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Surprise, the bigots are uneducated

DagwoodIII - 21hr

I mean, pretty much the first thing you learn if you look into it was that there were hundreds of stories that didn't make it into the 'official' Bible.

Female priests were redacted.

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karashta - 20hr

The Bible a lot of people think of as definitive is named after the dude who edited it for the umpteenth time.

Literally called the King James Version haha

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ChicoSuave @lemmy.world - 18hr

John Bible did it first

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DylanMc6 [any, any] - 8hr

you mean Captain Bible?

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DagwoodIII - 17hr

You don't trust your King???

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TheLeadenSea @sh.itjust.works - 20hr

Speaking as someone who has read the Torah in Hebrew, this is inaccurate. The Leviticus (ויקרא) line is absolutely about 'do not lie with a man as you lie with a woman'. However, we can admit the Torah, and Bible is homophobic and also shouldn't proscribe our daily lives today. 'Reforming' the Bible by making stuff up just supports all the other things the Bible also unambiguously supports, such as slavery and misogyny. And transphobia, for that matter.

From my interpretation of reading the passage, the Sodomites were bisexual, since they would have been happy to rape either the male angels or Lot's daughters. However, the more important point is that they were rapists, and my understanding has always been that they were destroyed for being cruel to guests and the poor (such as the story of a woman giving a loaf of bread to a beggar being punished by being stripped naked, covered in honey, and left to the bees.)

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Boomer Humor Doomergod - 20hr

Ezekiel made it pretty clear why Sodom was destroyed:

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom:She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen

This is, of course, mostly ignored

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TheLeadenSea @sh.itjust.works - 20hr

Quite, not helping the poor and needy was part of what I said.

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Boomer Humor Doomergod - 20hr

Yes I was agreeing with you

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mineralfellow @lemmy.world - 8hr

It was about violation of guest right. Lot invited the angels in and gave them bread. When the crowd demanded to violate them, it was better to offer his daughters, because they were his (property), and not his guests. They refused even that, which is when the angels declared that the city was doomed.

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Hegar - 19hr

This meme seemed inaccurate to me too. Focusing on greek terms rather than hebrew for leviticus struck me as weird.

I found an academics' discussion about arsenokoitai in Paul: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskBibleScholars/comments/18j1873/meaning_of_arsenokoites/

It seems like the question of the meaning of arsenokoitai is mostly about what paul meant by it. While all the posters above seem to agree paul's not saying all homosexuals and probably only situations we'd describe as non-consenual, they all describe no firm answer and disagree on many details.

I think this post takes unsettled scholarship about NT greek and presents it as settled scholarship about part of the torah.

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Asidonhopo @lemmy.world - 17hr

Have you read the Septuagint(s) in Ancient Greek though? There's scholarly dispute over whether the Greek texts came first and in general Hebrew was a dead language akin to Latin today except with a vocabulary of only 9000 words at the time the Old Testament was written. No known medical texts or literature at that time was being written in Hebrew, maybe a few amulets and accounting documents exist prior to the Torah being written. Hebrew as a living, flourishing language was from before contact with the Greeks, maybe 800-1000 years prior. Jews of the time spoke Greek and had for centuries (as did Jesus), and synagogues of the time had Greek inscriptions on their walls.

Some of the criticism I've heard is that the writing of the Old Testament during Greek occupation was akin to the Babylonian Captivity where the Jews that considered themselves purists were angry with Jews who had adopted Greek culture and the writing of it was fundamentally reactionary to that, and trying to recreate a culture that in many ways had already been lost. Also, access to the Library of Alexandria and other libraries at the time (no earlier than 300 BC, probably later) seems to have played a large role in helping the reactionary Jews who led the movement that became dominant write a history of the world that put themselves first.

Anyone interested in this kind of perspective is encouraged to learn about and watch interviews with Dr. Ammon Hillman, who has been translating Ancient Greek for 35 years. He is a classical philologist, meaning his education focuses on Greek texts rather than a biblical scholar who only studies the bible. He has many interviews available on youtube and none of his books or media are monetized. He understandably has a huge number of powerful detractors and he is no longer affiliated with any academic institution but he teaches the largest course on Classical Greek online.

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IronBird @lemmy.world - 19hr

that's the part that pisses me off the most about so many religious people, they're just so fucking...lazy...about even their own religion.

i travel alot, stay in hostels cause cheap and you meet new/interesting people, the least interesting people are the bible thumpers who always make nice little show about praying in the public space in the morning and just generally bringing jesus up at every opportunity.

just to fuck with these people i like to ask them what the 10 commandments are...most can't remember, at which point i say some manner of "...why are you trying to push this shit you clearly don't know onto me? Moses's sermon on the mount is like the 1 thing all branch's of abrahamic religions agree on...", if they do repeat all 10 i say some manner of "trick question, there's more than 10...have you even ever actually read Exodus/Deuteronomy?"

these people are just so fucking annoying, they supposedly had some super-powerful moment of revelation, to become a bible thumping moron...yet they can't even be bothered to do the bare minimum of reading even just their own book let alone actually researching their faith.

all religions have this problem but the american christians are the worst by far, if i thought a book had the answers to all of lifes questions i would be memorizing/anlayzing the fuck out of that shit.

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Sylvartas @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 19hr

Yeah it's all performative. I know a few people who are very well taught in christian scriptures and none of them do that kind of shit, or are an active member of any church, for the ones that do believe in God. Even after talking about religion with them for an hour you could think they're actually atheists

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IronBird @lemmy.world - 19hr

extra annoying is that these half-assed protestants have gotten to my mom, now she won't stop trying to "convert" me in ever more annoying ways.

she's never been seriously religious, she's just...old, isolated because her immediate family broke apart (9 siblings but none of them live close to each other, but also self-inflicted, moving out to bumfuck nowhere), and probably scared of dying like any sane human is.

i don't care so much about her fleeing to religion to deal with fear of death...but tthese chucklefuck protestants don't help with the fear of death they just make it even worse by convincing you any family members that don't join along will burn in hell...which if she found a denomination that was slightly less crazy wouldnt be an issue

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UnderpantsWeevil @lemmy.world - 11hr

they’re just so fucking…lazy…about even their own religion

Most people aren't going to learn a dead language, because it is time consuming and difficult and not particularly relevant to their material interests. The reason we're talking about the proper root words and what they mean has nothing to do with our own interest in the Bible as a theological or historical document. We're only discussing it because we're dealing with a series of public officials who claim a moralistic posture to do violence to the LGBTQ community.

On the flip side, most orthodox religious folks still just get their dogma the same way we got it - from a handful of scholars with their own socio-economic agendas, looking to make political points.

You didn't learn Greek. I didn't learn Greek. I'm not really surprised a church-going soccer mom in Arkansas terrified of her kid getting beaten up for acting queer hasn't spent a lot of time learning Greek. The translation doesn't really matter anyway. Its not as though a plain text condemnation of "Thou Shalt Not Kill" has ever dissuaded a religious zealot from doing murder. No more than a humanist lecture on the secular sanctity of life would dissuade an Atheist.

all religions have this problem but the american christians are the worst by far

Humans have a problem, wherein they seek comfort within a tribe of like-minded neighbors to justify their actions in hindsight. Religion is an expression of this tribal mentality. But if you really want to get to the nut of homophobia (or pedophilia or any other social contagion), you have to approach it with a much more material framing.

Until you get to the genuine sociological root of the dysfunction, you're just yelling at people for thinking wrong. And that's a lot of noise which never really sways anyone.

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kn0wmad1c - 19hr

Is there a source for that translation of arsenokoitai? DDG wasn't helpful and just kept giving me the "homosexual" translation.

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Karkitoo @lemmy.ml - 19hr

Yeah I would also like to know.

I would really like for this to be true.

But I fear the source is "trust me bro"

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masquenox @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 21hr

Spoiler alert - a lack of knowledge doesn't create bigots. Reactionary propaganda creates bigots.

The idea that bigots are bigots due to being "uneducated" is just another liberal myth designed to hide the origins of the bigotry that protects their precious status quo.

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Diplomjodler - 21hr

Yeah yeah yeah, before capitalism there was no bigotry, we get it.

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Stamets @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 21hr

Not what I am referring to with the title. The title is in reference to the fact that they use something they are uneducated about as their tool for hatred.

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masquenox @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 16hr

The title is in reference to the fact that they use something they are uneducated consciously miseducated about as their tool for hatred.

FTFY. Bigotry requires education - an education presided over by reactionary actors intent on protecting the status quo.

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DylanMc6 [any, any] - 8hr

how do you think bigotry should be solved under socialism/communism (mostly)?

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masquenox @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 7hr

Not spending vast amounts of treasure and energy to create them in the first place seems like a logical first step to me.

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Lka1988 - 18hr

The idea that bigots are bigots due to being “uneducated” is just another liberal myth designed to hide the origins of the bigotry that protects their precious status quo.

Not all uneducated people are bigots. But all bigots are uneducated.

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VerilyFemme - 11hr

Listen, I agree that homosexuality is overjudged by Christians, but isn't arsenokoitai a Greek word?

Just asking because Leviticus was written in Hebrew. There was a Greek translation, but there should also he a Hebrew source to pull from.

EDIT: I wrote this without reading the full post. That's my bad. Seems like an obvious loan word now. Egg on my face.

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VerilyFemme - 9hr

What I'm saying is that a Hebrew version should also exist, which would have its own cultural connotations around whatever word they use. Studying it in tandem with the Greek translation would help reveal the original meaning.

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PapaStevesy @lemmy.world - 9hr

Maybe it's a cognate, they used the Greek word because they didn't have a word for it.

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VerilyFemme - 9hr

Good point!

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Amnesigenic - 9hr

If the ancient hebrews didn't have a cultural tradition of fucking kids then they may not have had a term specifically for it, maybe it was a loan word?

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kynzo @lemmy.world - 10hr

quite off topic here but i feel the need to clarify. Pedophilia is not evil, a predator is. Now please don't jump to conclusions here, it is a very misrepresented topic due to its offensive nature. But pedophile is just someone that is attracted, which doesn't always mean they are predators. More then often it is not there fault (they can just be born like that or it can be caused by trauma), of course they should seek professional help but calling them evil before they do anything makes them not come out and not seek the help they need, thus causing more predators to exist. And just because I'm on thin ice here I will clarify again, I do NOT support pedophilia, I just don't like when people say pedophile when they mean predator. It is causing the problem to be worse. Hope someone takes this to heart and next time uses the right word, because words we use matter.

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🍉 Albert 🍉 - 17hr

King David had a gay lover and the bible celebrates it. there's a funeral poem that David wrote in there.

there are more gay parts in the bible than antigay part in the Christian version of it.

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UnderpantsWeevil @lemmy.world - 11hr

That's just the part of the bible Satan included to trick you. Kinda like how he buried those dinosaur bones in order to trick you into believing the Earth is more than 6000 years old.

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Lushed_Lungfish @lemmy.ca - 10hr

I prefer instead to just not base my life around a work of fiction.

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III @lemmy.world - 10hr

Or at the very least, pick a much better one. Maybe stay away from fan forums...

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DancingBear @midwest.social - 8hr

I like hearing religious themed stories… not just Christian or Jewish… these old stories have a lot of wisdom. I’m not religious though. Agnostic maybe not sure.

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Chloé 🥕 - 17hr

it’s becoming clearer and clearer to me that, unlike judaism, islam and other religions, christianity is nothing more than a tool made to oppress. and what a cruel one, given that Jewish people, whom christians stole almost everything from, are one of the oldest and biggest targets of christian hate and violence

i realize the irony of phrasing it like this… but it is your moral duty to be anti-christian

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eestileib - 16hr

All religions suck dude, the one that happens to be shitting on you at the moment feels worst.

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Chloé 🥕 - 16hr

all religions have been used as tools of violence. only christianity has been nothing but that.

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eestileib - 11hr

Ehh, I know Christians who make the world better despite what I consider their epistemological errors.

The Society of Friends (aka Quakers) were very energetic in working to abolish slavery in America. The group that pushed for a tightening of drunk driving laws in the US that have saved many lives started as an evangelical org (evangelicals used to be a very very different kind of person).

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Isolde @lemmy.world - 16hr

What’s wrong with Taoism? Buddhism? Hinduism?

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SwingingTheLamp @midwest.social - 15hr

As to Hinduism, see the example of India today. Specifically, the Hindutva movement, which is often considered fascist, or at least fascist-adjacent.

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ayyy @sh.itjust.works - 14hr

Mostly the war and genocide.

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Hegar - 14hr

The caste system of hinduism has been long used to sanctify oppresion, hindu nationalism (hindutva) is a potent force promoting authoritarianism and distruth (indus valley civ was def. not vedic nor did they have flight).

Buddhism has been used as an imperial religion less easily, but chinese dynasties have done it. In india, ashoka the great (or the terrible) probably used it as a cynical PR campaign after his empire recoiled at his brutality. In the province he most brutalised, the version of the stele that talks about his terrible deeds and his conversion leaves out the conversion and just reminds reader of his brutality.

Daoism is a bit different because it has an explicitly anarchist strain that's harder to co-opt by the powerful. Bits of Laozi are directed at rulers, and i think we can assume that the laissez-faire style it promotes must have lead to some issues as it has in other times and places. Also though: grifters. I love daoism, especially the Zhuangzi, possibly the best book ever, but a lot of sources give me the impression that a lot of daoist priests were just going town to town grifting immortality elixirs and the like.

Also, meekness and non-violence, as much as i love them, fundementally serve the interest of brutal states in excersizing legitimate violence.

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Isolde @lemmy.world - 12hr

Humans are flawed and religion can’t be something humans aren’t, but I still hold that these are the least caustic, although not to say pure and perfect.

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eestileib - 14hr

All of these religions ran religious dictatorships too.

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III @lemmy.world - 10hr

Quick, tell me that they also mistranslated the part about shellfish or cloth made with different types of thread...

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DragonTypeWyvern @midwest.social - 15hr

On the topic of addressing historical correctitude, it's also worth noting that the Greek pederasty tradition was controversial even among classical Greeks, and the backlash of it spreading to Roman culture when they strip mined Greece for culture eventually ended it as popular practice in turn.

By the time Romans were in Judea the tradition was already out of favor even in Greece.

The real revisionist homophobia is pretending pederasty was the only kind of homosexuality in practice in either Greece or Rome.

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downvote_hunter - 20hr

"Peace out fuckos" is now part of my vernacular

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bluegreenpurplepink @lemmy.world - 16hr

All the more pool for me, fuckos!

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hark @lemmy.world - 8hr

and many scholars believe that King David was gay

Had a lot of wives for a gay guy.

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bus_factor @lemmy.world - 4hr

So gay he needed multiple beards!

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RememberTheApollo_ @lemmy.world - 11hr

I’m interested in learning the actual use of and etymology of this word. I searched for it and the results generally consists of religious sites basically saying it means men who bed other men. Being religious sites I consider them single-source and unreliable. Only one made allowances for translating it as unfaithfulness regardless of the relationship, but then still went on to say it was man/man. None specified children. Anyone got a decent secular and objective source that lays out the possible usage and meaning(s)?

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TankovayaDiviziya @lemmy.world - 10hr

Going to be non-pc on with the term but surprise, surprise-- religion evolved on Chinese whispers. The words and texts are mistranslated from one language to another over generations, which is not different to many internet translators being wrong when you re-translate some words and sentences over and over from one language to another, and then another.

Kudos to the ancient Israelites calling out pederasty. A Jewish-Roman historian by the name of Josephus noted that children clearly did not like the custom (although how newly born male children are circumcised by rabbis is not good either). Even to this day, go to the poorest parts of South East Asia, where children are being trafficked and pimped, with many hebo- and pedophiles proudly walking with their chest high since they have the power over children, while these children are visibily distraught. I can't imagine the trauma that they have.

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flandish - 19hr

why do the same people who think the bible and US constitution are some form of immutable legislation also lack the ability to consider the torah nor the ability to understand the word “amendment?”

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Lka1988 - 18hr

why do the same people who think the bible and US constitution are some form of immutable legislation also lack the ability to consider the torah nor the ability to understand the word “amendment?”

see post title

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flandish - 18hr

hahah yes so true.

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AstaKask @lemmy.cafe - 11hr

Why bother arguing semantics with insane cultists? These people need deprogramming, not encouragement.

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DylanMc6 [any, any] - 8hr

how?

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presoak @lazysoci.al - 8hr

Emotion comes first, justification second. For basically everybody.

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DylanMc6 [any, any] - 8hr

tl;dr (too long, DIDN'T read): it was a mistranslation/warped interpretation of biblical verse.

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Ricky Rigatoni - 21hr

Any religion that forsakes The Eternal Party must be destroyed.

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bluemoon - 20hr

hebrew words for the multiple genders?

also just make it a version of the bible that says this and slam it in former Epstein client's faces - no more KJ bible

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