Lev 20:13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination…
Well, a purely gay guy normally wouldn’t lie with a woman, so he doesn’t have sex with guys the same way he has sex with women. Bisexuals, on the other hand, lie with men sort of as they lie with women. So God may just be saying “Maketh up thy mind, which are ye?” This is also a warning from The Lord for gay men not to sleep with bisexual men. Note that the passage says that if only one of the partners has sex with a guy the same way he does with a woman then both of the partners are abominable.
Is this a facetious reading? You betcha. But it makes just as much sense as a lot of Biblical interpretation I’ve seen.
Sodom was punished for being rude to the angels. The dictionary definition of Sodomy is a specious argument at best. Homosexuality came to be associated with 'Sodomites" but that has no relevance to the meaning of the story in Genesis
Me too.
Did you go to a religious school? No objective religion prof would ever give such an unequivocal answer to a question which has no settled answer in academia. There are settled doctrinal positions but there is no answer which is objectively known. Did you go to a Bible college? Your profs gave you doctrine, not facts.
I was reading a “gay Pentecostal” site that translated it “If two men lie together in a woman’s bed, they have done confusion”, which could support your proposal. That could also forbid MFM threesomes or polyandry.
Zev, I’m checking the Q for C’tian Dopers thread. Alas, it pretty much covers what I would say, I’ll try to think of something to contribute tho.
Unfortunately for this interpretation, it does not say “as he lieth with a woman.” It says “the layings of a woman,” i.e., the way women are laid in general, not specifically the way that that specific person would lay a woman.
This phrase also belies Diogenes’ limited interpretation. Surely the qualifier “the layings of a woman” indicate that any form of sex that a man can have with a woman (which would include within a loving, exclusive relationship) is forbidden for him to have with a man.
I had two profs who specialized heavily in Semitic languages, and both knew ancient Greek like the back of their hands. They knew how to read the sources, and prefered the least value-laden approach to interpretation. Zev put it best above. Lev. 18 says what it says. You can imbue it with as much semiotic b.s. as you like, speculate about early Judaism juxtaposed with ancient Caananite rituals until you are blue, or you can read the text right off the page. There’s a strong academic contingent that insists objection to homosexual acts is relevant only to religious practice and separation from the Gentiles, essentially like keeping kosher and maintaining overall fealty to YHWH. Homogenital sex is “filthy” or “disgusting” but not “sin”. People like to quibble over toevah vs. zimah, but that’s a strained argument usually foisted by those with vested interests. Look, it’s bad, that’s all any follower of G-d needs to know. How it is bad, in what particular theological sense it is bad is really splitting hairs. To point out that it’s bad like eating pork, not bad like making graven images (and this point is still highly debatable), does little to change the fact that IT’S STILL REALLY BAD. So say it’s like keeping kosher instead of like schtupping your neighbor’s wife. Fine, be happy rationalizing. Argue, “I’m a Christian, I don’t need to keep kosher, according to Paul.” I think Paul closed that loophole pretty convincingly in Romans and elsewhere.
For the “reformed”, both among the Jewish and Christian faiths, I simply can’t understand why the approach is always revisionism and denial. It’s as bad as the fundamentalists, just in an opposing direction, and the result is always butchery of the texts. Why not just admit the obvious: You pick what you like and chuck the rest.
Context is everything. I can match you prof for prof on the interpretation of Leviticus. I personally don’t know what’s correct. The transvestic prostitute thing may be a rationalization or it may not be (I’m more comfortable with NT stuff on this issue. I studied Greek, I didn’t study Hebrew). My intention was not to persuade everybody that Leviticus does not condemn homosexuality but to point out that it’s not universally accepted that it does.
IMO, Leviticus is not the word of God anyway. I think it expresses an ancient cultural worldview that no longer holds up to rational scrutiny. Looking to a 3000 year old legal code written by shepherds in the desert for moral guidance now is a more than a little silly.
Who would? On the other hand, it struck me that there might be a few things to be offered in Lot’s defence. Apologies if I here reinvent the wheel:
Lot had the absolute right to do as he pleased with his daughters. Naturally they would fervently hope that he would not exercise that right to the extent of almost literally casting them to the wolves…
For Lot to fail to protect honoured guests under his roof would cause him even greater shame than to suffer the rape of his daughters (itself more of an insult to him than an offence against the girls themselves, perhaps, if that’s a fair guess at the cultural mores of the time).
Lot expected that the rabid ass-rapers thronging round his door would insist on their original demands being met despite his counter-offer, but saved face by making that same offer: He showed his guests he had tried his best.
This may of course all be utter nonsense. Taken all in all, I think Sodom would have been on ground zero for the fire and brimstone even if it had been crammed to the battlements with heterosexual rapists. An unshakeable determination on the part of the crowd to bugger a pair of male strangers willing or no was a symptom of their depravity, not the substance of it.
>Unfortunately for this interpretation, it does not say “as he lieth with a
>woman.” It says “the layings of a woman,” i.e., the way women are laid in
>general, not specifically the way that that specific person would lay a woman.
The “the layings of a woman” sure might change the meaning. Unfortunately I don’t find it to be as clear a phrase as you do. Frankly if someone were to walk up to me on the street and talk about the layings of a woman I’d be far more inclined to think he’s confused female humans with female chickens then to think that he means any form of physical intamacy that a woman might express with a man.
I got a laugh out of the version that says you aren’t supposed to have sex with another man in a woman’s bed. Indeed that might cause confusion. But then I read that there really is an interpretation that says that that’s what it means. This site has a pretty good discussion of the various meanings of the passage: http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_bibh.htm
As to the Sodom thing, I’ve got my own reading of that one too. The Bible doesn’t say whether the townsmen who wanted to rape the angel guests knew whether or not they were angels. Angels aren’t human. If the townspeople regularly had sex with non-humans then perhaps sodomy means bestiality.
Interestingly, it probably wouldn’t be seen as the same “thing” the way we see it today as falling under a single umbrella of “gay.” It would be seen as a different act, and have different reasonings as to why it was wrong: if it was considered wrong. We don’t really have evidence that the people of that society ever even considered what women might do together sexually.
Hey, Zev! I am not personally prepared to defend this perspective, but to state it as simply as possible:
Under the interpretation you ask about, there are four elements to the Law:
The ritual law. This was superseded by the one sacrifice of Christ, who in offering Himself, truly God and truly man, on the cross fulfilled for all time the requirements of the Law in terms of sacrifice.
The dietary law. This was abrogated by Jesus’s teaching that “not what goes into a mouth but what comes out of it defiles a person” and by the miraculous vision of Peter in Acts 10:
Laws and customs peculiar to the Jewish Commonwealth. These are not strictly abrogated but are to be adapted to life in the U.S., the U.K., and so on.
The moral law: Those things which relate to the personal moral choices of the individual, not covered under the other heads. These remain in force.
Paul’s explicit teaching is that “we are free from the Law, not to sin but to love God and our fellow man.” He compares the Law to the paidogogos, the trusted slave who is sent by the Master of the household to accompany his son to his school, placed in authority over the boy for this specific task in order that the boy may not come to harm through youth and inexperience. But when the boy comes of age and is a free and responsible adult, he no longer needs the paidogogos.
I hope that was some help in clarifying matters to you.
I think one would have to strain very hard to arrive at that interpretation. At no point does the Mosaic Law condemn inhospitality as gravely as it condemns sexual sin – in fact, I can’t think of a single such reference offhand.
Additionally, the text clearly shows that Yahweh had planned to condemn Sodom and Gomorrah long before this act of inhospality occurred. This was, in fact, the specific reason why Abraham visited Sodom – which happened before the incident with Lot.
So I think it’s rather bizarre (indeed, practically Byzantine) to suggest that Yahweh wiped out Sodom and Gomorrah merely due to an act of bad manners. Such a claim requires hopelessly strained interpretations – regardless of whether one considers homosexuality to be right or wrong.
Did you miss this passage that Poly cited in earlier in the thread?
In contrast, you will find nothing in scripture that says that homosexuality that had anything to do with it. Even when those guys wanted to bugger the angels, it was the rudeness that was the problem, not homosexuality.
You have to reach an awfully long way (as your cite does) to try to blame homosexuality for the destruction of Sodom. The text doesn’t say that.
The link which I cited (reproduced here specifically addressed that passage. The wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah were indeed great, and doubtlessly encompassed many sins. To reduce this to mere inhospitality is simply ludicruous – and with regard to the Genesis 18 incident, the sin was primarily sexual in nature. It clearly was NOT a mere case of inhospitality, especially since Lot and his family were in no particular need of food, shelter or clothing.
Additionally, I’d like to emphasize that Ezekiel 16 was not referring specifically to Lot’s encounter with the Sodomites. There are some obvious textual clues to this effect.
Ezekiel 16 refers to Sodom’s refusal to “aid the poor and needy.” Lot and his family were by no means impoverished, and certainly not needy.
Lot’s encounter was with just a few of the Sodomites – not with the city as a whole. Ergo, Ezekiel 16 was condemning problems which extended far beyond the inhospitality of a few Sodomites toward Lot’s kin.
And finally, let us not forget that Yahweh had pronounced judgment on Sodom long before the incident with Lot occurred. Ergo, one cannot take Ezekiel 16 and insist that it applies to Lot’s unfortunate encounter with the Sodomites.
Ezekiel 16 is therefore irrelevant to the specific instance of Genesis 18.
Not as ludicrous as reducing it to mere homosexuality-- an innate orienation which hurts no one.
Tell me, do you think people who engage in homosexual actictivity deserve to die?
If not, then it’s silly to assume that God would. "Wickedness’ encompasses a pretty broad spectrum and the Genesis story of Sodom never specifies homosexuality, in itself, as wickedness.
With all due respect, JThunder, the question before the house seemed to be if “the sin of Sodom” was in fact “sodomy” as the etymology of the latter word would seem to suggest.
Proper behavior, anywhere in the Middle East including the Hebrews, called for welcoming the stranger in your midst and treating him as an honored guest. There is a bit of legend preserved about a man who had declared blood feud upon another man for manifold offenses against him, who was forced by circumstances to take shelter at the home of the first man, who welcomed him and hosted him with lavish hospitality – and the legend praises the first man for doing justly (not “mercifully”) by the other man.
There is also the repeated command throughout all Middle Eastern faiths, not merely Judaism and Islam, that the poor are entitled to the giving of alms, and widows and others whom circumstance has impoverished deserve special care.
The violation of all these moral strictures is what Sodom is condemned for in Ezekiel. And the treatment of Lot’s guests as sex objects, gay or straight, for the pleasure of the citydwellers, whether the guests be angels or merely human strangers, is a case in point of this self-centered quest after personal luxury and “getting mine first” at the cost of others who are needy or strangers. I suspect that is what you were saying, but you seemed to be drawing a distinction between the condemnation in Ezekiel and the Lot story, and I’m not sure of your point.
To turn it into a cautionary story making the point that “two men who love each other should refrain from sex” is not only ludicrous, but a contradiction of, to quote my conservative friends, “the plain words of Scripture.”
From Leviticus 21: 17-21 it seems people with disabilities, including blemishes, get a hard time too. From my reading of this they cannot act as priests. Is this right?
I was addressing the specific claim made by Diogenes – namely, that
and
This is entirely different from the question of what “the sin of Sodom” is.
Moreover, the passage which you cited, Ezekiel 16, would actually disproveDiogenes’ claim (if the passage were relevant, that is). Your passage describes great apathy toward the suffering of the poor and needy, which is by no means the same as mere “inhospitality.”
Circular reasoning. The validity of this accusation has no bearing on our discussion of what the sin is.
Your claim is that this sin was nothing more than mere inhospitality. The context shows otherwise, and the only passage cited in defense of your claim (Ezekiel 16) has nothing to do with inhospitality. You can’t buttress this faulty exegesis by saying “But I disagree with that judgment!”
Taken all in all, I think Sodom would have been on ground zero for the fire and brimstone even if it had been crammed to the battlements with heterosexual rapists. An unshakeable determination on the part of the crowd to bugger a pair of male strangers willing or no was a symptom of their depravity, not the substance of it.