What does the Bible say about homosexuality?

[cmkeller]

Ah, well. I guess there was no avoiding the thread move.

Diogenes:

But they haven’t been analyzed critically or with any in depth knowledge of historical, cultural, mythological or literary context.

Condescending, and wrong. The Talmudic Rabbis probably had a better understanding of the world in which Biblical personalities lived than modern archaeologists and historians in their attempts to re-construct it.

The thing that’s different is the attempt to actually divine the intent of the authors through hard scholarly research instead of just mindlessy reiterating previous interpretations

Scholarly research into the intent of the author(s)? Pretty wild coming from a viewpoint which doesn’t even claim to know who the author is, or how many of them there were! Whose mind are these scholars delving into…Moses (if the scholars even believe he existed)? King Hezekiah? Jeremiah? Ezra? And why would modern “divinations” have better insight into the authors’ minds than the understanding of those very personalities’ students, or their students’ students, several generations removed?

I take great exception to the notion that anything was “mindlessly repeated.” The Talmud is rife with disagreements over what one Rabbi or another meant when he said one thing or another. But when the Talmudists had such disagreements, it was because there were differing viewpoints among that selfsame Rabbi’s students, not that some outsider is claiming a better insight than the words quoted from the Rabbi himself.

or imposing culturally biased assumptions on the text…(snip)…What should we think about people who have preexisting religious agendas, biases or prejudices? Are people with a priori religious assumptions less capable of dishonesty than a person with a gay rights agenda.

And where exactly does a “pre-existing religious agenda, bias or prejudice” come from in Biblical interpretation? The Bible IS the definition of the religion. If there are questions of interpretation, the conclusion of the debate DETERMINES what the religious agenda will be. Conversely, if you’re arguing that the Bible was some codification of an already-existing religion, then clearly whatever religious bias was brought into that WAS the author’s original intent. You’ve got yourself a Catch-22 there.

I would also remind you that none of these scholars are asking you to take their word for anything. They publish their research and go through peer review, Challenge their work.

The work has been challenged plenty. I’ve presented some of my arguments against it above, and that was the toned-down version, for when this was still a GQ thread. And don’t tell me that it “went through peer review.” That just gets the viewpoint to be published. The fact that it got published doesn’t mean it must be accepted as factual, and I’m far from the only one…including those who you might consider to rightfully consider themselves the author’s peers…who doesn’t.

Asserting dishonesty on the basis of a perceived agenda is simply ad hominem hand waving.

Maybe, but when a novel interpretation arises that coincides in substance with a similarly newly-arising political movement, one can’t help but think the newcomers might be holding hands.

What other people thought before is beside the point. The opinions of readers subsequent to the author - especially centuries subsequent to authorship - are not reliable probative evidence as to the intent of the author. Rabbinic tradition, for instance, is not empirical evidence. It is only tradition.

Unless these “readers subsequent” are actually STUDENTS taught by the author, or students of those students, and so forth. Even if the generational distance introduces some inaccuracies, they can’t help but be a better reflection of the author’s original intent than someone even more centuries after the fact trying to divine this intent through artifacts of a culture that the author didn’t even belong to!

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@cmkeller

Ah, well. I guess there was no avoiding the thread move.

Diogenes:

Condescending, and wrong. The Talmudic Rabbis probably had a better understanding of the world in which Biblical personalities lived than modern archaeologists and historians in their attempts to re-construct it.

Upon what do you base this assertion? Archaeology has proven a lot of assumptions to be wrong.

Scholarly research into the intent of the author(s)? Pretty wild coming from a viewpoint which doesn’t even claim to know who the author is, or how many of them there were! Whose mind are these scholars delving into…Moses (if the scholars even believe he existed)? King Hezekiah? Jeremiah? Ezra? And why would modern “divinations” have better insight into the authors’ minds than the understanding of those very personalities’ students, or their students’ students, several generations removed?

It isn’t necessary to know the authors’ names in order to divine some things about their literary intent. A lot of extra-Biblical information can be applied to the analysis which takes into account historical, cultural and political contexts of authorship. Even correcting traditional dates of authorship can shed new light. We understand Daniel much better when we know that it was written during Maccabean revolt rather than the Babylonian exile during which it is set. Don’t pooh pooh empirical method.

I take great exception to the notion that anything was “mindlessly repeated.” The Talmud is rife with disagreements over what one Rabbi or another meant when he said one thing or another. But when the Talmudists had such disagreements, it was because there were differing viewpoints among that selfsame Rabbi’s students, not that some outsider is claiming a better insight than the words quoted from the Rabbi himself.

I apologize for the characterization of “mindlessness,” I think something akin to “rote” is more what I intended. An uncritical acceptance of prior tradition over modern empirical research.

And where exactly does a “pre-existing religious agenda, bias or prejudice” come from in Biblical interpretation? The Bible IS the definition of the religion. If there are questions of interpretation, the conclusion of the debate DETERMINES what the religious agenda will be. Conversely, if you’re arguing that the Bible was some codification of an already-existing religion, then clearly whatever religious bias was brought into that WAS the author’s original intent. You’ve got yourself a Catch-22 there.

I’m not quite sure I understand what you mean by this paragraph. What I’m saying is that the religious bias of contemporary readers is not necessarily the same as the religious bias of the authors. You’re saying that people with a “gay rights agenda” are prejudicing their research with pre-conceived conclusions. I’m saying that you can say the same thing about people with doctrinal agendas. The agenda of the authors is exactly what we are trying to determine.

The work has been challenged plenty. I’ve presented some of my arguments against it above, and that was the toned-down version, for when this was still a GQ thread. And don’t tell me that it “went through peer review.” That just gets the viewpoint to be published. The fact that it got published doesn’t mean it must be accepted as factual, and I’m far from the only one…including those who you might consider to rightfully consider themselves the author’s peers…who doesn’t.

I wasn’t saying you should accept it because it’s peer reviewed, I was saying that the arguments and evidence are out there to be analyzed on their own merits and the “agenda” of the researchers has no bearing on the soundness of their evidence. It stands and falls on its own and only the evidence should be addressed, not the perceived bias of the scholars.

Maybe, but when a novel interpretation arises that coincides in substance with a similarly newly-arising political movement, one can’t help but think the newcomers might be holding hands.

Or maybe the new movement prompted research which overthrew old assumptions. If you think it’s suspicious, challenge their evidence on its own merits.

Unless these “readers subsequent” are actually STUDENTS taught by the author, or students of those students, and so forth. Even if the generational distance introduces some inaccuracies, they can’t help but be a better reflection of the author’s original intent than someone even more centuries after the fact trying to divine this intent through artifacts of a culture that the author didn’t even belong to!

I think it’s rather optimistic and generous to assume that there is any perfect line of transmission going back to the authors. If that was the case we wouldn’t have students today who think Moses wrote the Torah or that Daniel was written in the exile.

[Polycarp]

Look, there is a real problem in what is happening here, and it’s one I really think all parties need to come together on addressing. The issue originally to be addressed is not whose interpretation is right, it’s that there exist interpretations.

This is beginning to remind me more and more of the sort of argument that happens between the sophomore atheist and the typical halfway-scholarly conservative Christian (not painting anyone here with that term, but using it stereotypically). The first is maintaining firmly that there is absolutely no evidence for the existence of God; the second is maintaining that the Bible clearly proves enormous amounts of stuff about His existence and will. And neither is paying the slightest attention to the premises of the other.

Chaim, Diogenes and I would gladly concede that the longstanding tradition of most of Jewish and Christian thought regarding those passages is what you and Shodan assert. Our point is that scholarship is by no means unanimous in sustaining what tradition has held, in fact, tending towards the other extreme. And in all fairness, you must concede that while you may disagree with their conclusions, they are in fact attempting an objective exegesis of the text. I think that saying that either side, taken as a whole, is arguing in support of a presupposed conclusion, is unjust. There are clearly members of either stance who seek to prove a point. And there are others seeking to honestly follow the text and the scholarship underlying it wherever it goes.

In other words, when one says that X is the clear conclusion, he’s wrong … because if he were right, there wouldn’t be the dispute that exists on whether X is in fact the clear conclusion.

But the bottom line on this is in fact one on which we can agree. Chaim, would you be so kind as to explain what the Rabbis pointed out as the simplest precis of Torah, that which one might use if asked to explicate Torah while standing on one foot? Because Jesus borrowed that and taught it authoritatively. And what it has to say should, IMO, be the underlying factor in whatever conclusions we may reach on Biblical scholarship w/r/t homosexuality in this thread.

[Rucksinator]

I have The New Oxford Annotated Bible (NRSV). Let’s see how it translated 1 Corinthians 6:9 – 10…

“…Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, (10) thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers – none of these will inherit the kingdom of God”

There’s also a footnote: “The Greek terms translated male prostitutes and sodomites do not refer to “homosexuals,” as in inappropriate older translations; “masturbators” and male prostitutes might be a better translation.”

We could continue to trade translations, but eventually we’ll need to get into the actual Greek. By the way, I’ve done plenty of research myself, although I can’t read Greek. But perhaps there are some uses of “arsenokoites” that I don’t know about, where the context is clear that it’s referring to homosexuality. If you have evidence that arsenokoites means “homosexual”, then please share.

Regarding Romans, it’s not a matter of translation, but simply of reading it in context. Start reading at verse 22, and you’ll see that their sin was idolatry, and the punnishment was God changing their sexual orientation. Living in a jail cell is not a sin or a crime; it is the punishment. Paying a fine itself is not a sin. You are confusing the crime with the punishment.

@Shodan

Homosexual and lesbian sex is, clearly and unambiguously, condemned as sinful.

Assumming you’re referring to the NT…. CITE? Paul’s supposed condemnation of homosexuality is anything but clear.
P.S. I’m not going to get into Leviticus. Most of the people that I deal with are happy to condemn homosexuality between bites of shrimp and catfish, so I haven’t done a lot of research about those 2 verses. And I’m not foolish enough to get into an OT debate with CMK or Zev.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Rucksinator

Regarding Romans, it’s not a matter of translation, but simply of reading it in context. Start reading at verse 22, and you’ll see that their sin was idolatry, and the punnishment was God changing their sexual orientation. Living in a jail cell is not a sin or a crime; it is the punishment. Paying a fine itself is not a sin. You are confusing the crime with the punishment.

I just wanted to emphasize the bolded part because it’s something I should have emphasized myself. The loss of sexual control was a consequence of angering God, not the cause of it, and it was GOD who made them go gay. If God had given them boils would that mean it was a sin to have a boil?

[drhess]

@Diogenes the Cynic

I just wanted to emphasize the bolded part because it’s something I should have emphasized myself. The loss of sexual control was a consequence of angering God, not the cause of it, and it was GOD who made them go gay. If God had given them boils would that mean it was a sin to have a boil?

It does seem a bit odd, however, to punish somebody by making them either a slut or gay, depending on how we read it. I mean, it doesn’t make homosexual conduct sound great.

I would really like to hear people opine some on the homo-eroic passages that were quoted earlier.

Additional note: the idea that a more gay friendly or neutral interpretation of these passages occuring when gay culture is moving into the mainstream is evidence of poor reasoning or sloopy argument is rather silly. When else in time would people claim that homosexuality is not a sin after prior authorities in a rabidly homophobic time said the that it was a sin and right there in the bible? It’s a two way street, baby.

[Rucksinator]

@drhess

It does seem a bit odd, however, to punish somebody by making them either a slut or gay, depending on how we read it.

My memory is foggy, so I’m going to have to ask for help on this, but isn’t there a story in the OT where God turned a king(? I thinking there are some z’s in the name, but that doesn’t narrow it down a lot) into a raving beast. He lived in the woods like an animal for some time. Can someone clarify this a bit for me? Because it would set a precedent for God coming up with some pretty creative and harsh punishments. (For those of you who have an SO, how would it affect your relationship if your sexual orientation suddenly changed? Pretty harsh, but also pretty creative. I guess you can do that kind of stuff if you’re God.)

[Rucksinator]

@drhess

I would really like to hear people opine some on the homo-eroic passages that were quoted earlier.

If you’re referring to post #11, in the thread that I linked to earlier, one of our Jewish scholars (Zev or CMK, I can’t remember which) gave explanations to the David/Jonathan verses that convinced me to drop that line of argumentation from the presentation that I had to give on the subject of homosexuality and the Bible for a religion class that I took.* (I wasn’t about to present evidence that could easily be shot down.) I think that it’s somewhere around the 3rd page, though. But if you’re really looking for info on this subject, I think that you need to go spend a coupld hours reading that thread. This has all been done before.

• Holy run-on sentence, Batman!

[Loopydude]

Sigh. Arsenokoites is a term coined by Paul, and likely inspired by the Septuagint: *Kai meta arsenos ou koiméthés koitén gynaikeian * (Lev 18:22). The translation we all know. This has been so beaten to death I still cannot understand it. We’ve had 2000 years to hash it out, and since the first translations in the Latin Vulgate (concubitores masculorum), the meaning has been taken to be pretty much a “man bedder” (or “man fucker” if you prefer). Believe what you want, folks, but as a Hellenic Jew, it’s ludicrous to not even allow that Paul perhaps was being generally condemnatory towards male-on-male sexual behavior. Why he chose that word is somewhat mysterious, as he had other more specific words at his disposal, but maybe he didn’t want to be specific! Maybe he wanted a blanket condemnation! It’s not an outrageous suggestion. Whether he even had much of an appreciation for or comprehension of the differences between those who merely frequented buggered boys, and those who lived in committed relationships with men, seems hardly relevant, given what we know of him through his own words. He had rather repressive views on sexuality in general (marriage is at best a compromise as far as Paul is concerned), so I fail to see how it’s such a stretch he’d be especially bothered by buttfucking and all those who do it, whatever their proclivities. Why on Earth wouldn’t he look darkly upon what we generally recognize as “homosexuality”? Are there any examples of Hellenic Jews praising man-on-man sex based on their theology? Or for any reason? Even a neutral position?

It all strikes me as tortured logic and wishful thinking to assert otherwise with any hope of certainty, or even likelihood. Surely it will remain a bone of contention forever among liberal and conservative scholars, but regardless of their assertions, far more explicit language has been around for about 1500 years. Applying such abstruse nitpicking of koine Greek is never going to change the traditionalist view (which is quite possibly correct), and liberals will sieze upon whatever crumbs of hope support their conceits anyway, so they can hardly be taken without some mighty grains of salt themselves. In the end, if it’s really come to that, nothing is resolved, because we cannot ask the Apostle himself. In any event, I’d lay a wager of any amount that if one could ask Paul for clarification, the answer would likely not please the liberals. Few, if any, even among those who still feel arsenokoietes is such a debatable term would cut Paul that kind of slack.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Loopydude

Sigh. Arsenokoites is a term coined by Paul, and likely inspired by the Septuagint: *Kai meta arsenos ou koiméthés koitén gynaikeian * (Lev 18:22). The translation we all know. This has been so beaten to death I still cannot understand it. We’ve had 2000 years to hash it out, and since the first translations in the Latin Vulgate (concubitores masculorum), the meaning has been taken to be pretty much a “man bedder” (or “man fucker” if you prefer). Believe what you want, folks, but as a Hellenic Jew, it’s ludicrous to not even allow that Paul perhaps was being generally condemnatory towards male-on-male sexual behavior. Why he chose that word is somewhat mysterious, as he had other more specific words at his disposal, but maybe he didn’t want to be specific! Maybe he wanted a blanket condemnation! It’s not an outrageous suggestion. Whether he even had much of an appreciation for or comprehension of the differences between those who merely frequented buggered boys, and those who lived in committed relationships with men, seems hardly relevant, given what we know of him through his own words. He had rather repressive views on sexuality in general (marriage is at best a compromise as far as Paul is concerned), so I fail to see how it’s such a stretch he’d be especially bothered by buttfucking and all those who do it, whatever their proclivities. Why on Earth wouldn’t he look darkly upon what we generally recognize as “homosexuality”? Are there any examples of Hellenic Jews praising man-on-man sex based on their theology? Or for any reason? Even a neutral position?

1. Arsenos means “male,” not “man.” It’s an adjective not a noun. That makes the intention of that prefix more ambiguous in the compound. is it a person who beds males or is it a male who beds? (or fucks)

2. When koites was used as a suffix in compounds it always indicated the penetrative partner (the “fucker”), never the passive. That means it can’t apply to both partners in an act and cannot be a generic term for all homosexual activity.

3. There are two known instances of the word being applied to heterosexuals, once for male prostitutes who service female clients and another instance in which a reference is made to men practicing “arsenokotes” with their wives. If this particular vice can be practiced by heterosexuals - indeed between a man and his wife - then how can it mean “homosexual?”

4. Paul was teaching in cities where the practice of male prostitution was common and where most of the prostitutes were young male slaves.

5. There are two instances in Greek literature where arsenokoites is used to indicate homosexual rape. Once in Aristede’s Apology where it refers to the rape of Ganymede by Zeus and once in Hippolytus’ Refutatio, where it refers to the rape of Adam by an evil angel named Naas.

6. Other than that the word is mainly found on vice lists. The Thesaurus Lingua Graecae data base shows 42 lists most of which fall into the following formulation. Pornoi, moixoi, malakoi, arsenokoitai, kleptai, pleonektai, methusoi, loidoroi. “Prostitutes, adulterers, the (morally) soft, arsenokoitai, thieves, greedy ones, drunkards, (verbal) abusers.” Sometimes arsenokoitai is followed by andrapodistais kai epiorkrois, “slave traders and perjurers.”

As you can see those lists do not offer up much context. The fact that arsenokoites always follows immediately after malakoi echoes Paul but still is not that helpful. Malakos means “soft,” amd some have attempted to translate it as “effeminate” but there seems to have been no such connotation in actual use. It meant morally weak or undisciplined and it was often applied to masturbaters or womanizers. In some translations of the NT, it is, in fact, translated as “masturbaters” and I believe that’s also what it means in Modern Greek.

Still, “masturbaters,” doesn’t help us with arsenokoitai but given paul’s emphasis on chastity, and given the other factors listed above, I think a very plausible case can be made that he was referring to the patronization of teenage male prostitutes…to pederasty. I think that a translation of arsenokoitai “pederasts” is at least as reasonable as “homosexuals,” if not more so.

That doesn’t mean that Paul necessarily would have approved of consenusal, adult, monogomous same-sex relationships, it just means he didn’t say anything about them. The question before us is not what did Paul personally believe about non-exploitive same-sex relationships but what does the Bible say about them. At least as far as the New Testament goes, it’s not clear that it addresses them at all.

[Loopydude]

Bigger sigh. Well, we’re never going to agree on this, so I may as well give up. You win, forever, as I have not a dog in this tiff at all. That the roots of the word in Leviticus should be read as more-or-less as bedding a male is beyond dispute. If the source is Leviticus, the other stuff is probably irrelevant, IMO. But neither you nor I will ever know. Boswell and Martin have said their piece. David Wright, to give one example from the conservative point of view, which is nonetheless no less cogent, disagrees. Where do we go from there? All extant references to the word come after Paul, likely depend entirely on him inventing it, and can hence provide no clues to origin. Why in those contexts the likely translation should be considered superior to what was guessed at by the first Latin worshippers and translators (who likely predated some of your examples) of the Pauline context will remain forever obscure to me, as will the true meaning of this word to everyone.

[cmkeller]

Diogenes:

Upon what do you base this assertion?

Upon the fact that they actually lived amongst those types of societies, or were not far removed from those who had.

Archaeology has proven a lot of assumptions to be wrong.

And I’m not saying that it hasn’t. But how many of those assumptions - other than where actual matters of religious belief are concerned - were based on, or echoed in the Talmud?

It isn’t necessary to know the authors’ names in order to divine some things about their literary intent. A lot of extra-Biblical information can be applied to the analysis which takes into account historical, cultural and political contexts of authorship. Even correcting traditional dates of authorship can shed new light. We understand Daniel much better when we know that it was written during Maccabean revolt rather than the Babylonian exile during which it is set. Don’t pooh pooh empirical method.

I’m not one to pooh-pooh empirical method, but certainly trying to analyze the thought processes of an individual (and that term can be accurately applied even if you don’t believe - as I’m sure you don’t - in the Bible being the work of one being, because in the end, it was one person who took these various precursor dosuments and delivered them as a single volume) isn’t reasonably possible when the individual can’t be placed in a specific context. Your example of Daniel is an excellent illustration of that (not that I agree with the view that posits Maccabean authorship). Some things might be understood one way if (according to a multiple-author theory) the Bible were compiled in the Judean kingdom vs the Northern kingdom; the political contexts of those kingdoms varied wildly from one king to the next - within a century of the Judean kingdom, the Biblicist’s context would be different if he lived under Ahaz or Menasseh than if he lived under Hezekiah or Josiah. (And obviously I’m low-balling the antiquity of the Bible there; the context could even have been the unified kingdom of Saul, David and Solomon or earlier!) There’s no way that by declaring “author undetermined” you can develop any meaningful sense of context that will assist in analyzing the author’s intentions.

I’m not quite sure I understand what you mean by this paragraph. What I’m saying is that the religious bias of contemporary readers is not necessarily the same as the religious bias of the authors. You’re saying that people with a “gay rights agenda” are prejudicing their research with pre-conceived conclusions. I’m saying that you can say the same thing about people with doctrinal agendas. The agenda of the authors is exactly what we are trying to determine.

My point there is that you’ve engaged in circular reasoning. If the Bible defines the religion, then how can the religion be a source of bias about interpreting the Bible? The interpretation would determine what the religious bias should be, not vice versa.

I think it’s rather optimistic and generous to assume that there is any perfect line of transmission going back to the authors. If that was the case we wouldn’t have students today who think Moses wrote the Torah or that Daniel was written in the exile.

I’m going to let that last line slide…I have no intention of getting into a general authorship debate. That said, can you point to where you believe the purported line of transmission breaks down?

Polycarp:

But the bottom line on this is in fact one on which we can agree. Chaim, would you be so kind as to explain what the Rabbis pointed out as the simplest precis of Torah, that which one might use if asked to explicate Torah while standing on one foot?

Why certainly, Polycarp (bolding mine). Hillel said to the potential convert who challenged him thusly, “Do not do to others what is hateful unto you. The rest is commentary, go and learn it.”

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

Loopy,
don’t get me wrong, I pretty much agree with you. My intent is not to convince anyone that my case is correct but just to convince them that a case exists and that it’s not frivolous. The flat statement that “Paul condemned homosexuality” is not so damn cut and dried as many would have it. I’m not trying to say that it’s ridiculous or even unlikely that Paul would have disapproved of all same-sex relationships but I also think that since the most common homosexual practice he would have seen involved hiring “rent boys” that it’s reasonable to infer that such was the practice he was probably singling out.

@cmkeller

Diogenes:

Upon the fact that they actually lived amongst those types of societies, or were not far removed from those who had.

I’m going to leave this alone because it will only lead to an endless debate about the accuracy of written Talmudic tradition. I only meant to say that some of the historical assumptions of that tradition have been challenged by other evidence.

And I’m not saying that it hasn’t. But how many of those assumptions - other than where actual matters of religious belief are concerned - were based on, or echoed in the Talmud?

I want to tread lightly here and avoid offense but what about the assumption that Mosaic Law was actually given to Moses? How much Talmudic tradition takes into account the real political and cultural context of when that Law was really written? How much does the Tamud reflect on what was known of Canaanite Temple practices and how Judaism responded defensively to those practices?

Did Talmudic writers of the 2nd or 3rd century CE really have a complete grasp of how the Torah was influenced by the political and cultural events surrounding its authorship a thousand years before?

I know you’ll say there was an oral tradition but I believe the reliability of that tradition relies at least to some extent on faith. I do not say that to disparage it or even to say that it can’t be accurate. It’s an empirical position only. What cannot be proven cannot be proven.

I’m not one to pooh-pooh empirical method, but certainly trying to analyze the thought processes of an individual (and that term can be accurately applied even if you don’t believe - as I’m sure you don’t - in the Bible being the work of one being, because in the end, it was one person who took these various precursor dosuments and delivered them as a single volume) isn’t reasonably possible when the individual can’t be placed in a specific context. Your example of Daniel is an excellent illustration of that (not that I agree with the view that posits Maccabean authorship).

Editorial intent is certainly taken into consideration but editorial intent cannot be simplified into or made synonomous with authorial intent. An editor is capable, for all kinds of reasons, of selecting a book which may not reflect a completely perfect accord with the agenda of the editor. Editors may attempt to merge and unify multiple originally diverse or even contradictory traditions or books into a single, coherent body with a single overlying purpose or agenda. That process is called syncretism and it’s a process which is examined separately from the authorial intent with each individual book.

Some things might be understood one way if (according to a multiple-author theory) the Bible were compiled in the Judean kingdom vs the Northern kingdom; the political contexts of those kingdoms varied wildly from one king to the next - within a century of the Judean kingdom, the Biblicist’s context would be different if he lived under Ahaz or Menasseh than if he lived under Hezekiah or Josiah. (And obviously I’m low-balling the antiquity of the Bible there; the context could even have been the unified kingdom of Saul, David and Solomon or earlier!) There’s no way that by declaring “author undetermined” you can develop any meaningful sense of context that will assist in analyzing the author’s intentions.

The fact that you’re aware of those new theories is one of the things I respect about you, Chaim. You’re not afraid to read up on this stuff and make an informed decsion as to what you believe… Even if I disagree with your opinion, I respect that it’s an informed opinion and that you’re not lazy in how you arrive at them.
Having said that, there are ways that some books can be dated from internal textual evidence and then that date can be compared to archaeological or other documentary evidence to learn some things about the historical, political, cultural and literary context in which it was written. We are not blind when it comes to finding context and context informs about probable authorial intent.

My point there is that you’ve engaged in circular reasoning. If the Bible defines the religion, then how can the religion be a source of bias about interpreting the Bible? The interpretation would determine what the religious bias should be, not vice versa.

But the Bible does not define the religion. The interpretation of the bible defines the religion. The Bible cannot define the religion because the the original intent of the authors (in my opinion) cannot be known with certainty. You know yourself how differently books like Isaiah and Daniel are read in some Christian traditions than how they are read in Jewish tradition.

I’m going to let that last line slide…I have no intention of getting into a general authorship debate. That said, can you point to where you believe the purported line of transmission breaks down?

Respectfully, CM (and I mean that), this alleged line of transmission is your own assertion and therefore your burden to prove, not mine to refute.

[Loopydude]

@Diogenes the Cynic

My intent is not to convince anyone that my case is correct but just to convince them that a case exists and that it’s not frivolous. The flat statement that “Paul condemned homosexuality” is not so damn cut and dried as many would have it.

Can’t argue with that!