reply to post by Bigwhammy
The other famous scripture against homosexuality is taken from Leviticus.
Yet the abominations mentioned within it refer to that which is ritually unclean.These also include women during their menstural cycle,eating
with strangers,eating sheffish,eating pork etc.
And if you want to keep Leviticus 18:22 then you have to keep all the other laws mentioned in Leviticus,all 611 of them.Yet Christians don't,they say
those laws are for the Jewish ppl only.That must mean then the law mentioned above must be just for the Jews only too!! Remember,we can't pick and
choose which Divine Laws we want to follow.
Most Jewish scholars interpret the verse as being against anal sex between 2 men.Why? Because in this sexual act someone has to take the passive
role-the role of the woman.And,as women were seen as being highly inferior to men,it would be unseemly for a man to submit to this position.Some
Jewish scholars usually have verse 22 translated thus:"Do not lie with a man as if it were the same thing as lying with a woman." or "Do not sleep
with a man as it were with a woman."
Others see it like this:
At the beginning of the chapter that includes this passage, Leviticus 18:3 states: "After the doings of the land of
Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do: and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do: neither shall ye walk in
their ordinances." Here, God is saying that the Hebrews are not to follow the practices of the Egyptians or of the Canaanites. Homosexual ritual sex
in temples of both countries was common. Thus, one might assume that Leviticus 18:22 relates to temple same-sex rituals -- something that was ritually
impure.
If this is the case then the 1st mention of homosexuality is Romans,a book written some time between 51-57.AD.
This leads to an important conclusion.If this is the very 1st mention then this faith exited for 1000's of yrs with no mention of homosexuality being
against God and nature.
Less than 300yrs before the book of Romans was written the Hebrews,
thanks to the conquests of Alexander the Great,came into direct contact with
the ppls of Greece.As we all know,most of Greece had a very liberal outlook
on homosexuality.The Hebrew state had existed peacefully for over 200yrs before the arrival of the Greeks and Macedonians and then it found itself
caught in a power struggle once more between the Seleucid state with its capital in Syria to the north and the Ptolemaic state,with its capital in
Egypt to the south.Once more,Judah would be conquered first by one,and then by the other, as it shifted from being a Seleucid vassal state to a
Ptolemaic vassal state.Between 319 and 302 BC,Jerusalem changed hands seven times!
I'm sure the Jewish ppl had such hatred for the Greeks & Macedonians.
They were more foreign than any group they had ever seen. In a state founded on maintaining the purity of the Hebrew religion, the gods of the Greeks
seemed wildly offensive. In a society rigidly opposed to the exposure of the body, the Greek practice of wrestling in the nude and deliberately
dressing light must have been appalling.Some Greek states also had liberal
attitudes to women,no doubt this would've been highly disaproved of by the Jews.And,like the Catholics did to other cultures,i'm sure that many Jews
will have demonized the Greeks,their religion and their sexual practises and their
social attitudes.
Is it so far fetched to see a connection between the Jews (and early Christians) 1st contact with the Greeks and their changing attitude to
homosexuality? I don't think so.
