This whole interminable discussion started with "God hates homosexuality", based on Leviticus calling it an abomination. It's not unreasonable to want to know what the original said. When you look at that, the answer seems to be God hates anal sex, in the same way that he hates failure to distinguish clean and unclean animals.
That's the simple reading comprehension BobRyan refers to. But knowing what the text says isn't the complete answer. Just how that applies to us isn't so obvious, since we don't distinguish between clean and unclean animals. Why not? Because Christians generally see reasons that the Leviticus holiness code doesn't apply to us.
It does raise interesting questions. Did God actually hate eating unclean animals, or do he hate Israelites' eating unclean animals because he had made a specific covenant with them? I think Christians typically take the second position. Personally I think the author of Leviticus took the first position, that God actually did hate the failure to distinguish between clean and unclean animals. The wider context makes that pretty clear. But since conservative Christians think every word of the Bible is eternally true, they have to reject the idea that Biblical authors might have been wrong about something, or that God might have changed his mind, so we start down the path of ignoring what the text really meant in the original context.
That path isn't so unusual. 1st Cent Jews, modern Jews, Jesus, and the Catholic Church until the last few hundred years took the same non-literal approach. (Look at Luke 20:42, and imagine what would happen to you if you used that kind of exegesis in a modern seminary exegesis class, whether conservative or liberal. But this was typical of Jewish exegesis.) They didn't treat the Bible as an historical document, but as a living document. Interpretations adapted it, sometimes by very "creative" approaches, to current needs. But if we take that approach, then the whole fundamentalist enterprise collapses, along with a lot of liberal historical interpretation.
At that point we have to do what most Jews and Christians did throughout history, and creatively interpret the Bible so it supports Christ's goal of loving God and our neighbor, even if a literal reading of the text as the author would have understood it might not support that.
That's the simple reading comprehension BobRyan refers to. But knowing what the text says isn't the complete answer. Just how that applies to us isn't so obvious, since we don't distinguish between clean and unclean animals. Why not? Because Christians generally see reasons that the Leviticus holiness code doesn't apply to us.
It does raise interesting questions. Did God actually hate eating unclean animals, or do he hate Israelites' eating unclean animals because he had made a specific covenant with them? I think Christians typically take the second position. Personally I think the author of Leviticus took the first position, that God actually did hate the failure to distinguish between clean and unclean animals. The wider context makes that pretty clear. But since conservative Christians think every word of the Bible is eternally true, they have to reject the idea that Biblical authors might have been wrong about something, or that God might have changed his mind, so we start down the path of ignoring what the text really meant in the original context.
That path isn't so unusual. 1st Cent Jews, modern Jews, Jesus, and the Catholic Church until the last few hundred years took the same non-literal approach. (Look at Luke 20:42, and imagine what would happen to you if you used that kind of exegesis in a modern seminary exegesis class, whether conservative or liberal. But this was typical of Jewish exegesis.) They didn't treat the Bible as an historical document, but as a living document. Interpretations adapted it, sometimes by very "creative" approaches, to current needs. But if we take that approach, then the whole fundamentalist enterprise collapses, along with a lot of liberal historical interpretation.
At that point we have to do what most Jews and Christians did throughout history, and creatively interpret the Bible so it supports Christ's goal of loving God and our neighbor, even if a literal reading of the text as the author would have understood it might not support that.
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