Did Christian homophobia come from a mistranslation of the Bible?
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Anonymous
This. The very idea shows a complete ignorance of Christianity, the Church, and the Bible. All church teaching (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant denominations) prior to the middle 20th century regarded homosexual behavior as sinful. I'm not saying you have to agree with that teaching, but when people talk like "homophobia" is the result of a translation that occurred almost 2000 years into the history of the church, they are not being serious. |
Anonymous
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DP. It's obviously correct to say that all churches' teaching prior to mid-20th century regarded homosexual behavior as sinful.
As I understand it, OP and her sources are focussing on the New Testament. We all agree Jesus said nothing on the subject. The only other New Testament passage is from Paul, but the Guardian piece disputes the translation. Which if correct would leave nothing in the New Testament against homosexuality. If that's the case, then Christians who condemn homosexuality have to fall back on the Old Testament--Leviticus, Sodom and Gomorrah, although the Adam Erickson piece somebody posted disputes them, too. Point is, if you knock off the New Testament, then only Bible literalists who think everything in the Old Testament is God's word would still have a basis for homophobia. Few Christians today are Bible literalists. As a pp pointed out, the Old Testament also has father-daughter incest. There's a third source, which is cultural biases. Undoubtedly these affected Aquinas, Luther, etc, although they did find supposed "authority" in the Bible. But culture is changing, thank goodness. |
Anonymous
The Bible has many examples of people in earlier times committing acts of evil. So what? That is in no way an approval of those acts. |
Anonymous
Agree. That part of the story doesn't mean God condoned it. That's a silly argument. |
Anonymous
As is racism, misogyny, and other things which are very much NOT linked to what we know of the actual words of Jesus. As a teenager, I realized that much of what I disliked about Christianity— as I understood it — was really more about Paul, and that people often used and misused words attributed to Paul to justify quite a lot of less than loving behavior and views. |
Anonymous
This is simply fallacious (the Guardian piece assertions, not your post). Go to Biblehub for 1 Cor. 6 and look up the Wycliffe bible (14th century), Tyndale bible (16th century), and King James bible (17th century). The King James bible uses euphemistic terms (although they would have been clear enough in the 17th century) in the 1 Cor. 6 passage, but Wycliffe is explicit, sic "nor lechers against nature, nor those who do lechery with men". These "1946 mistranslation" arguments are not a result of serious scholarship. |
Anonymous
So do the folks in the Guardian need to go back further than 1946, back to the 16th century, and dispute those translations too? Because it seems like if the translation was wrong in 1946, it would have been wrong then, too. Which isn't to say Christian homophobia didn't exist before 1946. Of course it did. |
Anonymous
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The ancient world pre Christianity wasn't exactly a welcoming place for homosexuality either. There were variations across the civilized world on how homosexual activity was viewed but there was never a time or place where same sex couples could marry and be treated as fully valid in the eyes of society. Roman society pre Christianity certainly saw homosexuality as deviant behavior and accusations of homosexual activity was a slur. That said, homosexual activity was also commonplace as a sexual activity.
A great deal of it had to do with that people were viewed through the prism of class and culture, not sex, and as long as you performed cultural public facing expectations of your tribe in your public behavior and attitudes, which would be extremely traditional and regulated, what happened in the bedroom was irrelevant. So an emperor could have a wife, as was culturally expected for him, but have his gay lovers too, and it wouldn't be that controversial. But for an emperor to have a male "husband" would have been enormously controversial and widely derided. You can certainly make the case that Christianity codified attitudes that led to less tolerance for homosexual activity, especially the Christian emphasis on sexual purity and the sanctity of sex between male and female (which, if anything, distinctly benefited Christian women over pagan women). But in practice it changed little. The entire history of the Christian world is littered with homosexual activity. It was rampant enough in the medieval era. If anything, my own casual observation is that it was really the tribal Germanic cultures who adopted the Christian faith that had more to do with homophobia in the later ages than anything in the Bible or the early Church in the Mediterranean world. We can see how there was always more tolerance for homosexual behavior behind closed doors in the Mediterranean Europe than Germanic/Northern Europe, which is an intriguing angle and worth exploring. The real cultural changes launched by the widespread adoption of the Christian faith was the status of women. And babies. The early Christians were perceived as weirdos for rescuing unwanted abandoned female babies, a commonplace activity of the time. |
Anonymous
Yes, exactly. What is more likely, that all past translations before mid-20th century were incorrect OR that, with our modern sensibilities, we don't like what 1 Cor. 6 actually says? The idea that "everybody got it wrong before now" as a matter of simple language translation is ridiculous. Say you don't want to rule your life by it, fine, but don't do damage to yourself intellectually with this "mistranslation" nonsense. |
Anonymous
OP Very well stated. Thank you |
Anonymous
OP Ignorant of what exactly? That most ancient civilizations did not stigmatize or punish homosexuality until 4th century AD when Constantine converted the declining Roman Empire to Christianity? Jesus had nothing to say about the matter giving us a sense that he did not regard homosexuality as an abomination before God in the same league as many other behaviors. He had plenty to say about other types of sin (attitudes and actions that separate us from the love of God) - such as those who were/ are judgmental, hypocritical and lack compassion for others who are suffering in different ways. Ancient Rome As long as a man played the penetrative role, it was socially acceptable and considered natural for him to have same-sex relations, without a perceived loss of his masculinity or social standing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_homosexuality#:~:text=Ancient%20Rome,-Main%20articles%3A%20Sexuality&text=As%20long%20as%20a%20man,his%20masculinity%20or%20social%20standing. Was homosexuality accepted in ancient Greece? During these times, homosexuality was seen as normal and necessary due to the power dynamic at play between an older, dominant man, and a younger, submissive one. Yet, when two men of similar age shared a similar relationship, it was deemed taboo and, in fact, perverse. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Greece#:~:text=During%20these%20times%2C%20homosexuality%20was,and%2C%20in%20fact%2C%20perverse. Was homosexuality accepted in ancient Egypt? No ancient Egyptian document mentions that homosexual acts were set under penalty. Thus it was very likely tolerated, as there has never been proof suggesting otherwise. The Roman Emperor Constantine in the 4th century AD is said to have exterminated a large number of "effeminate priests" based in Alexandria. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Egypt#:~:text=No%20ancient%20Egyptian%20document%20mentions,effeminate%20priests%22%20based%20in%20Alexandria Speaking for myself, many of my favorite priests and church leaders are gay. I am so glad that they can be their true awesome selves in our church (and in many others now). Jesus advised us that we will know a tree by its fruit. The gay people I know at my large church reflect the fruits of the spirit that St Paul talks about in Galatians 5: 22-23: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law or condemnation. |
Anonymous
You are making my point. Many ancient non-Christian civilizations did not regard homosexuality as sinful. All pre-20th-century Christian teaching is that homosexuality is sinful. You certainly don't have to accept that teaching. My point is that it is intellectually and historically dishonest to say that the bible and Christianity have not consistently been understood to condemn homosexuality for 1950 years or so. There is no way that a 1946 translation (or even a 14th, 16th, or 17th century translation) led to "Christian homophobia". That concept is intellectually dishonest and historically laughable. |
Anonymous
OP - that is likely true . I am going to nosy to watch the documentary and hoping they make a more convincing case than what was described in the guardian article . |
Anonymous
You are guilty of cherrypicking what you want to believe and making widespread assumptions about pagan civilizations with absolutely no knowledge of them. Pagan civilizations were not beau ideals when it came to homosexuality. There was never a time when two grown male adults could openly be married in the eyes of their civilization with all the due rights associated with it. There were no rights for homosexuality. The Romans were also very aware of the Greek (some Greek, not all Greek) man-boy love and it was controversial for them and not exactly something they accepted as "normal." A great deal of your misunderstanding lies in that homosexuality was seen as a sexual act rather than a sexual identity, whether man-boy or man-man love, or woman-woman. Roman literature and history is filled with using homosexuality as a slur against a person, not a praise, just as other forms of deviant sexual behaviors were also used slurs. At the same time, it was an era when men could engage in homosexual activity and still be treated as a regularly married man with a wife and family, which they often did have. It was treated as one would treat a fetish. You also ignore that the mindset of the ancient world was sharply different and based on entirely different outlooks. It was a world, for example, where men had complete "ownership" over family members so if the wife produced yet another unwanted daughter, the father could order the slaves to leave the baby to be abandoned outside the walls for the vultures, and then go sleep with his male lover, assuming he had one. And it was accepted and within the bounds of legality of the times. The consideration for the value of human life practically did not exist in any meaningful sense, people were viewed by their tribe/people, their status as free or slave, and if free, their family and wealth. Society operated against that framework. A wealthy man from a prominent family would receive far more freedom and flexibility in his private life than a slave or a poor man. And the vast majority were either peasants or slaves with preciously few rights or protection. So I would be very careful before trying to see that a "better" morality was lost with the arrival of Christianity. When Christianity arrived on the scene, it did introduce a new morality that fundamentally changed how the world viewed itself and people viewed each other, but it wasn't invented by the early Church. A great deal of Christian morality derived from the strict rules governing family and sexual relationships of the Jewish people (there were multiple Jewish groups), along with adaptation and evolution as it spread out of the Eastern Mediterranean and across the known world. Still, Jesus makes it clear that he subscribed to the laws of the Jewish people before him. But the absence of information in the Bible shouldn't be taken to mean that Jesus would have given his thumbs up to open acceptance of homosexuality. Frankly, we do not know what he would have said or thought. But given the context of his time and his origin and his people, if he thought about homosexuality, it was as a sexual act, not an identity, and given that he deferred to existing Jewish laws in so many areas governing family relationships, it's likely he would have seen it against that backdrop. I'd consider homosexuality a red herring in many ways because we're arguing about something that didn't have the same societal meaning and perspectives at the time. It wasn't important enough to Jesus to talk about it, yet he also didn't single out acceptance of homosexuality either, and that does tell you something. The concept of a "gay man" rather than someone who liked to sleep with men first emerged in Germany in the mid 19th century. But what would be much more intriguing is the modern concept of transgenderism and non-binarism and fluid sexual identities. Now what Jesus would have thought about that is surely an interesting question. |
Anonymous
DP. Agree that pre-Christian societies were not the tolerant paradises some here would like to think. The tradition of man-boy love, in particular, involves power imbalances that should give us all pause. But you’re wrong in asserting that Jesus would “likely” have opposed homosexuality because of his time and background. It also seems meaningless to conclude that because he isn’t on the record as saying anything affirmatively in favor of homosexuality, this absence “tells us something,” and that something must be negative. Against all this, you should weigh his acceptance of and love for all types of people. |