?s brilliance, he was largely speaking from an inaccurate data base, so regardless of what his words on the topic of homosexuality actually meant to his readers, they carry little weight for Christians today.IOW... the author is not really claiming that the Bible does not condemn homosexuality. He's claiming, essentially, that you can believe that the Bible is wrong, and still be a Christian.
That was damned hilarious!
For those of you who have not seen it, here is an essay I wrote some time ago regarding what the Bible does and does not say about homosexuality: http://www.gayxjw.org/bible.html
Arg gateway timeout. I should have clipboarded what I had typed out but I didn't..here goes I'll try to duplicate it.
IOW... the author is not really claiming that the Bible does not condemn homosexuality. He's claiming, essentially, that you can believe that the Bible is wrong, and still be a Christian.
Well a point I saw made was that Paul writes all scipture is inspired of God. At the time his letters and writings were just that, letters and writings, not scripture. He makes no claim to be inspired, contrary to what many Christians believe and teach. Therefore his letters are not necessarily infallible, a belief held about the bible in general. He also condones slavery, something that most Christians today do not condone. It's an example of Christians changing with the times. Much the same way today, homosexuality is not held to be a choice like it perhaps was then, it is also not generally connected to false religious worship as it was in Biblical times and societies.
I don't think the OT should ever enter into this, ONLY the NT. Jesus came to replace the law. Some of the things in the OT are so ridiculous that if we all had to follow them no one would be "saved". Yet people are quick to point to sciptures that seemingly condemn homosexuality, completely pulling them out of context and ignoring the rest of the law.
That being said I make no claim to being Christian nor to having a monopoly on Bible understanding. Believe what you will.
I don't have time to get into this, but I can say that they have recently found the bible was tampered with and the real words in genesis said..."Adam and Steve"
Gumby
Okay, I'm going to weigh in on this. I don't know about whether Paul talked about homosexuality, maybe he did, but this is definitely NOT what is being discussed in the Epistle of Jude and 2 Peter (the latter reference being derived from the former). Let me first quote what it says in Jude 6-8:
Jude 6-8
"Next let me remind you of the angels who had supreme authority but did not keep it and left their appointed sphere; he has kept them down in the dark, in spiritual chains, to be judged on the great day. The fornication of Sodom and Gomorrah and other nearby towns is equally unnatural, and it is a warning to us that they are paying for their crimes in eternal fire. Nevertheless, these people are doing the same: in their delusions they not only defile their bodies and disregard authority, but abuse the glorious angels as well."
From the text itself, it is clear that the sin described is not homosexuality but sexual intercourse with divine angels. The key to understanding this are the words "equally unnatural" in Jude 7: what did the situation of Sodom and Gomorrah have in common with the situation of the incarnation of angels before the Flood that was "equally unnatural"? It was having sex with angels. Note also how v. 8 applies both situations to heretics who figuratively "defile their bodies" and "abuse the glorious angels", both descriptions of the same thing. The parallel text in 2 Peter 2:6-11 is derivative of the Jude text and its secondary features arise from the author's use of the more original Jude text.
There is much extrabiblical evidence of this too. You see, Jude is heavily steeped in the pseudepigraphal literature of the time, especially the Enochian literature which tell the story of the fallen angels who had intercourse with human women. Jude 14 is a verbatim quotation from 1 Enoch 1:9. Jude 14 also matches 1 Enoch 60:8 which refers to Enoch as "the seventh as Adam". Compare Jude 6 with 1 Enoch 10:4-6 ("Bind Azazel hand and foot and throw him into the darkness....He covered his face in order that he may not see light; and in order that he may be sent into the fire on the great day of judgment") and 10:11-12: "Bind Semjaza and the others who are with him, who fornicated with the women, that they will die together with them in all their defilement...Bind them for seventy generations underneath the rocks of the ground until the day of their judgment and of their consummation, until the eternal judgment is concluded." What is more, the connection between the sin of the fallen angels and the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah also derives from the Enochian literature. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs quote and refer to a lost Enoch book that is related to 2 Enoch (cf. 2 Enoch 34:2 which relates sodomy to the sin of the angels), and this book clearly relates the two situations:
Testament of Naphtali 3:4-4:1
"Do not become like Sodom, which departed from the order of nature. Likewise the Watchers departed from nature's order; the Lord pronounced a curse on them at the Flood. On their account he ordered that the earth be without dweller or produce. I say these things, my children, because I have read in the writing of holy Enoch that you will also stray from the Lord."
In another reference to the fallen angels, the Testament of Reuben 5:5 says: "Flee from fornication....For it was thus they [women] had charmed the Watchers, who were before the Flood." The Testament of Benjamin 9:1 also states: "Now I suppose, from the words of the righteous Enoch, that there will be also evil-doings among you: for ye will commit fornication with the fornication of Sodom, and shall perish all save a few, and will multiply inordinate lusts with women." Here the sin of Sodom is again discussed by a work concerned with the sin of the angels, and its likening with "lusts with women" does not suggest homosexuality but rather fornication. Similarly Testment of Asher 7:1 says that Sodom "did not recognize the Lord's angels and perished forever," the sin thus being related to a failure to respect the divine angelic order in their fornication and not homosexuality. Jude, indebted as he was by the Enochian literature, is probably making a similar point.
Leolaia
Interesting stuff, Leolaia... I've read very little of the apocrypha. I should add, however, that I don't believe that the point of the Sodom & Gomorrah story was meant to be a condemnation of homosexuality. I think that the story of mob & attempted rape was meant simply to show inhospitality and animalism of the men of Sodom.
Mysterious... the idea of religion changing with the times certainly sounds good to me, but then again, I'm not a Christian either.
For those of you who have not seen it, here is an essay I wrote some time ago regarding what the Bible does and does not say about homosexuality: http://www.gayxjw.org/bible.html
Interesting essay, I agree with much of it but not entirely with your analysis of Gen. 19. I do agree that the cities were not destroyed because of the incident with the angels -- their fate had already been sealed (Gen. 18), and their sin is something that everyone, man, woman, and child, participated in, and the tradition in Ez. 19 makes clear that the sin was "pride, gluttony, arrogance, complacency; such were the sins of Sodom and her daughters" (v. 49), and v. 50 refers to the idolatry which it regards as most filthy of the sins. What I don't quite agree with is that yada "know" in 19:5 means "to be acquainted" instead of "have sex with". First of all, Lot's reaction to their request to yada his guests ("I beg you to do no such wicked thing") implies that the kind of yada meant was something sinful. Merely getting to know someone does not entail this, but demanding sex with one's guests does. Second, in v. 8 Lot offers his daughters whom he specifically describes as "virgin daughters." In the original Hebrew, this reads as "daughters who have not known [yada] man." Only three verses from use of yada in the request by the mob, this use clearly is sexual in nature since obviously, living with their father and living in the city, they were otherwise acquainted with men, hence the translation as "virgin daughters". Aside from Gen 19:5 and 19:8, yada "know" refers to sexual activity in at least two other places in Genesis: 4:25 ("And Adam knew his wife again and she bore a son") and 38:26 ("And he knew her again no more, and it came to pass in the time of her travail, that, behold, twins were in her womb"). A sexual sense of yada thus seems more probable in v. 5 of Gen. 19. Of course, this has no impact on the misapplication of the verse to homosexuality since the kind of yada the mob wanted was dealt with by offering Lot's daughters to the mob.
Leolaia
Agreed on both accounds, Euphemism.
About the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha (and the apostolic fathers, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, etc. etc.), they shed a lot of light on various aspects of scripture.
Leolaia
