This is complete and utter hogwash.
It’s not hogwash; as has been discussed already, it simply relies on an interpretation of a couple of ambiguous Greek words as ‘partner’ rather than boy, son, slave or servant. It sounds like a big stretch to me but it’s not impossible.
Amen- The gay reading on this actually has Christ affirming a pederastic relatonship.
Hogwash is a mild term for it.
You are right. I was being kind when I said hogwash.
Before you play the fundie card, let me assure you that if I was absolutely convinced that Christ had nothing against homosexuality, and gay myself ,I’d still be offended by this tripe.
It’s intellectually dishonest. It’s not a “stretch”; it’s a “stench.”
I don’t think that’s clear at all. It’s certainly not how Jude understood that passage, for he described the Sodomites as going after “strange flesh.” Furthermore, there is absolutely no mention of inhospitality as a capital crime in the Old Testament, or even as a severe sin. Homosexuality, on the other hand, was condemned quite strenuously.
One might disagree with these prohibitions against homosexuality, but I think that’s beside the point. The point is that dismissing their offense as mere inhospitality requires a strained reading of the text – both the immediate passage and the greater context. It also requires inserting a harsh condemnation of inhospitality that is not echoed anywhere by any of the Biblical writers.
Yes, and dudes should read Cor in full “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.”
So drunkards get the same road to damnation, as well as most of Wall Street.
We don’t know if it was a gay couple, and I believe that’s part of the intent. It is obvious from the scripture that the centurion is a sinner as he said “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof.”, but we are all sinners, even Simon/Peter said something similar "“Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” Luke 5:8x. I don’t believe it matters what the sin is, Jesus comes to help the sinner, whatever that sin may be.
The two passages the OP cites are the only passages in the Hebrew Scripture that I am aware of which are commonly taken to refer to homosexuality. In the case of Sodom, this is clearly erroneous from the point of view of traditional Jewish interpretation. Here is an account of the destruction of Sodom from an Orthodox Jewish source; although this source does feel that Judaism unequivocally forbids homosexuality based on the Leviticus cites, you will note that it is not even mentioned in their Sodom story. Although Christian interpretations may differ, Jews (who did, after all, write the text!) have always believed that Sodom was destroyed for its cruelty (going well beyond mere “inhospitality”) to strangers and the poor (note that this account bolsters this charge with several other folk tales of outrageous, though non-sexual, Sodomite behavior that didn’t make it into the Bible).
As for the Leviticus cites, their plain, and traditionally understood, meaning is clearly to forbid homosexuality (at least male homosexuality, though traditional Jewish law extends the proscription to lesbianism as well). Liberal theologian Rabbi Arthur Waskow argues here that this prohibition should no longer apply in our time.
First, it’s not strictly “inhospitality” in and of itself but the whole suite of sins associated with being selfish, greedy, living in luxury, and uncharitable towards the needy, for which Sodom is condemned. Second, we miss the importance of hospitality on the Middle East. There is a story in the Arabic literature about a sheikh who had vowed revenge on the killer of his father. Said killer became lost in the desert, and turned up half dead from starvation and thirst near the sheikh’s home. The sheikh took him in, he and his household nursed him back to health, hosted him lavishly – because it was his duty to do so under the law of hospitality. It’s a far different and more important thing than what our culture conceives of it as.
Thirdly, it’s not altogether clear that the sexual immorality Jude condemns equals homosexuality. Strange flesh translates heteros sarx – different (fleshly) body – and appears to have meant the attempted rape of angels, God’s messengers – whether they had appeared as young men, women, or whatever.
This is not to address directly whether the Bible is, or can be, read as condemning homosexual behavior and/or desire. Rather, it’s to put the proper perspective on the Spdom and Jude passages – sin is condemned; not necessarily ‘the sin of homosexuality’.
That could easily mean the flesh of strangers, or the flesh of angels as Polycarp says. He didn’t say ‘male flesh’ after all.
I’m astonished that you’ve said this, you cannot have read even a significant portion of the Bible. Hospitality was esteemed as one of the most important virtues in the Jewish tradition and there’s literally dozens of references to its importance all the way through the Bible, both Old and New testaments:
[http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=937&letter=H&search=hospitality"]http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=937&letter=H&search=hospitality"]http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=937&letter=H&search=hospitality](http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=937&letter=H&search=hospitality)
That link refers to dozens of other references scattered throughout the Bible as well. There’s a story in Judges where a civil war was started because of a breach of hospitality laws. So - completely contrary to what you have said - given the fact that hospitality was valued so highly throughout the entire Bible, and given that there’s not even a clear reference to homosexuality in the Sodom story, I think it’s almost a strained reading not to view the passage as being a condemnation of inhospitality.
In what way is heterosexual intercourse any different? Nothing you quoted specifically mentions homosexuality or could even be interpreted as a reference to homosexuality.
This being GQ and all, you might want to try a little bit harder than, “this conflicts with my worldview, and is therefore wrong!”
Pederastic my left earlobe! We do not know the age of the person for whose healing the Centurion asks, only that he’s described as “boy” (Matthew) or “favored youth” (Luke) in terms that denotatively mean “not-yet-adult male” (including adolescents) and connotatively were used for servants. We do know – because the Gospel writers tell us – that the Centurion loved his pais or doulos – we do not know if that love was affectionate, compassionate, romantic/sexual, or what. Tbonham gave one reading as an example of where Christ might have dealt compassionately with someone gay – and if that reading is accurate, it was an erastes/eromenos relationship, not child molestation.
Me, as with the David/Jonathan story, I take a neutral view: It might mean something completely non-sexual, it might mean something romantic/sexual, and we don’t know. It is a mistake to read back our cultural preconceptions to try to understand an earlier culture’s behavior patterns – this leads to things like the Sermon on the Mount passage in Matthew being taken as a verbatim transcription of one of Jesus’s sermons. (We know, as surely as such things can be known, that it was not, but a probably-mostly-accurate reconstruction.) The pais may have been a boy being raised in the Centurion’s household, he may have been a beloved favorite servant, he may have been the Centurion’s eromenos – and we don’t know which is true.
It’s not one vs the other, it’s that violation of the first commandment will lead to other violations of the law. Whenever we put our own desire ahead of God’s will for our lives it will lead to sin of one type or another. This particular path we are discussing just leads to homosexuality as the method of dealing with pain of sin.
From the NT scriptures it appears that all sexual perversion, including homosexuality/lesbianism is a result of prior sin.
I’m not sure where you’re trying to go with that. The NT makes it pretty clear that all sin is a result of prior sin. The book of Hebrews goes all the way back to Adam as the one man who introduced it and Jesus as the one man who removed it. In an OT passage, there’s talk of the sins of the father being carried down seven generations.
The fact that homosexuality results from this chain of sin doesn’t really tell us anything about homosexuality itself and/or why there would be a ban on it. I’d consider a shoe fetish a form of sexual perversion and we can argue about the source of that desire, but there is an appropriate context for it. (i.e. there’s nothing wrong with having your wife dress up in sexy shoes). In contrast, there are passages that state (or have been interpreted to state) that homosexuality is a sin in any context.
Maybe I’m getting confused with the French word, but I’ve always thought that “pederastic” meant “homosexual” and would apply to a relationship between two adults also, not meaning only “pedophilic tendencies by an adult male but only directed toward young persons of the same sex”.
With that being said, I don’t see why Jesus would have such an objection towards gay couples. Unless somewhere in the Bible Jesus himself speaks out against homosexuality?
Homosexuality gets condemned a total of what, twice? in the OT?
Say what? Centuries of Jewish scholars (who have almost universally condemned homosexuality) have said that Sodom’s crime was not being kind to strangers. It’s a strained reading of the text to say otherwise.
Pederasty is sex between an adult male and an adolescent boy (i.e. Michael Jackson style relationships).
With regards to Sodom. The story about the angels is irrelevant. God had already made the decision to destroy Sodom before the angels ever even showed up.
Well, it’s not irrelevant, because it shows the sinfulness of Sodom, whether that sinfulness is homosexual rape particularly, or inhospitality generally. It’s not in itself the reason that Sodom (and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim…everyone forgets those cities) is destroyed, but it’s an example of their wickedness.
Just for the record, MJ did not apparently have sex with those boys, even though we all know there was something skeevy and unnatural going on. :eek:
Nor were they adolescent, as I recall.
They were ages 9-12, which is usually called pre-adolescent.