Need some help on a few difficult subjects...

[PapaLandShark]

Hi all,
There are two interrelated subjects I'd appreciate some help and thoughts on. I've asked one of the Senior Admin's about this topic and she helped me clarify what I'm trying to get across and suggested that perhaps this would be the best place to post this.

In many places I've seen those who are homosexual treated in an un-Christian way. Even here on this board. Perhaps not surprising, but disturbing to me and something that I myself have been guilty of.

In my searching for answers I ran across this particular site that suggested that perhaps our translations of certain scripture were incorrect. I'm not an expert in the original language/s...I'm barely competent in English in my own estimation.

So I would ask that those of you who can expound on the information in the link below take a look and offer your views:

http://www.freeingthespirit.org/CommentariesJS.htm

Information about the Author can be found here:

http://www.freeingthespirit.org/abouttheauthor.htm

Briefly the author asserts that the scripture in light of context ( and perhaps mistakes in translation) keeps returning to Idolatry...Not homosexuality itself ( if I understand correctly ).

Even if we are to poke holes into this that you could drive a Mack Truck through I keep returning to this:

Mark 12:30
AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.'
Mark 12:31
"The second is this, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

How can we explain our attitudes in the face of these words?

 

[filosofer]

Here is an approach that seems balanced in dealing with the sin and being compassionate and active in ministry from a Christian perspective:

Welcome. Exodus is the largest Christian referral and information ministry dealing with homosexual issues in our world today. In order to keep you informed of the worldwide ministries, we offer monthly newsletters, annual conferences, speaking engagements and, of course, web services. Exodus is your global resource that offers freedom through the love of Jesus Christ.

Exodus is a worldwide interdenominational, Christian organization called to encourage, strengthen, unify and equip Christians to minister the transforming power of the Lord Jesus Christ to those affected by homosexuality.

Exodus

 

[PapaLandShark]

Hi filosopher,
Thank you for the link. I'll be sure to check it out. I think that I should clarify a bit though.

I'm not trying to change minds here. I am asking that those who can actually read and translate the original texts of the scripture take a look at the information presented by the author above ( I've followed it as far as I can ) and offer thier thoughts on the translations. I'm also asking for some self examination and discussion on our attitudes in the face of the above scripture.

It is also not my intent to turn this into a debate so I pray that it will not stray into such.

Thanks all!

 

[MAC]

See if this gives you some help..

Mar 12:30 - And thou shalt love the Lord thy God,.... Which is to be understood of the one God, Father, Son, and Spirit; for all the three divine persons are to be equally loved, being possessed of the same perfections and excellencies, and having done the same works, and having bestowed like benefits and favours upon men: and though there is now no principle of love to God in men; but, on the contrary, men are enemies to God in their minds, which appears by their wicked works; yet this commandment is still in force, and the obligation to it is the same; the fall of man, the corruption of nature, and the impotency, and even aversion in man to observe this command, do not make it null and void: and in regeneration, when God puts his laws into the heart, and writes them in the mind; love is produced in such persons, to God the Father, who has begotten them again, according to his abundant mercy; and to Christ, who has saved them from their sins; and to the blessed Spirit, who has quickened and comforted them: and this love is in some measure exercised as it should be, and as here directed to,

with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind; that is, with all the powers and faculties of the soul; or with the affections, as under the influence and guidance of the more noble faculties of the soul, the mind, the understanding, judgment, and will: it is added here, which is not in Matthew,

and with all thy strength; which answers to the phrase in Deu_6:5, "with all thy might"; that is, with the greatest vehemency of affection, in the strongest expressions of it, and with all the strength of grace a man has. This passage follows the former in Deu_6:5 and is what is only cited in Mat_22:37;

Mar 12:31 - And the second is like--"unto it" (Mat_22:39); as demanding the same affection, and only the extension of it, in its proper measure, to the creatures of Him whom we thus love--our brethren in the participation of the same nature, and neighbors, as connected with us by ties that render each dependent upon and necessary to the other.

Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself--Now, as we are not to love ourselves supremely, this is virtually a command, in the first place, not to love our neighbor with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. And thus it is a condemnation of the idolatry of the creature. Our supreme and uttermost affection is to be reserved for God. But as sincerely as ourselves we are to love all mankind, and with the same readiness to do and suffer for them as we should reasonably desire them to show to us. The golden rule (Mat_7:12) is here our best interpreter of the nature and extent of these claims.

There is none other commandment greater than these--or, as in Mat_22:40, "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets" (see on Mat_5:17). It is as if He had said, "This is all Scripture in a nutshell; the whole law of human duty in a portable, pocket form." Indeed, it is so simple that a child may understand it, so brief that all may remember it, so comprehensive as to embrace all possible cases. And from its very nature it is unchangeable. It is inconceivable that God should require from his rational creatures anything less, or in substance anything else, under any dispensation, in any world, at any period throughout eternal duration. He cannot but claim this--all this--alike in heaven, in earth, and in hell! And this incomparable summary of the divine law belonged to the Jewish religion! As it shines in its own self-evidencing splendor, so it reveals its own true source. The religion from which the world has received it could be none other than a God-given religion!

Psa 19:7 The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.

Rom 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

 

[filosofer]

Okay, here is a look at the first "proof text":

Christian Forums: 12-23-2004

Free the Spirit - - Evaluation

Where did the idea of condemning homosexuality come from? Philo, who was a leading Jewish scholar who lived from about 20 B.C.E. to 50 C.E. had a great deal of influence on biblical interpretation. With respect to sexuality, he taught that it was the primary duty of every male to procreate, and any sexual expression which did not produce legitimate offspring was "against nature."

If the condemnation is an ancient idea for an ancient culture, why do so many churches still teach it today? Tradition! Tradition has been defined as the homage one pays to the dead. Basing its teachings on the teachings of Philo and others, the church has, for the better part of the last two thousand years kept its doors closed to homosexuals.

This is a case of misrepresenting history. We have manuscripts prior to the time Philo, namely the Dead Sea Scrolls, that have the same statements. The person is reading back into textual/manuscript history what she wants to find.

Because we do not have the original manuscripts, the truth is that no one knows–for that matter–no one can know what God really said. If you need proof of my statement, go to any bible bookstore and look at the number of different translations presented. Each translation represents the diligent labor of countless scholars working for years to try to determine what God really said. The bottom line is that all we have are their interpretations of what God really said.

Not accurate. The person is mixing two different things: the text in the Hebrew/Greek vs. translating that text into English. Because there are several different English translations trying to present what the Hebrew/Greek manuscripts actually do have does not destroy or make "uncertain" what God said.

The first rule of hermeneutics is that passages in scripture must be kept in proper context.

No, context is an important rule of hermeneutics, but the first rule of hermeneutics is to take the words in their normally understood manner.

I believe that God fully intended that there not be just one interpretation of scripture. I believe that God wanted to make room for all–all different kinds of interpretation of scripture–all different kinds of understanding of scripture–many, many different ways of looking at scripture. Just as I believe that God’s Love embraces all different manner of us, I believe that God’s Heart has room for all the many ways we have of drawing closer to God.

Here is the real agenda. Note that the author is stating up front that she can differ with any scholar or a consensus of scholars and be legitimate ("Don't confuse me with facts, I have my interpretation and God approves of it!").

My personal definition of divine inspiration sees the bible as the instrument the Holy Spirit uses to communicate directly and personally with each of us, to the extent that we allow the Spirit to do so. At their last meal Jesus explained to the disciples about the coming of the Holy Spirit and said, "But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom God will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said…when the Spirit of truth comes, the Spirit will guide you into all the truth." ( John 14:26, 16:13a, NIV) For me, divine inspiration is what happens to me when I open up the bible to read it, and open up myself to be guided by the Holy Spirit into "all the truth" for my life. Christians like to speak of having a personal relationship with God. The resultant spiritual growth you and I experience when we open ourselves up to the Holy Spirit is our evidence of that personal relationship–that divine inspiration.

Note that the person uses her own definition to justify what she wants to prove.

-----–
Note the number of assumptions, and "perhaps" and "apparently" that forms the basis of her argument that Gen. 19 is not about homosexuality.

Lot was a relative newcomer to Sodom. Genesis 13 tells us that Abraham and his nephew, Lot, had sojourned together, but that their respective entourages had gotten so large that the land they traveled through could not support all of them, so they decided to go their separate ways. Lot and his family chose to migrate toward Sodom. Apparently, they hadn’t been living in the city too long before the strangers (angels) arrived.

It seems to be the nature of people to tend to be suspicious of newcomers. This was especially true in those days where towns often were attacked and raided by roving bands of hooligans. Lot may have been there long enough to have won token acceptance, but when he invited two more strangers to his home, this action drew the immediate attention of the community.

Is it possible that, fearing a threat to the city, the men stormed Lot’s house determined to find out (yadtha’) who these men were and exactly what were their intentions? Did the Sodomites suspect the strangers were a scouting party sent to infiltrate the city to find out its weaknesses and report back to an army waiting outside the city gates to lay siege to it? Could it be that in storming Lot’s door they were saying, "Who are these men? Bring them out here so that we can find out exactly what they are up to?"

By asking questions of the text - is good, but relevant? "Is it possible that people stood out in the Arizona desert and took pictures of the landscape and sent them back to Hollywood to refine and then pass them off as people having been on the moon's surface?" Asking the question does not establish the "fact" of the question. Yet that is what she is trying to do.

The key problem here is that she has overlooked the specific use of YADTHA' ("to know"). For instance, she makes this claim:

Used in Scripture, yadtha’ means to have complete and thorough knowledge of something or someone, and includes having sexual knowledge. But, of the 943 times yadtha’ is used in the Hebrew Scriptures, only ten times does it refer to having sexual intercourse. That means there are 933 times when this word is used when it does not refer to sex.

All well and good, but that has no bearing on the text if this is indeed one of the texts in which it does refer to sexual intercourse.

In fact, it correctly can be inferred that the damning behavior of the Sodomites was the breaking of their own Code of Hospitality with regard to the strangers.

The New Oxford Annotated Bible states: *"…the main issue here is hospitality to secretly divine visitors. Here, however, the sanctity of hospitality is threatened by the men of the city who wish to rape (know) the guests. Though disapproval of male homosexual rape is assumed here, the primary point of the text is how this threat by the townspeople violates the value of hospitality. Hospitality is valued so strongly in this context that this text positively portrays Lot’s offer of his virgin daughters in place of his guests.

Note two things: the basis of "proving" her point is a commentary by the New Oxford Annotated Bible. Check out the earlier Oxford editions. Is it coincidence that this "view" appeared only in the last 30 years, when the homosexual agenda became a fad?

Second, notice the assumptions that are being made with regard to "hospitality" as the greater sin.

"If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town. I tell you the truth, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town." (Matt.10:14, 15 NIV) Here, Christ has used the comparison of the punishment awaiting a town which lacks hospitality toward the disciples with that of Sodom and Gomorrah.

No, Jesus is not comparing that. If you notice, the comparison relates to the "punishment" - and the issue is that they did not heed/listen to the word of God and repent (for inhospitality?).

When you limit sources to only those that agree with you, well, you can establish any position as "legitimate". Note when she writes:

In spite of the fact that the language used by the crowd in this story is the same as that used in the Sodom and Gomorrah story, I’ve yet to find any scholar or commentary which suggest that the Gibeans were homosexual.

How about the NIV Study Bible? Easy enough to find in the footnotes there? Scholars who wrote the commentary? Quite so.

 

[PapaLandShark]

filosofer: I did see some of the weaknesses in the material presented. Which is why I brought this here. What then of the translations? I don't read this as trying to "destroy or make uncertain" what God said. I see it as a questioning of how the originals were translated into English. God makes no mistakes. We humans do.

MAC: Where did you find that qoute? Regardless


Thank you both! This bears, as usual, more study and prayer on my part. I appreciate you taking the time.

 

[filosofer]

filosofer: I did see some of the weaknesses in the material presented. Which is why I brought this here. What then of the translations? I don't read this as trying to "destroy or make uncertain" what God said. I see it as a questioning of how the originals were translated into English. God makes no mistakes. We humans do.

I can tell you that within conservative Lutheran denominations, doctrine is established based on the original language texts, never a translation, although we would look at the LXX to see how the Hebrew was translated into Greek before the time of Christ. (Not sure how other church bodies handle this.) Thus, if we take a stand on "justification/righteousness" it is based on DIKAIOUSUNH (and related cognates) in the Greek, not on the Latin word IUSTITIA, nor on the German word RECHTFERTIGUNG. Likewise, if I were studying only in English, I would look at translations other than KJV/NIV, for instance, NAS, NKJV, REB, NAB, NJB, GW, TaNaKH, NRSV, CEV, TEV, NCB, etc.

Thus, if her point is to challenge an English translation she can. But notice that she really isn't evaluating a translation, even admitting that she is not qualified to do it; rather she is challenging two translations but only on a specific set of texts that happen to be her "justification" for her lifestyle. Even more, she has not really dealt with the Hebrew and Greek denotative nor conotative senses of the words.

 

[MAC]

filosofer: I did see some of the weaknesses in the material presented. Which is why I brought this here. What then of the translations? I don't read this as trying to "destroy or make uncertain" what God said. I see it as a questioning of how the originals were translated into English. God makes no mistakes. We humans do.

MAC: Where did you find that qoute? Regardless


Thank you both! This bears, as usual, more study and prayer on my part. I appreciate you taking the time.

Hi PapaLandShark

I took those from John Gills

 

[PapaLandShark]

I popped out and did a quick search on LXX and got buried in references

Where would one start study of this? Any n00b guides?

 

[PapaLandShark]

MAC:

Oh my...What a wonderful resource! Thank you!

My wife has commented I'd rather read than eat...I'm thankful that she drags me to the kitchen on occasion as I believe she's right.

 

[Dmckay]

**** I am NOT an accredited Bible scholar, but then for the most part, neither were the authors of the Bible. However, I have spent a good deal of the last twenty-five years studying not only scripture itself, but commentaries, historical documents and archaeological evidence. I am an ordained clergyperson with the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches.*

There are those who take the approach that God wrote every single word of the Bible, and therefore, it must be taken literally. The only problem with that thesis is that no one knows for sure what the Bible says word-for-word. We don't have the originals. The manuscripts we do have are copies of copies of copies, and each subsequent copy is subject to copywriting error. The earliest manuscripts were written in ancient languages: Hebrew, Chaldee, Aramaic and Greek. The Hebrew presents a special problem in that the writings were done without the benefit of vowels. The vowels would be inserted during the reading based on the context of what was written.

**** Another problem is that the scriptures were written to an ancient people living in an ancient civilization and reflect the thoughts, problems, and culture, not to mention the colloquialisms and idioms of the day. I approach the Bible just as though I were working a diamond or gold mine. Not every stone taken from a mine is either diamond or gold, but that which is precious must be extracted from that which is not. While scripture tells us that everything in it is there for our edification, we must remember that it speaks of scripture in the original languages.

These two quotes from the About the Author page are all you need to know. This woman is self-professed in her lack of formal training in Scripture. Further she is ordained to the ministry of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches a group that is primarily made up of practicing homosexuals. I would think right off, that would indicate a bias to her interpretation.

Then we have her explaination that her approach to Scripture is more like mining a Gold or diamond mine. "Not every stone taken from a mine is either diamond or gold, but that which is precious must be extracted from that which is not." This is an admission that she picks and chooses that which she thinks is valuable and rejects the rest. Basing her decision on, "While scripture tells us that everything in it is there for our edification, we must remember that it speaks of scripture in the original languages." But she admits she has no ability with those original languages, so she isn't qualified to be making any kind of interpretation.

Remember, Peter said that "No prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation. For prophecy never had it's origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God, as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." There is only one interpretation to any portion of Scripture, after the interpretation is determined there may be many applications. You can't Biblically force Scripture to say what you want. This site and their teachers are False teachers.

 

[Crazy Liz]

These two quotes from the About the Author page are all you need to know. ....

I didn't read that article, but agree that the background and biases of the author are important in evaluating their opinions. With that in mind, I think you are likely to find this article by Walter Wink more scholarly and objective.

 

[Dmckay]

I didn't read that article, but agree that the background and biases of the author are important in evaluating their opinions. With that in mind, I think you are likely to find this article by Walter Wink more scholarly and objective.

I read the article at the link that you posted, and I agree with you that it is a bit more scholarly in it's approach, in that the author hides his perconceived outcome better. However, he dismisses, what God has to say on the subject of homosexuality by saying that the authors were writing from their ignorance of human sexuality, and unscientific understanding of the nature of human sperm.

I don't know about you, but I happen to believe the Bible when it states that, "But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, 21for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. God's Holy Spirit moved these men as they penned the Words of Scripture so that the Bible and all that it teaches is directly given from the mind and knowledge of the Creator. He is the one who declares homosexuality an abomination indicative of a reprobate mind.

 

[Mustaphile]

I read the article at the link that you posted, and I agree with you that it is a bit more scholarly in it's approach, in that the author hides his perconceived outcome better. However, he dismisses, what God has to say on the subject of homosexuality by saying that the authors were writing from their ignorance of human sexuality, and unscientific understanding of the nature of human sperm.

I don't know about you, but I happen to believe the Bible when it states that, "But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, 21for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. God's Holy Spirit moved these men as they penned the Words of Scripture so that the Bible and all that it teaches is directly given from the mind and knowledge of the Creator. He is the one who declares homosexuality an abomination indicative of a reprobate mind.

One might question what prophecy has to do with this subject though. Prophecy is a thing distinct from other scripture.

 

[Dmckay]

One might question what prophecy has to do with this subject though. Prophecy is a thing distinct from other scripture.

Prophecy, as used in this passage in Peter is in it's original use. Forth-telling the Word of God. This was the primary calling of the original Olt Testament prophets. It was only as that Word which was "forth-told" to the people of Israel that the "foretelling" or future aspect of the Word came into play. For example: The prophet is told to tell the people that if they don't repent of their idolatry the Lord will send a famine to consume the land. By telling them that The Lord has called for them to repent of their idolatry, the prophet has spoken forth or "forth-told" the Word of God. The future aspect is, if you don't repent this will happen.

When Peter was moved by the Holy Spirit to write that No prophecy of Scripture is of one's own interpretation, he was speaking about the inspiration of Scripture as the writer or prophet "forthtelling" God's message on a topic. It's God's message, and God's meaning, you aren't to decide on your own what it means, you have to determine God's meaning.