For Theology Nerds Only

Ha! I see what you did there, ElderLez.

Thanks, ElderLez. I've been enthralled with the subject (as an lifelong atheist in Mississippi - imagine what that's been like!)

If only I were an IT nerd! I am trying to link to pages 116 and 117 of “Veiled and Silenced” by Alvin Schmidt, but DataLounge won’t let me.

* as A lifelong atheist in Mississippi

Oh my goodness R2, that must have been a struggle!

While I am theologically Lutheran, this is a space for people of all or no belief to discuss Judeo-Christian theology. I am starting with sex cause this is DL, but other topics are welcome.

I’m sure that we’ll be crashed by some snarkiness in true DL fashion.

Anyway if anyone wants to google those pages of that book it gives a great breakdown of how the Biblical writers would have understood reproduction. And to understand sex in the Bible, you have to start with the understanding that they defined sex as ejaculation which is different than how we define it now.

I'll be sure to look it up - thanks ElderLez.

As for Mississippi atheists, good lord. I got old (67) and stopped giving as much of a fuck... Just in the last year, I've alienated my husband entire family (and he was the youngest in a family of 7 -- his father was one of 16!! so we're talking hundreds of people lol). I have no family, so that's good...

But I also alienated a fairly long-term friend, who just sort of choked it down for THREE years, with occasional passive-aggressive digs, and now she and her family won't come near us any more. My guess is they made a New Year's resolution to avoid the.... INFIDEL !!! Sometimes I think about all that when I'm walking from my house to my car because I'm afraid I'll be assassinated. Joking (mostly). Happily, may back yard is fenced so I can putter around there and avoid people.

I am looking to check out the only Unitarian Church within 50 miles - I went to the one in my city but it closed down due to lack of interest. Oh well. And this is a fucking university town - which is the only reason we're here. Honestly, I believe it's gotten WORSE since we moved back home from Florida -- in 1990. We had a Democratic governor whose wife was a teacher and they wanted investment in our schools.... and since then, MAGA times 1000 jerks in every office (except Bennie Thompson, chair of the judicial review thing, from the Delta where 80% of the population is black.)

Sorry to ramble -- I have a lot to get off my chest. All this has given me a goddamned nervous breakdown (excuse my language if you're a believer ahem)

Looks like I might be able to post from my desk top.

Hey, the bad language is OK. I plan on posting some NSFW links because to really understand what the Bible says about sex, you need to talk about things that you don't talk about in church.

Oh and I loved our Attorney General in 1990 - Mike Moore - a Democrat who was the first to successfully sue the cigarette manufacturers and got a big settlement that politics assured Mississippi residents would be put in a fund to help our 50th place education system. Probably some of the money Brett Favre pilfered from the state, though I think that money was intended for single moms to help take care of their children (well of course, millionaire times a lot Brett needs the money more than our 50th poorest population, right?

It's been bloody hell here in Saudi Mississippi. The only thing I can say is the winter weather is nice - a Scottish friend of mine said it was like an English spring.

* politicians assured....

I'm so addled I can't type. Well, who wouldn't be?

I did not know about AG Moore, but am a big Benny Thompson fan.

Infant sacrifice link below. This is all kind of background context for understanding what certain scriptures mean.

I'm sorry to spam it up about Mississippi when it's not a "theology" type subject.

But I think in a way it IS. Mississippi is the way it is because of the overarching important of religion - specifically Southern Baptist, but all the crap ones too - "non-denominational" (ha!), Pentecostal, Church of God whatever whatever -- oh and we have two breakaway groups, a southern Methodist (not affiliated with those liberal United Methodists - and the Presbyterian Church of America (instead of USA). Both groups separated from the main ones because they loved slavery and hated Civil Rights - some of them still argue that slavery was good for those useless Africans ... I lived next to one who kept trying to get us to go to his weird-ass "Methodist" church....

I swear I need to write a book. Just to get it off my chest.

But anyway I'll try to stay to the real subject - theology. I love trying to shoot it all down.

A little about Asheroth.

(Astarte or Ishtar in to the East and Southwest, kinda of like a mash-up of Persephone and Aphrodite)

And this is kind of a ridiculous list, but just skip to # 1.

I'll be gone a while but I'll check on all that, ElderLez, when I get a chance. Thanks for the links.

Autodidacts and ironical twats have so many opinions, as is their rite.

True enough fellow nerd at R15 punny insult well landed.

ElderLez: On 𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐮𝐩 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐡, reply 53, you said,

[quote]The Bible is very clearly against anal sex with temple (make and female) prostitutes (which was considered at the time a form of child sacrifice) as a method of worshipping fertility gods and (primarily) goddesses.

I replied,

[quote]Mmm, it's a theory. But have you ever done a deeper dive into its 'prooftexts'? For instance, where does it specifically talk about "anal sex"? Have you looked into the so-called 'temple prostitutes'? Who's a "fertility god"? Which "goddesses"? And 𝑤ℎ𝑜 exactly was demanding and receiving child sacrifices?

To which, you answered,

[quote]Yes actually Poisoned Dragon I have. I can post a series of links later if you’d like, assuming you and OP don’t think it would derail the thread. (see link below)

The link you provided notes that "ASHTORETH" was a "Canaanite goddess." What it doesn't mention is that Yahweh was also a constituent of the Canaanite pantheon, one of the '70 Sons of El,' and a 'fertility god' as well. The goddesses mentioned in the bible - Ashtoreth (actually Astarte; your article explains 'Ashtoreth' as a Hebrew alteration of the name), Anath, and Asherah - were once consorts of Yahweh, and acceptable objects of worship with Yahweh.

The distinction between 'Canaanite' and 'Hebrew' in the Iron Age was kind of a false one, being that they were one people, sharing a common ethnicity, language, culture, and religious ideas. The insistence that the Canaanites were foreigners worshipping 'strange gods' was a form of religious propaganda disseminated by the 'Deuteronomists,' a 'Yahweh-Only' sect which gained predominance after Israel shook itself free from Seleucid/Syrian control, in the 2nd century BCE. The Deuteronomist point of view came to shape the Jewish bible, but traces of the older views are still discernible in its texts.

A common trope among biblical authors was to set 'historical' stories farther back in the past than when they occurred (for example, the Book of Daniel, set in the 6th century BCE, but written in the 2nd century BCE). Hence, the 'cleansing of the temple' set during the so-called 'Divided Monarchy', where all the paraphernalia of Canaanite worship were removed from the temple (the Asherah poles, shrines to the Canaanite pantheon, the 'Chariots of the Sun,' the housing of the 𝑞𝑒𝑑𝑒𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑚, etc. cited in 2 Kings 23), ostensibly back in the 7th century BCE, 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 occurred subsequent to the overthrow of Seleucid influence after Antiochus' desecration of the Temple in the 2nd century. Judaism underwent a rather quick makeover from polytheism to monotheism, and what had recently been a religious norm - the worship of the Canaanite pantheon - suddenly became proscribed.

[quote]ElderLez, reply 60 on 𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐮𝐩 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐡: I’ll just add here though that in the biological understanding of the Old Testament era it was believed that every seminal emission included a fetus so every ejaculation that could not result in pregnancy was wasted. The sin of Onanism wasn’t male masturbation, but good old Pope approved withdrawal.

Quite - but with the caveat that there's considerable difference between the view of the authors of Genesis 38, where Onan is found, and the fixation of late medieval Catholicism through early 20th century religion on masturbation, which used the story of Onan to justify their views.

In the late Iron Age, when 'Genesis' was being put together, they didn't really have a "biological understanding," much less a value placed upon every seminal emission. If they had, it would have been more expressly defined in the Torah, rather than needing to be interpreted out of a reading of the story of Onan.

The story of Onan was crafted with the intention of reinforcing the already-existing custom of Levirate marriage, where a brother is required to step into a marriage to replace a deceased male sibling. Onan refused to fulfill that responsibility, and so Yahweh supposedly slew him. It was never intended to be a statement on seminal emissions, or any of the rest of what Christianity added to it.

If I step away from our discussion for hours or a day or so, don't lose patience. I just have stuff to do, and I need rest. I'm still interested in talking with you. Reply at your leisure, as it suits you.

[quote]Yes actually Poisoned Dragon I have. I can post a series of links later if you’d like, assuming you and OP don’t think it would derail the thread.

I said, "It might. Perhaps we can take this discussion over to the '𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐱𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐚 𝐬𝐢𝐧?' thread, which is more on-topic, and isn't currently in use."

[quote]OK - it will take me a while to read all that and now I need to get back to work so forgive my delay in posting, I will post eventually.

[quote]I’ll just add here though that in the biological understanding of the Old Testament era it was believed that every seminal emission included a fetus so every ejaculation that could not result in pregnancy was wasted. The sin of Onanism wasn’t male masturbation, but good old Pope approved withdrawal.

[quote]Can we use a different thread [R59]? I am trying to read the posts before adding anything and the idiocy is making my head hurt. I can create one if necessary.

I said, "Can't you just skip to the end, without suffering through the rest of the thread?

But if you would prefer to create a clean thread, by all means, do so. ;)"

And here we are.

I will come back to the subject of sacred prostitution; I'm worn out today. Please bear with me.

No rush! I’ll respond as well, but it will take some time.

You know, churches bitch and moan about how to get the young interested and how to fill those pews again. And sacred prostitution is just sitting there, waiting. Why?

I do think the ancient Israelites really were ancient Canaanites, and maybe should have just stayed that way. Could have prevented a whole lot of annoying shit about the One True God. The Exodus seems to have been complete bullshit, or camel shit.

The traditional English rendering of the key passage in Deuteronomy 23 we're considering runs thus:

17 There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel. 18 Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the LORD thy God for any vow: for even both these are abomination unto the LORD thy God.

The ESV renders it, 17 “None of the daughters of Israel shall be a cult prostitute, and none of the sons of Israel shall be a cult prostitute. 18 You shall not bring the fee of a prostitute or the wages of a dog into the house of the LORD your God in payment for any vow, for both of these are an abomination to the LORD your God.

On the surface of it, that seems pretty straightforward, and appears to cinch the case for sacred prostitution. But one must bear in mind that, to the minds of the Deuteronomists, strict worshippers of Yahweh only, the worship of other members of the Canaanite/Ugaritic pantheon (Asherah, Baal, Chemosh, Astarte, Hadad, Shammash, Dagon, Anath, etc) was considered 𝑤ℎ𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑑𝑜𝑚, a form of prostitution (cf. Exodus 34:15, 16; Leviticus 17:7, 20:5,6; Deuteronomy 31:16; Ezekiel 6:9, 23:30, 𝑙𝑜𝑡𝑠 of others). They believed that 𝐼𝑠𝑟𝑎𝑒𝑙 belonged to Yahweh as his portion (Deuteronomy 32:8-9¹), considered more binding than a marriage.

Just because someone is 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑑 a whore, does not mean that they are, especially when dealing with forms of religious invective. The sense is ritual, or metaphorical.

How does that pertain to us? Well, the translators of the KJV decided to characterize the males of Deut. 23:17 as 'sodomites,' linking them with the story found in Genesis 19, even though there is no etymological or textual reason for doing so. In Hebrew, the word used for 'cult prostitute' (male) is qā-ḏêš, and a 'cult prostitute' (female) is qə-ḏê-šāh. What these terms actually mean is "holy ones" (from 'Qadesh', 'holy'). These were nothing more or less than temple functionaries, priests and priestesses in the service of 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐺𝑜𝑑𝑠. But because they served gods besides just Yahweh, the Deuteronomists called them 'prostitutes,' even though, strictly speaking, there was no sexual activity involved. And they slew them (2 Kings 23:7-20).

And because some 17th century translators chose to falsely equate them with those who have same-sex relations, people have been persecuting and killing us ever since.

¹ Of Deuteronomy 32:9, it should be noted that the Masoretic text was altered in order to remove references to divine beings other than Yahweh. There are a number of textual variants for this passage, but most tend towards "When Elyon gave the nations as an inheritance, when he separated the sons of man, he set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the Sons of El ('Benei HaʼElōhīm'; the latter is plural, meaning, 'the Gods'). For Yahweh’s portion was his people; Jacob was the lot of his inheritance”.

That's great R24!! Actually though the scripture I was leading to though was Leviticus 18:22 and the Hebrew word תּוֹעֵבָה (Toebah) that is generally translated as "abomination," which doesn't capture the fact that the word in Hebrew conveys the sense of a forbidden foreign cultural/religious practice.

[quote]R25: Actually though the scripture I was leading to though was Leviticus 18:22 and the Hebrew word תּוֹעֵבָה (Toebah) that is generally translated as "abomination," which doesn't capture the fact that the word in Hebrew conveys the sense of a forbidden foreign cultural/religious practice.

You are quite correct.

Leviticus 18:22 / 20:13, however, read literally, don't appear to contain any direct references to 'shrine prostitutes,' as the modern bibles put it.

'Abomination' isn't what a lot of people assume it is. 'Sin' and 'abomination' are not interchangeable concepts, but come from two entirely different religious paradigms. In the Jewish testament, "sins" were offenses for which one could simply make a sin offering to make it go away. Note that the passages which speak of 'abomination' do not use the term 'sin' at all. 'Abomination' (Hebrew 'tō-w-‘ê-ḇāh') referred to a ritual or ceremonial infraction or taboo (typically used of idolatry, but also of breaking the dietary restrictions - Deut.14:3), pertaining to one's membership in the community; one's standing as an observant Jew. 'Abomination' was characterized as being something characteristically committed by the 𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 (i.e. gentiles, cf. Lev.18:24-29). Matters of ritual impurity were handled in various ways, depending on their severity. Some, like menstruation or handling a dead body, required a period of sequestration ('seven days,' or 'until evening,' respectively). Those characterized as 'abomination' - idolatry, blasphemy, dishonor of family or elders, violation of the dietary laws, breaking the Sabbath, etc. - mandated death; being "cut off from your people" was a euphemism for execution.

Christianity was totally different. Christians often completely misunderstand what they read in the Jewish Testament, coming at it as they do with Christian concepts of sin and the way it's expiated in Christianity (contrition, confession, penance, asking Christ for forgiveness). The majority of offenses characterized as 'abomination' typically do not rise to the level of what Christians would characterize as a sin (eating pork, wearing mixed fabrics, etc.). But when they read Jewish texts calling for the death penalty for such offenses, they conflate it with the Christian concept of sin (cf. Romans 6:23). But according to the New Testament, the concept of 'abomination' - ritual or ceremonial impurity - has no continued relevance for Christians, as spelled out in Acts 10:28, "He [Peter] said to them, "You know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with a foreigner or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean." So, even if it were the case that passages like Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 referred to same-sex relations (actually, being halakhic commentary on Deuteronomy 23:17-18, they are instead abstruse condemnations of idolatry), the distinction would be abolished for anyone except conservative. traditionalist Jews.

Agreed that the purity code only applies to traditional Jews and I’d go further than that and say that it only applies to Jews in Israel (which is a pretty standard Reform belief) and even further than that and say that much of it including Leviticus 18:22 only applies to Jews from the priestly class in Israel while in Temple service. I think one of the main complexities with the discussion of how Christians misinterpret Hebrew scripture is the idea that there is a unified Jewish interpretation of Hebrew scripture. And that just isn’t the case. The what applies when discussion of the Pentateuch is very much in play amongst the different Jewish traditions.

On the thread, 𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐮𝐩 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐡 (see link below), at reply 57 I'd quoted ElderLez:

[quote]The Bible is very clearly against anal sex with temple (make and female) prostitutes (which was considered at the time a form of child sacrifice) as a method of worshipping fertility gods and (primarily) goddesses.

I had answered,

[quote]Mmm, it's a theory. But have you ever done a deeper dive into its 'prooftexts'? For instance, where does it specifically talk about "anal sex"? Have you looked into the so-called 'temple prostitutes'? Who's a "fertility god"? Which "goddesses"? And 𝑤ℎ𝑜 exactly was demanding and receiving child sacrifices?

I had wanted to press onward to the last question here on this thread, but never got as chance.

(Psst! The answer to that question was YHWH.)

Hi R28 so glad you bumped this thread. Back in February one of my lectionary readings was from 2 Kings and it referred back in the supplementary notes to a text in 1 Kings and I think they are both directly relevant to what I wrote in the other thread. I wrote this big long note on this thread while still kind of half asleep, almost missing my train as a result, and of course it didn’t post and I lost it. I keep meaning to go back and find the references. I’ll look tonight.

I am forwarding this entire thread to the Missouri Synod.

(PSST back R29 the extra surprise twist ending is that YHWH is the one offering the child sacrifice in the end. Mary becomes the ideal vaginally virgin temple prostitute kind of sort of)

Specifically on anal PD R28 within the Biblical text itself I am relying primarily on the use of ὁμοίως in Romans 1. The context is idolatry (specifically Egyptian I believe) and there is no ὁμοίως in practice between how lesbians have sex and how gay men have sex, but anal sex is common to male-male and male-female intercourse.

Found it way back in the February 7th readings: 2 Kings 23:6-7 and 1 Kings 14:24 both refer to male shrine prostitutes and the 2 Kings reference seems to also include female temple prostitutes.

To my way of thinking, it's largely irrelevant if shrine prostitution had, at the very beginning, been part of Judaism and then later repudiated. (Although very interesting!) And it's also somewhat irrelevant if it was more common as an accusation than an an actual occurrence. (Again though very interesting). The important thing from a practical theological perspective is that the practice (or the idea of the practice) of temple prostitution would be a contextual prism that the Jewish people from say at least the Babylonian exile to the fall of Rome and the early Christian Church would have seen sexual morality through.

And we know from the Epistles that early Christian Church (or at least Paul) saw sex with prostitutes as especially sinful because of its links to idolatry in a way that even surpassed even eating food offered to idols.

Hmm. I still don't believe that the 'cult prostitutes' were a real thing, but rather a result of regarding Deuteronomic invective, the product of fanatical religious minds, literally.

It's sort of like, "You worship gods besides just Yahweh? That makes you a 𝐖𝐇𝐎𝐑𝐄!"

Back in the 1920s/30s, my great grandfather was a deacon in a West Texas Church of Christ. He was a severe man, using the razor strap to inflict corporal punishment on his kids and grandkids. (He also molested his granddaughter, my mom, when she was six years old or so, but that's another story.) When she was fourteen, one of his daughters, my grandmother, had gotten ahold of some red fingernail polish from somewhere and painted her nails. He drove her off the property with his razor strap, hollering invective, calling her a whore, a harlot, etc.. Barefoot, she fled, and becoming entangled in the barbwire fence at the edge of the property, she received many blows; far from relenting while she was trapped, he poured it on. From that point forward, she was effectively disowned and could not go home. Neither would anyone in the community help. Having to resort to hook-ups with various men in order to survive, I suppose what he did sort of made the invective come true about her.

Religious invective is powerful, and usually a bunch of bullshit. It usually says far worse about the ones saying it than the ones it is said about.

Of course, that is just an anecdote, and it is not the source of my opinion in this matter, i.e. the "holy ones" of 1&2 Kings.

[quote]R32: Specifically on anal PD [R28] within the Biblical text itself I am relying primarily on the use of ὁμοίως in Romans 1. The context is idolatry (specifically Egyptian I believe) and there is no ὁμοίως in practice between how lesbians have sex and how gay men have sex, but anal sex is common to male-male and male-female intercourse.

I'm not seeing any real reference to 'anal intercourse' in Romans 1:27. "Likewise" there simply means 'like the subject of the preceding verse.' I'll soon repost my workup of Romans 1.

Why 'Egyptian,' ElderLez?

[quote]R33: And we know from the Epistles that early Christian Church (or at least Paul) saw sex with prostitutes as especially sinful because of its links to idolatry in a way that even surpassed even eating food offered to idols.

You know I don't believe that "Paul" existed, right? ;)

Nor do I think it's safe to make general inferences about 'the early Christian church' based on a passage found in a composite pseudepigraphal text (like the so-called 'Pauline' letters). The statement more likely reflects a narrow sectarian opinion, like that of the Encratites.

R34 longer email later, but why wouldn’t you believe in cultic prostitution? Even in nearby cultures without shrine prostitutes, whores were dedicated to fertility goddesses like Aphrodite. Do you think you might be projecting your own negative views of prostitution into the past?

[quote]R35: longer email later, but why wouldn’t you believe in cultic prostitution? Even in nearby cultures without shrine prostitutes, whores were dedicated to fertility goddesses like Aphrodite. Do you think you might be projecting your own negative views of prostitution into the past?

No, quite the reverse: I simply do not see any reason for characterizing the 𝑞𝑒𝑑𝑒𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑚 (literally, "holy ones") as prostitutes, other than that being the way the Deuteronimists deplored them. "Whore" is something added by a couple of millennia's worth of commentary and imaginative extrapolation. Aphrodite is no more a 'fertility goddess' than YHWH is a 'fertility god.' Her rites were fairly ordinary, and her 'clergy' were nothing more or less than people regarded as 'holy ones' in her service. Raised within Christian culture, we tend to 'other' or 'exoticize' the other gods and goddesses. I explained some of this in this thread at R24. There's also a link.

Really interesting (to me) video that came up in my Youtube feed yesterday

Romans 1:18-32¹ could be called 'the Christian version of 'Pandora's Box.'² Although vv. 26-27 does mention same-sex relations (it's one of only two passages in the bible that does, the other being 1 Sam.20:30, where Saul accuses Jonathan of it), there's not even really a prohibition there. It is also recounted in the past tense, as something which has already taken place, rather than as anything that will happen if 'x' isn't avoided. The author of Romans speaks of same-sex relations as though they were inevitable, and can even be understood as essentially saying 'God made them do it' ("therefore 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐠𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫" to this or that trait, vv.24, 26, and 28). The author traces the beginning of mankind's fall, starting at creation (v.20) with his abandonment of God (v.21), which led to idol worship (v.23), leading to descriptions of all of mankind's failures of character; from vv.28-31 the list gets pretty comprehensive, covering what everyone has been guilty of at one time or another, as a proposed etiology for why people die (v.32). It doesn't offer this diagnosis as something of which only *some* are guilty (of which, were *they* to judge, they alone would be hypocritical), but of a̲l̲l̲ . Everyone dies - not just those who participate in same-sex relations, not just the sinners, but *everyone*. Even the Christians, those sanctified souls who regard themselves as 'forgiven.' The capstone of the passage is Romans 2:1, ostensibly addressed to the believers at Rome: "You therefore have no excuse, you who pass judgment on another. For on whatever grounds you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things." Anyone who tries to use Romans to condemn LGBTs condemns himself, not them.

It bears repeating: Everybody dies, even Christians. It isn't something that happens only to LGBTs, but to hear the way evangelicals try to use Romans 1, you'd think it was.

¹ Romans 1:18 through 2:29, an interpolation, likely formed an anonymous sermon preached in some Hellenistic synagogue and circulated among Jews of the Diaspora, as J.C. O'Neill has suggested ['Paul's Letter to the Romans,' 1975]). The foibles list of 1:18-31 can be seen as generally headed under 'things Gentiles do.' The fragment would have been conserved by proto-orthodox ecclesiastics and inserted into the text of 'Romans.'

² Pandora's Box is a Greek myth that explains why there's troubles in the world, like sickness and death, the same way the anonymous author of Romans 1:18-2:29 blames the origins of man's foibles and subsequent death upon mankind having forgotten God. The two myths have more in common than one might think on first glance - both blame the origins of the world's afflictions on women - or more specifically, one woman - the Greek, on Pandora, and the Christian, on Eve (cf. 1 Timothy 2:14, "And it was not Adam [here an analogue to the Greek Epimetheus] who was deceived, but the woman who was deceived and fell into transgression").

I've always assumed ἑρπετῶν in Romans 1:23 is Sobek, crocodile fertility god of the Egyptians who would have had many expat followers in Rome at the time. Certainly the description of the idols as being in the shape of birds and reptiles is much more consistent with Egyptian deities than Roman.

I am here to be educated by ElderLez, PoisonedDragon et al.

Other bitches should sit their asses down and do the same.

Hell yes r40, I’m right with you.

Romans 1:26 does not reference same-sex female relations. Choosing to believe that παρὰ φύσιν means lesbianism is an anachronistic reading. Homoiōs to our modern ears with a LGBT community might cause us to believe that it does, but that community didn't exist then. That's why my understanding is "mechanism" focused and not "class."

(Also I am so saddened to hear about what happened to your grandmother and your mother. I am glad that your mother clearly healed enough to provide you a great upbringing.)

(Also, also whoever (singular or plural) wrote the non-pastoral, Pauline letters reads as a gay man to me)

A most interesting thread.

[quote]R39: I've always assumed ἑρπετῶν in Romans 1:23 is Sobek, crocodile fertility god of the Egyptians who would have had many expat followers in Rome at the time. Certainly the description of the idols as being in the shape of birds and reptiles is much more consistent with Egyptian deities than Roman.

Well, the appearance of ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑝𝑒𝑡𝑜̄𝑛 (ἑρπετῶν) in Romans (also in James 3:7) is because it's a citation from the Septuagint, from the Greek texts of Genesis, Leviticus, etc., part of the usual formulation of 'birds, four-footed beasts, creeping things, and sea creatures,' as types of animals commonly enumerated as having been 'created' by God. The reference is literary, and not really specific to any Roman cultus. I cannot see a reason to reach for Sobek, unless the text specifically mentioned Sobek, although I can see the enthusiasm of conservative Christians for the idea - since the citation is from the Septuagint, which they believe was written by Moses, who was supposedly raised in Egypt - well, you get the idea. (Not that I'm accusing 𝑦𝑜𝑢 of conservative Christianity, but perhaps your source hails from that direction.) A couple of decades ago, I recall encountering a book which sought to directly link the Ten Plagues with specific Egyptian deities, depicting the plagues as attacks on them. It's kind of a case of 'believers discovering the culture of ancient Egypt,' and looking for ways to relate it to their sacred book, the culture of Egypt holding no real interest for them on its own.

If one's heart is really set on somehow seeing Egypt in this text, a better avenue to pursue besides 'Moses' might well be the critical theory that Genesis was written at Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE, by scholars at the Library.

Link pertaining to the last statement in the previous post:

There were a lot of Egyptian influences in Rome at the time.

Cult of Isis in Rome and rivalry with/impact on Christianity

[quote]R42: Romans 1:26 does not reference same-sex female relations.

Why doesn't it?

[quote]Choosing to believe that παρὰ φύσιν means lesbianism is an anachronistic reading.

Well, Romans (and the books which surround it) are themselves anachronistic. One could only be stung by the suggestion of such a reading if one thought of biblical books as constituting 𝑡ℎ𝑒 'Word of God'™, and reflective of ℌℑ𝔖 opinion. As I pointed out at R38, whatever mentions of same-sex relations there are in Romans 1, the passage does not condemn them, but merely notes them under the rubric of "things Gentiles do." Ideas of damnation or hell are baggage that believing readers bring with them to the text; they are not present in the text itself. (The disparate texts of the bible are not part of a unified, consistent whole, and never were.) One should not be threatened by the idea that the text mentions lesbians.

[quote] Homoiōs to our modern ears with a LGBT community might cause us to believe that it does, but that community didn't exist then.

It shouldn't, not to anyone's ears. The term ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑥𝑢𝑎𝑙 is not an ancient word, but rather one coined by a pair of late 19th century journalists in private correspondence with one another. The word made it into public discourse with the publication of Havelock Ellis's 𝑆𝑡𝑢𝑑𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑃𝑠𝑦𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑆𝑒𝑥 (1901). The word is a hybrid of Greek (ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑜, meaning 'same') and Latin (𝑠𝑒𝑥). Greek words possessing the prefix, such as ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑜𝑖𝑜̄𝑠 ('likewise,' 'resembling,' or 'the same') have nothing whatsoever to do with ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑥𝑢𝑎𝑙.

[quote] (Also I am so saddened to hear about what happened to your grandmother and your mother. I am glad that your mother clearly healed enough to provide you a great upbringing.)

You're kind. Alas, my mother did not heal. She suffered from schizophrenia, and through therapy she recovered memories of her abuse, resulting in her mental decompensation smack in the middle of my pre-teen to teenage years. Eventually, she succumbed to alcohol abuse and committed suicide by drinking antifreeze in 1998. It was all pretty terrible, but I've made my way past it.

[quote](Also, also whoever (singular or plural) wrote the non-pastoral, Pauline letters reads as a gay man to me)

They certainly read as a 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔, don't they? Whoever they were, they did not care much for women.

Critically, the Epistles break down into components written by many different hands. One scholar, Winsome Munro, wrote a really good book about it (𝐴𝑢𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑖𝑛 𝑃𝑎𝑢𝑙 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑃𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑟: 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐼𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝑃𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑎𝑙 𝑆𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑚 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑃𝑎𝑢𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑒 𝐶𝑜𝑟𝑝𝑢𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 1 𝑃𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑟, Cambridge University Press, 1983), which informs the scholarship of Dr Robert M Price, who has integrated its findings into his own work, 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑃𝑟𝑒-𝑁𝑖𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑒 𝑁𝑒𝑤 𝑇𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡: 𝐹𝑖𝑓𝑡𝑦-𝑓𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑇𝑒𝑥𝑡𝑠 (Signature Books, 2006). I recommend it highly as a resource for studying the New Testament.

[quote]R46: There were a lot of Egyptian influences in Rome at the time.

[quote]R47: Cult of Isis in Rome and rivalry with/impact on Christianity

I don't take issue with either of those sources. I'm also fond of the work of DM Murdock, linking the influences of paganism with Judaism and Christianity. The only catch here is that there's not a lot of 'Rome' and its interests in foreign cultures in the Epistle to the Romans.

How can you believe in Christianity? There is basically no contemporary evidence to back up what the Bible says. Jesus likely didn't even exist. By *any* other historical standard he wouldn't have. There are no birth records, no death records. Not to mention the extraordinary claims of the things he did - no record of them at the time. I just don't understand.

I have visited Israel and loved the country/experience but I saw it as like a theme park. Visiting the Garden of Gethsemane, the site of Jesus's crucifixion and his tomb. It all seemed like visiting some writer's imagination to me. And the Dead Sea Scrolls at the museum were very interesting because it made me understand just how much of a cult early Christianity was.

I have read the entire Bible plus the Apocrypha, and the Koran, etc in full.

[quote]R50: How can you believe in Christianity?

Have you actually read the thread? Not a lot of belief here.

R51 Elderlez says she is "theologically Lutheran".

R52, that could suggest that she was raised as a Lutheran. It doesn't come across as an affirmation of faith, 'tho she may have meant it that way, I don't know. It's also not a crime.

Theology is being discussed here as an abstract. If you came here hoping to provoke an argument by posting, "Jesus likely didn't even exist," you won't get it from me. I'm the DL's leading Christ Mythicist.

R53 Why on earth would she say 'theologically Lutheran' if she didn't believe in it? If you didn't believe in Christianity you'd say you were either an agnostic or an atheist - or some other religion/belief.

[quote]I'm the DL's leading Christ Mythicist.

LMAO. In other words, a mental nutcase.

[quote]R54: LMAO. In other words, a mental nutcase.

What does that say of you at R50?

I am certainly not conservative, but I am a believer and a rather orthodox* (little o) Lutheran one at that. I wasn’t raised as anything although I was Baptized in a Catholic Church as an infant; my unwed teenage mother not having much choice in the matter.

I am sure my status a believer colors my posts, but this is a thread for people of all or no faiths who are interested in the topic and I hope that I’ve interacted in a way that is respectful of people who hold different beliefs.

*Apostles and Nicene creeds, law and gospel, salvation through grace alone through faith alone through Christ alone, belief in the sacramental nature of baptism and communion, belief in the usefulness of all scripture the purposes of preaching and teaching (but still preferring Galatians to James) (that last item is a Lutheran joke)

R55 I stand by my entire post from an academic historian perspective. In the end, there is no contemporary evidence to support that Jesus even existed. Only people writing *100s* of years afterwards wrote about him. How convincing is that when there were birth and death records taken during the time he is alleged to have lived? Why did nobody write about the miracles he supposedly achieved?

[quote]R56: I am sure my status a believer colors my posts, but this is a thread for people of all or no faiths who are interested in the topic and I hope that I’ve interacted in a way that is respectful of people who hold different beliefs.

I think you're doing just fine. I hope I have not antagonized you. It wasn't my intention.

R58 Please provide some convincing historical evidence that your savior Jesus existed. Then we'll take you more seriously.

[quote]R57: I stand by my entire post from an academic historian perspective.

How is that different from Christ Mythicism?

Sounds like Ugly Anscher has found the thread.

[QUOTE]How is that different from Christ Mythicism?

Because Christ Mythicism doesn't even really exist. Lol. You're just trying to fake things.

[quote]Ugly Anscher

Who the fuck is 'Ugly Anscher'? I googled this phrase and it seems like another fake thing.

[quote]R62: Because Christ Mythicism doesn't even really exist. Lol. You're just trying to fake things.

More later? Da fuk?

R64 Bluntly, that doesn't convince me at all. How come you didn't explain to me how um, Christ Mythicism er.... er.... exists? Oh... Dear!!!!!

Well it only took a few days for one contrarian cunt to sidetrack an interesting discussion.

Oh you haven’t R58. It’s been a fun conversation. You haven’t been antagonist in the least. It’d be a boring world if we only talked to people who think the same way we did.

I do find the discussion a little exhausting at times, just because, as has been pointed out, I am an autodidact in this area and I am trying to express myself clearly on topics that have so many layers and are inherently complicated and that I also care deeply about. But it’s no criticism at all that you’ve given me a lot to think about. And I still need to respond to many of your comments and links.

I’d like to clarify two things where I don’t think I was clear enough, I don’t use whore in a pejorative sense. I think it’s important to remain somewhat neutral in discussing prostitution, especially in regards to historical cultures. And second the fact that likewise in Greek is the same root word for “homo”sexual is a red herring that always confuses the discussion of Romans 1. I am entirely ignoring that and just treating likewise as likewise and saying what would contemporaries of the letter writer think these sexually unnatural women have in common with with MSM and I think they would be thinking about acts rather than identities.

(I can’t even imagine the what you went through with your mother. You must be a very resilient person PD.)

Thanks, ElderLez, but the author's errors right at the top of those pages get my guard up. The Greek and Latin words for "seed" (and "semen") are sperma and semen, not "spermakos" and "semin." The author's larger points could be correct, of course.

I also note that R48's Greek is muddled, whatever the merits of his argument; I've basically skimmed through the thread so won't go into the latter.

1 Samuel 20:30 - a reference to homosexuality in the Bible that is actually about a homosexual. And the gay guy is the hero. And the homophobic father is the villain. It’s quite the story to wrap one’s head around.

Just think if only Saul had said I know the Lord has taken the Kingship from my house and given it to David, but still he has chosen to bless me by making my Jonathan his beloved maybe David-Jonathan-Michal could have been a happy throuple and David would never have met all the Hebron wives and Saul’s grandchild would have ascended to the throne, rape or no rape of Bathsheba.

[quote]R70: I also note that [R48]'s Greek is muddled, whatever the merits of his argument; I've basically skimmed through the thread so won't go into the latter.

Perhaps you will go into the former, then. What exactly is "muddled" about the Greek in R48? Be specific.

[quote] The word [homosexual] is a hybrid of Greek (ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑜, meaning 'same') and Latin (𝑠𝑒𝑥). Greek words possessing the prefix, such as ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑜𝑖𝑜̄𝑠 ('likewise,' 'resembling,' or 'the same') have nothing whatsoever to do with ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑥𝑢𝑎𝑙.

In the first sentence I think you're just quoting the parts of the English word, but for the record the dictionary form of the first Greek word you're thinking of is "homos," not "homo" (the stem). "Homoiōs" is only "likewise" or "equally" (an adverb); the adjective "resembling, similar, like" is "homoios." "Homos" and "homoios" are cognate, so although "homosexual" is indeed founded on the former rather than the latter, it's odd to say the latter has "nothing whatsoever to do" with "homosexual," as if they were from different roots (I don't think ElderLez was making an etymological claim, just one about modern verbal associations).

Again, these minor confusions (not as bad as the basic linguistic errors in the author ElderLez linked to) probably have no bearing on the merits of your larger arguments, but if you're approaching the Greek texts through secondary sources without firsthand knowledge of the languages, you could go off the rails, or at least your phrasing could mislead others. And it's never too late to learn ancient Greek!

Do you mean the link in R7, R73?

Maybe we can have an Ancient Greek for the modern Homosexual DataLounge study group. I must admit that I am using Strong’s concordance.

Yes, ElderLez, what I mentioned in R70. Again, those errors don't necessarily vitiate the argument of the book (which I haven't read), but it looks like what the author is doing is mistaking the stems of the two nouns for whole words, and making a couple of other mistakes. I'd be cautious when he makes arguments based on vocabulary.

[quote]R73: "Homos" and "homoios" are cognate, so although "homosexual" is indeed founded on the former rather than the latter, it's odd to say the latter has "nothing whatsoever to do" with "homosexual," as if they were from different roots.

I said it has "nothing whatsoever to do with ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑥𝑢𝑎𝑙" because the concepts expressed are completely different.

[quote]R73: In the first sentence I think you're just quoting the parts of the English word, but for the record the dictionary form of the first Greek word you're thinking of is "homos," not "homo" (the stem).

Hmm. The Wiki article (link below) says this:

[quote]The word ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑥𝑢𝑎𝑙 translates literally as "of the same sex", being a hybrid of the Greek prefix ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑜- meaning 'same' (as distinguished from the Latin root ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑜 meaning 'human') and the Latin root 𝑠𝑒𝑥 meaning 'sex'.

Obviously they're completely wrong, criminally so, and you'd best get right on that.

[quote]R74: Maybe we can have an Ancient Greek for the modern Homosexual DataLounge study group. I must admit that I am using Strong’s concordance.

I'm sure he would like to upbraid you for relying on an "Xtian" source, but that would give him away.

IMO, the trio that crashed this thread (R50 /R52 /R54 /R57 /R59 /R62 /R63, R66; and R65; and R70 (note that he appropriates your 'thanks' as if you'd been talking to him) /R73 / R75 are socks of a single user, Matt A, who's been triggered by the discussion of biblical languages here. He believes that only natural speakers of languages should be allowed to discuss them, or at least that's the point of view he most often trolls.

No need to be sarcastic, R76. You don't seem to have noticed the hyphen in the Wikipedia article, indicating that it's to be taken as a stem (as I said). They should have put one after "sex," which they sort of correctly call a root. "Homo-" in any case should not be described as a prefix; more precisely, it's used in "homosexual" as the first element of a compound word. I don't understand your first point about homos and homoios expressing completely different concepts; they're not the same word or idea but they're obviously related.

Some other errors in that Wikipedia quotation: the Latin word "homo" is not a root, but the nominative singular form of the word. And "homosexual" doesn't really translate literally to "of the same sex."

Your idea that I'm Matt A or any of those other posters is bizarre (in this thread I've only posted 70, 73, 75, and this one—my "thanks" to ElderLez was plainly just for her raising an interesting topic and linking to a discussion), as is your leap to the idea that I'm saying that "only natural speakers" of ancient Greek should be allowed to discuss them (needless to say I myself am not a "natural speaker" of an ancient language, just a scholar of them) . Why do you have to dig in and make wild claims rather than take pieces of constructive criticism in the spirit they're intended? I'll just repeat that it's never too late to learn ancient Greek, which would help in your exploration of the scholarship.

Let me also add that I hope ElderLez doesn't think I'm "crashing" this thread rather than just offering cautionary remarks based on my own knowledge of ancient Greek and Latin (with backup from the large dictionaries and grammars right here next to my desk).

PD I am vouching for R70 who could not possibly be Matt A., but is a fine upstanding. poster whom I know from many other threads. (but whom I did not know was a scholar of ancient languages.)

If I can make a stereotypically Lutheran suggestion, I think we should all put the best possible construction on the motives of our fellow posters unless and until we are forced to do otherwise.

(Of course once forced we can start with the DIAGF’s)

While I am not crazy about the fact that R50 seems to want to make this thread about criticizing other people’s beliefs rather than contributing to the discussion substantively I am going to say that I also don’t think that poster is Matt A. R50 were you raised Eastern Orthodox?

Thanks, ElderLez @ R80. I return your "fine upstanding poster" accolade hundredfold!

[quote]R80: PD I am vouching for [R70] who could not possibly be Matt A., but is a fine upstanding. poster whom I know from many other threads. (but whom I did not know was a scholar of ancient languages.)

That's an interesting claim. How does one reliably know an anonymous poster?

For that matter, how does one really know an authenticated poster? I have a tentative acquaintance with 'PlatonicCaveman,' with whom I interacted on another forum dating back some eighteen years. But even that isn't something to which I would swear on my life.

There are some here who, although possessing some authenticated accounts (i.e. DeFacto, BootsyGumdrop, rescuechick), do most of their posting through multiple anonymous sock accounts. In some cases, they judiciously and sparingly use their authenticated accounts as a sort of 'reliability anchor' at pivotal discussion points, to add gravity to a thread, or to reinforce a point of view. I really hope that you're not one of those kinds of accounts, ElderLez. That would certainly make DL a sadder place than it already is.

[quote]R81: While I am not crazy about the fact that [R50] seems to want to make this thread about criticizing other people’s beliefs rather than contributing to the discussion substantively I am going to say that I also don’t think that poster is Matt A.

Is this anything like last year, when you put forward that you believed 'BlackMillennial' was who and what they claimed to be? (That turned out to be Matt A, and got both itself and its wingman sock redlined.)

Ouch.

[quote]R73: if you're approaching the Greek texts through secondary sources without firsthand knowledge of the languages, you could go off the rails, or at least your phrasing could mislead others.

"Firsthand knowledge of the languages." That perfectly encapsulates Matt A's stance, and comes across as a way of re-stating it in other terms so as to not appear too obvious.

[quote]R80: If I can make a stereotypically Lutheran suggestion, I think we should all put the best possible construction on the motives of our fellow posters unless and until we are forced to do otherwise.

That moment already irrevocably passed for me when R78 said, "I don't understand your first point about homos and homoios expressing completely different concepts; they're not the same word or idea but they're obviously related." That was a piece of dishonest trolling, and similar to the R50 et al sock's refusal to recognize an atheistic poster, and pretense not to know what 'Christ Mythicism' is. (I think of Karloff in 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐂𝐚𝐭 raising his penciled eyebrows in feigned shock, exclaiming, "Why, whatever do you mean?") Gaslighting of this sort is something I frequently encounter on DL; the trolling patterns are too similar not to recognize it for what it is.

Perhaps I'll return to this thread if something interesting develops, if some actual content appears.

Well this took an unfortunate turn. Still, that is an interesting link at r45. It's an out there theory, but sometimes those force us to ask the most basic questions about who really wrote that old bitch of a book and why.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

PD I know how to use the block person button and read their posting history in our shared threads to evaluate any claims of trolling. I have sometimes found people arguing with themselves or presenting as different personalities. That wasn’t the case here. Yes, it’s possible that people have sock puppets from different IP addresses, but that’d be an extraordinary amount of time and work so it doesn’t seem reasonable that it would happen very often. OTOH, people often have distinctive writing styles. R70 sounds like R70 in other threads; witty, erudite, patriotic, measured, even at least once correcting my (obviously wrong) Greek previously (all signed anonymous), R50 sounds like R50 in other threads; short posts, right wing but anti-Trump, mildly pugnacious, with a knowledge of Russian nicknaming conventions and Dostoyevsky novels (also all signed anonymous.)

This is DataLounge and people, including me, are snarky at times. I hope that you won’t take you toys and go home. You have an interesting and different point of you. I’d also really like to hear more from R70 whom I am sure will provide important insights and clarifications we wouldn’t get on our own. And R50 has taught me things on other threads, why not here as well.

So PD how many writers do you think are there behind the Pauline epistles and do you think any of the epistles shared a writer? I believe you’ve already indicated you think Romans is a composite. (Also interesting about BM, that I could certainly see being Matt A, but FWIW a nasty right wing poster calling people communists and posting LOLOL has recently appeared.)

[quote]R85: Yes, it’s possible that people have sock puppets from different IP addresses, but that’d be an extraordinary amount of time and work so it doesn’t seem reasonable that it would happen very often.

Well, I agree that it's not reasonable, but these are not reasonable people, and they evidently lead very empty lives, so that building elaborate networks of sock characters seems to be all that's left to them. At any given time, the board is crawling with them. ("I am a gay Presbyterian please help" - Reply 21 from '𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐮𝐩 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐡,' gaslighting at its finest)

[quote]I hope that you won’t take you toys and go home.

I won't, though I cannot promise to be here every day. I didn't post at all Friday because I took my first ever dose of Trulicity (a small dose, a 0.75) and it basically wrung me out; I was ruined, all day yesterday. I mostly slept.

[quote]So PD how many writers do you think are there behind the Pauline epistles and do you think any of the epistles shared a writer? I believe you’ve already indicated you think Romans is a composite.

Unknown; the number of anonymous hands contributing to the New Testament and particularly the epistles probably runs into the hundreds. It's not an exaggeration to say that 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑎 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑙𝑒 𝑏𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑁𝑒𝑤 𝑇𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛 𝑏𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑤ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑑; it is all pseudepigrapha, all of it. But the single author most influential on the New Testament was someone not ever even mentioned in the bible - Marcion of Sinope (estimated 85-160 CE). His collection of what has since come to be known as 'Pauline Epistles' was what inspired the proto-orthodox (that's proto-𝐶𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑠 to you and I) to create the New Testament, essentially as a form of anti-Marcionite polemic. (Yes, that means exactly what it appears to mean: since Catholicism arose as a polemical response to Marcionite Christianity, then Catholicism was not first on the scene; they are 𝑛𝑜𝑡 the much-proclaimed inheritors of a sacred deposit passed on to them.) Several NT works contain a Marcionite core; Romans is one of them, and Galatians is probably the one closest to its original Marcionite form. The earliest canonical gospel, the Gospel of Mark, was probably originally a Marcionite document.

Almost 𝑎𝑙𝑙 of the New Testament books suffer from an interpolated stratum added in the late 2nd/early 3rd century (a snapshot of Catholic views at that time), authored by what we can call the 𝑃𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑎𝑙 𝑅𝑒𝑑𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑜𝑟. It is within this stratum that we find most of the misogynistic material ("let the women keep silent in the churches," "women, obey your men", the injunction to actually assault women going around with their heads uncovered, etc). And there's contributions by other sectarians towards the gnostic end, like the Encratites (passages urging against marriage, like Matthew 19:10-11, and 1 Corinthians 7:38b).

My favorite book of the Bible is Ecclesiastes. It's mystical poetry. And I've also always loved Job (minus the optimistic ending, which is factitious and was added later).

My least favorite is Deuteronomy, which is dryer than a nun's cooter.

Best wishes on the new medication PD. I don’t expect I’ll be able to post every day either.

R87 Ecclesiastes, Proverbs and Song of Songs; the three books ascribed to Solomon certainly stand alone stylistically in the Bible.

Job is a fascinating book insofar as the protagonist isn’t Jewish and the book isn’t set specifically in a pre-Abrahamic time. I’d never really though about that until a Jewish colleague who was taking a class about the book pointed it out to me. I believe it is a Zoroastrian work since the relationship between G-d and Satan aligns with Zoroastrian theology. (Fair warning I am fascinated by Zoroastrian influences from the burning bush to the Magi.)

I don’t know that I have a favorite book, but Lamentations 3:19-33 and Ephesians 2:10 are amongst my favorite scriptures.

Oh yes, Song of Songs. Mystical *erotic* poetry. Like the kind you find in Bach's cantatas.

What I like about Job, apart from the imagery and the poetry, is emphasis on infinity. There's an old Latin saying 'finitum non capax infiniti', or something like that, which seems to me the thrust of Job. And this was also the major impetus behind Swiss theologian Karl Barth's work. You can't live on a diet of only that, but you can't live without a diet of SOME of that.

bumping just in case anybody still cares.

PD when I read Romans it seems to me such a work unto itself that it is hard for me to imagine it as a pastiche. Just imagine prissy queen Paul (or insert name), planning on making his triumphal trip to Rome. He is as self-described Pharisee amongst Pharisees and apostle to the Gentiles and Rome is the grandest stage and most important mission field.

And in advance of his visit the believers send him letters; not to welcome him with open arms or tell him about their endeavors, but to lodge petty complaints about each other. “The Jews are mean to us.” “The Gentiles do gross things.” Romans is Paul’s grand Girls, girls you are both awful response. He’s trying to shame them into shape using every rhetorical trick in the book. Now some of those tricks might be cut and pastes from other sources, but I don’t think that undermines its standing as a single work. I think the problem with a work like Romans is that it is read in snippets and since it’s a long argument that starts with why Gentiles are awful and then goes to why Jews are awful to get to the point that we are all awful and need to start working together, the snippet approach especially of the early chapters invariably leads to misreadings. And churches don’t like to talk about the messy parts of Paul (or insert name). Why isn’t he married? Why is he working as a tent maker when he’s a literate Roman citizen who trained with the top rabbis? Why is he so grumpy and always fighting and reconciling with his travel companions?

[quote]R91: Just imagine prissy queen Paul (or insert name), planning on making his triumphal trip to Rome.

Paul's trip to Rome, or Marcion's? One is a fictional retelling of the other.

[quote] He is as self-described Pharisee amongst Pharisees and apostle to the Gentiles and Rome is the grandest stage and most important mission field.

Remember: NT documents are not written by the persons whose names are affixed, even if they exhibit the pretense of speaking in the first person.

The NT contains contradictory narratives. Who is the "apostle to the Gentiles"? Paul, or Peter? 'The Acts of All The Apostles' and the Epistles give different answers to this question. In 'Acts,' Peter goes to the Gentiles, and Paul is depicted as going to synagogues in every city and preaching to the Jews. In the Epistles, it's the other way around.

If one were trying to alter the perceived character of an apostle notorious for arguing the abolition of the Law (see Galatians), what better way to do it than have him appear to declare himself the most observant Jew ever, a Pharisee?

Why place documents under the name of "Paul"? To better target those congregations in Asia Minor, mostly Marcionites and gnostics of various stripes for whom "Paul" had become a trusted, honored name. Marcionites were the first collectors and conservators of what has become known as the "Pauline Epistles." But the name "Paul" actually began among the proto-Catholics as an epithet for anyone who taught the abrogation of Jewish law and the negation of the use of Jewish scriptures by Christians. Thus, "Paul" became a cipher, subsuming those whom Catholics regarded as heresiarchs (Simon Trismegistus, Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion, etc.) under a single label ("Paul" means "small," cf. Matthew 5:19 - "Whoever then shall break one of the least of these commandments and shall teach others the same, he will be called *𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑡* in the kingdom of the heavens").

This link is a little more on point to what I was talking about than the article on Couchoud,.

And then there's this, the first of a series of articles:

I'd like to just say ElderLez and PoisonedDragon can have a Smart-A-Thon and I will show up to watch! I'm Jewish, so this entire conversation has been thoroughly entertaining for me. The smart ass who keeps mouthing off doesn't understand the difference between a theological discussion and a religious discussion. Please keep going!

IIRC there is ample textual evidence for various sources in the synoptic gospels. I don't recall any for Romans.

R95 any comments on the book of Job?

R92/PD Reading Matthew 5:19 without 5:20 it seems to be a wholehearted endorsement of the purity code as the way to heaven, but then you read verse 20 and you realize it is impossible for anyone to be more personally righteous than a Pharisee or teacher of the law and the meaning of 5:19 gets flipped. I think a parallel text is Matthew 19 where it is harder to get a camel through the eye of a needle (paralleling the impossibility of having righteousness exceeding…) than for a rich man to enter heaven, but with G-d all things are possible. Jesus is arguing against the claim that he is going to dumb down the purity code to make more people capable of “passing” it. He’s saying it is impossible for anyone to pass and will remain so forever. So I don’t see the Pauline epistles, or for that matter Peter’s vision before meeting Cornelius as being in conflict with Matthew.

[quote]R96: IIRC there is ample textual evidence for various sources in the synoptic gospels. I don't recall any for Romans.

What you're looking for are redactional seams, interpolations, and subject or line-of-thought incongruities. These can be difficult to find for those accustomed to seeing NT works as an integrated, consistent whole.

I am frustrated as far as being able to find critical scholarship available in an online form; a great deal of it is locked up in paid services like JSTOR. There's a lot of interesting discussion on Vridar, but finding articles addressing specific issues is hit-or-miss. It's why I cannot urge strongly enough the recommendation of Robert M Price's book (linked at R48), where critical exposition of the New Testament is offered, book by book, chapter by chapter, and verse by verse, and where the findings of dozens of critical scholars' views are summarized and applied - one can get access to the views of scholars like Van Manen, Couchoud, O'Neill, Munro, et al, without having to hunt out those sources independently. The only other thing I can think of to do is to try to type in selections from Price on Romans, which would be very difficult for me. There isn't room here, and posting long sections of authors' works is frowned upon in the TOS.

[quote]R97: PD Reading Matthew 5:19 without 5:20 it seems to be a wholehearted endorsement of the purity code as the way to heaven, but then you read verse 20 and you realize it is impossible for anyone to be more personally righteous than a Pharisee or teacher of the law and the meaning of 5:19 gets flipped.

So you can't see the passage as anti-Pauline/gnostic polemic, a deliberate slap at anyone who taught that Christians should not observe Jewish laws?

Illustrating 'the way to heaven' isn't really the point of the passage; it's openly passing judgement on those who hold a certain point of view.

[quote]Jesus is arguing against the claim that he is going to dumb down the purity code to make more people capable of “passing” it. He’s saying it is impossible for anyone to pass and will remain so forever.

Well, 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑏𝑜𝑑𝑦 is arguing something like that, not Jesus. Jesus is a literary character, a mouthpiece for promoting the teachings of anonymous theologians.

Well I don’t believe there was a unified Christian identity at the time.

There was a Jewish sect that believed the Messiah had come and that the Messiah was not just a redeemer, but also the deity and the Messiah wanted them to involve non-Jews in this new sect. (Obviously I am going by a pretty straightforward reading of the post-Crucifixion portions of the Gospels and the book of Acts) Since the Jewish religion hadn’t encouraged conversion, being tied to an ethic identity, and also had a extensive purity code that they understood to only apply to themselves, the question of how to deal with the “all nations” was a conundrum. Do Gentile believers need to become Jews first and observe the purity code. The texts chosen to be in the Bible pretty clearly say no, but indicate how controversial and contested this understanding was, with a small carve out for things like blood sausage, which we all ignore now. The question of whether Jews continue to be bound by the purity code is imho unresolved in the Canonical New Testament, but as I I read the texts ascribed to Paul I believe he thought they should continue to obey the purity code.

[quote]R100: as I I read the texts ascribed to Paul I believe he thought they should continue to obey the purity code.

Have you got a citation to that effect?

What about "Behold, I Paul say to you that if you shall become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing" (Galatians 5:2)? "You observe days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you, that my efforts for you may have been in vain" (Galatians 4:10,11).

"When Cephas came to Antioch, however, I opposed him to his face, because he stood to be condemned. For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself, for fear of those in the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.

When I saw that they were not walking in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, “If you, who are a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”" (Galatians 2:11-14)

He sounds firmly against the purity laws.

What branch of Lutheran, ElderLez? I am MO-Synod (yes, ithe most conservative one).

At a rather late age, I discovered Martin Luther’s antisemitic book(S). I had already dropped the Missouri Synod (as if that’s possible), and then I dropped Lutheranism.

“An Historical Christ” A.N. Wilson gave me comfort. No blaming Mr. Wilson for the bullshit in my head, but I do believe there was a Saul of Tarsus, that he was a Truman Capote of poets, and he fucked with a lot of people when he went feral queen. One bitchy comment about women to his friend, and a bunch of mouth breathers ran with it to subjugate women. Suddenly the Christ is beating on Martha as a complete fool every fucking time.

I’m more into Azarath myself.

[quote]R103: “An Historical Christ” A.N. Wilson gave me comfort.

Do you mean 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠: 𝐴 𝐿𝑖𝑓𝑒 (1992)?

[quote]One bitchy comment about women to his friend, and a bunch of mouth breathers ran with it to subjugate women.

Are you referring to 1 Timothy 2:11-15?

[quote]A woman must learn in quietness and full submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman who was deceived and fell into transgression. Women, however, will be saved through childbearing, if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control.

There is absolutely zero possibility that 'Paul' wrote any of that. It's a piece of late 2nd/early 3rd century pseudepigrapha, far past the supposed lifetime of Paul. 1 Timothy 6:20-21a says, "O Timothy, guard the deposit committed to you, avoiding profane, empty babblings, and 'The Antithesis' falsely called gnosis, which some professing, have gone astray from the faith." The reference is to the seminal work of Marcion of Sinope, 'The Antithesis,' written in the latter half of the 2nd century CE. A formal warning against it, such as one finds in the text of 1 Timothy, would have taken later still.

The Principle of Witnesses (Deut.17:6, 19:15; Matt.18:16; 2 Cor. 13:1) was held necessary for anything to become a doctrinally approved practice. Practices that had only a single witness often had a second mention interpolated into either the same book, or another New Testament text held authoritative by a given Christian community. Examples would be the Matthean community's doublet of the "fornication clause" for divorce (Matthew 19:8, interpolated also at 5:32), the injunction that women keep silent (1 Timothy 2:11-15 is the likely first instance of it, interpolated also back into 1 Corinthians 14:33b-35 to comprise a second witness), and the mandate to torture recalcitrant sinners (likely first instance 1 Timothy 1:20, duplicated at 1 Corinthians 5:4-5). The 'hapax legomenae' of 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 are yet another example of multiplying witnesses.

If not Paul, then who wrote it? Early ecclesiastical Catholics, who overwrote many Marcionite works (see Winsome Munro, 𝘈𝘶𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘗𝘢𝘶𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘗𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘳: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘐𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘗𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘮 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘢𝘶𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘱𝘶𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 1 𝘗𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘳 [Cambridge University Press, 1983]), and crafted others like the Pastoral Epistles out of whole cloth, in order to make them support then-current Catholic doctrine.

[quote]Suddenly the Christ is beating on Martha as a complete fool every fucking time.

Huh? Where does that take place?

R105, you gave me a rabbit hole and I’m diving.

I’m typing about that great book from memory… I’m messy that way.

Give me a bit to think about your question PD. I want some time to interrogate my own assumptions before replying on that.

R102 may I ask why? Is it the denomination of your family? ELCA for me. FWIW I think Wisconsin synod might be more conservative than Missouri.

I’ve been wrestling a lot with Matthew 7:6 this week. However, if you treat it as prophecy when you look at things like Luther’s bitter spurned suitor anti-Semitic rantings it is spot-on.