Leviticus 11:7-8 and Deuteronomy 14:8, plus a few others say you can’t play football, because doing so requires you to touch the dead carcass of the swine.
Peace,
mangeorge
We got it,
oh baby we got it.
We’re their Venus,
we’re the fire,
we’re their desire…
IME they don’t reconcile anything. They were brought up hearing “it says so in the bible” and that’s good enough for them. There’s rarely any intellectual discussion to be had. If anything, when pressed, they might say “times have changed” and that other stuff doesn’t matter. An easy enough argument to dismantle. Most of these people haven’t even read the bible. Even if they have, they aren’t familiar with the different versions, translations, interpretations etc. Try to explain the difficulties in linguistics & ancient languages & they dismiss you as playing games, making things up, trying to trick them. You’d be surprised how many people to whom it really hasn’t occurred that the bible wasn’t written in English.
Anyway, once they can’t reconcile the Leviticus thing they fall back on the excuse that homosexuality is wrong 'cause you can’t make babies, or it causes AIDS or some other silly thing.
I think you’re asking for far too much than the people using Leviticus have ever even thought about. They don’t reconcile it.
Problem is, they don’t really have to. The Holy See is free to use Leviticus as an example of why homosexuality is wrong but he isn’t under any obligation or expectation to issue a rewrite of the bible because we play football. The fact that, as far as the Pope figures God is concerned it’s no big deal to work on Sundays doesn’t mean he can’t still condemn infidelity, masturbation etc. and base it on the bible. For all we know the Pope’s robes are a nice cotton/wool/poly blend. There’s no real hypocrisy or anything to reconcile. Just 'cause it says so in the bible is simultaneously a good excuse and no excuse. If it amuses you to debate the content of the bible you can, but the Pope is the final arbiter of what’s right/wrong regardless of what meaning you take from it.
I think Christians and non-Christians alike put too much weight on what’s in the bible and interpreting it for themselves when they should be listening more closely to what the current Pope is saying. He’s the closest thing to the current word of (Catholic) God you’re going to get.
If you do a search of homosexuality, Leviticus, etc. at the http://www.vatican.va website you’ll find some interesting, and more contemporary reading.
My $.02 anyway.
ZEV!!! HELP US!!!
I know- gotta wait till at least sundown today.
To me, the Paulian prohibitions in Romans 1 & I Corinthians 6 settle it for me on the wrongness of gay sex. However, I would also say the VERY heterosexist
passages on marriage in Genesis 1 & 2, Matthew 19 & I Corinthians 7, while not actually forbidding same-sex relations, does restrict marriage to man & woman (and actually indicates that the original Divine intention was monogamous).
Along the lines of similar reasoning, it would appear that Leviticus does not wiegh in on lesbian sex. I’m surprised no one has brought that up yet.
It’s sad, but true, isn’t it? I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at that one. Kind of puts the whole thing in perspective, doesn’t it?
Many also don’t seem to realize how much has been redacted from the Bible on the basis of “heresy” and how much was changed for convienience’s sake.
Romans chapter 1 verses 26-28 seems to characterize homosexuality as a “vile affection”. Vile affection being immoral.
The New International says men committed indecent acts with other men as men left the natural relations with women and women left natural relations with men. The NIV characterizes such relations as “unnatural” and a “perversion”.
I presume, Jimmy1, that it was your intent to say that the NIV characterizes the “indecent acts” and not the “natural relations” as “unnatural” and “a perversion” – unfortunately your sentence as written appears to state the reverse! :eek:
But, sir, given that assertion, how is it that you conclude that this is an indictment of gay men and women? Becaus if one thing is clear, it is that a Kinsey-6 man or woman did not “leave natural relations with women” – he was never attracted to them nor did he indulge in them. Rather, as Diogenes and I have pointed out several times, this passage is speaking of sex as something that one does and not something that one is, and is condemning those who reject God for pleasures of this world and who, becoming bored of straight sex, decide to try out gay sex for kicks.
In addition to this, it’s worth noting that some of this group, repenting, have become members of the church in Rome – see Romans 2:1-4, which follows directly on this passage.
It’s my firm assertion that the human writers of the Bible (a) did not have a clue that a homosexual orientation existed, and never addressed it, and (b) in the one case of same-sex romantic attachment spoken of in Scripture, were entirely approving, though they pointed out clearly other sins committed by each partner in that relationship.
But of course “all this is ‘twisting Scripture’” because it doesn’t serve your purposes of violating our Lord’s commandment by condemning a group of people.
I’m bluntly tired of asking gay men and women to be restrained and put the best face on what others say, when my own fellow Christians cannot even follow the commandments they were given by Him Who they provess to call Lord. :mad: :smack:
I presume, Jimmy1, that it was your intent to say that the NIV characterizes the “indecent acts” and not the “natural relations” as “unnatural” and “a perversion” – unfortunately your sentence as written appears to state the reverse! :eek:
But, sir, given that assertion, how is it that you conclude that this is an indictment of gay men and women? Becaus if one thing is clear, it is that a Kinsey-6 man or woman did not “leave natural relations with women” – he was never attracted to them nor did he indulge in them. Rather, as Diogenes and I have pointed out several times, this passage is speaking of sex as something that one does and not something that one is, and is condemning those who reject God for pleasures of this world and who, becoming bored of straight sex, decide to try out gay sex for kicks.
In addition to this, it’s worth noting that some of this group, repenting, have become members of the church in Rome – see Romans 2:1-4, which follows directly on this passage.
It’s my firm assertion that the human writers of the Bible (a) did not have a clue that a homosexual orientation existed, and never addressed it, and (b) in the one case of same-sex romantic attachment spoken of in Scripture, were entirely approving, though they pointed out clearly other sins committed by each partner in that relationship.
But of course “all this is ‘twisting Scripture’” because it doesn’t serve your purposes of violating our Lord’s commandment by condemning a group of people.
I’m bluntly tired of asking gay men and women to be restrained and put the best face on what others say, when my own fellow Christians cannot even follow the commandments they were given by Him Who they profess to call Lord. :mad: :smack:
First of all, the phrase in Leviticus is mistranslated.
The actual word used is “toevah” which does not imply something horrific and evil like rape or murder, but rather something ritually unclean like eating pork. It is often used in the old testament for sins which involve Gentiles or idoltry. You’ll notice that Leviticus 18 opens with
And the verse before the one in question reads
This suggests that such a law was set to seperate the Jews from their neighbors.
“Toevah” is generally divided into violations of law or justice and violations of ritual puriy or monotheistic worship. It seems that homosexuality falls under the latter.
Why I personally ignore Leviticus is because the Council of Jerusalem in AD 49 decided pagan converts to Christianity were not held by the Mosaic laws except for four
-eating food which had been sacrificed to idols
-abstaining from blood
-abstaining from strangled meat
-abstaining from over indulgence in sex
Referencing I Corinthians 6:9 and I Timothy 1:20 is also faulty because the word used does not refer to homosexuals. The word used does mean “soft,” but it refers to a person lacking in morals. The Greeks didn’t think of homosexuals as feminine as alot of people do today.
As for the second word, arsenokoitai… DtC, I found the book that I mentioned earlier and the author says that koitai is better translated as “fucker” rather than “beds.” He uses Romans 13:13 as an example. What do you think of his translation?
Yes, but only Catholics get to use that argument as far as I can tell. I can start my own branch of Christianity, make myself Chief Mugwumpess, and declare that “Thou shalt not kill” is based on an outdated misinterpretation of a mistranslation that nobody should obey, but the fact remains that my word is not Biblical law. (Except, perhaps, in the eyes of my followers, presuming I had any.)
Diogenes: I could swear I recall hearing that arsenokoitai was the word used in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew word for male temple prostitutes; do you know anything about that? Any basis in fact there?
Is this question, asked here by the OP;
Answered here, by Polycarp?
.
Lord = Jesus?
Because I do remember being told by some christian friends that everything we need to know from the OT is contained for us in the NT.
“fucker” might be a little harsh. koitai is the plural form of koite which can be translated either as “bed” or as “going to bed.” It could also be used as a verb in the same way that “bedding” someone can be used to indicate having sex in English. Other variants that I find in my Lexicon include “marriage bed” and even “offspring.” I think that association of sex is pretty strong and that it Paul’s use was an obvious allusion to some kind of sexual practice, it’s just not clear exactly what.
IIRC, the septuagint translates a Hebrew word for male temple prostitutes as something like arsenos koiten which is pretty close.
Bishop Spong, among others, believes that the context of the word in 1 Timothy 1:8-11 indicates that it refers to those who patronized male prostititutes. He draws this conclusion from the fact that the vices of pornai, arsenokoitai and andrapodistai are grouped in that order. pornai were male prostitues or “call boys,” and andrapodistai were slave traders. Taken together then, Spong concludes that pauls was referring to male prostitutes, the “Johns” who patronized them and the slave traders who sold them.
koite is used as a suffix in other words and usually implies the active rather than passive) partner in some licentious act. Adelphekoite, for instance, is one who “bed” his sister. There are a number of other such compounds in Greek.
There is at least one instance of usage where arsenokoite explicitly refers to pederasty and that is in the Apology of Arisites in which it refers to the rape of Ganymedes by Zeus.
I thought the whole point of forbidding homosexual acts in the Bible was to separate the Jews and later the Christians from the decadent Romans, Greeks, etc at the time.
Was I wrong?
That may be true at least as far as Leviticus goes. Some scholars make the argument that the infamous prohibition on a “man lying with a man as he would a woman” is reference to Canaanite temple prostitutes who typically were male transvestites. It wasn’t the sex per se that was being condemned, it was going to a Canaanite temple. It was idolotry.
Ah, I see. I thought it was mostly to try and set themselves apart.
I still don’t see what the dealy with the mixed fibers is. That’s just bizarre. (No offense, it’s just very confusing).
No the NIV characterizes and distinguishes between natural and unnatural uses. Women exchanged their natural relations for unnatural ones, in the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women. Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
Going off of this alone it must be admitted homosexuality is viewed negatively here by Paul. The King James describes the unnatural relations as “vile affections”. Vile affections are immoral. This is just going off of what the verses say themselves and nothing more.
Furthermore, Diogenes admits it is not at all conclusive or clear that Paul is not condemning homosexuality while simultaneously admitting nor is it clear he definitely was.
And what commandments are those? Personally I think you presume too much, make judgments about people to quickly. Your post directed towards me is inundated with value judgments about myself and you know very little about me to make such judgments.
Knowing Polycarp as I do, I believe those commandments are the ones contained in Matthew 22:27-40, which are His response to the question, “which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Having said similar things to what he’s said a few times and agreed with him many times, I can tell you that when I’ve pointed out those commandments, it’s because I’ve seen little or no evidence of the person I’m addressing acting on them. To my way of thinking, Christ told us what we should focus on and what the most important part of our faith is in clear, unambiguous terms. Those terms aren’t in Leviticus or Paul’s Gospels.
CJ