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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSerious question about 'being gay' and the Bible
Forgive my ignorance, but when I hear the (never) right wing rail against homosexuality using the Bible, I hear them quoting the Old Testament. I know Jesus never said or even implied anything about being gay, but where else from the New Testament are people quoting this stuff? If they only quote the Old Testament, doesn't that make them followers of Judeism (albeit bad ones)?
randys1
(16,286 posts)jberryhill
(62,444 posts)PeaceNikki
(27,985 posts)Bucky
(54,041 posts)Abortion is preferable to bastardy
Numbers 5:11-31
11 Then the Lord said to Moses, 12 Speak to the Israelites and say to them: If a mans wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him 13 so that another man has sexual relations with her, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected (since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act), 14 and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impureor if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure 15 then he is to take his wife to the priest. He must also take an offering of a tenth of an ephah of barley flour on her behalf. He must not pour olive oil on it or put incense on it, because it is a grain offering for jealousy, a reminder-offering to draw attention to wrongdoing.
16 The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the Lord. 17 Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water. 18 After the priest has had the woman stand before the Lord, he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the reminder-offering, the grain offering for jealousy, while he himself holds the bitter water that brings a curse. 19 Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, If no other man has had sexual relations with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. 20 But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband 21here the priest is to put the woman under this cursemay the Lord cause you to become a curse among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell. 22 May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.
Then the woman is to say, Amen. So be it.
23 The priest is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water. 24 He shall make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and this water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering will enter her. 25 The priest is to take from her hands the grain offering for jealousy, wave it before the Lord and bring it to the altar. 26 The priest is then to take a handful of the grain offering as a memorial offering and burn it on the altar; after that, he is to have the woman drink the water. 27 If she has made herself impure and been unfaithful to her husband, this will be the result: When she is made to drink the water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering, it will enter her, her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry, and she will become a curse. 28 If, however, the woman has not made herself impure, but is clean, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children.
29 This, then, is the law of jealousy when a woman goes astray and makes herself impure while married to her husband, 30 or when feelings of jealousy come over a man because he suspects his wife. The priest is to have her stand before the Lord and is to apply this entire law to her. 31 The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin.
After winning a war, genocide is a-okay
Deuteronomy 13:15
Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword.
(But also check out Exodus 34: 11-14 and Leviticus 26: 7-9)
kelliekat44
(7,759 posts)oberliner
(58,724 posts)Perhaps some reflection is in order on that score.
MohRokTah
(15,429 posts)Romans 1:24-27; 1 Corinthians 6: 9-10; and 1 Timothy 1:10
Paul was a real dickhead and never met Jesus.
Warpy
(111,319 posts)despised anything bordering on the feminine (can we all say "latent?" and that included women as well as gay men. He's in the NT and is quoted frequently by religious phobes.
It's not all Leviticus, in other words, but neither Jesus no anyone who knew him said anything about gays or abortion, although both were certainly well known in their time.
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)The first five books of the Hebrew testament (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) are collectively referred to as The Torah, and authorship is traditionally ascribed to Moses. The "law" passages are mostly in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and it is from these two books that folks quote the prohibitions against same sex sexual relations. (Curiously, it only describes male but not female same sex sexual relations.)
It's important to note that the word that has come down to us in 21st Century English as "abomination" was originally understood to mean "against our custom." That is, in the centuries between the writing down and the present translation, the language has become much stronger than the original. One theory about that is that the keepers of the sacred writings wanted to reinforce and legitimize their own point of view against same sex relations, and I think that's probably accurate.
When theologians talk about an abomination, this is usually understood as one of the strongest divine condemnations against whatever is being abominated. But the original language is quite a bit milder, indicating a difference in custom or societal norms, rather than any divine disapproval. Something like opening your presents on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning. There's no agreement on the One True Gift Opening Practice, and families do pretty much as they please without running afoul of the divine temper.
There are whole books written about the Torah, and the meaning of all the laws and rules and purity practices set down. It should perhaps not be surprising to consider that for a people coming out of slavery, structure and order were necessary to help establish a new society. Think of the Morgan Freeman character in "The Shawshank Redemption." After he's been in prison for most of his adult life, adjusting to life on the outside is problematical. He's not even accustomed to going to the bathroom when he wants without first checking in with his manager at the supermarket.
In the Christian Testament, there is a paucity of references to same sex practices or relationships. In his magnum opus, the Epistle to the Romans, Paul lays out a series of terrible, horrible sins in the first chapter, which includes an oblique reference to what sounds like same sex sexual relationships. In his second chapter, however, Paul contrasts those terrible, horrible sins that his intended audience condemns with the even worse sins he knows his audience has committed. Which is to say, that as bad as his audience thinks the chapter 1 list is, they've done even worse. A classic case of "whenever you point your finger at someone else, three fingers are pointing back at you."
The other popularly cited Christian testament passage is from 1 Corinthians, and a Greek word that the English translators under King James in the 17th century decided was best rendered as effeminate, and came to be regarded as a reading against unmanly homosexual men (again, women werent included). This translation influenced scholars and theologians for a long time. Probably the fairest thing to say about the Corinthians verse is that its meaning is in dispute or uncertain; hardly a basis for making a conclusory judgment about people.
Christians come in all stripes, and some of them require a very authoritarian structure. From what I've seen of Kim Davis (for example), she craves a very black-and-white, manichean universe where good and evil contend for supremacy. She's been on her own prior to her conversion with her present congregation, and she didn't do so very well. Now she's in a much more controlled environment, which is to her liking. She gets definite instruction on what's right and what's wrong, and she is comforted by the assurance that if she does certain things in certain ways, God will be pleased with her, and God will favor her. In addition, the congregation around her supports and reinforces those ideas. Gray areas and ambiguities are not only discouraged, but regarded as evil, tools of the dark side.
One of those gray areas concerns human sexuality. Researchers and scholars find the field to be rife with uncertainties, and differences within populations, and even within persons as they age or as their social circumstances change. An area of study that many people find fascinating because of the wide spectrum of experience, others find confusing and frightening. After all, as they understand it, God has condemned this range in the strongest possible terms, and even trying to figure it out puts this person in existential peril. It's best for them to just repeat what they believe, and not risk it.
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)LittleBlue
(10,362 posts)The OT and NT are so dissimilar they don't belong in the same book.
FreakinDJ
(17,644 posts)Systematic Theology to be more correct
The study of Biblical writing using the correct translation of the words used in the historical context of the period of time they were written in for that geographic location
Anyone can go dumpster driving through the Bible saying they know the one true meaning. But how does it compare with what other people wrote about it at the time it was written