Posted on 02/12/2011 10:57:29 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Reputable Christian scholars are outright rejecting one author's message that the Bible gives mixed and contradictory teachings on sex and sexuality.
Earlier this week, a Newsweek article entitled, "What the Bible Really Says About Sex," brought attention to the work of Jennifer Wright Knust, author of Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire.
Knust, a religion professor at Boston University, argues that there are cases in the Bible where premarital sex, homosexuality and prostitution is permissible, according to her book and the Newsweek piece.
Evangelical scholars say she fails to demonstrate authentic scholarship and correct biblical interpretation despite teaching religion and being an ordained American Baptist pastor.
"Jennifer Knuts offers a revisionist interpretation of the biblical texts. Her interpretation departs, not only from the traditional ways those texts are interpreted, but also from the true meaning of what the texts actually say," Dr. Claude Mariottini, professor of Old Testament at Northern Baptist Seminary, told The Christian Post.
In his blog post responding to the Newsweek piece, Dr. Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said the Bible already presents a "clear and consistent sexual ethic" and that the issue at hand is not lack of clarity.
"The real problem here is not that the Bible is misunderstood and in need of revision," he wrote Wednesday. "To the contrary, the real problem is that the ethic revealed in the Bible is both rejected and reviled."
In an interview posted Thursday on the Huffington Post, Knust contended to Stephen Prothero, author of Religious Literacy, that the story of Ruth is an example of how premarital sex is "a source of God's blessing" in the Bible. She claimed that the Bible's record of Ruth "uncovering the feet" of Boaz and lying down at his feet is actually a scene of the great grandparents of King David having sex. "Feet" can be a euphemism for male genitals, according to Knust.
Dr. Paul Copan, a philosophy professor at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, Fla., told The Christian Post that he believes Ruth's uncovering of Boaz's feet was just that and that nothing sexual took place.
"The Bible doesn't shy away from recording sexual encounters and would have recorded it if one took place," he said.
President of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, Copan also pointed out that the grammar in the Bible doesn’t support a sexual act. The word "lie" can be used in a sexual way, such as Potiphar's wife telling Joseph "lie with me," he noted. But in the story of Ruth, "the word is used here without sexual connotations," said Copan.
Mariottini acknowledged that "feet" can refer to "genitals" in a few passages of the Old Testament, but to say that "Ruth exposed Boaz’s genitals, is to read a sexual meaning into the text that may or may not be there," he said.
"Even if Ruth exposed Boaz’s genitals, it does not mean that they had sexual intercourse. It is possible that Ruth was tricking Boaz into thinking they had sex," offered the Old Testament professor.
Bottom line: "The case of Ruth cannot be used to give approval to premarital sex," said Mariottini.
Both Copan and Mariottini referred to Deuteronomy 22:28-29 to explain that the Bible is against premarital sex. According to the passage, sex consummates the marriage so if a man has violated a virgin woman, he must pay her father 50 pieces of silver and also take her as his wife, the scholars said.
They also cited the passage in Genesis 2:24, which states, "This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh."
Scripture affirms God's creation order of marriage between a man and a woman and sexual pleasure as taking place in the context of marriage, they said.
In another controversial claim, Knust also argues that the Bible justifies prostitution, pointing to the story of Tamar.
Tamar was left a widow after the Lord punished Er, Judah's eldest son, with death for his wickedness. Judah then asks his second eldest son, Onan, to marry Tamar and give her an offspring but he, too, is slain by the Lord after he intentionally withheld his seed from Tamar. When the third son Shelah was grown but was given to wed Tamar, she posed as a prostitute and had sex with her father-in-law.
"The Bible does not approve prostitution, but like in our society today, prostitution was very common," said Mariottini.
"The reason Tamar dressed like a prostitute was because Judah violated a societal rule and refused to provide an heir for his dead son. So, she was forcing him to fulfill his obligation," he said.
In a commentary to CNN this week, Knust takes another stab at the Bible's claims on sexuality by arguing that Scripture supports homosexuality. Again using Old Testament characters to make her point, she sets her sights on David and Jonathan, alleging that the two were same-sex partners.
"There is no evidence that David and Jonathan were gay partners," stated Mariottini. "Both of them were married and had children. They were just friends who had the kind of friendship that was common in the Ancient Near East. This type of friendship is unknown today. This is the reason people mistake this kind of friendship with a gay relationship."
Mohler had this to say about Knust's claim on homosexuality, "No Jewish or Christian interpreter of the Bible had ever suggested that the relationship between David and Jonathan was homosexual – at least not until recent decades."
"The revisionist case is equally ludicrous across the board. We are only now able to understand what Paul was talking about in Romans 1? The church was wrong for two millennia?" he asked rhetorically.
Knust acknowledged in her CNN commentary that same-sex intimacy is condemned in a "few" biblical passages, but claims that "these passages, which I can count on one hand, are addressed to specific sex acts and specific persons, not to all humanity forever, and they can be interpreted in any number of ways."
Not so, according to Copan.
Copan, who addresses the topics of homosexuality and gay marriage in his book When God Goes to Starbucks, said that homosexuality is strictly prohibited by the Bible in Leviticus 18:22 and again by Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 6.
Homosexuality "goes against the very design that God intended: marriage is between husband and wife," said Copan, reaffirming the passage in Genesis.
"Paul speaks very strongly against homosexuality," he said. "He says that these sorts of things are not to be approved in the Kingdom of God. He is also saying that people can be redeemed from this."
In his book, Copan cited the work of Richard Hays, dean of Duke Divinity School, who calls such attempts to label Ruth and Naomi as lesbians or David and Jonathan as gays "exegetical curiosities” that just aren’t taken seriously by biblical scholars.
"The Scriptures offer no indications – no stories, no metaphors – that homosexual relationships are acceptable before God," concluded Copan in When God Goes to Starbucks.
Newsweek, now there’s a place I go to for spiritual guidance.
Once you deny the Divine authority of the Holy Scriptures you can make them say anything you want.
The “liberal scholars” responsible for the original story in Newsweek are nothing more than heretics masquerading as Christians. Either the Bible is the Word of God or it is nothing. If you don’t believe in the divine authority of the Bible then you can’t with any honesty use it as a proof text for your wild imaginations. Either it’s real or it’s rubbish...how intellectually dishonest of these folks.
They sound like Southern Baptists and Mormons.
“It says Jesus turned water into wine but it really wasn’t wine”.
We all know what the Bible does and does not say about sex. We also know that those who do the devil’s bidding can quote scripture to serve their own ends. The bottom line is that the Bible unequivocally condemns homosexuality and sex outside marriage, and we all know that. It’s just that a few gay activists have the chutzpa to “correct God’s mistakes” in the scripture He gave us.
There were a lot of different kinds of wine in those days. Water had a lot of bacteria you know, and was probably dangerous. They had wines that was diluted by half and down to a quarter which in the Roman times usually went to the kids.
The question is not whether or not is was wine but what the fermentation level is given the Bible’s prohibition to drunkeness. Given that this was at the end of the wedding, God creating something that tasted really good and was full of alcohol would be akin to His tempting people to sin.
First requirement to teach religion at a nonrelious school is to be an atheist, second is to be anti-Chritian
I respectfully disagree on your position. If you take your position out to the logical conclusion, anything that God creates cannot by its nature “temp” anyone. We know from Scripture that God created everything, yet we are tempted daily by many things in God’s creation...whether it be a beautiful woman or some other glittering prize. We bear responsibility for not sinning within God’s creation. God does not “temp” us, we are tempted by our own fallen flesh as a result of our own sinful disobedience to God. God gives us free will...your position takes that away.
Well, that explains it.
Judaism’s Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism (and then Christianity) Rejected Homosexuality
CERC ^ | DENNIS PRAGER bttt
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1929676/posts
Not surprising in the least. Some of the most biblically clueless people I've ever talked with have been professors of religion right here at UNC-CH.
Evangelical scholars say she fails to demonstrate authentic scholarship and correct biblical interpretation despite teaching religion and being an ordained American Baptist pastor.
Dominoes. Unfaithfulness in one command leads to unfaithfulness and confusion about the others.
It also doesn’t say which Baptist denomination has ordained her. Being ordained also doesn’t by its nature mean you are a believer ground in the truth...need I mention the Reverend Al Sharpton or Reverend Jackson?
It's amazing how many people want to read alcohol into each and every place where oinos is used.
The word refers to any product of the grape, fermented or not. The problem with assuming that Jesus made fermented wine in John 2 is simply that there is no contextual warrant for it. What Jesus made was fresh - the "goodness" of a wine/juice depended on its freshness and taste. What the governour of the feast said was that Jesus had made some really high quality, good-tasting stuff - unusual because after drinking several glasses, a person's palate is usually inured to the taste, and therefore people would usually start substituting in less expensive, lower quality wine later on into a feast, when nobody would be likely to notice. John 2 isn't really commenting on the alcoholicity of the wine either way. The fact that it was freshly made would logically tend, however, to suggest that it wasn't alcoholic.
Another problem for the alcohol people is that Jesus specifically calls the cup in the Lord's Supper "the fruit of the vine," which He said He would drink "new" in His kingdom. These are pretty clear indicators that the Scripture is trying to tell us that the wine was not fermented in the Lord's Supper.
That is actually theologically important for the same reason that the bread being used was unleavened. Leavening, which is essentially the bread version of fermentation, is a process that is used throughout Scripture to denote sin. It's a typological picture. Why would Jesus use bread in the Passover that avoided consuming this picture in the bread, but fail to do so in the wine, when the same idea about the wine (a picture of His blood, therefore ALSO sinless and perfect) was being expressed as that of the bread (picturing His body, also perfect and sinless)? Short answer is, He wouldn't, which is what the Scripture takes pains to tell us.
But teaching liberals about the Bible is like teaching a pig to dance.
Charles, that surprises me to see you say that! I figured you guys up in Connecticut were a little more liberal on this regard...
You extrapolate more from “new” than I think can be merited in the text.
But, even if your proof text regarding Jesus’ first miracle is correct, it does not indicate a ban on the consumption of alcohol.
The Scriptures clearly provide guidance that the consumption of alcohol in moderation is not prohibited.
Judges 9:13 “But the vine said to them, ‘Shall I leave my wine that cheers God and men and go hold sway over the trees?’”
Ecclesiastes 10:19 (NASB) “Men prepare a meal for enjoyment, and wine makes life merry, and money is the answer to everything.”
Zechariah 10:7 “Then Ephraim shall become like a mighty warrior, and their hearts shall be glad as with wine. Their children shall see it and be glad; their hearts shall rejoice in the LORD.”
Not in conjunction with the other contextual clues given in the passage.
But, even if your proof text regarding Jesus’ first miracle is correct, it does not indicate a ban on the consumption of alcohol.
Never said it did.
The Scriptures clearly provide guidance that the consumption of alcohol in moderation is not prohibited.
Sorry, but the three texts you provided do nothing of the sort. To see alcoholic wine in these is only because one wants to see it there - there's no textual or contextual suggestion to support this, however. Indeed, Isaiah 65:8 seems to suggest that wine "in the cluster" also brings a blessing to those who drink it, as well. If it's still in the cluster, it obviously cannot be fermented.
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