Beware, I am about to turn into a Bible-quoting Christian ™:
“Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. 50 And they were haughty and committed abomination before Me; therefore I took them away as I saw fit.” (Ezekiel 16:49-50)
You’re right; it’s surprising, with the amount of pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness, and failure to aid the poor and needy in this country, that God has not seen fit to smite the McMansion suburbanites.
What that may have to do with modern homosexuality is kind of moot, right? I mean, there is a large difference between hateful selfishness culminating in gang rape of strangers, and consensual sex between committed couples, wouldn’t you say?
Not being a Christian or a Jew I could no more care less whether the Bible says Christianity is a sin, at least when it comes to supernatural reasons, than I do whether Rastafarianism allows nail clipping. It’s a non-issue to me except for the fact that it inspires so much ignorance and asinine behavior, but I accepted long ago that people turn their minds off when it comes to religion and thus you could make the most logical and powerful and airtight argument possible and fit it onto a bumper sticker and they’re not going to change their minds.
I’ve participated in about 42,000 of these threads already, but since I detest the simplification of history however and I feel that most Christians do this- they seem to have no clue that the First Century Roman World was about as much like modern day America as Mos Eisley is I’ll just build on something I don’t think I’ve said before, and which relates to what other posters have said.
There’s a saying that’s about a decade out of date that “the only new thing about sex in the 20th century was the AA battery”, and it’s very true. There’s nothing that two people do sexually now that doesn’t involve technology that they haven’t been doing for thousands of years. I see this as super relevant to whether Christianity’s a sin in the New Testament.
The following terms all existed at the time of Paul and all referred specifically and without dispute to homosexual acts. I am writing them in current English transliteration, but using (Gk.) for those of Greek origin and (Lt.) for those of Latin origin. tribas (Gk.)/ fricatrice (Lt.): both come from verbs meaning “to rub” and were nouns for women who sexually stimulated another woman by frottage or fingering either for their own gratification or for that of a male watching them.
paiderastia (Gk.), usually modernized as pederasty: a term used in both Greek and Roman culture for non-penetrative sexual acts between a man and a boy under the age of manhood. Often a consensual relationship, though the consent was more between the man and the boy’s family than the boy himself.
catamitus (Lt.)- anal sex between two men or between a man and a young male. (Catamite is a somewhat later term for a male concubine.)
*
pathicus/cinaedus* (Lt.)- an adult man who enjoyed being the recipient of anal sex. (By Roman law a freeborn Roman citizen was not allowed to be the a pathicus or cinaedus.)
felator (Lt.) a male who fellates other men. (The Latin word cunnilingus meant exactly the same then as today when done by heterosexuals though I don’t know if the same word was used when it was between two women.)
concubitor- general term for a male sex slave (or literally a male concubine; only male Romans were allowed to have concubitors, their wives were not.)
irrumatio (Lt.)- what we would today call “face f*cking”, or repeated in-and-out oral sex.
pedicatio (Lt.)- anal sex with a boy; may have been used for anal sex in general in Rome.
diamerizein (Gk.)- literally means “between the thighs” and was a non penetrative sexual practice between two males that we would call frottage or dry humping. Romans called it intercrurus.
puer delicatus (Lt.)- a male prostitute, usually a young slave, who bottomed for anal sex for customers.
There are others but these should be enough to give the idea that the Romans knew about homosexual acts, and since Israel had been occupied by Greece and was at the time of Paul occupied by Rome you can be pretty sure Paul, who wrote in Greek and was a citizen of Rome (again, as mentioned in another thread, a very big deal that implied his family was heavily assimilated), would surely have known of those terms.
For that matter he sailed many places and in pretty much every seaport, then as now, there were brothels, and in the ancient world there was no need to ask where they were. They were the places with the great big phalluses and pictures of graphic sexual acts painted on the outside; this was for the benefit of sailors and other customers who couldn’t read or speak the language. The term “pornography” comes from the Greek word pornographia which literally meant “prostitution illustrations”- in other words, these very paintings.
GRAPHIC AND PROBABLY NSFW Pornographia from the 1st Century Roman World:
There were law codes- the Lex Scantinia (149 BC) and the Lex Julia (ca. 18 BC) that spoke very specifically about what sexual relations were and were not allowed.
General synopsis of Rome’s sex laws where homosexual male:male relations were concerned: sex between two free born Roman men is a don’t; a Roman man must NEVER be a bottom for any other man; do whatever you like with your slaves and or non-Roman p.o.w.s because male or female anal or frottage it’s not rape if he’s your property or your prisoner). Rape was a very serious crime and if it was anal rape of a free Roman male of any age it was punishable by death; however, there was no law against a man being the penetrative partner (the top) with male or eunuch slaves or non Romans. A slave’s consent to sex was not required and for a master to have sex with a slave or prostitute a slave, male or female, against their will was not considered rape.
So the point is not that there was homosexuality in the ancient world, which everybody pretty much already knew or assume, but how VISIBLE and TALKED ABOUT it was. There were statues and frescoes and words and legal terms for every conceivable sexual act.
Therefore, Paul would have had no need whatsoever to make one up or be euphemistic. If it’s argued that he was being euphemistic for aesthetic reasons- why? You’re trying to save peoples souls… clarity trumps poetics.
If you’re banning homosexual relations, why not choose which act or acts you have problems with? If it’s all homosexual acts, why not just say outright “do not have sex with a male if you are a male or with a female if you are a female”? That can’t be hard to express in any language and it’s very clear.
Instead he coins new words… why? Words that are somewhat vague- possibly literal, possibly sexual, possibly euphemistic. Personally I think he was referring to something very specific: the priests of Cybele perhaps, or eunuchs, or orgiastic rites of various mystery cults he was competing with.
Of course then there’s the whole “Who the Hell made Paul head of the church anyway?” argument but that’s a whole other series of posts.
Heh, you just reminded me of one of my favorite words I learned in Latin class: glubit- we learned it was a word only found being used twice in Latin, once by the awesome dude Catullus in his short poem:*
Caeli, Lesbia nostra, Lesbia illa,
Illa Lesbia, quam Catullus unam
Plus quam se atque amavit omnes,
Nunc in quadriviis et angiportis
Glubit magnanimos Remi nepotes* - Catullus. (translated down here)
But basically, Glubit: to strip the bark off a tree, or to pull the husk off a plant.
One of the best euphemisms I’ve EVER heard in any time period, right up there with: “She looks like she could suck-start a Harley” Though you’d enjoy that one, if you didn’t know it already, Sampiro.
While I am an agnostic, bordering on atheism, I never stop wondering WHY Christians have to concern themselves with getting everyone into heaven. I just want to scream “You HAVE your ticket to heaven, why do you have to worry about everyone else getting a ticket into heaven?”
If you think I’m going to hell, YAY, let me go to hell–YOU are going to heaven! Woo hoo for you! Since heaven is a place of everlasting happiness, you won’t even care that I am in hell when you get to heaven! Even if your loved ones don’t make it into heaven, you’ll still be in a place of eternal bliss so why give a rat’s ass if some stranger doesn’t make it? So, if you think something is a sin, great, don’t do it. But don’t stop others from doing it.
Because the only real goal Christianity has is to maximize the number of people who think of themselves as Christians. It’s a plague; it seeks to spread itself. Everything else is really just competition over tactics.
Regarding Paul- and please note I’m not trying to be offensive and these questions aren’t rhetorical- his conversion story is told three times in the New Testament, once in the third person and twice in the first person, and essentially the same story both times.
Let’s dissect this. Try to imagine that you’re not Christian, or that you’re hearing a similar story from Islam or Buddhism or Younameitism.
Notice something different from how he himself describes his experience and how it’s depicted in art (and evidently in Christian consciousness)? Well for starters they all feature horses which he never mentions, but I won’t even bother with that one; I’ll just go straight to the two biggies.
One is that they all are pictured as occurring at night or twilight or at very least on a cloudy day. He never says this. What he says is that he was traveling AT NOON. In a country that is 2/3 desert and 100% hot. And at noon in a desert country there’s bright light in the sky.
Some people who are more smart alecky than I am might say “That’s called ‘The Sun’, honey”, but I’ll just say that it’s not that unusual to see bright lights in the Israeli sky at noon. It’s also not uncommon to see odd optical illusions, especially when you’re dehydrated on the sort of really hot activities like riding through Israel on a hot day at noon. Heat stroke is also not that terribly uncommon when you’re doing things like walking through a hot country at noon. Heat stroke- just mentioning for the sake of mentioning- also causes people to fall down, and it can cause hallucinations as well. Extremely bright days can also hurt your eyesight.
But back to the paintings: the other biggie- most of them show Jesus in the sky [del]with diamonds[/del], just like Paul described. Except for the Jesus part, because Paul never once said Jesus was in the sky. He said there was some kind of bright light (at noon in a country that’s 2/3 desert) in the sky. He never saw Jesus. He heard him. After he had fallen to the ground…at noon while exerting through travel in a country that’s 2/3 desert when there was particularly bright light of the kind that does things like bounce off water or get refracted through dust of the sort you get off a well traveled road like one that leads to theworld’s oldest continually inhabited [and in ancient times among the most traveled to] city.
So he sees bright lights at noon in a hot country by the sea with lots of dust in the road and he passes out. And hears a voice. One he does not recognize- he in fact has to ask “who are you?” and the voice says “I’m Jesus, the one you’re persecuting”. Well, that’s what he said to Paul. The other people there don’t hear it, or at least don’t understand it, though they tell him "yeah, we saw lights in the sky at noon and heard voices (on the highly traveled road to the world’s oldest inhabited city where acoustics have water and hills to play with). Odd: Jesus never seemed that shy when he was alive- if He spoke pretty much everyone could hear him- sometimes in their own language- but the recent crucificixion had perhaps made him a bit more reticent.
OK- which so far sounds more logical- really, and not rhetorically- to explain why a guy passes out at noon on a hot day in a hot country and hears voices nobody else hears?
1- God has decided to use him- a Christian persecuting Roman citizen [though of no real political importance or power]- as a vessel to the Gentiles rather than the disciples who had known him during his human phase, and this is step one, or
2- Heat stroke or heat prostration- which people still have probably every noon on every hot day somewhere in Israel- and a hypnagogic (or perhaps hypnopompic) hallucination of the sort everybody has at some point and that are even more common to somebody who has passed out from heat?
Reason he’s going to Damascus? To persecute and if possible to kill Christians. Something that might trouble the conscience of somebody.
Off the cuff question: Ever had a dream that seemed to focus on something that was much on your mind anyway and that suggested “maybe I’m doing the wrong thing?” I’m told they happen.
So back to Paul: he stands up and he’s blind. After looking at bright lights in the sky in a country that’s 2/3 desert. At noon. And after passing out. (Know who else hated people of Jewish descent and went blind for a while? Hitler. Not saying Paul was Hitler or that he was gassed by a French grenade.)
Anyway, Paul- after falling to the ground in a nation with no shortage of rocks after staring at bright lights at noon wakes up and he can’t see. And since he can’t exactly look for the Co-cola signs or exit lanes he’s led to Damascus where he goes to see Ananias, who ironically was the very person he was going there to persecute.
Ananias tells him “God told me you were coming. He wants you to do the bidding of His son Christ.”
==========
Okay, you’re Ananias, an old man who’s taken up with a new sect based on an itinerant self proclaimed rabbi who was recently executed for treason after a not altogether peaceful demonstration led to temporary expulsion of merchants from the heart of Asia Minor’s chief commerce center (the outer courts of the Temple in Jerusalem were home to literally thousands of merchants- Jewish and non- and to have expelled even a dent in the number there from the Temple would have required a substantial riot; this, not blasphemy- is what most likely led to the priests convincing the Romans “this man’s dangerous”- not one thing in Christianity would have qualified as blasphemy to the First Century Jews and He was far from the first man and far from the last to be hailed as the Messiah- most of them died more or less peacefully in bed with a few cranks for followers- but unlike most he was holding a match to the powder keg under the tenuous Judeo-Roman relations
But I digress—
Here’s Ananias, member of a sect with a recently executed leader and already familiar with Saul’s persecution of members of said sect and knowing fully well that Saul’s coming to Damascus is not a good thing. Ananias knows that Saul represents the priests in Jerusalem and that the priests in Jerusalem are trying to stop the cult he’s a local leader of from spreading.
Ananias also knows that the priests in Jerusalem also have absolutely no political or military power in Damascus. Syria is not under the control of the Herods nor is it Jewish (oh there are many Jews who live there- far more Jews live outside of Israel than in Israel by this time- the biggest community is in Alexandria in fact, more there than in Jerusalem). Syria is under the control of Rome, true, but Rome doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what religion somebody practices so long as they 1- pay their taxes 2- don’t rock the boat (by doing things like causing riots in major commercial centers that cost the equivalent of many billions and billions of dollars to build) and Damascus in fact has temples to more gods than you can name (including men who castrate themselves and dress as women to serve as Ceres and some who engage in bizarre sex rites the Romans couldn’t care less about since they’re not Roman but which a man like Saul/Paul might take issue with and call by a newly coined term for lack of a better word).
Okey dokey, the priests/Saul have no political or military clout and they want to get rid of nascent Christianity. How do you get rid of somebody when you have no political or military power- all you have is a spin merchant and more money than most gods? Well, you could get there and pray and sacrifice maybe a nice plump pheasant with a “pretty please Lord, supernaturally strike down this new cult”. Or, if you just had to I suppose, you could use the money and influence of the priests in Jerusalem to spin rumors and work up the Jews in Damascus to take care of the Christians themselves- nip it in the bud- or to help with the kinds of allegations that would make the Roman civil authorities take care of this cult. Or, I suppose that somewhere in the world’s oldest inhabited city just… maybe… you could find some people willing to beat the hell out of or kill some others for, oh, a bunch of money (or more likely not all that much). Nope, to a priest of the new and already in major trouble cult of Christianity, Saul being there isn’t good news, because you can be pretty sure he’s not there to say “I have a different take on the Torah from yours, but I’m sure we can either reach consensus or agree to disagree…”.
Illiterate people tend to be very superstitious. People who do not know anything about science tend to be very superstitious. In the First Century about 9 out of 10 people were illiterate, and about 10 out of 10 knew nothing about science. Paul was not illiterate, but it’s highly unlikely he was skeptical by nature or particularly well versed on science.
If he was well versed in science he’d have mainly studied works based on or written by Aristotle. Aristotle firmly believed in curses.
If you were to do a poll of people who believed in curses in the ancient world you’d have probably done remarkably well to find one person in a thousand, Jew or bedouin or Egyptian or sophist or Celt or Caesar, who didn’t believe in them. They were universal, long before there was a concept of karma or grace there was a belief that “bad things happen for a reason”. The evil eye was universal- the Eye of Horus was used throughout the Egyptian and then the Roman empire to ward it off, though to non worshipers of Horus it became a bit less Egyptian and a bit more stylized. (I wonder what ever happened to the eye of Horus and why we don’t see it anymore?)
So in other words people in the First Century Roman World tended to look for causes- supernatural or otherwise- when bad things happen. But that’s beside the point so let’s get back to Saul/Paul.
Who it just so happens was going to Damascus to start some serious and probably shady shi’ite with the Christian community there when a weird light caused him to pass out and wake up blind. As if for some cause… what could it be? Dark magic? Naw, that couldn’t be it… cause didn’t that voice nobody else could hear as you were either going into or coming out of the unconscious state say “This is cause you’re messing with Christians, bra”? Maybe… just maybe… that’s it.
So he’s taken to Damascus. Where he’s blind and mumbling something about the Christian community. And, almost as if somebody said “blind Jewish guy is mumbling something about Christians… isn’t Ananias who lives over Flatulus Biggus’s All You Can Eat Olive Bar and Vomitorium one of those?” and sends him over. Or God did one or the other. Odd that the people traveling with him- the ones who didn’t pass out or hear voices- let alone pass out and hear voices- had no idea where to take him yet he wound up there. Or God did it.
Anyway, Ananias- who knows Saul by reputation and has serious reason to fear him- is suddenly, Hosanna Hosanna- delivered his dangerous enemy in a totally helpless state. And he says “This is the will of G_d! [Oh wait, we’re gradually seceding from Judaism aren’t we? It’s the will of God… I can put in that o without even having to bathe! Christ I love this religion…”.
Saul says “Darndest thing happened on the road about 3 Co-cola signs back… it was about noon and there was this super bright light in the sky…”
“At noon in Israel there was a bright light in the sky?”
“Yeah, and it was doing funny things…”
“Back there where the Mediterranean refracts light and there’s all that dust in the air from the constant caravans that travel- though usually they travel late in the day because only maddogs and zealots would be stupid enough to travel in the middle of the day- around that place you saw the light do funny things?”
“Exactly. And then I passed out…”
“While you were traveling at noon on a hot day?”
“Exactly. And as I was passing out or as I was coming too I heard a voice…”
“Like the ones you hear sometimes as you’re drifting off to sleep or waking up or suffering from heat prostration?”
"Exactly, and it’s not anything I recognize so I say ‘Who it is?’ and the voice says “I’m [del]Rick James the Lesser[/del] Jesus [del]bitch[/del], what’s your problem with me?”
“Like the same Jesus whose cult you were coming here to persecute through probably unethical means to serve a corrupt politicized priestly caste who couldn’t give a damn about you and who you were probably having ‘why am i doing this?’ conscience problems about the time you passed out in the heat? That Jesus?”
“Exactly. And then I was blind when I woke up…”
“Like the blindness you get when you look at the sun on a really bright day when it’s doing weird things or the kind you can get fromextreme anxiety either or both of which are temporary conditions that rarely last more than a few days?”
“Exactly…”
“And this was a few days ago?”
“Exactly… hey, how about that, my vision’s clearing up. So what do you think that means?”
“Well… I think it means that God wants you to come to me and turn to our side. In fact I’m positive He does because I just remembered, He came to me in a dream and said 'Anni, meesah think yousa can use Paul likah the only woman on a pirate ship for the purposes of your new cult and in so doing eliminate an enemy and exploit a literate citizen of Rome”. And I wasn’t sure what he meant, but now I know… God brought you here."
Which is more believable all in all:
Saul had a heat stroke that caused brief hallucination and temporary blindness while going to do malevolent stuff to a new church for strictly political reasons and, being a pattern seeking man in a superstitious time, convinced himself it was a deity smiting him and this was used to their advantage by his former enemies", or
It was several miracles, all of which just completely coincidentally have completely natural explanations?
Whatever the case, passing out at noon on an Israeli day and hearing a voice that said one sentence was the whole of Paul’s credentials. Even as New Testament miracles go (and let’s face it, outside of Jesus the NT miracles just weren’t on par with the OT ones- opening seas and talking donkeys are hard to beat if you can’t raise the dead or clone cooked fish) the road to Damascus isn’t exactly that impressive. Nothing danced or got leprosy for a moment or turned into a snake or got a 90 year old woman pregnant or caused flames to bubble from the Earth or turned a river to blood or anything like.
=-=========================================
Of course there’s also the matter of Jesus Himself saying that Saul (changed to Paul now, starting the Saul is Dead rumor) was the man who had authority in the new church.
Oh, wait, Simon bar Jonah was St. Peter wasn’t he? Could have sworn he was St. Paul. So I guess the only time Paul and Jesus really meet is when Paul passed out at noon on a road in an arid land. Well, they didn’t meet then… but Paul heard a voice (that nobody else did).
But as Paul said, Jesus just meant Peter was the leader of his Church to the Jews. And they didn’t much like Jesus anyway, which is why Peter finally said “To hell with this, I wanted to see the Colosseum anyway… hope it’s there before my martyrdom”.
Curtis LeMay, although you like to pick and choose which parts of the bible to acknowledge, I would really appreciate it if you did not do the same thing with this thread. A thread that YOU started by the way.
I asked you a specific question and I would really like an answer. If you don’t believe in the mosaic law anymore, do you not accept the 10 commandments? You do know who came down the mountain with them, right?
Paul himself never actually tells the Damascus story. Acts was written by Luke. Paul never mentions the whole light on the road to Damascus thing in his own letters. His own accounts of his revelation are sketchy at best.
For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
(1 Cor. 15:3-8)
Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?
(1 Cor. 9:1)
But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being.
(Gal. 1:15-16)
That’s pretty much all the detail he gives. The road to Damascus is all Luke, though he puts two of his three accounts into the mouth of Paul.
Of course, some people, having taken Jesus as Lord and Savior, feel that it is only appropriate to do what He is reported as saying, rather than taking a perspective that a collection of writings by and about Jewish leading figures and early Christians somehow has been transformed into a divinely-authored manual of behavior, from which verses may be abstracted at need to justify various behaviors, some of them anti-social and contrary to Jesus’s own teachings.
(As between Jesus having Himself been reported as having said three times that the second most important thing one can do is love one’s neighbor as oneself, that this summarizes the entirel Law and Prophets (i.e., the whole Old Testament), and that the Golden Rule likewise summarizes the same thing, one may randomly select verses from letters of Christian leaders giving advice to individual churches and hold them up as one-size-fits-all commands to be used in all times and places – and sneer at others who attempt to do what Jesus commands – well, one of these is not like the other.)
I don’t know if you’ve done anything here but validate my post.
That “collection of writings by and about Jewish leading figures” represented the holy writings of the Jews; the sacred writings that governed their lives. As a Jew, he ‘took this perspective’ and followed Jewish law, teachings and traditions. It is absolutely valid----and the evidence overwhelming----that the Jews of Jesus’s day would have considered those writings “divinely-authored manual of behavior.” The Gospels have hundreds, if not thousands, of instances where Jesus referenced those writings.
That represented his past; his heritage. His future was entrusted to his Apostles, and followers, including Paul, reputedly chosen by Christ himself. Those “early Christians” were said to be carrying out the work commissioned by Christ himself, at his direction, and for the core group, in person.
IIRC, there are 27 books in the NT, 14 of which were written by Paul. Yet modernity requires us to discount (and in large parts, reject) these writings, leaving us wondering why the Son of God was so poor in picking the team that would carry on his work.
We’re not quite done, however. That bright and shiny Jesus that said “All you need is Love”, was also intolerant of Jews who gamed the Law, stated that following him would divide families, called people vipers and sons of Satan, and plainly stated that good intentions would not be enough to gain his favor.
So it’s not as though this humanist based Christianity is centered on the 4 gospels, while treating the rest of the bible with suspicion. (if not contempt) That’s because there are more than a few passages----including Jesus’s own words----that are objectionable to the New and Improved Christianity.
So all we’re left with is the “all you need is love” get-out-of-hell card, which allows to determine-----for ourselves----what is right and wrong, and what is good and bad.
So, yea, it looks like the whole of them have been shown the door.
That is faith. If you have faith than you will be convinced of following God (ie the Abhramic God) and His moral directives. Also I do make moral choices myself, for instance I would probably kill in self-defense although the Bible does not wish it.
Jesus reinforced the Ten Commandments by specifically saying “Do Not Kill”, “Do Not Commit Adultery”, and so on.
So you are making decisions about the morality of the commandments in the bible. Good. That’s what the overwhelming majority of believers do, though a lot of them deny that they do it.
The thing is: what tends to get thrown around by christians in discussions like this is that people get all their morality from God, and by extension, from the bible. Since you’re actually not claiming that, what you’re basically saying is that god’s rules and/or the bible are guidelines that you judge based on your own moral beliefs. At that point, unless you can give a moral argument* why homosexuality/homosexual activity is bad, I suggest you regard those particular sections as irrelevant**.
*ETA: “gays can’t get children” and “it’s not natural” are neither correct statements, nor moral arguments.
** ETA2: Especially since, unless you’re gay, they don’t apply to you.
May I ask how you came to follow God before you had faith? I’d understand if this is too personal a question, and I wouldn’t hold it against you if you felt you’d prefer not to answer.
