What parts of the Bible ban homosexuality?

Great Debates
121

Since any debate on the matter is unwinnable (and personally the only reason I give a damn what the Bible says on any matter is because of it being cited by people who invariably don’t read Greek and couldn’t tell you the difference between a Paroshim and a Zadikim or between a tetrarch and a terrapin yet feel they’re experts on interpreting it for the modern world), please pardon a slight hijack.

Something I’ve wondered is- several times Paul calls on slaves to serve their masters obediently:

The above is from Colossians but is echoed in Ephesians, Romans, Corinthians, and other Pauline books. At this time it was perfectly legal and even common- and Paul would most certainly have known this- for wealthy men who were so inclined to have sex with male slaves, and some slaves entered into slavery voluntarily (it beat starving to death). So long as it was relatively discreet and the master was the penetrative partner there was no real social stigma to it either in the Roman and Greek worlds (though no doubt there was some “eww” factors to some). Brothels contained both male and female slaves.
So, this in mind, could it be argued that Paul, if he said having sex with other men was inherently sinful, could side item that with " unless of course you’re a sex slave, in which case- back up that bumper, shake the tail feather and give him all you got, amigo!" And suppose now that the male slave (catamite, concubitor, whatever) likes his job, even enjoys sex with his master— is he still committing a sin by submitting?

122

I’m not one who will say that the Bible is inerrant. But I do think that there are some pretty serious implications behind the phrase “divinely inspired”. If the Bible is, in fact, divinely inspired then I think it carries along a number of things with it. For instance, I believe that God is omniscient. If he would divinely inspire words where important parts of the message are consistently mistranslated, IMO it is inconsistent with the divine part of the inspiration. To this end, I believe that the most important stuff, like salvation and sins, are not going to be lost in translation.

So, my argument is the exact opposite, that you can have a reasonable amount of certainty in what the message says because it is divinely inspired, not the other way around as you two suggest.

123

In a previous post you said that the Bible was divinely inspired. Now is it just parts of the Bible?

124

You are grossly underestimating the incompetence, bias, and occasional downright malice of humans. No matter how inspired the original text was, if the translater writes english text which does not mean the same thing, then that, as they say, is that.

(And, the “important stuff”? Homosexuality is mentioned, what, half a dozen times, if even that often, in the entire bible?)

125

No, that was just poor word choice on my part; I was trying to keep the point brief, but I can see where the confusion is. I was trying to say that if the divinely inspired message is lost in translation, IMO that it is inconistent with the omnscience of the divine being that gave the inspiration.

However, to that end, each individual word, phrase, or possibly even several sentences aren’t exactly important. The important part of the message from, say, the New Testament is stuff like who Jesus is, why he was here, how we obtain salvation, what we should and shouldn’t do, etc. It would take a whole lot of mistranslations to change the underlying message, but that would also be easily noticeable.

That doesn’t seem to be the case here to me and, having seen the arguments on both sides, while I can now see how the argument that homosexuality isn’t explicitly banned is phrased, it looks like it contradicts my assertion that the message won’t be consistently lost in translation where, that would be the case if it were true that it wasn’t banned.

However, it REALLY doesn’t matter because the underlying message of salvation is still unequivocally clear and, even if it is a sin, it isn’t any more serious than any other sin, so it really only makes a difference IF you believe it is a sin AND YET you continue to do it. And if you claim to have salvation, and yet continue to knowingly indulge in things you know to be sinful, then you missed the entire point.

126

According to scripture homosexuality is the result of sin and in itself will incur a curse, so is sexual promiscuity and adultery, there is a form of straight sex that in itself is not under a curse, but a blessing. So the morality is not the same. That does not make the straight person sinless, just that homosexuality is not a sin of his. But if you violate any part of the law it’s the same guilt wise as if you violated the whole law.

Gay and straight people are all sinners, but as pointed out above straigh sex is not necessarily a sin, though homosexuality is, if you are under the law.

There is no reason to condemn any sinner, we all need the salvation that Jesus offers, we all need the love of God and His forgiveness and healing.

127

It would still be nice to see some cites for known scholars with similar positions.

128

God’s Word is eternal, just as completely valid today as back then.

129

I also think you’re missing the implications of what “divinely inspired” means. If God is omniscient, which is a pretty standard belief in Christianity, then it just wouldn’t make sense if the entire message is lost to posterity when it’s been translated to another language. If the message is lost, then it basically means that salvation is only for those who could read the initial languages before they were translated and everyone else is damned.

And I, quite frankly, think you’re over-estimating the human element. Yes, there’s going to be incompetence and bias and possibly even malice, but it’s not like it’s being translated by just one person or that translations aren’t constantly re-evaluated by scholars. The original Greek is still there.

So yes, it doesn’t necessarily say exactly the same thing, but that doesn’t mean that the translated meaning is necessarily different in a way that loses the intent. That is, there culture didn’t have a concept of homsexuality as a sexual orientation akin to what we have today, but more as just performing homosexual acts. I think a more important question to be asking is, if they were trying to discuss the concept that we have today, how exactly would they address it. It seems to me that it’s fairly reasonable to say that, absent that concept, the fact that they would be prohibiting things that are similar is indicative that they would likely prohibit that concept as well.

Please don’t read more into what I said than I did; I never said that homosexuality is an “important” part. It’s by no means the most important thing in there because, as I said, it’s just another sin, but the fact that it was repeated in multiple places is likely indicative of something.

130

Positions on what, exactly? That the definition of the word is unknown? Try some of Shodan’s links.

131

Even if I completely alter the text to completely different words that mean completely different things? Cool!

Well, if he was serious about this, he wouldn’t leave it to man at all, would he? (Which is an argument that the translators were divinely inspired, I suppose. For all the different translations!)

I still know people who use the KJV. In my opinion, there were almost certainly tremendous margins for error, bias, and intentional manipulation in the translation process for that text. Probably less so with more recent translations, but there is demonstrably still disagreement and debate as to what is correct. This thread is my cite. :smiley:

And you are now doing your own editorializing on the meaning of the text, expanding prohibitions from stated sins to “similar” sins. You are basically writing scripture in your own head! Doesn’t that feel empowering! (To me, it’s scary when other people do it. Though if I was religious, I would totally twist scripture to my own evil ends.)

Truth be told, especially in an instance like this where there are only half a dozen mentions in the entire book, and some of the relevent words still have ambiguous or unknown meaning, it strikes me as very easy and even likely that the intent of the text would be perturbed in translation. (Whether the crucifiction was alledged to occur, not so much.)

Okay. But given the size of the book, and how rarely it was mentioned (with the translations in some places being uncertain, even), I think that is indicitave of something.

132

Somebody accused Shodan of dodging the request for cites. As someone who is a bit undecided on this issue I’d like to see what kind of scholarly support your claim of ambiguousness has.

133

What would the nature of such support be. How would you support the thesis " ‘Marzipolous’ does not mean ‘Contrary’ "? Or the thesis " ‘Marzipolous’ is of undetermined definition’ "?

134

How about a semi-scholarly treatise on the different possibilities and their likelyhood?

135

The meaning of the word is unknown. i am not arguing for any definition. I’m saying that nobody knows what the word means. A number of links already posted say that nobody knows what the word means. I’ve also given a summary of known instances of how the word is attested in Greek. You’re asking me to cite a negative here. It’s incumbant upon the person arguing for a specific definition who needs to back it up with attestations.

Anyone who wants to argue that arsenokoites means “homosexual” needs to explain why the word can be found in reference to married heterosexuals.

136

You realize, of course, that the collection of books that we commonly call the “Bible” was put together by the vote of men, many years after the books were written, at the direction of Emporer Constantine - who at the time, wasn’t even a “Christian”, right? Further, you also realize that not only were a number of books left out (they didnt fit the model) purportedly written by the apostles (Gospel of Thomas, Gospel Of Peter, etc…) but that that version of the “Bible” was later revised to exclude books that the original editors chose?

So, who decided that the original works were “Inspired of God”? And if they were, what made later people decide “no, these really aren’t after all”?

And, if you want to talk about lost in translation - In the book of Acts, Peter and Paul are arguing over what rules had to be followed - and they had to come to an agreement, doesn’t seem so divinely inspired if direct followers of Christ, who heard the message ‘personally’ have already started to differ on the instructions.

So, within a couple of years (generously) they were already debating Christ’s message and ‘rules’ for the followers, 300 years later they were deciding what books belonged, a few hundred more years and they are again disagreeing over which of those books “really” belonged…

So, seems the “Lost in translation” happened long before we entered into this debate.

So, even if you get beyond all that and decide that the “Bible” is still the “Word of God”, you still have to figure out if the message still applies today as it did then - clearly not all of them do - and if some don’t, then that raises the question what you are going to pick and choose to follow out of it. And if you get to pick and choose, who’s to say that your picking is any better than anyone elses?

137

I know what you think. I don’t know Greek but the idea that “nobody knows what it means” seems like an overstatement. Is there always some room for debate? I’m sure there is. I’d like to see some some discussion by scholars. If you don’t (or can’t) supply that just say so and I’ll go to someone else.

138

I think the implication is simpler than that - There are many words that have a certain range of meaning - thanks to other textual references, a translation can be offered.

In this case, it seems that there are so few references of it, or there are so many with no distinct pattern, (clearly references x here, y there, s somewhere else) that being able to say with certainty that the author meant Y is nearly impossible.

139

If we are talking arsenokaites, Diogenes is stating more or less the exact truth. Paul apparently coined the term – it never appears before him writings, and every reference after is either a quote of, commentary on, or allusion to his use of it.

It consists of the roots for “male” and “bed”/“lay with”, and Paul decided to use it in place of the dozens of words for “guy who engages in gay sex” that were in common use in Greek. There’s a strong suggestion that it refers to those who patronize the enslaved boy prostitutes of Corinth, for which the city was notorious even by last 1st Century standards. There’s a suggestion it was coined to echo the rather odd phrasing of Lev. 18:22 which conjoins “man” and “lying” (reclining, as for sex, not prevaricating). But we cannot be sure of what Paul meant, Translators have rendered it “abusers of themselves”, “abusers of themselves with mankind,” “homosexual offenders,” and several other uses – but, like my comments above, these are educated guesses. There are a number of good sources on the passage – mine are mostly secondary, so I’ll wait to see if anyone has good scholarly cites before giving htem.

140

Yeah that’s a big maybe. Or maybe a loving relationship between any two people is fine in the eyes of God and sex doesn’t make it wrong. Maybe it’s homophobic Christians who fight to keep gays from being married that are the real unrepentant sinners.