Ok so there are a few things to keep in mind. One is history and while I could go on for days about the history of the Church and explore all these angles I am going to try and whittle it down to a couple points that are absolutely vital. Now my sources for all this are my personal notes and research, however
all of this can be easily verified using a simple google search on any topic I refer to.
Christianity was declared the official religion of Rome by Constantine I in the early 4th century. This is really important because prior to this Christianity was totally different. The focus was on the individual and the relationship with God on a person by person basis. There was no concept of hell, there was no standardized Bible, there wasnt even a unified statement of what it meant to be Christian. Those things were hammered at the Councils of Nicea and Carthage and Independent Logic is absolutely correct that what they did was to sit down and look at all the books that were used by various groups and decided which ones would be used and which would be outlawed and they quite literally killed anyone who owned a copy of an outlawed book, spoke in a manner which supported an outlawed book or concept, or generally refused to worship in the manner that the Church (and by proxy the government) said.
Now its vital to understand that what was adopted as the official Bible was selected
very carefully. Constantine and later Roman Emperors and the Popes who were suddenly in positions of great power rejected any book that could be interpreted to say that the path to God went through the individual instead of the Church and the Roman Empire by proxy. Over time concepts changed dramatically. Jesus became God instead of simply a prophet of God. That was important to appeal to Roman culture that was accustomed to worshipping gods. To worship a man would not fly with Roman culture, so he had to be considered God and in Roman culture the government had the authority to declare that the dead had become gods. Prior to this there were some groups that saw Jesus as God, but most saw him simply as a man.
The concept of hell as a place of eternal torment for wickedness was introduced by the Popes as a means to terrify the peasants into behaving as the Church wanted them to behave. Pagan celebrations where changed to reflect events in the life of Jesus. Winter Solstice (Yule) became Christmas, Spring Equinox and the Festival of Eos (a fertility goddess whose symbols were eggs and bunnies) because Easter. The meanings were changed because they could not get the peasants to stop celebrating them and again they killed anyone who claimed that the meanings of those festivals were anything but the Christian version.
After the fall of Rome, Europe was left in a massive power vacuum and the only remaining authority structure was the Church and they ruled with an iron hand. Bibles were written in Latin but
it was an offense punishable by death for anyone but nobility or the clergy to own a Bible or even learn how to speak Latin. They did this for a reason. If no one knew what the Bible said, they could claim it said whatever the hell they wanted and there would be no way for the people to look and find out for themselves.
After the Reformation, Bibles started to be translated into English but very few members of the clergy spoke Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic and those that did could only do so marginally. This was the case when the Bibles were translated to Latin as well. So what people were forced to do was to take a Bible that had been
badly translated from an original language into Latin, and translate it again from Latin to English. Add in that the English that was spoken during the Reformation is not the same English we speak today.
Furthermore, over time archeologists discovered books that had been hidden from the Church who would have destroyed them had they found them and killed the owner. Additionally, archeologists have found copies of the same books from different time periods and they are not the same. A Greek version of Romans, for example, from the 3nd century can be significantly different than a version from the 5th century. A lot of this is because when the books were copied they were tweaked to reflect significant events that were happening at the current time. Significant problems occur when English Bibles are mass printed using a later version of a book and then archeologists discover a far earlier version of the same book and they are significantly different on key points. What do you? Go back and reprint millions of Bibles to reflect the new information that might completely change major concepts in modern Christian thought? No way. It would cost a fortune and in many cases send Christian thinking into chaos.
Now lets make it even worse. Because the languages have changed, there are holes in the texts sometimes, pages are missing, the pages are torn or disintegrated, or sometimes a verse simply makes no sense at all because the language has been lost, the Church employs a Jewish tradition known as
Midrash. Now Midrash does a lot of stuff but one of the things it does is to allow the Church to fill in those gaps
however they see fit. So if they have a text where they are reading along and suddenly there is a massive hole in the page or it simply doesnt make any sense at all,
the Church can quite literally make up whatever they want and they do not need to justify that decision. Let me assure you that they have taken
full advantage of this and there are many things in English translations that are not supported by any evidence whatsoever.
So the result is that a modern translation of the Bible in English can be a total clusterfuck. It was badly translated into Latin, it was badly translated from Latin to English, its not current with the most recent archeological finds, its been selectively assembled by the Roman Emperors and Popes, the English language has changed since it was first translated, theres stuff in there that even the Church doesnt know what it means and they literally just made shit up.
Its just a total mess.
So keeping all that in mind lets have a look at some of the places where the anti-gay crowd points to and have a good look at them.
First is
Genesis and the story of
Sodom and Gomorrah. Now its pretty rare anymore for anyone to point to this and claim its about homosexuality because the argument is so flimsy its laughable.
The Bible never says what the sin of Sodom was. People point to the alleged attempt by the people of the town to rape the angels at Lots house but that makes no sense and it ignores important parts of the story and the culture of the times. First of all the cities were slated for destruction
before the angels came to Lot so suggesting that it was that act that was the problem is basically saying that God decided to destroy the cities before the sin was even committed. Furthermore, the word used to describe what the people wanted to do to the angels is
yada which means
to know. Now its not
totally unheard of to use the word yada in those days to refer to sexual activity, but boy its rare
.
REALLY rare. More often it means to get information from, to identify, to interrogate, etc. Now this would make a lot of sense since the cities were under siege by the
Elamites and their allies and if there were people in town unknown to everyone else, they would sure as hell want to know who they were and what they were doing there.
This is where culture comes in because the argument become
well if all they wanted to do was interrogate the angels then why did Lot offer his daughters instead? Well because according to tradition if someone was found to be a spy, a foreign diplomat from an enemy nation, etc they would be gang raped in the town square as a show of power and humiliation. The fact that it would be homosexual in nature would be irrelevant, because its important to understand that
in ancient culture it was perfectly acceptable to participate in homosexual relations so long as you were in the dominant role. The feminine role was reserved for slaves and young boys. So to force an enemy into a feminine role in a public forum would be the ultimate act of humiliation,
not because its an act of homosexuality but
because he is forced into a submissive feminine role.
Also of vital importance is to understand that in that culture, it was one of the strictest rules that when someone came into your house for shelter that you protected them with everything in your power and that would absolutely include giving up your own life or the lives of your family in their protection. Equally as important is to understand that in that culture if someone asked you for shelter you had a spiritual obligation to provide it and this was not something that the people of Sodom and Gomorrah (there were actually four cities) would do. They were rich cities, they had become arrogant, they routinely refused to provide shelter and aid to travelers, they warred with their neighbors, etc.
THOSE were almost certainly the sins of Sodom although sexual freedom, fornication, perversion, adulterous behavior in multiple forms was probably a
part of it. But that would be all encompassing and not strictly limited to homosexual activity which according to the customs of the day would only be problematic if you were assuming the feminine role anyhow.
So
forget about Sodom and Gomorrah. Thats out the window. I have already discussed Leviticus
here and
here.
They are out the window for reasons I have already explained.
Deuteronomy 23:17 is one of the most obvious mistranslations in the Bible and most versions (with the notable exception of KJV) dont even interpret it that way anymore. The KJV refers to the sodomites but remember our history. The KJV was translated from Latin in the 17th century and by that time the word sodomite referred to anything except missionary style sexual activity between married couples. Oral sex, doggie style, hand jobs, unmarried vaginal intercourse, etc
.
all of that would get you labeled as a sodomite. The key word though is
Qadesh which means
prostitute and this reinforces the discussion of ritual in Leviticus as it was common practice for pagan temples to employ male and female prostitutes so the people could engage in rituals which involved orgies and various other sexual activities usually for the purposes of fertility either in regard to themselves or their crops. As you may imagine, venereal disease was widespread and as such it was considered unclean, especially to the Jews who were picky about such things as evidenced by Kosher Law, as one example, which had less to do with what was holy and far more to do with what was likely to get you sick according to the standards of cleanliness and food storage of the day.
So Deuteronomy is out.
Now we move to the
New Testament where we have two primary sources:
Paul and
Jude. Lets take Jude first.
Jude is a pretty weak argument as all it does is refer to Sodom and Gomorrah and make a reference to fornication and
going after strange flesh (KJV). Jude does not define exactly what act is being referred to. It does not define what
strange flesh is. It could be bestiality, adultery
.it could be just about anything and since the sins of Sodom were almost certainly not homosexuality all this does is refer to something that is undefined and provides no additional clarification.
So Jude is out the window.
All that leaves us is a couple verses by Paul in
1 Corinthians , Romans, and
1 Timothy. As mentioned before Corinthians was a letter to Corinth, Romans a letter to Rome, and Timothy a letter to Timothy who was a friend to Paul and whom Paul mentored. As I have mentioned several times we do not have the full letters. We have parts of them and we have different versions from different times in history that say different things. We dont have the letters in response so we dont know the context or what Paul was specifically referring to when he wrote them. As I mentioned before reading Paul is a lot like listening to someone on the phone and walking in and out of the room. You
kind of know what is being discussed but not
really. I have also described other problems with Paul; his habit of changing his story depending on the circumstances he is facing at the time, the fact that he never met Jesus once in his life
he didnt so much as sniff Jesus jock strap let alone hear him talk or hold a conversation with him, he was a Roman and viewed the message of Jesus through the filter of Roman culture and Roman upbringing, etc, etc. But with that in mind lets have a look.
Now I have already addressed Romans
here so I am not going to go into that again.
Corinthians and
Timothy both suffer the same fate and its something Ravi referred to earlier and that is the word
arsenokotai and to a lesser degree the word
malakoi in Corinthians. Both are Greek words used by Paul in his letters. Lets look at malakoi first.
No one really knows what malakoi means. It has been translated as
effeminate and it
may mean that but frankly it probably doesnt. The word is used in Matthew as well and is translated as
soft or
fine (depending on the version) in reference to the clothing of the rich. The word is simply unknown and anyone that is being honest will say I have no idea what it means, but
what is interesting is that in Matthew its translated as rich, fine, haughty, etc, but in Corinthians its translated quite differently as effeminate. Why? Well in oder to understand why we have to look at the other word
arsenokotai.
Arsenokotai is used in both Timothy and Corinthians and translated as homosexual or having to do with homosexuality. Unfortunately,
like malakoi, no one has any idea what it means. As I mentioned before there are no uses of the word in any other writings of the time by Paul or anyone else so its literally this unknown word that no one has any idea about. Unfortunately, neither can we look at the context of Pauls writings to give us a clue because Paul is listing a whole bunch of stuff in both Corinthians and Timothy that God finds unacceptable and none of them are really related. Thieves, drunks, fornicators, extortionists, murderers
.a whole bunch of stuff and arsenokotai is just tossed in there. In Corinthians it comes right after malakoi. So what we have is a list of unrelated things with a couple words no one has any idea about.
Enter Midrash. If the Church doesnt know what it means, they reserve the right to define it however they choose and
by defining malakoi as effeminate it gives them context to define arsenokotai as homosexual in Corinthians and through Corinthians again in Timothy. This despite the fact that the common term for homosexuality at the time was
paiderasste which, if Paul wanted to refer to homosexuals, would have been clear as a summers day and undeniable in its definition. So in other words
they ******* flat out made it up.
So Romans is out, Corinthians is out, and Timothy is out too.
So what is left?
What does the anti-gay agenda have to point out with all those verses discredited? They have a whole lot of nothing, thats what they have. So when we get back to the original question of lumping homosexuality with bestiality, the answer is
well
it doesnt. Theres no evidence that homosexuality is what is being referenced when bestiality is listed and in fact the historical and cultural evidence along with linguistic evidence suggest that not only is there no evidence that homosexuality is what is being referenced,
its almost certainly not what is being referenced.
I hope that answers your question Ravi.
