To be fair, it wasn’t the NT authors that did it (and Jesus didn’t write anything), it was those who chose to Canonize those works as scripture. Paul, the authors of the Gospels and the authors of the on-Pauline Epistles didn’t know that what they were writing was going to be “added” to the Hebrew Bible.
As you said, others have come forward with other books and messages they claim are from God. How are we to tell which is real or which is bogus? Book of Mormon? Koran? The Course in Miracles? Others.
Obviously Revelations was written independently of the other books and letters that make up the NT centuries before the NT existed in it’s present form. That’s a fairly good reason to at least consider that perhaps that warning refers only to that particular book. It is you who stretches the meaning. You seem to be saying that it was God’s intention that it refer to the entire NT. Do you have any kind of scriptural reference for this assumption? We know the books and letters were written decades apart. We also know there was not total agreement about which books should be included. So why is it logical to assume that it was God’s plan and intention that we have these particular books as a be all end all?
I wouldn’t call the Bible incoherant but I would say it’s a real challenge to try and discern one consitant message from it. It’s a fact that even believers don’t agree about it’s meaning. Yes many Christians do decide for themselves what the scriptures mean. It’s also safe to say that they are heavily influnenced by Christian tradition and what theiur particular denomination accepts. It’s also true that may accept what they are told by those in authority positions. In discussions I’ve had I often hear, our pastor says, or, my study guide says, or my friend who’s studied the Bible for years, says etc. That IMHO means people are defering to someone elses opinion instead of truly forming their own.
Our knowledge of the origins of sickness is an advancement. Believeing the Bible is the inerrant word of God is not. Our knowledge of where the Bible came from is much more advanced than it was 500 years ago. The evidence indicates that the books in the Bible were changed many times as they passed through scribe after scribe. Even if we accept that the original authors were inspired by God we don’t know what the original words were. That’s not a theory. It’s fact. Making the Bible the be all and end all in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is not an honest pursuit of truth IMO.
It also assumes something is God’s plan that we have no evidence for. As far as I can tell, that assumption about the Bible was contrived by man and is one of the “traditions of men” that you mentioned earlier.
To understand the scriptures it’s good to know something about the cultural background they were written in and how the attitudes of the day and authors are reflected in them. The “teachings” as you put it come from our own mind as we study and seek to understand. That’s why there is so much variance in beliefs. People don’t have the same experiences or interpretations.
The Bible is an expression of men *trying * to understand God, Other people interpret it’s words. Seeing it as the inerrant word of God is a man made tradition.
Do you have any evidence other than religious tradition that it was meant to be the be all end all? The evidence against that beiing the case is pretty substantial. As I mentioned before. We don’t have the original words of the authors. We have copies of copies of copies, with many differences from one copy to another of the very same book. Some of these differences are pretty significant theologically speaking, i.e. the teachings of the Bible. It’s apparent that some intentional changes were made and things were added and taken away. If you want to check out this information for yourself I recommend "Misquoting Jesus In the face of all that evidence that we shouldn’t take the bible as the be all end all, what evidence do you have that we should? I repeat. Do you have any evidence or is it just a man made tradition? Remember, a religious tradition is still just a man made tradition.
Dan – Post #62 is a brilliant job. Let’s add that inerrancy as defined here is a fairly recent phenomenon (I think there was a 1920s cite for the initial writings in doctrinal fundamentalism last time we dealt with that, and that the broader use of inerrancy to anything supposedly said in Scripture is even more recent).
“God’s Word” as defined by Scripture equals Jesus Christ as Logos, in the first chapter of John’s Gospel. The term is occasionally used in Scripture to mean “what I said/am about to say in God’s Name” as used by a prophet, or “those things said authoritatively by God, as recorded in the Law and the Prophets” – to redefine it to equal the Bible as a whole is to place a human reinterpretation on, well, yeah… 
There are also a lot of things that “everyone know the Bible says” that in fact are not true. For example, and quite relevant to this OP, what did God condemn Sodom and Gomorrah for? The answer is explicit in several books of Scripture, and will probably surprise most people.
Finally, let’s attack the premiss (“if”) clause of the thread title question. First, there are a growing number of Christians, individually and as denominations, which reject the traditional understanding of certain selected verses from Scripture as condemning homosexuals generally. (Any of you gay guys who boinked your boyfriend as part of a Ba’alist fertility rite had better watch out, though! :D)
Beyond that, though, the more conservative Christian majority which might, if pressed, say, yeah, homosexual acts are sinful, seem by and large not to consider it a major issue – my impression is that they generally regard it as a human frailty, which some people are drawn to, not unlike masturbation or alcoholism in their eyes. (And no, I am not myself drawing any invidious comparison there, but trying to convey a sense of the impression I’m getting from the typical non-outspoken conservative Christian.)
It is only certain demagogic leaders and the groups they lead which elevate “homosexuality” to the status of cardinal sin, to be denounced and fought whenever possible. Over and above the Southern Baptist Convention leadership, the James Dobson Focus on the Family/Family Research Council operation in Colorado Springs, Donald Wildmon’s American Family Association/Agape Press operation, and the Falwell and Robertson empires seem to be the most vehement exponents of this attitude.
I think that it’s important to recognize that for all their noise, they represent a minority of a minority.
It refers to the fact that the Greek words “arsenokoites” and “malakos” have become to be translated as equivalent to homosexuality, without there being any evidence that Paul meant such.
It seems likely that “arsenokoites” referred to some form of male prostitution, but we don’t have any other documented cites for the word outside of Paul’s writing that could tell us what, exactly, he meant. Over successive translations of the Bible, it’s often simply been translated as some variant of “homosexual”.
Personally, the best translation option I’ve seen was to just leave that word in its original Greek.
You can easily Google up more information on this, but here’s one cite (most of Google’s results seem biased toward one side or the other, tho).
I missed this post earlier but Lightray basically covered it. It’s the same two words which have often been mistranslated as “homosexual.” I’ve discussed these words several times on this board. See this thread for a fairly coherent summation.
Many times in conversations or books I’m given to read people speaking of the Bible will refer to passages that are actually referring to the “word” as that living spirit within us. I like ** Hebrews 4:12
”For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discern er of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”**
Over and over again passages referring to the word of God refer to that living spirit. The same spirit that is said to be the only way to judge the spiritual. The same one that Jesus promised to lead us into all truth which sets us free.
I didn’t know that the bible as the infallible or inerrant is a fairly recent development. That’s pretty interesting. I find the phenomenon pretty interesting. What is it within humans that urges us to seek an external authority? When I think of it it almost seems a lack of faith rather than a matter of faith. A lack of faith in the promise of that living spirit within us and our connection to God and each other.
Have time for a cite. What book? Chapter? I’ll look it up.
Really. I wonder about the general feeling of negativity concerning gay marriage.
I have several Christian friends who are in general kind hearted but have become convinced that gay marriage is somehow crossing some moral line that society shouldn’t cross. I can’t quite understand it. My own opinion is that “sin” is not a physical act, but it is the intent, the motivation, the spirit behind the act that counts. In that sense a physical act springing from sincere love cannot be a sin.
I was surprised and alarmed to discover how much these groups have infiltrated and influenced the republican party. I think it’s time to denounce their bigotry loudly.
Your input is always appreciated.
Perhaps. I think they are part of the source of that feeling of doubt. The association of immoral = being gay, has crept into many minds. When Falwell made his comment about killing a gay man who approached him I was more horrified by the group that applauded and cheered his comment than him.
Shopping isn’t work unless you hate it.
It was Jimmy Swaggart who made the comment not Falwell.
Falwell recommended blowing away the terrorists in the name of the Lord.
I’m sure Jesus appreciates the consideration. :rolleyes:
I’m not.
And **Polycarp ** posted:
Well, then where is the noise from the vast majority who apparently oppose this “minority of a minority”? What does their silence tell us?
We aren’t silent. Polycarp and I are both Episcopalians. In addition to having been quite outspoken about this issue on this board, our church made headlines a couple of years ago when we ordained an openly gay bishop and we’ve been making headlines ever since including, I’m told, the cover of The New Yorker recently. My own church has been particularly active in this fight, however, I’m afraid a bishop is better equipped for this sort of publicity than a mere rector. We’re also, I’m afraid, outnumbered by the Baptists, etc.
Ezekiel 16:48-50 (King James Version)
King James Version (KJV)
[sup]48[/sup] As I live, saith the Lord GOD, Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters.
[sup]49[/sup] Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.
[sup]50[/sup] And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good.
Okay then how about “According to the Torah, all humanity is bound by the seven laws of Noah?”
Leaving out ‘Not to deny G-d’ and ‘Not to blaspheme G-d’ (The meaning of both laws is incredibly vague anyway) we get OTTOMH
No stealing
No murdering
No sexual immorality
No cruelty to animals.
Set up courts to enforce these laws
Sexual immorality is unclear. But, regardless of intent, five out of the seven are found in legal codes everywhere. Five of the seven laws can be summed up, seriously and efficiently, as ‘just try to be nice.’
Homebrew Is right. Any Talmudic scholar can tell you that Sodom and Gammorah were destroyed becuase they were without compassion.
I’ve been wondering, when was it decided that sodomy = two guys going at it. It’s clear that the jews never believed that and the new testament doesn’t indicate that, so it’s clear that it was post 1st century at least. Anyone know when this came about and who decided it was so?
This is the clearest and most explicit statement of “the sin of Sodom” but it is backed up by the implications of references to Sodom in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and in Jesus’s condemnation of Capernaum and the other Lake Cities. In fact, the sole place where Sodom is mentioned in the Bible with reference to homosexuality, other than the attempted gang rape of the two angels, is in one brief allusion in Jude.
It also needs to be remembered that God had already decided to condemn Sodom for “the stink of its iniquities” when He drops by Mamre for a short chat with Abraham, before the angels go off to do some investigative reporting in Sodom, based out of Lot’s house. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that those “iniquities” included homosexuality, save the attempted gang rape of the two angels, which is hardly a condemnation of homosexuality per se, any more than a law against rape is a condemnation of heterosexuality.
There are only six passages in Scripture that appear to condemn homosexuality, and oddly enough, every single one of them has some alternate reading, generally suggesting that idolatry or abusive conduct is what is being condemned. While the English is “the clear wording of the Bible” (quote from a typical anti-gay Bible quoter), the original Hebrew and Greek are far from being so clear. Arsenokaites appears to have been Paul’s own coinage; he is the first writer ever to use the word, despite Greek writings going back nearly a millenium before him, and it appears to have been a direct echo of the phrasing of Leviticus 18.
And that passage itself is less than coherent in the Hebrew; it literally reads something like “Thou shalt not lie with man the lyings as with a woman” – hardly a clear statement of “Thou shalt not have sex with another man.” In addition to which, it is not directly condemned as something malo in se but rather included in a shopping list of practices engaged in by the Canaanites from which the Israelites are supposed to keep themselves preserved. The one thing that “lying with a man the lyings as with a woman,” having sex with one’s menstruating wife, and sacrificing one’s child to Molech have in common is that they are Canaanite practices condemned together for Israelites. I think any modern person would see them as quite disparate concepts, other than that.
Similarly, malakoi, the other “anti-gay” term in I Corinthians, means “soft” but its use outside Scripture is in the context of “morally weak, yielding to pressure or whim.” It most emphatically does not mean “effeminate” anywhere else.
The supposed clearest condemnation of homosexuality, in Romans, is contextually part of a passage regarding people who turn from God to the worship of idols, and the character decay which that brings about in them. A couple of drama queens to one side, I fail to see how any part of the rest of the Romans 1 characterization of such people describes the typical gay person, but on the other hand it describes perfectly the behavior of the degenerate Roman aristocrats from the contemporary account of Petronius Arbiter, which it might be noted were carrying on their licentiousness and intrigue less than a mile from where the original recipients of Romans would have read it.
The other passages are even less explicit, Jude referring to the Sodom crime as “lusting for heteros sarx,” literally “other (strange) flesh” – more easily understood as men miscegenatively desiring angels than homosexual desire per se. Everything else seems to depend on bringing a modern worldview into an ancient culture to justify the interpretation.
From an article on the University of Waterloo drama department website regarding Gross Indecency: the Trial of Oscar Wilde:
Luther’s introduction of sola scriptura was novel, as the Church (East and West) always considered sacred tradition and the scriptures, as taught by the bishops, to be the final authority. It came as quite a shock to Luther when other reformers, reading the same Bible, came to quite different conclusions about what it meant (e.g., Zwingli, Calvin.) The idea that each individual believer should interpret the scriptures for themselves was certainly not what the Protestant reformers had in mind, though some five centuries on that is where many Protestants are.
Also, as to most Christians basing their beliefs solely on the Bible, I don’t think that is so. Using numbers from adherents.org, I get about 60% of worldwide Christians are Orthodox or Catholic, and even some of the remaining 40% (e.g., Lutherans, Anglicans) accept many of the General Counsels of the early church as being definitive. Are there Catholics who say they base their faith on the Bible only? Sure, but in my experience they’re more or less Protestants-in-waiting.
Thanks Polycarp . So in the history of judaism and christianity, the sodomy= gay thing is fairly recent. I thought it would be, but that cite certainly helps back that up.
I usually don’t post corrections to my posts, but “Counsels” instead of “Councils” just looked so idiotic that I had to this time. Mea culpa.
So what’s adultery in your interpretation? Just two married people being sexually involved? Or just that or any guy sleeping with a married woman?
For women, it’s cheating on their husbands. For men, it’s sleeping with someone else’s wife. It was basically a property crime.