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So if you studied more about it, you would make different statements? I'm glad, as I don't see you as someone who is close minded to learning new information.
Here's some more information: Were you aware that the KJV translators incorrectly translated the Hebrew word qadesh as "sodomites" in about 5 different verses in Deuteronomy, Kings 1 and 2, Job. It meant male cult prostitute. If you look at a range of modern English translations now, you will see this has been corrected:
Which is why you won't see modern anti-gay Christians using these verses against gays.
You also won't see them using Judges 19 and the story of the Levite stranger who was threatened with rape by a gang of local men. His concubine was offered up instead and the men gang raped her all night. Clearly these men were not homosexuals - and it clearly shows that the men in the story of Lot and Sodom were not homosexuals either.
I'm not at all closed-minded, but you don't understand my point Jay.
I said that it says it in The Bible. It does. Just because you want to point to earlier translations where it didn't, is not consequential.
It would be like me saying---The U.S does not have laws written that say it is illegal to own a slave, or have laws written that make it illegal to try to stop a Dr. from performing an abortion....because it USED TO BE that way...and then it was changed.
So, I stand by my statement: The Bible--The ones anyone on this board would typically have available to them...condemns homosexuality...SPECIFICALLY homosexuality...as anyone would understand homosexuality today.
And THAT is why people say it says that...because IT DOES.
I'm not at all closed-minded, but you don't understand my point Jay.
I said that it says it in The Bible. It does. Just because you want to point to earlier translations where it didn't, is not consequential.
It would be like me saying---The U.S does not have laws written that say it is illegal to own a slave, or have laws written that make it illegal to try to stop a Dr. from performing an abortion....because it USED TO BE that way...and then it was changed.
So, I stand by my statement: The Bible--The ones anyone on this board would typically have available to them...condemns homosexuality...SPECIFICALLY homosexuality...as anyone would understand homosexuality today.
And THAT is why people say it says that...because IT DOES.
Some versions do yes, especially those commissioned by conservative churches. They are incorrect translations that are an a example of how prejudice leads to poor and dishonest scholarship. This can now be easily exposed, as anyone with the internet can access and compare many versions of online bibles, secular works written in the same period, the works of the early church fathers, concordances, lexicons, and the works of historians and scholars etc. This has only been possible in very recent years and would never have been forseen by earlier translators.
I don't agree with your analogies as they are about changing laws in a legal and transparent fashion, not changing the wording about what something originally meant when it was first written. A more apt analogy would be if someone decided to change a copy of early US laws about slavery and announced that it was originally written that way. That would be an outright lie and fraud.
Another good example of prejudice leading to a mistranslation is where some translator decided to change the gender of a first century apostle Junia (female) to a male (Junias). The church had become more and more misogynistic, and no doubt the translator must have thought it was a mistake to be corrected and that a woman could not possible be an Apostle. Yet, we have the words of an early church fathers like John Chrysostom from the 4th century acknowledging that Paul referred to a woman Apostle named Junia in Romans 16:7.
Imagine if some misogynistic translator decided to change every instance in the Bible of words that originally meant prostitutes, harlots, whores etc to just "women".
How do you think modern women would react?
I don't think any reputable biblical scholar would tell you that the early church didn't make changes to the early manuscripts to suit the developing doctrines of the times. (the phrase added later to John to reinforce the doctrine of trinity, and the additions after the ending of Mark at the tomb scene, for example).
Origen (185 - 254) an early church father, referred to the tampering of manuscripts in his day. "Nowadays, as is evident, there is a great diversity between the various manuscripts, either through the negligence of certain copyists, or the perverse audacity shown by some in correcting the text, or through the fault of those, who, playing the part of correctors, lengthen or shorten it as they please."
Translators have continued to subtly change the meaning of the texts to suit current church doctrines- as shown by the 1946 change of translation of arsenokoites and malakos to "homosexuals" which had not previously been translated that way...and had never meant homosexuals before. As I mentioned before, Cor 1:6-9 was previously used to condemn masturbators for centuries.
Luckily, unlike any previous time in history, people are able to far more easily research biblical texts for themselves, instead of being indoctrinated by churches.
Origen (185 - 254) an early church father, referred to the tampering of manuscripts in his day. "Nowadays, as is evident, there is a great diversity between the various manuscripts, either through the negligence of certain copyists, or the perverse audacity shown by some in correcting the text, or through the fault of those, who, playing the part of correctors, lengthen or shorten it as they please."
"That it will be necessary sometimes to use falsehood as a remedy for the benefit of those who require such a mode of treatment"
-Eusebius. (The title for chapter 32 of the twelfth book of Evangelical Preparation).
"That it will be necessary sometimes to use falsehood as a remedy for the benefit of those who require such a mode of treatment"
-Eusebius. (The title for chapter 32 of the twelfth book of Evangelical Preparation).
Eusebius seemed to be quite open about it - but I guess he never expected ordinary people to read about him using "falsehoods".
Isn't it suspected that it was Eusebius who was responsible for the Testimonium Flavianum additions to Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews? The additions used by Apologists as "proof" of the existence of Jesus as a flesh and blood person?
Eusebius seemed to be quite open about it - but I guess he never expected ordinary people to read about him using "falsehoods".
Isn't it suspected that it was Eusebius who was responsible for the Testimonium Flavianum additions to Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews?
Yes it is. Eusebius is regarded as one of the greatest Christian forgers in history.
The great religious historian, Eusebius, ingenuously remarks that in his history he carefully omitted whatever tended to discredit the church, and that he piously magnified all that conduced to her glory”
Robert Green Ingersoll. "The Ghosts".
The gravest of the ecclesiastical historians, Eusebius himself, indirectly confesses that he has related whatever might redound to the glory, and that he has suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace, of religion. Such an acknowledgment will naturally excite a suspicion that a writer who has so openly violated one of the fundamental laws of history has not paid a very strict regard to the observance of the other; and the suspicion will derive additional credit from the character of Eusebius, which was less tinctured with credulity, and more practised in the arts of courts, than that of almost any of his contemporaries.
Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/HTML.php?recordID=0214.03 - broken link), vol. 3.
In a book where Eusebius is proving that the pagans got all their good ideas from the Jews, he lists as one of those good ideas Plato's argument that lying, indeed telling completely false tales, for the benefit of the state is good and even necessary. Eusebius then notes quite casually how the Hebrews did this, telling lies about their God, and he even compares such lies with medicine, a healthy and even necessary thing. Someone who can accept this as a 'good idea' worth both taking credit for and following is not the sort of person to be trusted.
Richard Carrier, Footnote 6 from "The Formation of the New testament Canon"
Yes it is. Eusebius is regarded as one of the greatest Christian forgers in history.
The great religious historian, Eusebius, ingenuously remarks that in his history he carefully omitted whatever tended to discredit the church, and that he piously magnified all that conduced to her glory”
Robert Green Ingersoll. "The Ghosts".
The gravest of the ecclesiastical historians, Eusebius himself, indirectly confesses that he has related whatever might redound to the glory, and that he has suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace, of religion. Such an acknowledgment will naturally excite a suspicion that a writer who has so openly violated one of the fundamental laws of history has not paid a very strict regard to the observance of the other; and the suspicion will derive additional credit from the character of Eusebius, which was less tinctured with credulity, and more practised in the arts of courts, than that of almost any of his contemporaries.
Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/HTML.php?recordID=0214.03 - broken link), vol. 3.
In a book where Eusebius is proving that the pagans got all their good ideas from the Jews, he lists as one of those good ideas Plato's argument that lying, indeed telling completely false tales, for the benefit of the state is good and even necessary. Eusebius then notes quite casually how the Hebrews did this, telling lies about their God, and he even compares such lies with medicine, a healthy and even necessary thing. Someone who can accept this as a 'good idea' worth both taking credit for and following is not the sort of person to be trusted.
Richard Carrier, Footnote 6 from "The Formation of the New testament Canon"
Combine that "flexible" attitude towards the truth with being Constantine's lackey and who knows what was real and what was fake with the manuscripts he put together as "canon" for Constantine?
Quote:
The Fifty Bibles of Constantine were fifty Bibles commissioned in 331 by Constantine I and prepared by Eusebius of Caesarea. They were made for the use of the Bishop of Constantinople in the growing number of orthodox churches. It was described by Eusebius in his Life of Constantine and it is our only surviving source about their existence. Little else is known, though there is plenty of speculation. It is speculated that this may have provided motivation for canon lists, and that Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus are possible examples of these Bibles.[1]
What part of idolatrous worship of other gods do you not understand?
I understand the part of idolatrous worship. Yet why does Scripture tell us that God gave them up to vile affections as punishment for their worship of those god's. And those vile affections show us that men were having sex with other men? And why does your translation say such a pratice was both unseemly, and an error?
Why does Romans 1:26,27 tell us, that men having sex with other men is unseemly, and an error?
And why do you focus only on the idolatrous worship, yet avoid speaking of the punishment?
Well I must say this has been an 'interesting' trip, going through all 14 pages and seeing what all everyone had to say, in response to the original posters query...
Here's my answer:
I don't like gay people...I've met a few, I've hung-out in thier chat-rooms watching quietly at the things they talk about, I've even had a few pvt me in vain attempts to figure out what all I was after...and over the years I've even met with one or two over a beer and a cheeseburger...just to look them in the eye and see what they were all about.
You know what I came up with ?
NOTHING. Not a single ONE of them had anything whatsoever to say, that either captivated or 'commanded' my attention.
I find gay people to be shallow, selfish, and self-serving MORONS who have nothing to offer the outside world, other than the goods and services they provide thier respective communities within which they reside and work for.
In short...a gay individual is no better or worse than the next person I meet on the street.
I don't HATE gay people, but that does'nt necessarily mean that I'm required to LIKE a gay person either.
Unless provoked, I will not be 'rude' to a gay person, but instead will be polite (perhaps even 'deferential' if need be) but a gay person will niether receive, nor expect any 'special' treatment, provisions or 'priviledges' when dealing directly with me.
We are all one big family here on this planet...whether any of us like it or not, you are my brother, you are my sister...and like ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL family's, there will be arguments, trials, good-times, bad-times, etc....
...for better or worse, we have to learn to get along somehow, or the hatred and anymosity will will eventually pulverize this planet to dust, from whence it came.
These earthquakes, temperature changes, radical weather patterns, fire-storms, drought, etc....
Taken as a whole, they are nothing short of WARNINGS which the entire human-race should take notice of.
Time is running out.
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