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.
"This refers to the idea that man’s choices are ultimately within the bounds of God’s sovereign control, yet they are free in the sense that God does not coerce man to choose against his will, but rather sovereignly determines what man wills in the first place. In other words, if some person chooses A instead of B, it was ultimately God’s decision that he would make that choice, and yet the choice was still free because the person made it willingly, not being coerced against his will. God made Him willing to make that choice."
There are several links concerning the unfermented nature of biblical wine on the internet.
Here is one example with several references.
http://www.fbcgrovecity.org/pdf/Wine%20in%20Bible%20Times.pdf
Grape juice was boiled into a syrup. Study up on the subject a little bit. It wasn’t the same as today.
http://www.fbcgrovecity.org/pdf/Wine%20in%20Bible%20Times.pdf
There is no prohibition against the non-drunken consumption of alcohol in the Scriptures. All this proves is that wine was more diluted...which I accept. If someone does not drink to drunkenness today, they are no more violating the Scriptures any more than people who drank the diluted alcoholic wine of Biblical times.
Even John MacArthur acknowledges that there was alcoholic wine that the faithful drank during Biblical times. His position is that we don’t need this today since we’ve solved sanitation and storage issues, but this paper makes it seem like no Believers would have ever consumed alcohol....and that is patently not true.
Not all of it was merely diluted. Please read the case for unfermented alcohol out there. MacArthur is good, but he is not omniscient.
I understand that not all was merely diluted. The point really is that both types were consumed by the Faithful and that the Scriptures merely prohibit drunkenness.
Temperance is the Biblical norm, not prohibition. Even John Calvin and Martin Luther the virtues of the consumption of wine.
Yes, the Bible does just that, it calls it wine right before it ferments.
In fact, you can buy non-fermentated wine in the store as well.
As for Pr.31, it states before the verse you cited, 'It is not for kings, O Lemuel it is not for kings to drink wine; nor for princes strong drink: Lest they drink and forget the law and pervert the judgment of any of the afflicted'(Pr.31:4-5)
The extent of it varies.
Alcohol is a poison that the body has to get rid of.
It has no positive effects on the body.
Decay is a natural process as well.
We don't eat rotten food.
Ofcourse there are other foods (and alcohol isn't a food, it is a drug) that can make one sick.
None of them combined has done to destroy as many lives as alcohol has.
We use grape juice for our Lord's supper.
The wine in Passover is non-fermented since fermentation is a form of leaven and forbidden in the passover/feast of unleavened bread.
And I showed you that wine has a meaning of both fermentation and non-fermentation in the scripture.
δια τουτο παρεδωκεν αυτους ο θεος εις παθη ατιμιας αι τε γαρ θηλειαι αυτων μετηλλαξαν την φυσικην χρησιν εις την παρα φυσιν ομοιως τε και οι αρρενες αφεντες την φυσικην χρησιν της θηλειας εξεκαυθησαν εν τη ορεξει αυτων εις αλληλους αρσενες εν αρσεσιν την ασχημοσυνην κατεργαζομενοι και την αντιμισθιαν ην εδει της πλανης αυτων εν εαυτοις απολαμβανοντες
This translates (literally in Young's Literal Translation) as:
Because of this did God give them up to dishonorable affections, for even their females did change the natural use into that against nature; and in like manner also the males having left the natural use of the female, did burn in their longing toward one another; males with males working shame, and the recompense of their error that was fit, in themselves receiving.
Perhaps someone else has more creativity in interpreting Paul's words, but I see (1) men with women = natural, (2) men with men = shame, dishonorable and against nature. This passage is not about rape, about prostitution, or even about pagan temples. Mistranslated by Young? Read the Greek yourself; I did. In context, this is about those who do not know God in general, and it cannot be interpreted narrowly to just rape as some readers might attribute to the passages on Sodom.
No you didn’t. You just said it happened. You never offered any proof at all.
The Bible says “wine” and that settles it.
There would be new “wine” at the harvest, not yet fermented. There would be fermented wine not long afterwards and for the remainder of the year. There was no other means to keep it.
I’ve got family members on both sides of this debate, and honestly don’t understand the vehemence that goes into arguing about it. If someone takes to heart the Biblical admonition to avoid drunkenness to such an extent as to refuse to drink alcohol entirely, I say that’s fine.
Practically speaking, it doesn’t appear to me that fermented wine was regarded as a problem, though. It was all but unavoidable with the exception of that one short season of the year. Drinking it to excess is repeatedly condemned, but drinking it in moderation, even to the point of being “merry,” is not.
The scripture does prohibit drunkenness. Not sure you can make the case that both were consumed by the faithful in Scripture beyond those few that got drunk.
Wine doesn't have to be alcoholic to be called wine.
What is non-alcoholic wine? Non-alcoholic wines are distinctly different from grape juices and other non-alcoholic beverages. ARIEL makes wine with alcohol from premium varietal grapes, ferments them to dryness, then removes the alcohol through a cold filtration process. This allows the consumer to enjoy the pleasure and nuances of a fermented beverage without the alcohol.
The Bible says ‘wine’ context tells you if it is fermented or nonfermented or not.
vile affections...
men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet."
Stop wasting our time.
And how you propose to make the case that they didn’t?
The Lord isn't going to give people a poison, which is what alcohol is, a poison that results in people becoming immoral as well.
Proverbs 20
1Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.
Proverbs 23:19-20
19Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thine heart in the way.
20Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh:
Proverbs 23:31
31Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.
Gee, was he a glutton as well?
They were comparing him with John the Baptist who was very austere, who they said had a devil.
And when Christ lived among them, they said he was abusing food and drink-which he wasn't.
Even if it there are two different types of "wine" in the Scriptures, one can't say that every verse that talks about wine consumption in a positive light is talking about "grape juice" and that which is talking about it in a negative light is "alcoholic" without providing textual criticism of every passage in Scripture.
No, context is very clear on what is being spoken about.
< Let me say this...I choose not to drink alcohol. However, I see no honest reading of all of Scripture than can ever justify the prohibition of the non-drunken consumption of alcohol.
You haven't been looking too hard.
There is nothing good about alcohol and nothing good comes drinking it.
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