Judaism’s Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism (and then Christianity) Rejected Homosexuality

Catholic Education ^ | DENNIS PRAGER

[safisoft]

PS Christianity ended polygamy - not the Jewish religion. Minor point.

Your history of Judaism is sadly lacking. 'Christianity' inherited the end to polygamy which Judaism had effectively banned during the time of the Great Assembly - 600 years before nominal 'Christianity' surfaced.

[safisoft]

You are confusing the worship of pagan idols with the veneration of sacred images like the ones in the First Temple.

There was no 'veneration of 'sacred images' in Taberancle/Temple worship, until pagan images were set up in the last First Temple period. Your 'Cherubim' (sic: K'ruvim) notwitstanding. They were not 'venerated' in anyway, and is a purely Catholic apologetical myth.

[safisoft]

Give me one example where the Mosaic Law took precedence before Christian doctrine

Where are you getting your history?

Your challenge is quite easy. Do you want only one example? There are hundreds. I'll start with one of the most obvious. Beastiality. Where is it condemned in the 'New Testament'? Your Greek and Roman 'civilizations' had no such prohibitions.

[Destro]

'Cherubim' (sic: K'ruvim) notwitstanding

So we should ignore these three dimensional representations for veneration? I guess the arc was just a highly decorated storage box?

[Destro]

So it took the Jews a while to figure out what the pagan Greeks knew all along? That monogomy was better?

[safisoft]

"In his books The Mythmaker and Paul and Hellenism, Talmudic scholar Hyam Maccoby exposed a theory that Paul was actually a Gentile raised in an environment influenced by the popular Hellenistic mystery religions centered on dying and resurrected savior deities [...] Maccoby believes that Paul's revelation was thus actually a resolution of his divided self; Paul subsequently fused the mystery religions, Judaism and the Passion of Jesus into an entirely new belief, centered on the death of Jesus as a mystical atoning sacrifice."

What utter tripe, where ever it comes from. Every Talmudic scholar knows that Gamliel I (incorrectly spelled 'Gamaliel' in the 'New Testament') had 500 of his talmidim (the record shows that Paul was one of them) extensively trained in Classic Greek and Roman literature and law. Paul was a Torah observant Jew to the day he died - by his OWN statement as recorded by his friend Luke.

When the pagan biases of the 'church' of Second and Third Centuries are removed from a reading of Paul's epistles it becomes quite clear that Paul remains a powerful Torah scholar and continued to use the now classical rabbinic methodologies. A great scholarly approach in connecting Paul to the sages of his time is Tim Hegg's book "The Letter Writer".

[safisoft]

So we should ignore these three dimensional representations for veneration? I guess the arc was just a highly decorated storage box?

I can see where someone with certain religious backgrounds would think that the decorations were 'venerated' but they were not. Think about it. THESE 'venerated objects' you refer to WERE NOT VISIBLE.

[Destro]

They were invisible??? You mean when the arc was paraded around it was invisible? Hmm, procession of venerated objects....now where does one find that in Christianity?

[safisoft]

They were invisible??? You mean when the arc was paraded around it was invisible? Hmm, procession of venerated objects....now where does one find that in Christianity?

First, it is "Ark", not 'arc'. Secondly, please study up a bit. A simple reading of the TaNaKh would be helpful. It was not 'paraded around'. The Ark was not seen by anyone. It was either in the Holy of Holies, which was only entered on Yom Kippur - by one man, and only after the room was filled with a cloud of smoke. Or it was covered when being carried in front of the people as they marched in the wilderness.

Now, if you could bear to keep your 'icons' covered and never look at them, you might have a leg to stand on, but I doubt it. Idolatry is idolatry, no matter what dogma says. When 'Christianity' can actually argue about the correct usage of 'icons' you know how far it has fallen from the true faith of the Scriptures.

[Paul C. Jesup]

(sarcasm) And here I though the Judeo-Christanity's ban on homosexuality was a counter-attack against the Roman culture for oppression against the Jews and later the Chirstians in the Roman Empire, which included the Holy Lands of the Middle-East.

[Destro]

You mean it was covered like a reliquary?

[Steve_Seattle]

"Christ’s contribution to Judaism was to make the Jewish Bible universally available to everybody."

Actually, Jesus stuck pretty close to the Jewish world; I think it's more accurate to say that Paul spread Jewish influence among the Gentiles.

[Steve_Seattle]

"When 'Christianity' can actually argue about the correct usage of 'icons' you know how far it has fallen from the true faith of the Scriptures."

I really don't see much difference between a Christian reverencing an icon and a Jew reverencing a Torah scroll. Christians do not believe that God or spirits reside in statues or icons. In fact, it seems to me that people who fear statues and icons are actually more superstitious about them than those who venerate them; they (the critics) are the ones who seem to believe that statues and icons contain mysterious powers.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Jews were formed by the Greek culture and earlier they were formed by the Babylonian/Persian culture and earlier by the Egyptians.

For some reason (mystifying to me) you have your civilizational chronology askew...

Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome...

All three pagan civilizational periods were in conflict with Judaic people.

Continuing pagan conflict manifested throughout the Dark Ages, Islamic paganism, European Renaissance (one only has to examine art to see this), continued on with Marxist paganism, the Teutonic paganism of the National Socialists and into our present with the neo-pagan New Age Left Wing nut jobs and the neo-pagan Islamofascists...

It should be no surprise to anyone that the modern Left is on the same side as the terrorists...

[Honorary Serb]

To better understand the context in which the Church was established one should to read the latest books of Old Testament - the ones removed by the rabbis after the split with the Christians (no surprise here) and followed by Luther and Calvin (they could not "reform" the Christianity otherwise). These books are called sometimes deuterocanonical (or falsely apocryphal as there are others which indeed deserve this name.)

Luther actually kept the same deuterocanonical books as the Roman Catholics, but put them into an appendix. (The Orthodox have a slightly different set of these books.) Luther also said that these books were useful for Christians to read.

I have a Bible with these books in an appendix, so it is a proper Lutheran Bible. This is yet another way that the diversity of conservative Lutheranism (from Protestant minimalism [e.g., "WordAlone"] through Evangelical Catholicism and Evangelical Orthodoxy) comes out. Throw in the revisionist, "liberal" Lutherans, with their "gay" and feminazi tendencies, and you can see what a stew we're in. We conservative Lutherans cannot seem to unite to successfully oppose the revisionists.

[redgolum]

You are correct HS. In most countries outside of North America, Lutheran Bibles still have the deuterocanonical books in them. In fact, until World War I and II, many of the Lutheran Bibles in the US had them.

As a result of the "Anti Hun" campaigns of the first world war, many Lutherans started to use Bibles translated and compiled by others.

[Just another Joe]

Who is he that is not of woman borne?

Either an angel, or Adam.