And seriously, I can see more than a few reasons why that wouldn't work, and why Steve (even me) would be monumentally unsatisfactory, and why it really really needs to be a female. And interestingly they are pretty much all the things you've all just spent millions of pixels on denying the relevance of - you know, gender, complementarity especially sexual, and oh yeah, that reproduction malarkey.....
I was wondering how long it would take to work around to "all those gays* just need to meet the right woman and that would fix 'em right up!" And here we are.
"Steve" has emerged as a central figure in American theology. He even played a significant role in the recent [ ed: 2004 ] national elections. Yet despite his enormous influence, we know little about Steve aside from a single reference to him in our holy texts. This reference is, like the catechism, extra-canonical but considered authoritative:
"God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."
This oft-quoted text presents a mystery. If God did not make Steve, then where did this uncreature come from? How did Steve come to be?
God did not make Steve, therefore we must also assume that Steve was never born. If Steve had been born, after all, then he would be "begotten, not made." Surely we are not meant to conclude that Steve is a little-known fourth member of the Trinity.
Thus again we come to mystery. Steve was neither made nor begotten; yet Steve is.
What can we do in the face of such mystery? It is beyond our ken**. We cannot hope to understand, we can only drop to our knees to sing a bewildered hymn of praise to the Creator of all things except Steve.
*As with most discussions of same-sex relationships lesbians seem to disappear entirely from the conversation. "It really really needs to be a female", unless the partner is another female.
**Your Ken should be sharing a Malibu Dreamhouse with Barbie, not going out in the Range Rover with Billy.
And seriously, I can see more than a few reasons why that wouldn't work and why Steve (even me) would be monumentally unsatisfactory, and why it really really needs to be a female. And interestingly they are pretty much all the things you've all just spent millions of pixels on denying the relevance of - you know, gender, complementarity especially sexual, and oh yeah, that reproduction malarkey.....
And they’re also notions that people have refuted, via a variety of arguments.
People get married who won’t be able to reproduce (perhaps because of age or disability) - are they still married according to your reading of Jesus’ words?
What bits of complementary did you have in mind other than sexual? I mean, I’m a better cook than the other half, and he’s good at DIY, but we could learn the other skills...
The sexual complementarity argument falls down because of the overlap between what gay couples and straight couples can do, and because sex isn’t just about the penis in vagina bit.
BroJames and others have pointed out that the Mark 10 passage is about gender insofar as honouring women as created by God.
The fact that, as I’ve italicised, you can see lots of reasons why it couldn’t work, doesn’t mean it couldn’t, or doesn’t work.
Frankly, it seems to me the reason that people insist on reading from Genesis 2:24 is that they don't want to have to explain how it's valid to describe a woman as "flesh of my flesh" but then say that a man can't possibly have the same kind of relationship with another man.
Suddenly, if you actually bother reading Genesis 2:23 or even earlier, and you want to deny same-sex relationships, you have to simultaneously argue that difference is important while reading material that emphasises similarity.
So Jesus, who clearly "insist(ed) on reading from Genesis 2:24", was also getting it wrong according to orfeo???!!
You misunderstand. Jesus’ use of Genesis 2.24 mirrors its use in Genesis. It’s not making a point about the gender of the participants, but about the nature of the commitment
For a while I've been thinking that there was something going on here which really wasn't right, the kind of loose end which tickles the absent-minded-professory instincts of aspies like me. And for some reason I rather focussed on this passage, though I note of course that others are doing the same thing and indeed BroJames recently did it at great length.
...you have to simultaneously argue that difference is important while reading material that emphasises similarity.
Well yes, in recognising Eve as "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" Adam is clearly seeing the similarity, when compared to the animals as candidates for that role!
However, if difference is unimportant, and it's all about similarity, the logic would be - especially in this particular context - that "Adam and Steve" would indeed be just as valid as "Adam and Eve" (I suppose it might be if you're a Paul Temple fan...) That is, it would be just as good if Adam's helpmeet/flesh-of-my-flesh were a male.
And seriously, I can see more than a few reasons why that wouldn't work, and why Steve (even me) would be monumentally unsatisfactory, and why it really really needs to be a female. And interestingly they are pretty much all the things you've all just spent millions of pixels on denying the relevance of - you know, gender, complementarity especially sexual, and oh yeah, that reproduction malarkey…
You are right to note that the text doesn’t offer us Adam and Steve, or Eve and Niamh for that matter. The text does two things it offers a theological understanding of gender different from other accounts in its historical context: man and woman are, flesh and bone, of the same kind as each other. And, further, that the creation of woman is good and a blessing, and not some kind of divine trick or test. Secondly, in that context it offers an understanding of the nature of marriage: that, even though they are people different from each other, marriage establishes a new kindred relationship between them (‘one flesh’).
It says, I am happy to agree, nothing at all about same sex relationships of any kind, either in favour or against. Any other argument, as far as the text of that scripture is concerned, is simply argument from silence.
Some of you might want to do some rethinking....
Not on the basis of any argument you have so far advanced,
Frankly, it seems to me the reason that people insist on reading from Genesis 2:24 is that they don't want to have to explain how it's valid to describe a woman as "flesh of my flesh" but then say that a man can't possibly have the same kind of relationship with another man.
Suddenly, if you actually bother reading Genesis 2:23 or even earlier, and you want to deny same-sex relationships, you have to simultaneously argue that difference is important while reading material that emphasises similarity.
So Jesus, who clearly "insist(ed) on reading from Genesis 2:24", was also getting it wrong according to orfeo???!!
Wow are you drawing a wrong conclusion from what I said.
And you keep using that word "clearly" for things that are merely assumptions on your part.
Here's the 2 things about Jesus that don't apply to you and your ways of getting this wrong.
First, Jesus was dealing with an audience that was highly educated in Hebrew Scripture and who would know the wider context of any passage he mentioned. My whole complaint is that you wilfully ignore the wider context. People back then simply didn't treat literature in the way that you do now. For one thing, verse and chapter numbering didn't exist.
Second, and I've already pointed this out to you once before, Jesus was answering a specific question about divorce and referred to enough of Scripture to make the point he was making. I can't criticise him for getting it wrong regarding gender analysis because there is zero evidence (despite what you keep claiming in circular arguments) that he was attempting to make a gender analysis.
My understanding is that while a lot of men had sex with male slaves and prostitutes (often under what is now the age of consent) there were few examples of mutual lifelong commitment between peers.
That was my understanding as well – which is why I said that the kind of sexual behaviour that Paul wrote about doesn’t map neatly onto the situation we’re living through now.
Marriage also worked very differently. It was more of a business arrangement / property exchange. Jesus’ reminder that both parties were made in the image of God, not just the one, is still revolutionary in some parts of the world. And I still think it’s a leap from his silence on various subjects to assuming that he didn’t agree with things or know about them. (He hung round with outsiders, outcasts and the sexually immoral. Good grief! Of course Jesus knew how many blue beans made five. But he told us to love our neighbour anyway - and didn't put a limit on it).
Paul seems to name people that he believes are leading the Body of Christ astray, but not wearing a headscarf etc is an individual failingso why would he single someone out? He condemns those who exploit others in the strongest terms, but is okay with slavery. It’s all way more complicated than Steve is leading me to believe.
Frankly, it seems to me the reason that people insist on reading from Genesis 2:24 is that they don't want to have to explain how it's valid to describe a woman as "flesh of my flesh" but then say that a man can't possibly have the same kind of relationship with another man.
Suddenly, if you actually bother reading Genesis 2:23 or even earlier, and you want to deny same-sex relationships, you have to simultaneously argue that difference is important while reading material that emphasises similarity.
So Jesus, who clearly "insist(ed) on reading from Genesis 2:24", was also getting it wrong according to orfeo???!!
Wow are you drawing a wrong conclusion from what I said.
And you keep using that word "clearly" for things that are merely assumptions on your part.
Here's the 2 things about Jesus that don't apply to you and your ways of getting this wrong.
First, Jesus was dealing with an audience that was highly educated in Hebrew Scripture and who would know the wider context of any passage he mentioned. My whole complaint is that you wilfully ignore the wider context. People back then simply didn't treat literature in the way that you do now. For one thing, verse and chapter numbering didn't exist.
Second, and I've already pointed this out to you once before, Jesus was answering a specific question about divorce and referred to enough of Scripture to make the point he was making. I can't criticise him for getting it wrong regarding gender analysis because there is zero evidence (despite what you keep claiming in circular arguments) that he was attempting to make a gender analysis.
1) Jesus did insist on reading/citing from Gen 2;24; and not only that but he made rather a point of first quoting the bit from the previous chapter about how God made them male and female, which does rather tend to emphasise rather than minimise the point that gender/sex is important to the text and to Jesus' use and interpretation. And by complaining about people who start from Gen 2;24 when Jesus did just that, you did rather lay yourself open to my comment there!
2) Given that my namesake the Archbishop played a major role in establishing the chapter and verse numbering I am more than a bit aware of that not existing in NT times! It's also not particularly relevant to this issue, mind, the text is there with or without the numbering.
Yes of course Jesus' audience knew the Scriptures and would know the context - it can of course still be the case that the actual way Jesus formed his quote is important; like him making a point of putting it into the context of the earlier chapter and its clear reference to male and female, for instance. And no, I'm not wilfully or otherwise ignoring the wider context, anything but.
What I didn't immediately realise because it is in fact an unnatural reading was the way you were giving such importance to the v23 'bone of my bones' etc to ignore/slide round/evade the obvious importance of the male-with-female thing. In the original context Adam is presented with all the various animals but there is no "helper as a complement to him" (that's actually the Jehovah's Witnesses translation which happens to be directly to hand from a conversation I've just had where I am now). And obviously regardless of sex/gender the animals are not able to offer everything that is needed for complete humanity (not to say that they can't be good companions). And then God brings Eve, who indeed is 'bone of his bones, flesh of his flesh', similar in very important ways; but also importantly different in ways that another male cannot possibly supply. At that juncture in human history another male human really would have been unsuitable!!! Only male humans without females would really have been incomplete.
3) Sure Jesus is answering a specific question about divorce. But it is clear, even though you would rather it wasn't, that he answers by putting divorce into the wider context of marriage and the meaning of marriage, and he does that by quoting the Genesis passages.
And yes, he "referred to enough of Scripture to make the point he was making." Exactly. He leaves out the detailed account of the creation of Eve, AND he leaves out Genesis 2;23 with its 'bone of my bone' etc. And he rather positively introduces it by effectively quoting from the previous chapter which could not much more clearly say God made them male and female - in effect he deliberately puts it into that 'gender-related' context. The whole quote is riddled with it being about 'male and female'.
4) Was he attempting to make a 'gender analysis'? No, not needed. Does he simply take it for granted that marriage - and ipso facto sex - is for male with female? Yes, and he makes his OT quotes in a way which if anything emphasises that.
Again I'm out of time for now - and Nick Tamen that is simply a statement of fact in terms of my current situation, not any kind of excuse or evasion. When I get back I will try and address what I was trying to say earlier about the implications of 'science' in this context.
Footnote; AIUI, though in what Barnabas62 refers to as 'then' the readers would probably be taking the Genesis account as a literal record of what you would have seen if, say, you had got hold of a time machine to eavesdrop on the proceedings, I am at least not at all worried by the idea that this is not an actual literal record. It doesn't have the comic intent or obvious absurdities of Kipling's "Just So" stories. I incline rather to think of it as similar to (not exactly the same as) Orwell's "Animal Farm" which is a serious history of the Russian Revolution but transposed into a different genre to make principles clear without too many detailed historical facts to distract, and also to make it more universal - naming one of the pigs Napoleon clues you in that the French (and other) revolutions show similar features. Nevertheless you are supposed to take Orwell's points seriously.
@Steve Langton - the point (the simple point) that everyone is making is that Jesus is answering a question on divorce. He was asked a question about divorce, and he answered that question on divorce.
If you can find a similar passage where Jesus is asked a question about same-sex relationships, then we can have a discussion about Jesus' answer on same-sex relationships.
Frankly, it seems to me the reason that people insist on reading from Genesis 2:24 is that they don't want to have to explain how it's valid to describe a woman as "flesh of my flesh" but then say that a man can't possibly have the same kind of relationship with another man.
Suddenly, if you actually bother reading Genesis 2:23 or even earlier, and you want to deny same-sex relationships, you have to simultaneously argue that difference is important while reading material that emphasises similarity.
So Jesus, who clearly "insist(ed) on reading from Genesis 2:24", was also getting it wrong according to orfeo???!!
Wow are you drawing a wrong conclusion from what I said.
And you keep using that word "clearly" for things that are merely assumptions on your part.
Here's the 2 things about Jesus that don't apply to you and your ways of getting this wrong.
First, Jesus was dealing with an audience that was highly educated in Hebrew Scripture and who would know the wider context of any passage he mentioned. My whole complaint is that you wilfully ignore the wider context. People back then simply didn't treat literature in the way that you do now. For one thing, verse and chapter numbering didn't exist.
Second, and I've already pointed this out to you once before, Jesus was answering a specific question about divorce and referred to enough of Scripture to make the point he was making. I can't criticise him for getting it wrong regarding gender analysis because there is zero evidence (despite what you keep claiming in circular arguments) that he was attempting to make a gender analysis.
1) Jesus did insist on reading/citing from Gen 2;24; and not only that but he made rather a point of first quoting the bit from the previous chapter about how God made them male and female, which does rather tend to emphasise rather than minimise the point that gender/sex is important to the text and to Jesus' use and interpretation. And by complaining about people who start from Gen 2;24 when Jesus did just that, you did rather lay yourself open to my comment there!
But @Steve Langton his reference to the male and female statement from the previous Genesis narrative was, in the context of a conversation already about husbands and wives, to stress that both were made in the image of God, not to make the point that you are seeking to about gender in marriage relationships.
2) Given that my namesake the Archbishop played a major role in establishing the chapter and verse numbering I am more than a bit aware of that not existing in NT times! It's also not particularly relevant to this issue, mind, the text is there with or without the numbering.
Yes of course Jesus' audience knew the Scriptures and would know the context - it can of course still be the case that the actual way Jesus formed his quote is important; like him making a point of putting it into the context of the earlier chapter and its clear reference to male and female, for instance. And no, I'm not wilfully or otherwise ignoring the wider context, anything but.
You are currently ignoring both the historical context of the question that Jesus was being asked, and the historical and textual context of the first quotation he uses from a Genesis.
What I didn't immediately realise because it is in fact an unnatural reading was the way you were giving such importance to the v23 'bone of my bones' etc to ignore/slide round/evade the obvious importance of the male-with-female thing. In the original context Adam is presented with all the various animals but there is no "helper as a complement to him" (that's actually the Jehovah's Witnesses translation which happens to be directly to hand from a conversation I've just had where I am now). And obviously regardless of sex/gender the animals are not able to offer everything that is needed for complete humanity (not to say that they can't be good companions). And then God brings Eve, who indeed is 'bone of his bones, flesh of his flesh', similar in very important ways; but also importantly different in ways that another male cannot possibly supply.
This is not in the text, nor is anything made of it by the text. This text can’t be treated as human history since it will shortly introduce for Cain and Seth wives who have no antecedents. An argument about ‘this point in human history’ does violence to the nature of the text, and to the theological argument it is making in its historical context.
At that juncture in human history another male human really would have been unsuitable!!! Only male humans without females would really have been incomplete.
3) Sure Jesus is answering a specific question about divorce. But it is clear, even though you would rather it wasn't, that he answers by putting divorce into the wider context of marriage and the meaning of marriage, and he does that by quoting the Genesis passages.
And yes, he "referred to enough of Scripture to make the point he was making." Exactly. He leaves out the detailed account of the creation of Eve, AND he leaves out Genesis 2;23 with its 'bone of my bone' etc. And he rather positively introduces it by effectively quoting from the previous chapter which could not much more clearly say God made them male and female - in effect he deliberately puts it into that 'gender-related' context. The whole quote is riddled with it being about 'male and female'.
No. You’re wrong. Jesus uses two separate scriptures to make two separate points. The first point is that male and female are made equally in the image of God, and the debate in its treatment of women as less than persons falls short of that creation standard. The second point is that marriage is not a mere contract which can be dispensed with by some legalistic trick, but rather a binding commitment which creates a new relationship of kinship between the parties. This is what the Genesis 2.24 reading means in its context. Jesus does not attempt to connect the two separate passages he cites to make any point about the gender of the parties to the marriage. He, and the passages he cites do not seek to address at all the question of what gender the parties to a marriage ought to be.
4) Was he attempting to make a 'gender analysis'? No, not needed. Does he simply take it for granted that marriage - and ipso facto sex - is for male with female?
He simply takes the scenario he is presented with, without questioning it
Yes, and he makes his OT quotes in a way which if anything emphasises that.
No he doesn’t. You are reading that into the text.
@Steve Langton - the point (the simple point) that everyone is making is that Jesus is answering a question on divorce. He was asked a question about divorce, and he answered that question on divorce.
If you can find a similar passage where Jesus is asked a question about same-sex relationships, then we can have a discussion about Jesus' answer on same-sex relationships.
Good luck with that because there isn't one.
Jesus answered that question in a way that was consistent with the behaviour towards women he demonstrated elsewhere in the Bible. Treating them as equals and people created in the image of God. He reminds his audience of the fact that God created both men and woman so one shouldn't be valued more than the other. And that marriage is a big deal - not entered into lightly and not set aside lightly. And that's it.
Anything else is an interpretation / opinion - the kind version. Or utter nonsense and bending the text in order to fit in with your own preconceived ideas - not so kind.
To follow up on the idea that anyone who quotes either of the first two chapters of Genesis is, by implication, quoting the entirety of both chapters, there's the question of Genesis 2:18.
The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”
This is used by various complementarians and other sexists to argue against same sex relationships (and that women should naturally be subservient and helpful to men), but I'd like to highlight that this is the first time God says that anything in his brand new world is "not good" (לֹא־טוֹב). He spent the entire previous chapter creating things and pronouncing them "good" (טוֹב) or "very good" (טוֹב מְאֹד).
Things get interesting when it comes to same-sex relationships. There are a number of possibilities here:
Contrary to God it actually is good for gay men* to be alone
Gay men should stop being gay
Gay men should marry a woman anyway despite the lack of any desire**
None of these seem particularly compassionate, or coherent. Why is it "not good" for straight men to be alone while it's apparently "good" for gay men? This division seems contrary to the human universalism of the previous chapter of Genesis, where everyone, male and female, is made in the image of God.
*Whether or not it's good or not good for women to be alone is not a question that seems to interest the author of Genesis 2.
**Again, the preferences of women about being married to husbands who find them sexually unattractive seem to be irrelevant. This mirrors the fact that Genesis gives us Adam's acceptance of Eve as a wife*** but doesn't consider Eve's opinion to be worth reporting.
***Were Adam and Eve "married" in any sense that we'd recognize the term? What distinguishes their "marriage" from what we'd consider "cohabitation"?
To follow up on the idea that anyone who quotes either of the first two chapters of Genesis is, by implication, quoting the entirety of both chapters, there's the question of Genesis 2:18.
The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”
This is used by various complementarians and other sexists to argue against same sex relationships (and that women should naturally be subservient and helpful to men), but I'd like to highlight that this is the first time God says that anything in his brand new world is "not good" (לֹא־טוֹב). He spent the entire previous chapter creating things and pronouncing them "good" (טוֹב) or "very good" (טוֹב מְאֹד).
Things get interesting when it comes to same-sex relationships. There are a number of possibilities here:
Contrary to God it actually is good for gay men* to be alone
Gay men should stop being gay
Gay men should marry a woman anyway despite the lack of any desire**
None of these seem particularly compassionate, or coherent. Why is it "not good" for straight men to be alone while it's apparently "good" for gay men? This division seems contrary to the human universalism of the previous chapter of Genesis, where everyone, male and female, is made in the image of God.
*Whether or not it's good or not good for women to be alone is not a question that seems to interest the author of Genesis 2.
**Again, the preferences of women about being married to husbands who find them sexually unattractive seem to be irrelevant. This mirrors the fact that Genesis gives us Adam's acceptance of Eve as a wife*** but doesn't consider Eve's opinion to be worth reporting.
***Were Adam and Eve "married" in any sense that we'd recognize the term? What distinguishes their "marriage" from what we'd consider "cohabitation"?
"Those whom God has joined together..." I would think. As God refers to them as husband and wife in the passage banishing them from Eden that ought to suffice. Failing that, I would suggest that them being referenced as husband and wife would fall under marriage "by habit and repute" which was one possible means of recognition in Scotland until the early 2000s.
Were Adam and Eve "married" in any sense that we'd recognize the term? What distinguishes their "marriage" from what we'd consider "cohabitation"?
"Those whom God has joined together..." I would think. As God refers to them as husband and wife in the passage banishing them from Eden that ought to suffice.
Does He? Hebrew uses the same word for "man" and "husband" (אִישֵׁ). Likewise with "woman" and "wife" (אִשְׁתֶּ), so I'm not sure it's unambiguous. God certainly refers to them in that way in English translation, but I'm not convinced that's not just reading what we want back into the text.
Failing that, I would suggest that them being referenced as husband and wife would fall under marriage "by habit and repute" which was one possible means of recognition in Scotland until the early 2000s.
What constitutes "repute" when there are only two people in the world?
Were Adam and Eve "married" in any sense that we'd recognize the term? What distinguishes their "marriage" from what we'd consider "cohabitation"?
"Those whom God has joined together..." I would think. As God refers to them as husband and wife in the passage banishing them from Eden that ought to suffice.
Does He? Hebrew uses the same word for "man" and "husband" (אִישֵׁ). Likewise with "woman" and "wife" (אִשְׁתֶּ), so I'm not sure it's unambiguous. God certainly refers to them in that way in English translation, but I'm not convinced that's not just reading what we want back into the text.
Failing that, I would suggest that them being referenced as husband and wife would fall under marriage "by habit and repute" which was one possible means of recognition in Scotland until the early 2000s.
What constitutes "repute" when there are only two people in the world?
Thank you for the correction, I have no knowledge of Hebrew and should have checked. That said, if Eve's desire for Adam was divinely ordained, does that not suggest that God joined them together, as per my first quote?
Thank you for the correction, I have no knowledge of Hebrew and should have checked. That said, if Eve's desire for Adam was divinely ordained, does that not suggest that God joined them together, as per my first quote?
Yes. The Hebrew is אִישֵׁ and אִשְׁתֶּ. It is a normal convention of translation into English to render the Hebrew ‘your man/woman’ as ‘husband/wife’. This is true of various modern languages as well. It is a well known translational issue where an original language allows a breadth of meaning but the receiving language, English in this case, needs a more specific word.
Thank you for the correction, I have no knowledge of Hebrew and should have checked. That said, if Eve's desire for Adam was divinely ordained, does that not suggest that God joined them together, as per my first quote?
Marriage as punishment? Sounds peachy!
"Garth, marriage is punishment for shoplifting in some countries" [/Wayne's World]
@Steve Langton - the point (the simple point) that everyone is making is that Jesus is answering a question on divorce. He was asked a question about divorce, and he answered that question on divorce.
If you can find a similar passage where Jesus is asked a question about same-sex relationships, then we can have a discussion about Jesus' answer on same-sex relationships.
And because the initial question is about divorce it is absolutely impossible for Jesus' answer to have any wider implication or application???
By BroJames
This is not in the text, nor is anything made of it by the text. This text can’t be treated as human history since it will shortly introduce for Cain and Seth wives who have no antecedents. An argument about ‘this point in human history’ does violence to the nature of the text, and to the theological argument it is making in its historical context.
See the 'Footnote' to my response to orfeo. If the text is of the broad kind of 'genre' I suggest there then it is perfectly appropriate to point to something which is rather obvious in terms of the context even though not strict 'history'. Clearly if, in terms of the story as told, the 'genre' of it, Adam needs a 'suitable helper' to be provided by God's creation, it is also very much the case that another male would not be appropriate to the need.
@Steve Langton - the point (the simple point) that everyone is making is that Jesus is answering a question on divorce. He was asked a question about divorce, and he answered that question on divorce.
If you can find a similar passage where Jesus is asked a question about same-sex relationships, then we can have a discussion about Jesus' answer on same-sex relationships.
And because the initial question is about divorce it is absolutely impossible for Jesus' answer to have any wider implication or application???
Fair deal then. Before you go on to consider any wider implication or application of Jesus' answer, can you address Jesus' answer in the context of answering a question on divorce? ISTM that you haven't yet.
This is not in the text, nor is anything made of it by the text. This text can’t be treated as human history since it will shortly introduce for Cain and Seth wives who have no antecedents. An argument about ‘this point in human history’ does violence to the nature of the text, and to the theological argument it is making in its historical context.
See the 'Footnote' to my response to orfeo. If the text is of the broad kind of 'genre' I suggest there then it is perfectly appropriate to point to something which is rather obvious in terms of the context even though not strict 'history'. Clearly if, in terms of the story as told, the 'genre' of it, Adam needs a 'suitable helper' to be provided by God's creation, it is also very much the case that another male would not be appropriate to the need.
Actually, since the main point of that story is to talk about relationships between the sexes, that woman is of the same kind as man, and that in allying together they establish a kinship relationship with one another it is necessary that the other actor in the story should be female. Its silence on male-male and female-female relationships is just that, silence. It has nothing to say about them. They could be completely uncontroversial, requiring no mention, or unknown and not mentioned, or so terrible that they cannot be named. Any of those conclusions, and probably many others, is/are consistent with the textual silence on the topic.
This is not in the text, nor is anything made of it by the text. This text can’t be treated as human history since it will shortly introduce for Cain and Seth wives who have no antecedents. An argument about ‘this point in human history’ does violence to the nature of the text, and to the theological argument it is making in its historical context.
See the 'Footnote' to my response to orfeo. If the text is of the broad kind of 'genre' I suggest there then it is perfectly appropriate to point to something which is rather obvious in terms of the context even though not strict 'history'. Clearly if, in terms of the story as told, the 'genre' of it, Adam needs a 'suitable helper' to be provided by God's creation, it is also very much the case that another male would not be appropriate to the need.
Actually, since the main point of that story is to talk about relationships between the sexes, that woman is of the same kind as man, and that in allying together they establish a kinship relationship with one another it is necessary that the other actor in the story should be female. Its silence on male-male and female-female relationships is just that, silence. It has nothing to say about them. They could be completely uncontroversial, requiring no mention, or unknown and not mentioned, or so terrible that they cannot be named. Any of those conclusions, and probably many others, is/are consistent with the textual silence on the topic.
Perhaps it might be better not to say BroJames, "the main point of that story is.." It may be ONE interpretation but is it THE interpretation that is full truth?
Otherwise you are falling in to exactly the same approach as others are calling out Steve Langton for.
@Steve Langton I simply have far better things to do with my time than to keep bouncing my soul up against your spiky barrier.
Despite regular claims that you've run out of time, you apparently have nothing better to do than to explain why I am fundamentally wrong in nature. Over and over.
That's not the worst part, though. The worst part is how everything is constantly "clear". I don't think people like you actually understand what it's like to be the subject of views that are so relentlessly dogmatic.
To have such certainty not about something germane to your own life, but about a topic that actually has no bearing on your own life whatsoever... the question is not so much how you manage to reach the theological view, but how you manage to have sufficient ego to be so utterly confident in ignoring the lived experience of others and favouring what is no more than a theoretical theology constructed purely out of treating a text written in an entirely different language (never mind culture and historical context) as if it poses no problems or questions.
In other words, your confidence is not earned. It's just a thing you can afford to have because the question matters not one jot to you except as a tool to beat other people about the head with. You're an armchair expert on homosexuality, armed with an English language Bible.
The safest conclusion for my own sanity is to decide not to give a fuck what someone like you thinks because your opinion is so divorced from any engagement with real, living people. So, farewell.
@Steve Langton - the point (the simple point) that everyone is making is that Jesus is answering a question on divorce. He was asked a question about divorce, and he answered that question on divorce.
If you can find a similar passage where Jesus is asked a question about same-sex relationships, then we can have a discussion about Jesus' answer on same-sex relationships.
And because the initial question is about divorce it is absolutely impossible for Jesus' answer to have any wider implication or application???
Fair deal then. Before you go on to consider any wider implication or application of Jesus' answer, can you address Jesus' answer in the context of answering a question on divorce? ISTM that you haven't yet.
As I've already said, I think that basically Jesus answers the question about divorce precisely by putting it into the context of the wider issue of "What is marriage?" to say that because that's what marriage is about divorce is not a good idea. As a practicality it was allowed in Israel in the OT period because though Israel was ideally "God's People" not everybody would be fully faithful. In the transposition after Jesus to a different international/transnational/supranational, and of course voluntary way of being God's people in the world, the idea is that in the Church we try to restore things as they were in the beginning and to repair the hardness of heart which caused divorce to be allowed.
That is a very summary version and there would be lots more to be said....
On the other point, I would I think expect both that Jesus' answers would at least often be of as wide an application as possible and about wider principles than the immediate issue, and that out of the masses of things Jesus said the gospel writers would select a lot of those wider application examples (which because of their wider application might often be more memorable anyway.
The drop-in centre I'm currently using is about to close.
As per orfeo's post above, I'm not gay, but I find it disgusting and shameful to read these repeated explanations by Langton of how gay is not intended by God. This is blatant homophobia, and hate speech, no matter its theological accuracy.
As I've already said, I think that basically Jesus answers the question about divorce precisely by putting it into the context of the wider issue of "What is marriage?" to say that because that's what marriage is about divorce is not a good idea. As a practicality it was allowed in Israel in the OT period because though Israel was ideally "God's People" not everybody would be fully faithful. In the transposition after Jesus to a different international/transnational/supranational, and of course voluntary way of being God's people in the world, the idea is that in the Church we try to restore things as they were in the beginning and to repair the hardness of heart which caused divorce to be allowed.
This is not an answer. This is a framing to a potential answer. What is your opinion on @BroJames ' assertion that Jesus was quoting from Genesis to remind his audience that a woman is created of God, and the marriage creates a new family, and therefore divorce is both a denigration of God's creation, and the sundering of kinship ties?
Again I'm out of time for now - and Nick Tamen that is simply a statement of fact in terms of my current situation, not any kind of excuse or evasion. When I get back I will try and address what I was trying to say earlier about the implications of 'science' in this context.
I’m sure you have other things to do, Steve Langton. We all do.
But when you plead lack of time in the middle of a 700+ word, most of which repeats things you’ve already said umpteen times, the impression is given that you do have time but choose to spend it replowing the same field.
Fair deal then. Before you go on to consider any wider implication or application of Jesus' answer, can you address Jesus' answer in the context of answering a question on divorce? ISTM that you haven't yet.
As I've already said, I think that basically Jesus answers the question about divorce precisely by putting it into the context of the wider issue of "What is marriage?" to say that because that's what marriage is about divorce is not a good idea. As a practicality it was allowed in Israel in the OT period because though Israel was ideally "God's People" not everybody would be fully faithful. In the transposition after Jesus to a different international/transnational/supranational, and of course voluntary way of being God's people in the world, the idea is that in the Church we try to restore things as they were in the beginning and to repair the hardness of heart which caused divorce to be allowed.
That doesn't really answer the question though. We've got two answers from Jesus on divorce. Mark 10 (which you seem to prefer citing) says that divorce is never acceptable, while Matthew 19 says that it's acceptable for cases of "sexual immorality" (πορνείᾳ) by the wife. (Sexual immorality by husbands is left unaddressed.) I can see why you would prefer the Mark 10 version, it's a clear rule with no exceptions and presumes, like you do, that all Christians will "be fully faithful" (unlike those treacherous Jews, apparently).
At any rate, the question of whether there's any "wiggle room" on divorce or whether it's a blanket pronouncement would seem to be relevant if you're going to dictate on other unrelated subjects on that basis.
As per orfeo's post above, I'm not gay, but I find it disgusting and shameful to read these repeated explanations by Langton of how gay is not intended by God. This is blatant homophobia, and hate speech, no matter its theological accuracy.
The theological element is an important bit of deflection. It allows people to pretend that they really like homosexuals and want to treat them the same as anyone else, but God is being a hardass about it so there's nothing they can do. Apparently they can't imagine a God that's more compassionate and loving than they are, only one who's less so.
Some of my best friends are gay, but God, being a stickler for the rules, insists on no sex for them. What can I do, as I am a faithful biblical scholar, and I never fuck my wife up the arse?
The longer this thread continues the easier I find it to dismiss the Langton view. It didn't convince me the first time I heard, it doesn't become any more convincing with repetition.
Briefly back in to point out that Jesus didn't even speak Greek, so treating Gospel text as some kind of verbatim transcript doesn't even get THAT far.
It's a report of his teachings written at least a few decades later in another language. Not what a stenographer notated from a tape recording. At least one of the Gospels specifically says that it's a selection of material for particular purposes.
That people don't stop to think about the nature of the material they're working with doesn't surprise me, but wow does it terrify me.
Ah, but in church we all parrot This is the Word of the Lord after every reading so it - and our interpretation of it - cannot, must not, be questioned.
Briefly back in to point out that Jesus didn't even speak Greek, so treating Gospel text as some kind of verbatim transcript doesn't even get THAT far.
It's a report of his teachings written at least a few decades later in another language. Not what a stenographer notated from a tape recording. At least one of the Gospels specifically says that it's a selection of material for particular purposes.
That people don't stop to think about the nature of the material they're working with doesn't surprise me, but wow does it terrify me.
Yeah, but then I do think about the nature of what I'm working with. For instance I've worked out that actually one of the key texts in the state/church issue, where Jesus is speaking to Pilate, will almost certainly be 'the original Greek' because that would have been the common language of the Roman and the Galilean.
I think it is one of the points of the NT being in Greek that our Scriptures are not like the Quran which I understand is considered in a way only real in the original Arabic. Indeed the Greek used is what is called 'Koine', not a superb 'classical' version of the language but the version that was everybody's second language throughout the Eastern Med (roughly comparable to the kind of basic English used in the TEV/GNB which the Bible Society produced originally for use in places like India and Africa where again everybody's second language was English. And for God that was perfectly adequate. Also as I understand it use of Koine implies that it is intended for everybody, not just for scholars making hair-fine distinctions.
And of course it's "a selection of material for particular purposes" - Jesus was going round teaching for some three years, and the gospels certainly aren't a day-by-day account of that! It's a mix of what will have been a basic version of things Jesus said repeatedly in essentially the same words, and so remembered not verbatim but adequately by that repetition, and memories of particular one-off but memorable events like the one in Mark 10/Matt 19. The slight differences between Matthew and Mark show it's not a 'transcript of a recording' kind of thing - but the meaning is not significantly affected.
As between Matthew and Mark, Irenaeus, Papias and Origen all record a tradition of Matthew being originally written in 'Hebrew' (probably actually Aramaic) and later translated in Greek. The 'synoptic' nature of the gospels makes it likely that the translator had Mark in front of him as well, and combined the two gospels into a fuller account, and may have added material from other sources (the hypothetical 'Q' for instance) and Irenaeus and Co do rather imply that Matthew was mostly collections of sayings with less stories. Luke is similar in adding his own researches to a lot of Mark. If so then where there are differences it is likely that Matthew,which is usually slightly fuller, is the more original eyewitness version while Mark, according to the anti-Marcionite prologues was not an eyewitness except for a few episodes and is mostly reporting what he heard from Peter. In terms of the arguments above Matthew if anything slightly stresses even more how much the particular quote from Jesus is about the male-and-female thing. This kind of process in the production doesn't make it any less 'the Word of God'.
@Steve Langton you wrote...'which the Bible Society produced originally for use in places like India and Africa where again everybody's second language was English'
Well except for Portuguese-speaking Africa: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe. A mix of Spanish and Portuguese in Equatorial Guinea.
Or French-speaking Africa: Equatorial Guinea, Togo, Central African Republic, Madagascar, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Niger, Benin, Burundi, Guinea, Chad, Rwanda, Congo, Mali, the Seychelles, Djibouti and Senegal.
Or German-speaking Africa: originally Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi and Namibia.
Or Italian-speaking Africa: originally Eritrea, Somalia and Libya.
Sweeping generalisations about global history and the Scramble for Africa tend not to be any more accurate than those to do with biblical history.
Briefly back in to point out that Jesus didn't even speak Greek, so treating Gospel text as some kind of verbatim transcript doesn't even get THAT far.
We don't know that for sure. It almost certainly wouldn't have been his native language, though. We can guess that he probably used Aramaic when addressing Jewish audiences, perhaps with a little Hebrew thrown in for scriptural quotations, but that's just conjecture.
Yeah, but then I do think about the nature of what I'm working with. For instance I've worked out that actually one of the key texts in the state/church issue, where Jesus is speaking to Pilate, will almost certainly be 'the original Greek' because that would have been the common language of the Roman and the Galilean.
Not necessarily. Pilate may have used a translator. He certainly would have had one on hand for communicating with anyone who didn't speak Latin or koine Greek (or whose koine might be shaky or an unfamiliar dialect). This is, of course, a minor quibble when compared to the question of sourcing, since the Gospels are clear that none of Jesus' followers were present. The Gospel of John goes even further to claim that not even Jesus' Jewish accusers were present during his conversation with Pilate, which throws the question of 'the original Greek' into some confusion.
I think it is one of the points of the NT being in Greek that our Scriptures are not like the Quran which I understand is considered in a way only real in the original Arabic. Indeed the Greek used is what is called 'Koine', not a superb 'classical' version of the language but the version that was everybody's second language throughout the Eastern Med (roughly comparable to the kind of basic English used in the TEV/GNB which the Bible Society produced originally for use in places like India and Africa where again everybody's second language was English.
Can you expand a bit on what you find non-superb about Koine? It certainly seems to have been superb enough to allow communication over a wide region and in a variety of genres from literature to accounting.
As between Matthew and Mark, Irenaeus, Papias and Origen all record a tradition of Matthew being originally written in 'Hebrew' (probably actually Aramaic) and later translated in Greek.
This is almost certainly not true, whatever Irenaeus, Papias, and Origen have to say on the matter. All the canonical Gospels were originally written in Koine Greek with a few Aramaic words or phrases ("Raca", "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?") thrown in for flavor.
Ulrich Luz refers to the author of Matthew as using what he calls "Synagogue Greek" (and "Synagogue" is itself a Greek word), by which he seems to mean a dialect of Koine with some adaptations geared towards discussing Jewish theology and heavily influenced by the Septuagint (a document also in Koine).
In terms of the arguments above Matthew if anything slightly stresses even more how much the particular quote from Jesus is about the male-and-female thing.
This is an assertion, not an argument or an explanation. Can you explain how the verse in Matthew "slightly stresses even more how much the particular quote from Jesus is about the male-and-female thing" than its parallel verse in Mark? Given you're justifying this with a false premise, I think a little more explanation is in order.
MaryLouise
You are of course right on that one. I'm not sure now whether I intended 'much of Africa' or whether I meant places simply 'in India and Africa'. I was writing in haste and with quite a bit of distraction. Basic point of course still stands that such English is roughly comparable to Eastern Med 1stC 'Koine' - Koine may have been a bit rougher by the standards of native Greeks!
Croesos
As I understand it Galilee was a quite ethnically mixed region at this time and while the native Jews probably spoke the Hebrew-related dialect Aramaic on an everyday basis, and would know quite a bit of biblical Hebrew, it was also likely that 'Koine' Greek would be widely spoken as well for dealings with 'Gentiles', Greek and otherwise.
by Croesos
"Can you expand a bit on what you find non-superb about Koine?"
Not so much what I find 'non-superb' about Koine (which clearly did its NT job very well!), more expressing the point that literary Greeks would have snobbishly seen it as an inferior and 'unpolished' dialect. Actually I'm told that ironically, until later archaeology showed that "everybody's second language" nature of Koine, much Western European scholarship apparently saw it as a special and superior 'divine' version of Greek!
Pilate may have used a translator.
He may - and you'll notice I allowed for that by saying 'almost certainly'. But I think the probability of Jesus the Galilean carpenter/jobbing-builder being reasonably fluent in Koine is pretty high.
The question of 'sourcing' for that conversation may depend a bit on whether you believe Jesus was resurrected and able to be the source himself; though there are at least possibilities of a less supernatural explanation.
by Croesos
All the canonical Gospels were originally written in Koine Greek
As we now have them, indeed so. I don't see how that precludes Irenaeus and Co preserving a correct tradition of what Matthew originally wrote and of it being later translated and combined with Mark in the process. Matthew does indeed show 'Hebrew/Jewish' features compared to Mark/Luke.
Again I said Matthew 'slightly' more emphasises the 'male-with-female' aspect. He deals with some of the points in a different order and in Matthew Jesus starts straight out in his response with "Have you not read that the creator made them from the beginning male and female?" The variation from Mark about the same incident probably means that this would be in the Matthew 'Hebrew' original.
by Croesos
It allows people to pretend that they really like homosexuals and want to treat them the same as anyone else, but God is being a hardass about it so there's nothing they can do.
Definitely not how I was thinking of it; but at now half-past-midnight I'll have to get back to that tomorrow.
Koine was simply what Ancient Greek had evolved into by NT times. It stood midway between that and the mediaeval language. Doubtless there were prestige and less prestige dialects within it, but no-one was speaking the Classical Greek of Herodotus and Plato by then.
Koine was simply what Ancient Greek had evolved into by NT times. It stood midway between that and the mediaeval language. Doubtless there were prestige and less prestige dialects within it, but no-one was speaking the Classical Greek of Herodotus and Plato by then.
Yes, evolution like English. We no longer speak like Shakespeare, let alone Chaucer. But to native English ears the language as spoken in other parts of the world is still not 'classical' (small 'c') English. ('American English' - contradiction in terms!) The TEV/GNB version of English is actually I guess a kind of compromise, using a 'basic' English suitable to as many different parts of the world as possible and avoiding localised variants. That in the event made it also very useful as a version for the English as well! I still like it a lot, though I also for study purposes use the Berkeley version which is decidedly not afraid of long words! And an 'interlinear' version whose English comparison version alongside the interlinear is the RSV.
Koine would I guess be similar - a basic version of Greek, with lots of local variants. Overall rather rougher as a version of Greek than TEV as a version of English. The NT writers like Paul, Mark, Luke and John ended up quite widely travelled and with perhaps a smoother and more widely useful version of Koine.
Steve Langton - it’s none of my business which posts you reply to and which you don’t, and I appreciate what you say about time pressures and so on, but. It is interesting, and possibly instructive to me that you’ve cheerfully leapt down the rabbit hole of English evolution and koine Greek, and responded to orfeo’s PS, above, whilst disregarding his previous post about what it’s like to be the subject of someone else’s dogmatism and armchair expertise. Or maybe you didn’t see it?
Ah, but in church we all parrot This is the Word of the Lord after every reading so it - and our interpretation of it - cannot, must not, be questioned.
I’ve been musing on this quite a bit. I wish there were a way to mark that yes, this is the word of the Lord, but also I wish to examine and argue with it. I think this isn’t helped by the fact that the preacher then gives his/her opinion on the word with no / almost no opportunity for discussion or disagreement. But then I would think that, I find the business of sermons quite unusual (and unhelpfully so) in a modern context.
Ah, but in church we all parrot This is the Word of the Lord after every reading so it - and our interpretation of it - cannot, must not, be questioned.
I’ve been musing on this quite a bit. I wish there were a way to mark that yes, this is the word of the Lord, but also I wish to examine and argue with it. I think this isn’t helped by the fact that the preacher then gives his/her opinion on the word with no / almost no opportunity for discussion or disagreement. But then I would think that, I find the business of sermons quite unusual (and unhelpfully so) in a modern context.
Our minister has been known on occasion to say things like “This is the troubling [or “perplexing” or another appropriate adjective] Word of the Lord.”
Not so much what I find 'non-superb' about Koine (which clearly did its NT job very well!), more expressing the point that literary Greeks would have snobbishly seen it as an inferior and 'unpolished' dialect.
Plutarch and Polybius wrote in Koine. So did most scholars of the Hellenistic era. Can you please stop making shit up and trying to pass it off as fact?
Steve Langton - it’s none of my business which posts you reply to and which you don’t, and I appreciate what you say about time pressures and so on, but. It is interesting, and possibly instructive to me that you’ve cheerfully leapt down the rabbit hole of English evolution and koine Greek, and responded to orfeo’s PS, above, whilst disregarding his previous post about what it’s like to be the subject of someone else’s dogmatism and armchair expertise. Or maybe you didn’t see it?
Also unanswered is my question from a week ago about how the "one flesh" rule works in plural marriages. If Leah is "one flesh" with Jacob and Rachel is also "one flesh" with Jacob, doesn't that mean that Leah and Rachel are also "one flesh" with each other? And if two women can be "one flesh" . . .
Ah, but in church we all parrot This is the Word of the Lord after every reading so it - and our interpretation of it - cannot, must not, be questioned.
I’ve been musing on this quite a bit. I wish there were a way to mark that yes, this is the word of the Lord, but also I wish to examine and argue with it. I think this isn’t helped by the fact that the preacher then gives his/her opinion on the word with no / almost no opportunity for discussion or disagreement. But then I would think that, I find the business of sermons quite unusual (and unhelpfully so) in a modern context.
Our minister has been known on occasion to say things like “This is the troubling [or “perplexing” or another appropriate adjective] Word of the Lord.”
Oh that’s good. I would find that acknowledgment very helpful.
Ah, but in church we all parrot This is the Word of the Lord after every reading so it - and our interpretation of it - cannot, must not, be questioned.
I’ve been musing on this quite a bit. I wish there were a way to mark that yes, this is the word of the Lord, but also I wish to examine and argue with it. I think this isn’t helped by the fact that the preacher then gives his/her opinion on the word with no / almost no opportunity for discussion or disagreement. But then I would think that, I find the business of sermons quite unusual (and unhelpfully so) in a modern context.
In some churches I've heard, "For the word of the Lord," "Thanks be to God".
I seem to remember that at an Iona Abbey service the phrase used before a scripture reading was "listen now for the word of the Lord" (or something to that effect). This implies that the listener has to positively engage with what the passage means for them.
The idea that you can't bless a partnership is absurd to me. What bit of being committed to someone else is unworthy of God's blessing?
The idea was that, as TheOrganist wrote,
the people who fought long and hard for the right of heterosexual couples to be able to have a civil partnership did so because they desperately wanted some means of showing to the world that they were in a committed relationship without the patriarchal overtones of marriage.
The idea that you can't bless a partnership is absurd to me. What bit of being committed to someone else is unworthy of God's blessing?
The idea was that, as TheOrganist wrote,
the people who fought long and hard for the right of heterosexual couples to be able to have a civil partnership did so because they desperately wanted some means of showing to the world that they were in a committed relationship without the patriarchal overtones of marriage.
IOW, such people don't want God's blessing.
That... doesn't follow at all. If you're not keen on patriarchy you can't be interested in God?
Comments
I was wondering how long it would take to work around to "all those gays* just need to meet the right woman and that would fix 'em right up!" And here we are.
And of course now I have a chance to repost the theology of Steve:
*As with most discussions of same-sex relationships lesbians seem to disappear entirely from the conversation. "It really really needs to be a female", unless the partner is another female.
**Your Ken should be sharing a Malibu Dreamhouse with Barbie, not going out in the Range Rover with Billy.
And they’re also notions that people have refuted, via a variety of arguments.
People get married who won’t be able to reproduce (perhaps because of age or disability) - are they still married according to your reading of Jesus’ words?
What bits of complementary did you have in mind other than sexual? I mean, I’m a better cook than the other half, and he’s good at DIY, but we could learn the other skills...
The sexual complementarity argument falls down because of the overlap between what gay couples and straight couples can do, and because sex isn’t just about the penis in vagina bit.
BroJames and others have pointed out that the Mark 10 passage is about gender insofar as honouring women as created by God.
The fact that, as I’ve italicised, you can see lots of reasons why it couldn’t work, doesn’t mean it couldn’t, or doesn’t work.
It says, I am happy to agree, nothing at all about same sex relationships of any kind, either in favour or against. Any other argument, as far as the text of that scripture is concerned, is simply argument from silence. Not on the basis of any argument you have so far advanced,
He's not a member of an established church, so he has nothing to rethink!
Wow are you drawing a wrong conclusion from what I said.
And you keep using that word "clearly" for things that are merely assumptions on your part.
Here's the 2 things about Jesus that don't apply to you and your ways of getting this wrong.
First, Jesus was dealing with an audience that was highly educated in Hebrew Scripture and who would know the wider context of any passage he mentioned. My whole complaint is that you wilfully ignore the wider context. People back then simply didn't treat literature in the way that you do now. For one thing, verse and chapter numbering didn't exist.
Second, and I've already pointed this out to you once before, Jesus was answering a specific question about divorce and referred to enough of Scripture to make the point he was making. I can't criticise him for getting it wrong regarding gender analysis because there is zero evidence (despite what you keep claiming in circular arguments) that he was attempting to make a gender analysis.
That was my understanding as well – which is why I said that the kind of sexual behaviour that Paul wrote about doesn’t map neatly onto the situation we’re living through now.
Marriage also worked very differently. It was more of a business arrangement / property exchange. Jesus’ reminder that both parties were made in the image of God, not just the one, is still revolutionary in some parts of the world. And I still think it’s a leap from his silence on various subjects to assuming that he didn’t agree with things or know about them. (He hung round with outsiders, outcasts and the sexually immoral. Good grief! Of course Jesus knew how many blue beans made five. But he told us to love our neighbour anyway - and didn't put a limit on it).
Paul seems to name people that he believes are leading the Body of Christ astray, but not wearing a headscarf etc is an individual failingso why would he single someone out? He condemns those who exploit others in the strongest terms, but is okay with slavery. It’s all way more complicated than Steve is leading me to believe.
1) Jesus did insist on reading/citing from Gen 2;24; and not only that but he made rather a point of first quoting the bit from the previous chapter about how God made them male and female, which does rather tend to emphasise rather than minimise the point that gender/sex is important to the text and to Jesus' use and interpretation. And by complaining about people who start from Gen 2;24 when Jesus did just that, you did rather lay yourself open to my comment there!
2) Given that my namesake the Archbishop played a major role in establishing the chapter and verse numbering I am more than a bit aware of that not existing in NT times! It's also not particularly relevant to this issue, mind, the text is there with or without the numbering.
Yes of course Jesus' audience knew the Scriptures and would know the context - it can of course still be the case that the actual way Jesus formed his quote is important; like him making a point of putting it into the context of the earlier chapter and its clear reference to male and female, for instance. And no, I'm not wilfully or otherwise ignoring the wider context, anything but.
What I didn't immediately realise because it is in fact an unnatural reading was the way you were giving such importance to the v23 'bone of my bones' etc to ignore/slide round/evade the obvious importance of the male-with-female thing. In the original context Adam is presented with all the various animals but there is no "helper as a complement to him" (that's actually the Jehovah's Witnesses translation which happens to be directly to hand from a conversation I've just had where I am now). And obviously regardless of sex/gender the animals are not able to offer everything that is needed for complete humanity (not to say that they can't be good companions). And then God brings Eve, who indeed is 'bone of his bones, flesh of his flesh', similar in very important ways; but also importantly different in ways that another male cannot possibly supply. At that juncture in human history another male human really would have been unsuitable!!! Only male humans without females would really have been incomplete.
3) Sure Jesus is answering a specific question about divorce. But it is clear, even though you would rather it wasn't, that he answers by putting divorce into the wider context of marriage and the meaning of marriage, and he does that by quoting the Genesis passages.
And yes, he "referred to enough of Scripture to make the point he was making." Exactly. He leaves out the detailed account of the creation of Eve, AND he leaves out Genesis 2;23 with its 'bone of my bone' etc. And he rather positively introduces it by effectively quoting from the previous chapter which could not much more clearly say God made them male and female - in effect he deliberately puts it into that 'gender-related' context. The whole quote is riddled with it being about 'male and female'.
4) Was he attempting to make a 'gender analysis'? No, not needed. Does he simply take it for granted that marriage - and ipso facto sex - is for male with female? Yes, and he makes his OT quotes in a way which if anything emphasises that.
Again I'm out of time for now - and Nick Tamen that is simply a statement of fact in terms of my current situation, not any kind of excuse or evasion. When I get back I will try and address what I was trying to say earlier about the implications of 'science' in this context.
Footnote; AIUI, though in what Barnabas62 refers to as 'then' the readers would probably be taking the Genesis account as a literal record of what you would have seen if, say, you had got hold of a time machine to eavesdrop on the proceedings, I am at least not at all worried by the idea that this is not an actual literal record. It doesn't have the comic intent or obvious absurdities of Kipling's "Just So" stories. I incline rather to think of it as similar to (not exactly the same as) Orwell's "Animal Farm" which is a serious history of the Russian Revolution but transposed into a different genre to make principles clear without too many detailed historical facts to distract, and also to make it more universal - naming one of the pigs Napoleon clues you in that the French (and other) revolutions show similar features. Nevertheless you are supposed to take Orwell's points seriously.
If you can find a similar passage where Jesus is asked a question about same-sex relationships, then we can have a discussion about Jesus' answer on same-sex relationships.
Good luck with that because there isn't one.
Jesus answered that question in a way that was consistent with the behaviour towards women he demonstrated elsewhere in the Bible. Treating them as equals and people created in the image of God. He reminds his audience of the fact that God created both men and woman so one shouldn't be valued more than the other. And that marriage is a big deal - not entered into lightly and not set aside lightly. And that's it.
Anything else is an interpretation / opinion - the kind version. Or utter nonsense and bending the text in order to fit in with your own preconceived ideas - not so kind.
This is used by various complementarians and other sexists to argue against same sex relationships (and that women should naturally be subservient and helpful to men), but I'd like to highlight that this is the first time God says that anything in his brand new world is "not good" (לֹא־טוֹב). He spent the entire previous chapter creating things and pronouncing them "good" (טוֹב) or "very good" (טוֹב מְאֹד).
Things get interesting when it comes to same-sex relationships. There are a number of possibilities here:
None of these seem particularly compassionate, or coherent. Why is it "not good" for straight men to be alone while it's apparently "good" for gay men? This division seems contrary to the human universalism of the previous chapter of Genesis, where everyone, male and female, is made in the image of God.
*Whether or not it's good or not good for women to be alone is not a question that seems to interest the author of Genesis 2.
**Again, the preferences of women about being married to husbands who find them sexually unattractive seem to be irrelevant. This mirrors the fact that Genesis gives us Adam's acceptance of Eve as a wife*** but doesn't consider Eve's opinion to be worth reporting.
***Were Adam and Eve "married" in any sense that we'd recognize the term? What distinguishes their "marriage" from what we'd consider "cohabitation"?
"Those whom God has joined together..." I would think. As God refers to them as husband and wife in the passage banishing them from Eden that ought to suffice. Failing that, I would suggest that them being referenced as husband and wife would fall under marriage "by habit and repute" which was one possible means of recognition in Scotland until the early 2000s.
Does He? Hebrew uses the same word for "man" and "husband" (אִישֵׁ). Likewise with "woman" and "wife" (אִשְׁתֶּ), so I'm not sure it's unambiguous. God certainly refers to them in that way in English translation, but I'm not convinced that's not just reading what we want back into the text.
What constitutes "repute" when there are only two people in the world?
Thank you for the correction, I have no knowledge of Hebrew and should have checked. That said, if Eve's desire for Adam was divinely ordained, does that not suggest that God joined them together, as per my first quote?
Marriage as punishment? Sounds peachy!
"Garth, marriage is punishment for shoplifting in some countries" [/Wayne's World]
And because the initial question is about divorce it is absolutely impossible for Jesus' answer to have any wider implication or application???
By BroJames
See the 'Footnote' to my response to orfeo. If the text is of the broad kind of 'genre' I suggest there then it is perfectly appropriate to point to something which is rather obvious in terms of the context even though not strict 'history'. Clearly if, in terms of the story as told, the 'genre' of it, Adam needs a 'suitable helper' to be provided by God's creation, it is also very much the case that another male would not be appropriate to the need.
Fair deal then. Before you go on to consider any wider implication or application of Jesus' answer, can you address Jesus' answer in the context of answering a question on divorce? ISTM that you haven't yet.
Actually, since the main point of that story is to talk about relationships between the sexes, that woman is of the same kind as man, and that in allying together they establish a kinship relationship with one another it is necessary that the other actor in the story should be female. Its silence on male-male and female-female relationships is just that, silence. It has nothing to say about them. They could be completely uncontroversial, requiring no mention, or unknown and not mentioned, or so terrible that they cannot be named. Any of those conclusions, and probably many others, is/are consistent with the textual silence on the topic.
Perhaps it might be better not to say BroJames, "the main point of that story is.." It may be ONE interpretation but is it THE interpretation that is full truth?
Otherwise you are falling in to exactly the same approach as others are calling out Steve Langton for.
Despite regular claims that you've run out of time, you apparently have nothing better to do than to explain why I am fundamentally wrong in nature. Over and over.
That's not the worst part, though. The worst part is how everything is constantly "clear". I don't think people like you actually understand what it's like to be the subject of views that are so relentlessly dogmatic.
To have such certainty not about something germane to your own life, but about a topic that actually has no bearing on your own life whatsoever... the question is not so much how you manage to reach the theological view, but how you manage to have sufficient ego to be so utterly confident in ignoring the lived experience of others and favouring what is no more than a theoretical theology constructed purely out of treating a text written in an entirely different language (never mind culture and historical context) as if it poses no problems or questions.
In other words, your confidence is not earned. It's just a thing you can afford to have because the question matters not one jot to you except as a tool to beat other people about the head with. You're an armchair expert on homosexuality, armed with an English language Bible.
The safest conclusion for my own sanity is to decide not to give a fuck what someone like you thinks because your opinion is so divorced from any engagement with real, living people. So, farewell.
As I've already said, I think that basically Jesus answers the question about divorce precisely by putting it into the context of the wider issue of "What is marriage?" to say that because that's what marriage is about divorce is not a good idea. As a practicality it was allowed in Israel in the OT period because though Israel was ideally "God's People" not everybody would be fully faithful. In the transposition after Jesus to a different international/transnational/supranational, and of course voluntary way of being God's people in the world, the idea is that in the Church we try to restore things as they were in the beginning and to repair the hardness of heart which caused divorce to be allowed.
That is a very summary version and there would be lots more to be said....
On the other point, I would I think expect both that Jesus' answers would at least often be of as wide an application as possible and about wider principles than the immediate issue, and that out of the masses of things Jesus said the gospel writers would select a lot of those wider application examples (which because of their wider application might often be more memorable anyway.
The drop-in centre I'm currently using is about to close.
This is not an answer. This is a framing to a potential answer. What is your opinion on @BroJames ' assertion that Jesus was quoting from Genesis to remind his audience that a woman is created of God, and the marriage creates a new family, and therefore divorce is both a denigration of God's creation, and the sundering of kinship ties?
But when you plead lack of time in the middle of a 700+ word, most of which repeats things you’ve already said umpteen times, the impression is given that you do have time but choose to spend it replowing the same field.
@orfeo,
:notworthy:
That doesn't really answer the question though. We've got two answers from Jesus on divorce. Mark 10 (which you seem to prefer citing) says that divorce is never acceptable, while Matthew 19 says that it's acceptable for cases of "sexual immorality" (πορνείᾳ) by the wife. (Sexual immorality by husbands is left unaddressed.) I can see why you would prefer the Mark 10 version, it's a clear rule with no exceptions and presumes, like you do, that all Christians will "be fully faithful" (unlike those treacherous Jews, apparently).
At any rate, the question of whether there's any "wiggle room" on divorce or whether it's a blanket pronouncement would seem to be relevant if you're going to dictate on other unrelated subjects on that basis.
The theological element is an important bit of deflection. It allows people to pretend that they really like homosexuals and want to treat them the same as anyone else, but God is being a hardass about it so there's nothing they can do. Apparently they can't imagine a God that's more compassionate and loving than they are, only one who's less so.
It's a report of his teachings written at least a few decades later in another language. Not what a stenographer notated from a tape recording. At least one of the Gospels specifically says that it's a selection of material for particular purposes.
That people don't stop to think about the nature of the material they're working with doesn't surprise me, but wow does it terrify me.
Yeah, but then I do think about the nature of what I'm working with. For instance I've worked out that actually one of the key texts in the state/church issue, where Jesus is speaking to Pilate, will almost certainly be 'the original Greek' because that would have been the common language of the Roman and the Galilean.
I think it is one of the points of the NT being in Greek that our Scriptures are not like the Quran which I understand is considered in a way only real in the original Arabic. Indeed the Greek used is what is called 'Koine', not a superb 'classical' version of the language but the version that was everybody's second language throughout the Eastern Med (roughly comparable to the kind of basic English used in the TEV/GNB which the Bible Society produced originally for use in places like India and Africa where again everybody's second language was English. And for God that was perfectly adequate. Also as I understand it use of Koine implies that it is intended for everybody, not just for scholars making hair-fine distinctions.
And of course it's "a selection of material for particular purposes" - Jesus was going round teaching for some three years, and the gospels certainly aren't a day-by-day account of that! It's a mix of what will have been a basic version of things Jesus said repeatedly in essentially the same words, and so remembered not verbatim but adequately by that repetition, and memories of particular one-off but memorable events like the one in Mark 10/Matt 19. The slight differences between Matthew and Mark show it's not a 'transcript of a recording' kind of thing - but the meaning is not significantly affected.
As between Matthew and Mark, Irenaeus, Papias and Origen all record a tradition of Matthew being originally written in 'Hebrew' (probably actually Aramaic) and later translated in Greek. The 'synoptic' nature of the gospels makes it likely that the translator had Mark in front of him as well, and combined the two gospels into a fuller account, and may have added material from other sources (the hypothetical 'Q' for instance) and Irenaeus and Co do rather imply that Matthew was mostly collections of sayings with less stories. Luke is similar in adding his own researches to a lot of Mark. If so then where there are differences it is likely that Matthew,which is usually slightly fuller, is the more original eyewitness version while Mark, according to the anti-Marcionite prologues was not an eyewitness except for a few episodes and is mostly reporting what he heard from Peter. In terms of the arguments above Matthew if anything slightly stresses even more how much the particular quote from Jesus is about the male-and-female thing. This kind of process in the production doesn't make it any less 'the Word of God'.
Well except for Portuguese-speaking Africa: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe. A mix of Spanish and Portuguese in Equatorial Guinea.
Or French-speaking Africa: Equatorial Guinea, Togo, Central African Republic, Madagascar, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Niger, Benin, Burundi, Guinea, Chad, Rwanda, Congo, Mali, the Seychelles, Djibouti and Senegal.
Or German-speaking Africa: originally Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi and Namibia.
Or Italian-speaking Africa: originally Eritrea, Somalia and Libya.
Sweeping generalisations about global history and the Scramble for Africa tend not to be any more accurate than those to do with biblical history.
We don't know that for sure. It almost certainly wouldn't have been his native language, though. We can guess that he probably used Aramaic when addressing Jewish audiences, perhaps with a little Hebrew thrown in for scriptural quotations, but that's just conjecture.
Not necessarily. Pilate may have used a translator. He certainly would have had one on hand for communicating with anyone who didn't speak Latin or koine Greek (or whose koine might be shaky or an unfamiliar dialect). This is, of course, a minor quibble when compared to the question of sourcing, since the Gospels are clear that none of Jesus' followers were present. The Gospel of John goes even further to claim that not even Jesus' Jewish accusers were present during his conversation with Pilate, which throws the question of 'the original Greek' into some confusion.
Can you expand a bit on what you find non-superb about Koine? It certainly seems to have been superb enough to allow communication over a wide region and in a variety of genres from literature to accounting.
This is almost certainly not true, whatever Irenaeus, Papias, and Origen have to say on the matter. All the canonical Gospels were originally written in Koine Greek with a few Aramaic words or phrases ("Raca", "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?") thrown in for flavor.
Ulrich Luz refers to the author of Matthew as using what he calls "Synagogue Greek" (and "Synagogue" is itself a Greek word), by which he seems to mean a dialect of Koine with some adaptations geared towards discussing Jewish theology and heavily influenced by the Septuagint (a document also in Koine).
It is not so.
This is an assertion, not an argument or an explanation. Can you explain how the verse in Matthew "slightly stresses even more how much the particular quote from Jesus is about the male-and-female thing" than its parallel verse in Mark? Given you're justifying this with a false premise, I think a little more explanation is in order.
You are of course right on that one. I'm not sure now whether I intended 'much of Africa' or whether I meant places simply 'in India and Africa'. I was writing in haste and with quite a bit of distraction. Basic point of course still stands that such English is roughly comparable to Eastern Med 1stC 'Koine' - Koine may have been a bit rougher by the standards of native Greeks!
Croesos
As I understand it Galilee was a quite ethnically mixed region at this time and while the native Jews probably spoke the Hebrew-related dialect Aramaic on an everyday basis, and would know quite a bit of biblical Hebrew, it was also likely that 'Koine' Greek would be widely spoken as well for dealings with 'Gentiles', Greek and otherwise.
by Croesos
Not so much what I find 'non-superb' about Koine (which clearly did its NT job very well!), more expressing the point that literary Greeks would have snobbishly seen it as an inferior and 'unpolished' dialect. Actually I'm told that ironically, until later archaeology showed that "everybody's second language" nature of Koine, much Western European scholarship apparently saw it as a special and superior 'divine' version of Greek!
He may - and you'll notice I allowed for that by saying 'almost certainly'. But I think the probability of Jesus the Galilean carpenter/jobbing-builder being reasonably fluent in Koine is pretty high.
The question of 'sourcing' for that conversation may depend a bit on whether you believe Jesus was resurrected and able to be the source himself; though there are at least possibilities of a less supernatural explanation.
by Croesos
As we now have them, indeed so. I don't see how that precludes Irenaeus and Co preserving a correct tradition of what Matthew originally wrote and of it being later translated and combined with Mark in the process. Matthew does indeed show 'Hebrew/Jewish' features compared to Mark/Luke.
Again I said Matthew 'slightly' more emphasises the 'male-with-female' aspect. He deals with some of the points in a different order and in Matthew Jesus starts straight out in his response with "Have you not read that the creator made them from the beginning male and female?" The variation from Mark about the same incident probably means that this would be in the Matthew 'Hebrew' original.
by Croesos
Definitely not how I was thinking of it; but at now half-past-midnight I'll have to get back to that tomorrow.
Yes, evolution like English. We no longer speak like Shakespeare, let alone Chaucer. But to native English ears the language as spoken in other parts of the world is still not 'classical' (small 'c') English. ('American English' - contradiction in terms!) The TEV/GNB version of English is actually I guess a kind of compromise, using a 'basic' English suitable to as many different parts of the world as possible and avoiding localised variants. That in the event made it also very useful as a version for the English as well! I still like it a lot, though I also for study purposes use the Berkeley version which is decidedly not afraid of long words! And an 'interlinear' version whose English comparison version alongside the interlinear is the RSV.
Koine would I guess be similar - a basic version of Greek, with lots of local variants. Overall rather rougher as a version of Greek than TEV as a version of English. The NT writers like Paul, Mark, Luke and John ended up quite widely travelled and with perhaps a smoother and more widely useful version of Koine.
I’ve been musing on this quite a bit. I wish there were a way to mark that yes, this is the word of the Lord, but also I wish to examine and argue with it. I think this isn’t helped by the fact that the preacher then gives his/her opinion on the word with no / almost no opportunity for discussion or disagreement. But then I would think that, I find the business of sermons quite unusual (and unhelpfully so) in a modern context.
Would it be too much to ask you to stick to actual facts rather than presenting your own half-assed guesswork as established reality?
For example:
Plutarch and Polybius wrote in Koine. So did most scholars of the Hellenistic era. Can you please stop making shit up and trying to pass it off as fact?
Also unanswered is my question from a week ago about how the "one flesh" rule works in plural marriages. If Leah is "one flesh" with Jacob and Rachel is also "one flesh" with Jacob, doesn't that mean that Leah and Rachel are also "one flesh" with each other? And if two women can be "one flesh" . . .
If L = J and R = J, then L = R.
Oh that’s good. I would find that acknowledgment very helpful.
In some churches I've heard, "For the word of the Lord," "Thanks be to God".
* delete as appropriate.
The idea was that, as TheOrganist wrote, IOW, such people don't want God's blessing.
That... doesn't follow at all. If you're not keen on patriarchy you can't be interested in God?