Leviticus al la carte

Thanks joe, I wasn't being impatient, just nipping the propensity of this thread to wander off in the bud...

Nip it! Nip it in the bud!!!

This is a statement which, in view of the history of European peoples that i have read, seems to me to be well established.

Sorry for the wandering, Chai.

The first was Jesus simultaneously being the fulfillment of the Mosaic law and overturning that law. I mentioned that in my remarks on Setanta's post.

Likewise, if the teachings of Jesus tell us not to obsess over god's law, we are presumably required to follow that teaching because it is god's law. Tell me that's not contradictory.


A debatable point, but one that is tangential to this thread.

I don't agree, but like the other point, it is tangential to this thread. May be a good topic for another, though.

Re: the interpretation business with Paul and being circumsized.

It seems that his interpretation is rather convenient.

as joe said, it was a deal breaker, so it was decided jesus meant you can be circumsized in your heart.

Was it convenient also to disgard other laws because they didn't fit in with the culture of those being converted? I can fully see someone one the fence about converting saying "but this thing about pork....I'm a pig farmer"....well....ok, we'll drop that law.

What, I wonder would have been the result of the following situation....You're on the verge of converting a largish group in one fell swoop....there are 3 or 4 members of this group who are natural born leaders, charasmatic, good communicators...would be key in spreading the word to many others in such a way that would surely result in conversion, and these members are homosexual.

Would Pauls interpretation have changed knowing the spread of christianity would spread all the quicker?

What if Paul himself had been a homosexual? Would that law no longer have applied?

I don't know the answer to these questions....but no one else does either.

Thinking about it, it comes to my related question of "who gets to interpret"?

Joe sez Paul is considered by most people to be a reliable interpreter of Gods word.

Why?

This is the gist of "who got to decide what's dropped, and what stays?"

What exactly makes Paul interpretation better than others? Because more people believed Paul than believed someone else?

How many people have said they have conversed with God, and interpret his word, (perhaps in a very valid way) only to be called insane?

If the answer to any of this is...I don't know, then, how do you know Paul was right?

Faith, you say? Doesn't that make each individual an interpretor, deciding whose interpretation is correct?

Then, why can each person make their own interpretation from square one?

By the way...Was Paul a homosexual?

If I remember correctly, Paul got to decide because Paul had power. I'll have to reread my history to find out how he got that power. Wasn't he the converted Roman soldier?

Lots o'info here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Paul%2C_the_Apostle

So, if I got some power, I could interpret?




Actually, I do have quite a bit of power already.

The fact that you are focused on homosexuality is significant. Although there is no reason to assume that the Romans were fond of homosexuality, there is also no reason to assert that they were opposed to it. The propaganda of the old Republican Empire was heavily grounded in the image of the chaste youth (male and female) emulating their virtuous Patriarch and Matriarch. The reality was quite different, and everyone knew it. The Republic dissovled in the Marian and Sullan civil wars which occurred at the end of the second century BCE, at about the time of the birth of Iulius Caesar. Caesar himself was known to the ancient world as a bisexual, and it was generally believed that he engaged in a homosexual relationship with the King of Bythinia for almost three years, before that King died, and bequeathed his kingdom to the Empire. The Empire was then putatively still a Republic, but the old structure was crumbling, and the conflict between Caesar and Pompey began to shape up even before Caesar was appointed Consul and given control of the consular province of Cisalpine Gaul. To cut to the chase, Caesar defeated Pompey and established the Principiate empire. Technically, his adopted successor Octavian, known as Caesar Augustus, was the first Principiate Emperor, because he was the emperor who first took the title Princeps, or first citizen. He maintained a fiction of ancient republican virtue, to the extent that he suppressed scandal, and took steps of censorship against those who maligned the members of Patrician families (his exile of Ovid is the most famous example, simply because Ovid is remembered).

But there was no official policy with regard to homosexuality, and it was not uncommon in the Roman empire. More importantly, homosexuality was not only not frowned upon by the Greeks, it was often celebrated. In a famous example, a woman condemned by the people as a bawd was acquitted by the Athenian "Senate" when she disrobed, and was much admired for having the figure of an adolescent boy. The event may be apochryphal, but it is illustrative of the Greek atttitude toward casual homosexuality.

Therefore, Paul's condemnation of homosexuality actually flew in the face of the casual social mores of Greek culture, which is the arena in which he hoped to make his biggest splash. But a key to understanding why he might not have toned down the rhetoric is that the cult was originally intended to appeal to the "downtrodden" masses, and not the intelligentsia or the social elite.

However, a contention that Paul might have abandoned the prohibition on homosexuality in the hope of gaining more converts would at least seem to have been contradicted by the casual attitude toward homosexuality in the Greek world. Had he been so inclined, it would actually have made sense. In the larger sense of the Roman Empire, condoning homosexuality would not have made any cult odious to Imperial authorities, although it would not have made itself attractive to the Patrician class, who, at least publicly, would have reacted to homosexuality as not being virtuous. However, Sulla proscribed literally thousands of Patricians, some allege as many as 5,000--so, long before Iuslius Caesar established the Principiate empire, most Patrician clans had been extinguished in the principle male line. Caesar himself was descended from a branch of the Iulian clan from Campania, and not from Rome.

There was no advantage to Paul in proscribing homosexuality, and one could even allege that it would have drawn a contemptuous response from the elite of the Greek world, which was the area in which he operated to spread the cult.

Good link FD, I'll read later.

Re: Leviticus al la carte


I've always held a simplistic explanation of why Christians have singled out this particular law to adhere to, while ignoring much of the rest. I believe most people throughout the centuries--present age included--have been repulsed by homosexuality. I believe the passages which address the issue, as unclear as they are in intention, have provided the necessary cover to practice the discrimination.

I have scant evidence for my theory; it's little more than an assumption. But a corollary with slavery laws could be drawn it seems. Those infamous passages were mightily defended and prominently underlined as well by racists until recently.

That's pretty much my take, too. The old saying about how you can find something in the bible to support most any assertion. I think the chicken and the egg of this is first, revulsion towards homosexuality by the powers that be, and second, "hey look there's something in the bible that supports my irrational revulsion..."

Great post set, really informational....

however, I think I got a little turned around..if there was no point in him banning homosexuality, as above, then why do you think he did?

Was homosexuality more practiced among the patricians than the common people? And he was trying to appeal to the masses?


I'm sure your answer is in there somewhere, but I may have overlooked.
Don't mean to be dense.

Chai-

Perhaps he wished to get himself crucified. The contempt of the Greek elite at that time could lead to all sorts of cruel and unusual punishments.

hmmmm...true spendius, I can see him wanting to be crucified.

So, I'm picking up here that it's largely a result of Pauls interpretations?


Didn't he believe that the world was going to end during his lifetime?

Missed out on that one big time, and that was the way he saw it. Why would someone trust without questioning the way he saw other things?

Leviticus 20:13
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

It is marketing. During that period it was the common custom to have the king acclaimed as a son of a god. Pharaohs were regarded as descendants of Gods so Jesus was packaged as Son of God even though Jesus never specifically referred to himself as Son Of God but Son of Man. When he does refer to his father in heaven he probably meant in a generic father as as are sons of God. The Romans were followers of Mithra which was very close to Paul's Christianity. Besides, the idea of 'messiah' came from the Persian Zoroastrianism.

The other Apostles focused their efforts on converting Jews as Jesus specially stated that was his mission. Paul went after the gentiles i.e. non-Jews and met with great success and changed the complexion of the Christianity

I acknowledge that my point was not clear. You had responded to Joe's remarks about discarding the requirement for circumcision by wondering if he would not have easily discarded the prohibition on homosexuality. I was pointing out that homosexuality was not to be considered offensive to the elite of the Empire, nor specifically to the elite of the Greek world. Therefore, a prohibition on homosexuality, the condemnation of the practice, would have been no advantage, and possibly even a disadvantage in the attempt to proselytize among those classes of people. But the cult was designed to appeal to the "downtrodden masses." There is no reason to assume that a prohibition on homosexuality would have been, to use Joe's phrase, "a dealbreaker" with that part of the population as circumcision might have been.

So, one might assume that Paul was not necessarily going to tailor the message is so broad terms as to appeal to absolutely everyone, or to anyone other than the target audience. One might also assume that Paul was only willing to make so many concessions to people's scruples, but no more (after all, having someone cut the skin off your pecker when you're already an adult is rather more drastic than being told you can't bugger the neighboring shepherd). One might assume that Paul, who was working in the Greek world, but still had a base among Jews, was unwilling to alienate a group which was important within the cult, and which had a pre-existing prejudice against homosexuality. One might assume that Paul heard a good deal of objection to circumcision, and little objection to a prohibition on homosexuality.

The problem with all of this is the complexity of the situation. Many aspects of the Mithraic cult were absorbed by early Christianity, and as it was practiced in the Empire at that time, sexual asceticism was a tenet of that cult. Prohibiting homosexual liaisons when one is discouraging sexual license in general is not a strikingly divergent attitude.

So, as all of this is in reference to Joe's remarks about circumcision, and Paul's canny decision to abandon the insistence on the procedure in order to make the cult more popular--a lot of men would have been turned off by the thought of circumcision, and in that time and that culture, the appeal to men was paramount. Sadly, people them did not give a rat's ass what women thought, even at the highest levels. Women in that day who were prominent were sufficiently rare as to have been the exceptions which proved the rule. But a prohibition on homosexuality would likely have offended far fewer men than the thought of adult circumcision.

Then again, may Paul just hated fags obsessively--ya never know.

Thanks, that helped me understand.