Speaking as someone who has read the Torah in Hebrew, this is inaccurate. The Leviticus (ויקרא) line is absolutely about ‘do not lie with a man as you lie with a woman’. However, we can admit the Torah, and Bible is homophobic and also shouldn’t proscribe our daily lives today. ‘Reforming’ the Bible by making stuff up just supports all the other things the Bible also unambiguously supports, such as slavery and misogyny. And transphobia, for that matter.
From my interpretation of reading the passage, the Sodomites were bisexual, since they would have been happy to rape either the male angels or Lot’s daughters. However, the more important point is that they were rapists, and my understanding has always been that they were destroyed for being cruel to guests and the poor (such as the story of a woman giving a loaf of bread to a beggar being punished by being stripped naked, covered in honey, and left to the bees.)
…Scholars thus agree that almah refers to a woman of childbearing age without implying virginity,[6] while an unrelated word, betulah (בְּתוּלָה), best refers to a virgin,[7] as well as the idea of virginity, betulim (בְּתוּלִים).[8]
Although the concept is central to the account of the virgin birth of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, the scholarly consensus is that the words denote a woman’s fertility without concern for her virginity.[1][2][3]
So uh, oops, the idea that Mary was specifically, literally a virgin… is kind of a translation error from going over into Greek.
This further explains, amongst many other things… if Joseph is not the literal father of Jesus… then… his lineage is irrelevant.
But his lineage going back to David is highly important to both Christian theology and the contextual, contemporaneous way that this would work in the Jewish culture of the time, that he would possibly be able to be seen as the Jewish Messiah.
So… that’s another dimension of this problem for Christians.
The interpretation/understanding given here is more like… (I think?)… that the Holy Spirit, ie, the sort of ever present, non personified idea of God… well, he/it’s role here is just to make sure the biological conception happens, and perhaps specifically bless it, by way of specifically making it happen… or maybe its more like… imbue it with the pure spiritual essence of God?
“… spiritually God, physically human, and legally the heir of the Kingdom.”
I’m frankly not sure that I’m understanding exactly the idea being proposed here.
I should probably also note that the author of this is a Messianic Jew, ie, one who believes, unlike I think basically most, or perhaps all other variants of Judaism… that Jesus actually is the fulfilment of the Jewish Messiah traditions, where most other Jews do not believe the Messiah has yet arrived.
I would very much appreciate any corrections of misunderstandings I may be having here… I grew up Christian, but my cousins are Jewish, but also they were not highly religious, more like ‘non-practicing Jews’, who partook in the holidays and traditions, but were not like, super duper serious about the theology, so we did not ever really talk about theology.
There’s another theory I’ve heard, that’s based on what seems to have been a fairly common rumor/insult hurled at Christians fairly close to the time of Jesus’ life, which is basically that Mary was raped by a Roman soldier, and Jospeh more or less did a kind of pity-marriage to her, as… she pretty much would have been cast out and viewed as tainted or worthless by her family and society.
Obviously that’s impossible to … ‘verify’, but it does at least strike me as plausibe.
You’ve said a lot of things! I don’t have the time or energy rn to reply to all of them, but about the Joseph thing - yes, his lineage should be irrelevant if he’s not actually Jesus’s father. I’ve seen excuses for why it matters, and I think the original reason is that the virgin thing was added on later, they originally did think he was his father.
And yeah, the virgin thing was the author of one of the gospels (I forget which) wanting to ‘fulfil prophecy’ with Jesus and reading something about how the Greek word meaning virgin or young woman would give birth to a son before something happened (in context something to do with a battle, like as a figure of speech to communicate a length of time). So yeah, it’s about a normal pregnancy, and then it was interpreted as a ‘virgin birth’ which the gospel writer used to make Mary a virgin to ‘fulfill prophecy’ (which is in context nothing to do with the messiah).
I hope that’s not too bumbling to make sense, in any case there are plenty people who’ve explained it much better than me, like the YouTuber Mindshift ;)
This is mostly about Christianity, which I will admit is mostly not my expertise. I will confirm that in the OT the Hebrew word does in context mean a young woman who has conceived a child in the usual way, however.
Yeah its Matthew where that happens, the virgin mistranslation thing… and I think also the geneology thing, but I think the geneology thing is a significant part of other Gospels as well?
But yes, what you’ve explained makes total sense, but that’s probably/possibly because I also watch Mindshift and a good deal of other similar kinds of channels.
I guess I just wanted to 1) have the whole ‘alma’ thing directly verified by someone who can read Hebrew, and 2) make sure I was not unintentionally making some significant error when it comes to trying to parse I guess ‘mainstream’ Judaism vs Messianic Judaism.
As you are not as familiar with Christianity, I am not so familiar with the various modern… branches, would you say? of Judaism.
Ezekiel made it pretty clear why Sodom was destroyed:
Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom:She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen
It was about violation of guest right. Lot invited the angels in and gave them bread. When the crowd demanded to violate them, it was better to offer his daughters, because they were his (property), and not his guests. They refused even that, which is when the angels declared that the city was doomed.
It seems like the question of the meaning of arsenokoitai is mostly about what paul meant by it. While all the posters above seem to agree paul’s not saying all homosexuals and probably only situations we’d describe as non-consenual, they all describe no firm answer and disagree on many details.
I think this post takes unsettled scholarship about NT greek and presents it as settled scholarship about part of the torah.
Have you read the Septuagint(s) in Ancient Greek though? There’s scholarly dispute over whether the Greek texts came first and in general Hebrew was a dead language akin to Latin today except with a vocabulary of only 9000 words at the time the Old Testament was written. No known medical texts or literature at that time was being written in Hebrew, maybe a few amulets and accounting documents exist prior to the Torah being written. Hebrew as a living, flourishing language was from before contact with the Greeks, maybe 800-1000 years prior. Jews of the time spoke Greek and had for centuries (as did Jesus), and synagogues of the time had Greek inscriptions on their walls.
Some of the criticism I’ve heard is that the writing of the Old Testament during Greek occupation was akin to the Babylonian Captivity where the Jews that considered themselves purists were angry with Jews who had adopted Greek culture and the writing of it was fundamentally reactionary to that, and trying to recreate a culture that in many ways had already been lost. Also, access to the Library of Alexandria and other libraries at the time (no earlier than 300 BC, probably later) seems to have played a large role in helping the reactionary Jews who led the movement that became dominant write a history of the world that put themselves first.
Anyone interested in this kind of perspective is encouraged to learn about and watch interviews with Dr. Ammon Hillman, who has been translating Ancient Greek for 35 years. He is a classical philologist, meaning his education focuses on Greek texts rather than a biblical scholar who only studies the bible. He has many interviews available on youtube and none of his books or media are monetized. He understandably has a huge number of powerful detractors and he is no longer affiliated with any academic institution but he teaches the largest course on Classical Greek online.
According to wikipedia, the original texts of the old testament/torah were written before the hellenistic period. And the language of the common people in the region around the time that Jesus was supposed to live was aramaic, not greek.
Speaking as someone who has read the Torah in Hebrew, this is inaccurate. The Leviticus (ויקרא) line is absolutely about ‘do not lie with a man as you lie with a woman’. However, we can admit the Torah, and Bible is homophobic and also shouldn’t proscribe our daily lives today. ‘Reforming’ the Bible by making stuff up just supports all the other things the Bible also unambiguously supports, such as slavery and misogyny. And transphobia, for that matter.
From my interpretation of reading the passage, the Sodomites were bisexual, since they would have been happy to rape either the male angels or Lot’s daughters. However, the more important point is that they were rapists, and my understanding has always been that they were destroyed for being cruel to guests and the poor (such as the story of a woman giving a loaf of bread to a beggar being punished by being stripped naked, covered in honey, and left to the bees.)
Seeing as you can actually read Hebrew, and have read the Torah in Hebrew… what do you think of the following?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almah
So uh, oops, the idea that Mary was specifically, literally a virgin… is kind of a translation error from going over into Greek.
https://www.jewishvoice.org/read/article/was-mary-virgin
This further explains, amongst many other things… if Joseph is not the literal father of Jesus… then… his lineage is irrelevant.
But his lineage going back to David is highly important to both Christian theology and the contextual, contemporaneous way that this would work in the Jewish culture of the time, that he would possibly be able to be seen as the Jewish Messiah.
So… that’s another dimension of this problem for Christians.
The interpretation/understanding given here is more like… (I think?)… that the Holy Spirit, ie, the sort of ever present, non personified idea of God… well, he/it’s role here is just to make sure the biological conception happens, and perhaps specifically bless it, by way of specifically making it happen… or maybe its more like… imbue it with the pure spiritual essence of God?
“… spiritually God, physically human, and legally the heir of the Kingdom.”
I’m frankly not sure that I’m understanding exactly the idea being proposed here.
I should probably also note that the author of this is a Messianic Jew, ie, one who believes, unlike I think basically most, or perhaps all other variants of Judaism… that Jesus actually is the fulfilment of the Jewish Messiah traditions, where most other Jews do not believe the Messiah has yet arrived.
I would very much appreciate any corrections of misunderstandings I may be having here… I grew up Christian, but my cousins are Jewish, but also they were not highly religious, more like ‘non-practicing Jews’, who partook in the holidays and traditions, but were not like, super duper serious about the theology, so we did not ever really talk about theology.
There’s another theory I’ve heard, that’s based on what seems to have been a fairly common rumor/insult hurled at Christians fairly close to the time of Jesus’ life, which is basically that Mary was raped by a Roman soldier, and Jospeh more or less did a kind of pity-marriage to her, as… she pretty much would have been cast out and viewed as tainted or worthless by her family and society.
Obviously that’s impossible to … ‘verify’, but it does at least strike me as plausibe.
You’ve said a lot of things! I don’t have the time or energy rn to reply to all of them, but about the Joseph thing - yes, his lineage should be irrelevant if he’s not actually Jesus’s father. I’ve seen excuses for why it matters, and I think the original reason is that the virgin thing was added on later, they originally did think he was his father.
And yeah, the virgin thing was the author of one of the gospels (I forget which) wanting to ‘fulfil prophecy’ with Jesus and reading something about how the Greek word meaning virgin or young woman would give birth to a son before something happened (in context something to do with a battle, like as a figure of speech to communicate a length of time). So yeah, it’s about a normal pregnancy, and then it was interpreted as a ‘virgin birth’ which the gospel writer used to make Mary a virgin to ‘fulfill prophecy’ (which is in context nothing to do with the messiah).
I hope that’s not too bumbling to make sense, in any case there are plenty people who’ve explained it much better than me, like the YouTuber Mindshift ;)
This is mostly about Christianity, which I will admit is mostly not my expertise. I will confirm that in the OT the Hebrew word does in context mean a young woman who has conceived a child in the usual way, however.
Hey, that’s more than fair enough!
Yeah its Matthew where that happens, the virgin mistranslation thing… and I think also the geneology thing, but I think the geneology thing is a significant part of other Gospels as well?
But yes, what you’ve explained makes total sense, but that’s probably/possibly because I also watch Mindshift and a good deal of other similar kinds of channels.
I guess I just wanted to 1) have the whole ‘alma’ thing directly verified by someone who can read Hebrew, and 2) make sure I was not unintentionally making some significant error when it comes to trying to parse I guess ‘mainstream’ Judaism vs Messianic Judaism.
As you are not as familiar with Christianity, I am not so familiar with the various modern… branches, would you say? of Judaism.
In this case it’s not really to do with Judaism, but rather the meaning of the Hebrew word ;)
Rabbinic/mainstream orthodox Judaism does have some interesting ideas about Jesus however
Ezekiel made it pretty clear why Sodom was destroyed:
This is, of course, mostly ignored
Quite, not helping the poor and needy was part of what I said.
Yes I was agreeing with you
It was about violation of guest right. Lot invited the angels in and gave them bread. When the crowd demanded to violate them, it was better to offer his daughters, because they were his (property), and not his guests. They refused even that, which is when the angels declared that the city was doomed.
This meme seemed inaccurate to me too. Focusing on greek terms rather than hebrew for leviticus struck me as weird.
I found an academics’ discussion about arsenokoitai in Paul: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskBibleScholars/comments/18j1873/meaning_of_arsenokoites/
It seems like the question of the meaning of arsenokoitai is mostly about what paul meant by it. While all the posters above seem to agree paul’s not saying all homosexuals and probably only situations we’d describe as non-consenual, they all describe no firm answer and disagree on many details.
I think this post takes unsettled scholarship about NT greek and presents it as settled scholarship about part of the torah.
Have you read the Septuagint(s) in Ancient Greek though? There’s scholarly dispute over whether the Greek texts came first and in general Hebrew was a dead language akin to Latin today except with a vocabulary of only 9000 words at the time the Old Testament was written. No known medical texts or literature at that time was being written in Hebrew, maybe a few amulets and accounting documents exist prior to the Torah being written. Hebrew as a living, flourishing language was from before contact with the Greeks, maybe 800-1000 years prior. Jews of the time spoke Greek and had for centuries (as did Jesus), and synagogues of the time had Greek inscriptions on their walls.
Some of the criticism I’ve heard is that the writing of the Old Testament during Greek occupation was akin to the Babylonian Captivity where the Jews that considered themselves purists were angry with Jews who had adopted Greek culture and the writing of it was fundamentally reactionary to that, and trying to recreate a culture that in many ways had already been lost. Also, access to the Library of Alexandria and other libraries at the time (no earlier than 300 BC, probably later) seems to have played a large role in helping the reactionary Jews who led the movement that became dominant write a history of the world that put themselves first.
Anyone interested in this kind of perspective is encouraged to learn about and watch interviews with Dr. Ammon Hillman, who has been translating Ancient Greek for 35 years. He is a classical philologist, meaning his education focuses on Greek texts rather than a biblical scholar who only studies the bible. He has many interviews available on youtube and none of his books or media are monetized. He understandably has a huge number of powerful detractors and he is no longer affiliated with any academic institution but he teaches the largest course on Classical Greek online.
According to wikipedia, the original texts of the old testament/torah were written before the hellenistic period. And the language of the common people in the region around the time that Jesus was supposed to live was aramaic, not greek.