www.HopeandHelpCenter.org
How Do I Read the Bible and Why?
Rev. Sue Yarber
My name is Rev. Sue Yarber. I devote much of my work to helping people overcome oppressive religious histories. I facilitated, along with wonderful church members, a group titled Recovering from Homophobic Religion. There has been much psychological and spiritual damage done to the GLBT community in the name of religion.
I seek to help folks heal from a distortion of scripture and history that has created an atmosphere of spiritual abuse in many mainstream churches.
I want to preface my remarks about the specific passages used historically by the religious right to condemn homosexuality and transgender identity by claiming several biases upfront and dispelling misconceptions that have shaped the systematic misuse of scripture:
I do not read the Bible literally. I think it is nonsensical to take an ancient, primarily Eastern, document that was written in Hebrew and Ancient Koine Greek and read it literally as an English speaking Westerner. If one wishes to be a biblical literalist then one must become an expert in ancient Hebrew and Greek cultures and languages in order to truly study the Holy Scriptures. I have yet to meet a fundamentalist who is literally working from the original languages.
While I believe that the Bible is divinely inspired, it is also a series of documents that human beings, men to be precise, of a certain time, place and culture wrote to a particular people, most often to address a particular contemporary situation. To read these texts as if my U.S.-born English speaking neighbor wrote them yesterday is a great distortion.
There are a number of historical distortions about Jesus and the Bible that greatly affect how the texts have been interpreted by fundamentalists:
a. Jesus was a JEW. There was no such thing as Christianity in the days of Jesus. Any Christian tradition that ONLY uses the New Testament is failing to look at the very texts that Jesus, himself, interprets in a radical new way.
b. The Jews DID NOT KILL Jesus. Jews were an oppressed minority who did not have the power or political means to kill Jesus, who was a prisoner of the Roman state. The Roman authorities killed Jesus but when Rome became Christian in the fourth century then certain biblical texts were problematic and, therefore, other interpretations of events became prominent. This is no small distortion. Centuries of anti-Jewish actions and attitudes perpetrated by the Christian church have resulted from this one historical inaccuracy.
c. No New Testament text was an eyewitness account of the events as they occurred but rather a particular rendering of the Jesus story or the church's story (Paul's letters).
d. It was a common ancient rhetorical practice to write in the name of a well- known rhetorician in order to provide yourself with credibility. Paul DID NOT write all of the books attributed to him. In fact, a later school of writers who were followers of Paul wrote using his name.
e. Women were viewed as sexual property. A woman literally was owned by her father and sold to her husband. To rape a woman was considered a crime against her father because he could not get as much money for her when it was time to sell her in marriage if she was not a virgin. When interpreting texts related to marriage and procreation one must understand the cultural context of these passages.
f. Reproduction was a matter of survival. The ancient world of the Bible was an agrarian society and, therefore, procreation was a matter of survival. Marriages were arranged and were business deals. They were mergers of two families for economic gain to both families. Our post-modern notions of marriage having anything to do with romantic love are irrelevant to the scriptures.
g. Reproductive processes were not fully understood and there was, in fact, an assumption that men had only a given number of sperm so wasted seed became a prevalent theme in both Old and New Testaments
h. Both Jews and Early Christians(all of whom were Jewish) were considered oppressed minorities living in a largely Pagan society. It is hard for those of us who have only lived in Judeo-Christian societies to imagine what it means to be a religious and cultural minority. Our society is thoroughly and utterly Christianized. Look at our calendar, our days off of work, etc.
i. Sexual orientation was not a concept in the Bible. Sexual orientation is a relatively new category of human existence and has only been designated in the last hundred years.
j. NEITHER HEBREW NOR KOINE GREEK HAVE A WORD FOR HOMOSEXUAL. If there was no word it means that there was no concept of sexual orientation. We only have words for concepts.
k. The Ancient Temple was a different institution altogether than today's house of worship. Temple was marketplace, school, bank and cultural center. There was no separation of church and state. Religion was culture. Culture was religion.
l. The Christian canon known as the Bible is a result of a council of early leaders voting on which accounts of Jesus and the early church would survive. The Bible is a reflection of the range of Christian thought that ultimately meets us in the twenty first century. What about all of the snuffed out voices of early Christendom? Where are those texts that did not meet the standards of the early leaders and what were those standards?
m. Creeds are a response or reaction to heresies not proactive definition of beliefs. They have some biblical basis but are not quotes of scripture.
n. I challenge any construction of sexual orientation that equates behavior with orientation. Sexual behavior is externally focused but sexual orientation is internally focused. Sexual orientation happens in the head before it happens in the bed.
GENESIS 19:1-12
Genesis 19:1-12 is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. There are a few things to think about when reading this story:
a. If the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is homosexuality why would Lot offer his daughters? What would a band of marauding homosexuals want with lots daughter?
b. If you believe that rape is a crime of violence then how is the sexual orientation of the rapist relevant?
c. No one ever says how utterly disgusting it is that Lot offered a gang of men with ill intentions his own daughter to defile and humiliate.
d. The text is simply not clear about what exactly the men intend to do. Some translations indicate that it was all of the townspeople that call for the stranger to be thrown from the safety of Lot's house. The Hebrew word “yadah” means to know and is used 943 times in scripture. Only one other time is it used to imply sexual knowledge and in that context it is used between man and wife.
Leviticus 18:22
Leviticus 18:22 states, “You shall not lie with a man as you would a woman; it is an abomination.”
I, personally, agree with this passage and as a lesbian would never lie with a man the way that I lie with a woman. I am pointing out here that the writer’s assumption is that the reader is male.
The Jews were living as an oppressed minority among a Pagan majority. Pagans were/are polytheistic or believe in multiple gods. Jews, as you know, are monotheistic or believe in one God. Leviticus is best understood as a way of separating themselves from the larger culture in which they lived. Many of the dietary restrictions and ways of dressing and grooming are related to being different from their Pagan peers. For instance, the restrictions around eating milk and meat at the same time are to stay away from a Pagan worship ritual in which the meat is cooked in its own milk.
It was a commonplace Pagan practice for Pagan men to sleep with male Pagan temple prostitutes in order to worship the fertility god, Baal. Worshiping the fertility god, Baal, was believed to bring about plentiful crops, many children and ample livestock. Jewish men were assimilating into Pagan culture and were sleeping with male temple prostitutes.
Leviticus 18:22 is best understood as an admonition against Jews participating in Pagan worship practices. The word abomination in Hebrew is “towebah” which means to “worship idols or practice idolatry, something that is disgusting and unholy.”
If one is going to interpret Leviticus literally then one must be willing to follow every law listed in Leviticus. Most fundamentalists I know wear polyester cotton blends, do not have women live in huts separated from men during menstruation, and do not sell their daughters into slavery which are all also laws in Leviticus.
The situation in the New Testament passages cited against G/L/B/T people are addressing the phenomena of the early church, also a minority living among a predominantly Pagan culture, and the practice of some Christian men, or more accurately Followers of the Way, who were engaging in sexual activity with temple prostitutes.
One must also remember that the concept of “wasted seed” was a concern for the survival of an oppressed minority. It was a misunderstanding of men’s reproductive capacity that led to the importance of not “wasting seed.” Today we have an understanding of reproduction that clearly contradicts the earlier theories of biblical times.
One of the most compelling reasons I do not believe that homosexuality is sin is that Jesus said absolutely nothing about it. If it was a sin that could deter one from entering the realm of heaven I think Jesus would have mentioned it.
Original Post: http://www.mccgsl.org/#/sexualitythebible/4530903266
