Originally Posted by Textcritic
That's not entirely accurate. The Hebrew Bible is as explicit on the subject as the language will allow. There was no expression within the ancient language—at least as far as we know—that makes the kind of specific prohibition you suggest. On the contrary, the euphemistic language and the idioms that are employed make it abundantly clear that homosexual behaviour was not tolerated among ancient Jews. The text in question from Lev 18:22 is most literally translated "Do not lie down with a male as on the bed with a wife." (The construction itself is grammatically awkward, and impossible to render directly into English). The usage of the words שָׁכַב and מִשְׁכְּבֵי אִשָּׁה is made explicit even to the untrained ear by the following verse, which prohibits bestiality by employing שְׁכֹבֶת, which is derived from the same root, literally rendered "bed lying," and does actually mean "sexual intercourse."
You should know that very few people use the King James version anymore outside of an antiquarian interest. (There are a few who insist on this translation as the only sanctioned Word of God in English, but they are an extreme minority). First off, yes, you are correct about some of the ambiguity in the words that appear in Romans and 1 Corinthians—that is to say, these are words that have something of a flexible meaning, and do not clearly correspond to "homosexuality" as we know it today. In the ancient world, there was no such thing as gender identity—people were either entirely male or female. However, the words that do appear in 1 Corinthians, μαλακος and ἀρσενοκοῖτης, carry with them the clear implication that ancient Greco-Roman "homosexuality" was in view. (The second word is actually a word introduced by Paul as a correspondence to the Hebraic expression of the same concept in Lev 18). The censure in Rom 1:26 against "their women who exchanged their natural function for what was unnatural" employs a word that was commonly understood to mean "sexual intercourse" (χρῆσις, cf. e.g. Xenophon, Symposium 8.28; Plato, Leges 8.841a; Isocrates 19.11; Pseudo Lucien Amores 25; Plutarch, Moralia 905b; P.Oxyrinchus 272.12). In other words, there was no ambiguity produced by the writers, nor among the first readers of these texts as to what was their intended meaning. With general clarity, both Judaism and by extension early Christianity were both fundamentally opposed to homosexual activity.
... If, on the other hand, your post was intended to illustrate the absurdity of literalism, then I quite agree with you. One of the fundamental flaws in hermeneutical approaches to the Bible that champions the "plain meaning" of the text is that it often ignores or glosses over critical syntactical, historical, and sociological contexts.
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