So....I sure hope you're not wearing mixed fabric clothing.....or are trimming your sideburns and beard....or eating shellfish....or planting seed mixes like wildflowers.
I think we both agree that there were things that were given to Israel that weren't given to other nations. Let's look at this from the context of what Israel was commanded to do. I read the text that tells the Israelites not to lie with a man as one does with a woman. I say it means that. From what you've been saying, that commandments doesn't apply except in some culturally-specific situation that relates to Canaanite or Egyptian idolatry, if I understand you right. Can we both agree that any time an Israelite man had sex with another man or with an animal, he was violating the commandment?
I don't "ignore what the text actually says"......I believe things are far richer---make more sense when they're placed in the context.
I am all for context. But you are making up 'context' or borrowing from writers who make up 'context.' And your context isn't really context. It is excuses. You have a hermeneutic that allows you to dismiss passages you don't like if the cultural situation is not what
you suppose is the cultural situation in the text. You have no basis for dismissing these commands as not being valid outside of the cultural situation of idol-worshipping pagans. I think if you were talking to a devout Orthodox Jew and told him it was only wrong to have sex with the same gender or with an animal if it is done as an act of idolatry, and that it's okay if it's done in a loving committed relationship, that he would disagree, because he believes that the commandment still stands on its own.
By 'context', btw, I'm talking about the context of what is written in the passage, not every theorized idea about the culture back then that you can come up with.
Basically, your 'context' is made up. You are assuming the command only applies in a specific case when the 'context' of the text itself doesn't justify your conclusions.
The verse in
Matthew 23 is an excellent example. If we merely go by the words alone--we can still be guilty of the offense.
But you would have us believe that we can violate the actual words and not be guilty of the offense. And the consistent problem with your thinking throughout the thread. What if we apply this to other areas. What if someone said, "I only slept with her physically, but I did not commit adultery with my heart."
Why is there an issue of wearing mixed fabrics.....am I not supposed to eat pork.....why are Abraham & Sarah excused from this "horrible abomination"? All of that is answered sufficiently (IMO) by the context.
I don't understand your point about what your assertion has to do with 'context'.
I wasn't aware that brother-sister incest is called an 'abomination' in scripture. It's less repulsive than homosexuality, especially if the two don't know they are related. At least they got the gender thing right. The Bible doesn't say that Abraham and Sarah were brother and sister, but it tells us that Abraham said that they are brother and sister-- to a king he had been misleading. And we see later that Isaac called his wife, who was his cousin, his sister, in the same book, a very similar story.
Why are you so quick to believe left-leaning Jewish scholars who go against the weight of Jewish traditional interpretation to build a weak case on Leviticus 18, but reject Jewish tradition on the relationship between Abraham and Sarah.
