| Posted: 09 May 2025 at 3:00pm | IP Logged | 5
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Catholicism has many, many faults but Sola Scriptura and Biblical literalism are not among them. Especially with regard to the Old Testament, Jesuits teachers will be the first to tell you that not everything is meant to be read literally and the historical context that the Scripture was written does matter.
With regard to the Biblical “clobber passages”, the Bible is only clear if you think the Bible was written in English. In Hebrew, the literal translation is:
“And a man who shall lie with a male (the) lyings of a woman has done (a) taboo (thing).”
And even that translation is not as clear as you think it might be, because “the lyings of a woman” is an obscure linguistic construction and the Jewish and secular scholars can’t come to terms with what is intended. Some specific act is bad, but whether this is a prohibition on male-male sex, being on the receiving end of anal penetration, incest, or some other specific act is unclear. That is also setting aside that these were rules for Israelites specifically.
Similarly with regard to Paul’s supposed condemnation of homosexuality, he creates a word arsenokoitai “man-bedders”, ostensibly a parallel to the Leviticus passages, when there were pre-existing Greek words for homosexual sex. Maybe Paul was condemning homosexual sex or some specific homosexual act, but it’s not clear.
And all of that ignores same-sex relations between women.
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