Korean Job Discussion Forums

[ED209]

No, the Westboro Baptists deserve a crazy gun man, the Amish have had far too much of their fair share. I choose 2.

[Grimalkin]

kittyfye

[Grimalkin]

mithridates

[anyway]

[ED209]

Maybe your parents are gay, but were forced to live a lie.

Plenty of gay parents out there, sometimes within a sham marriage or after one, sometimes through a planned pregnancy or adoption.

God also calls eating shellfish an abomination, should I turn to Jesus to save me from sushi?

There is no place for homosexuals or shellfish in nobbyken's world.

[kittyfye]

[khyber]

[Grimalkin]

kittyfye

[kittyfye]

Both khyber and grimalkin ask good questions here; I proceeded leaving some holes that should be filled. And so let me see if i can show your refutes to be exhaustive:

I am skeptical--note the ambiguity, I don't 'know'--I am skeptical that when the Septuagint was translated (from Hebrew and Aramaic into Greek) that most people in the Christian world did not understand the Greek in that text. That most did not understand Greek, Greek which could be read to them if they were illiterate, is improbable. Likewise, I am skeptical that when the Sept became the Vulgate that most people in the Christian world did not also, then, understand the Latin within the text. Whether they could read it or not, it was read to them and they knew it.

Apart from that, people were taught scripture, even those who could not read, in their own tongues. Remember that St Patrick is famed to this day in Ireland, and elsewhere, not for driving the snakes off of Eire but for bringing the word to the Irish in their own Celtic tongues. True, there is dispute as to whether or not he existed, but that this figure, fictive or not, is reputed for translating scripture from the original into the 'vulgar' says something about just how it was that Christianity proliferated throughout the north.

My friends, how else could it have happened but for someone to go into each culture and to make the teaching accessible to that people?

Indeed, much church art came into being, such as the stations, to afford everyone a more 'literary' participation. In other words, what they could not 'read' in the common book belonging to the chapel was made evident to them in the visual art. Just like today, one look at an icon or a glass and we know the story, as well as the theology that the passage or story beget--or at least we ought to. It is certainly believed that they 'knew' scripture, the entire canon. Tho, yes, yes, I admit that Luther's concern with writing an official text in the people's tongue was needed and therefore noble. (I am not, however, convinced that a history of official texts in local tongues would have put a dent in the scandal of the indulgences, but that's another matter.)

I also admit that there surely must have been some liminal-cultures, peroids of time between a tribe's cultural/pagan roots and their enculturation into Judeo-Christian culture. This would be like a first generation Judeo-Christian people who, while their own children were mastering a strange new language, philosophy and way of life, simply didn't get the full benefit of whatever scriptural passages were being communicated to them.

As for the level of education of Middle-Ages Irish, well, you are right to ask for substantiation; it is quite remarkable. But it is something that I picked up in an Irish Studies program as an undergrad many moons ago (not even a major study--just an interest), and so I wouldn't even know where to begin to prove it. But it is merely ancilliary to the point that we have do-gooder Christians to thank for our European standards of public education (Dominic, et al) and health care (Francis, et al).

Ladies, gents, whatever you are: much thanks; this has been a hell of alot more fun and informative than the papers I am having to write ^^

[seoulunitarian]

[seoulunitarian]

[kittyfye]

"I would also argue there is a difference between the homosexualities discussed in scripture, and those that are part of modern committed homosexual relationships. The Bible may have something to say about casual sexual relationships, whether they be straight or gay, but I think it is silent on the type of sexuality that many homosexally monogamous couples share."

I agree. There is no evidence at all that classical 'homosexuals' even identified themselves as homosexual; this appears to be a contemporary thing: "I am what I do in the bedroom." The classical homosexual relationships would have been quite different from those similarly oriented relationships today.

In the classical world, there certainly seems to have been loving and committed sexual relations, particularly between men and women, particularly when married. As for homosexual relations, those acts were often pleasure oriented or oriented around dominance, as when an older youth might have raped a younger boy. Virgil's Eclogues used this type of homoerotic relationship arguably as a metaphor for political dominance ("The Man" punks us all out, etc).

But Socrates, most are willing to admit, was surely homosexual and appeared to deeply love his 'boy', student and bed warmer, Isocrates. Plato, though, they say was good ol', boring ol' hetero sexual, and happily married at that. I know, I know, none of these guys come from biblical culture, but at least they come from the same time-period.