Faramond wrote:US church leader says homosexuality is no sin
Asked how she reconciled her position on homosexuality with specific passages in the Bible declaring sexual relations between men an abomination, Jefferts Schori said the Bible was written in a very different historical context by people asking different questions.
"The Bible has a great deal to teach us about how to live as human beings. The Bible does not have so much to teach us about what sorts of food to eat, what sorts of clothes to wear -- there are rules in the Bible about those that we don't observe today," she said.
This is strange to say the least. Either the Bible is the word of God, and should therefore be adhered to, or it isn't. Have people been cherry-picking the conveniences?
Leviticus is a strange book and probably the one for me that has the greatest proof that the Bible is
not the word of God alone. Not only is it one of the cornerstones of some Christian belief that homosexuality is a sin, but it delves into many other areas as well. I shall summarize Leviticus, and will have some questions for the believers (specifically Cerin and hal) at the end. Please note that every single chapter is prefaced by stressing these are God’s words.
Chapter 1
How to make an animal sacrifice to God.
Chapter 2
How to make a cereal sacrifice to God.
Chapter 3
How to make a peace sacrifice to God. This is normally an animal, and done in fulfilment of a vow.
Chapter 4
More sacrifices, normally bulls, if one has sinned.
Chapter 5
Yet more sacrifices for other sins, the offering ranging from sheep to flour according to what the sinner can afford.
Chapter 6
Rules on holocaust (fully-burnt) offerings.
Chapter 7
More rules on ‘guilt’ sacrifices. A portion goes to the priests.
Chapter 8
Theory becomes a practical demonstration. An actual example of a sacrifice, provided by Aaron.
Chapter 9
Another practical example by Aaron.
Chapter 10
Now a lesson in the form of a warning. Aaron’s two elder sons have a go themselves, mess it up, and God kills them.
Chapter 11
The previous ten chapters were the main body of the Priestly Code, in other words the ‘pomp and circumstance’ bit. Now it starts to become truly bizarre. Chapter 11 deals with what are clean and unclean animals to eat. In this chapter hare, pigs, shellfish and ostrich are specifically unclean. You can’t even touch them. If you hadn’t already suspected that this chapter was man-made before, you may do so now. According to God’s word, a bat is a bird and all insects have four legs.
Chapter 12
Now this chapter was definitely man-made as opposed to woman-made. God cannot be behind this one, surely. Basically, once a woman has given childbirth, her blood is considered unpure for forty days if it is a boy (and cannot touch anything holy), and double-penalty if it is a girl. Once the period is over, she needs to make an offering to atone for her sins.
Chapter 13
This is the beginning of the medical bit – a quite lengthy chapter concerning how a priest should determine if someone has leprosy or not.
Chapter 14
Another lengthy chapter on leprosy – this time split into two. The first concerns the offerings to God to be made once a house or a person has been given the all-clear by the priest. The second is the health inspector bit concerning how a priest determines that a house contains leprosy or not. Leprosy was a big thing at the time.
Chapter 15
More medical information on how to stop the spread of disease, focusing almost entirely on avoiding people with diarrhoea and menstruating women.
Chapter 16
The rules for National Atonement Day (Yom Kippur) where, pre-Jesus, all sins could be forgiven.
Chapter 17
No blood drinking.
Chapter 18
Which close relatives not to have sex with: mother, mother-in-law, sister, sister-in-law, granddaughters, aunts, daughters-in-law. No sex with your brother’s wife. As Jnyusa noted earlier, there is an exception to this in Deuteronomy (25: 5-10). If you are living with your brother and his wife, and the brother dies, you are duty bound to marry her. If you refuse, she is supposed to publicly spit in your face.
Also, any mother/daughter combination (not necessarily at the same time), and a few variations thereof.
No sex whilst a woman is menstruating.
No sex with the neighbour’s wife, no male homosexuality nor beastiality.
Now here is a strange thing. All of the above, apart from beastiality only mentions male sins. Women appear not to have any of the same rules, but are specifically mentioned when referencing animals.
Chapter 19
Much this is a re-tread of some of the Ten Commandments, mixed in with some ecology. Of particular interest is not only disallowing the sowing of two different seeds in the same field, but also the wearing of any garment with more than one kind of thread. Also, no mediums nor fortune-tellers, and no clipping the hair at the temples or the edges of the beard. No eating meat with the blood still in it.
Chapter 20
The Penalty Chapter, and a particularly blood-thirsty chapter at that. The first part starts off fine about how and why child-sacrificers should be put to death, but then it continues on with other sins punishable by death. These include anyone who curses at their parents, all adulterers, most incest (some get away with just being thrown out of the society), male homosexuality, and beastiality.
Along with some lesser incest, the other sin that results in the offenders being thrown out of society is when a couple has sex during menstruation.
Of particular strangeness if a man has sex with his uncle or brother’s wife. They will die childless. Now obviously this is completely incorrect, as many Jerry Springer shows have shown. But it’s the word of the Lord.
Chapter 21
The early part of this concerns what not to do when someone dies. However, the bulk of it concerns who a priest can marry, and who may be a priest. Specifically excluded are blind, lame, disfigured or malformed people, and anyone with a crippled foot or hand. It specifically states this extends to all future generations.
Chapter 22
Back to rules on sacrifice.
Chapter 23
Holy days, and what should happen.
Chapter 24
A blasphemer case study – in other words the Eye-For-An-Eye chapter. In the old days, anyone who was with sin
could cast the first stone.
Chapter 25
Rules on new lands and how to help out poor people.
Chapter 26
Follow chapters 1-25.
Chapter 27
A strange addition which seems to be added at a later stage, concerning the commutation of vows.
So there it is. The questions are obvious. The answers less so. As I said in another post, I cannot understand how anyone can consider the Bible
in toto to be the word of God (and from that male homosexuality is a sin). For if they do, then surely the following are equally sins:
Eating prawns, lobster, oysters, crab, shrimp etc
Eating pork, ham, bacon etc
Eating hare
Eating ostrich
Having a pig liver transplant
Touching a soccer ball (traditionally pigskin)
A woman touching a priest or clutching a cross up to forty days after childbirth (for boys) and eighty days for girls (and that a woman is twice as impure for having a girl as opposed to a boy)
Sex during menstruation.
Mixed cotton shirts
Reading horoscopes, let alone being guided by them
Eating a steak rare
Someone with a disability becoming a priest
Are these still considered sins? Could those who have claimed faith in the Bible as word-for-word the word of God help me out here, please? I am at a complete loss to understand their position.