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The Rule of Law

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Surrealism

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Polygamy

Polygamy was – and is – something for the rich, in ancient Judea as in Rome (where Emperors Nero and Basil the Great were both married to 2 women and 2 men). It’s about men and women having different social, legal and political rights.

Long-time there were laws (still are in many Islamic countries) specifically catering to the situation of 1 man married to several women (the women are only married to one man: the same – not with each other).

In 1 Cor 7:10ff and Mark 10:1-12 with parallels (Luke 16:18, Matt 5:27ff, Matt 19:9ff), repudium, the specific form of one-sided divorce (of the man) under Polygamy is discussed and rejected. So these passages are not about “marriage” as is often claimed – not even about Western mutual Divorce, which did not exist in the Mediterranean world – but about one-sided repudium.

By Ezraism, from 398 BC, repudium was mandatory if the other half (in practice, the man) dabbled in the other cult: porneía; sacral prostitution, or was of a different Etnicity, cf Ezra 10.

In 1 Cor 7 Paul rejects this: the parties hallow one another and their children. Separation is not necessary.

It took the Church almost a 1000 years to eradicate Polygamy from Europe. But there are still vestiges of it in some German Princely House laws. Also partnerships and cohabitations – mistaken as “modern” by most – are in fact mere continuations of the several unequal/different legal forms of marriage under Polygamy.

As late as in the mid 19th century Frederick VII of Denmark was married to a spouse and a wife, though divorced in between, and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who died only last year, was born of a “morganatic”, that is a private marriage, giving different (less) rights to the wife and children.

Today repudium – which comes from ancient Egyptian law – lingers on in Islamic law – it was discontinued in Morocco only a couple of years ago.

This site gives some fascinating facts about marriage contracts and repudium in ancient Egypt.

The language used in these contracts, as in the NT texts, is different/unequal/one-sided, because the social, legal and political situation was unequal. Only the man could repudiate, the woman would leave, provided there was such a clause in the contract.

The New Paradigm

The Paradigm of a Mandatory Heterosexist Order of Creation in Genesis 1-2 is often heard today in American Political Calvinism.

It's to underpin the Maître Pierre Chanteur late 12th century reading of Romans 1.26-27, which makes me suspect that they actually know it doesn't hold water...

And it seems to be a totally new Paradigm, borrowed from Rome's ideas on a Complementarity of 2 opposite Genders, not seldom including heavy stresses on the sub-ordination of women.

But even in Rome this can't be much older than the idea of antagonistic genders itself, which is 19th century. Industrialism, middle class, Modernity.

This new Paradigm is unknown in Sweden and personally I never encountered it before the year 2000, nor have I been able to trace it further than 1978; Don Williams: The Bond That Breaks: Will Homosexuality Split the Church?

There are claims to a Karl Barth prehistory to some of it, though I would be very much surprised if there was anything like a paradigmatic reading there (there is no connection at all in the quotes I have seen). Also he should have been very well aware that Genesis 1-2 are two different stories, not one.

So my conclusion is that this is a 1970ies product of a 1960ies Heterosexist Agenda (going back to Kinder and Küche, Bluth und Boden). Dr Dobson's child-beating Focus on the Family is a parallel.

American anti-modern social politics in Biblical costume: The mixing of State, Religion and Social Politics.

But to my mind Paul absolutely excludes the possility of any such interpretation in Galatians 3.26-29, saying ouk éni ársen kaì thelu, here is not male and female, denying the very gender-differentiation used in Genesis 1.27. Galathians 3.26-29 doing away with our Ethnic, Social and Biological categories.

In the Congregation we are all one in Christ Jesus. Not separate but Equal.

From Chastity to Heterosexism

The 1947 New York Bible Society’s Revised Standard Version is the first Dynamic Equivalence “translation”, explaining its own understanding – that is the Calvinist teachings of the “translators” – instead of translating the sacred texts. Consequently it was the first to put the new 20th century concept of “homosexuals” in 1 Cor 6.9, instead of malakoì and arsenokoîtai.

1 late-modern concept for 2 different 1st century words…

With the advent of Modernity, the post-Carolingian Scholastic (that is Neo Platonist) pro Empire and pro Papacy anti-Heterosexual teachings on Priestly Celibacy, Social Discipline and Mandatory Chastity, gradually changed into medical definitions, racial biology and social engineering.

In the medically defining 20th century the horror of the Scholastics and their Alexandrian forefathers, the Spilling of Semen; masturbation, was an increasingly hard sell as Deadly Sin, so it was supplanted in translations from 1965 onwards, with the late-modern concept of Sexual Orientation as Identity.

In 1966 Pater Zerwick’s Analysis Philologica Novi Testamenti graeci, corresponding to the 1966 English language (American?) version of the French Dominican’s Bible de Jérusalem, changed malakoì; disloyal men, in 1 Cor 6.9 from masturbation – which it had falsely been claimed to refer to since the 10th century in both East and West (see the entry Masturbation in the 1966 New Catholic Encyclopaedia) – into “soft, effeminate ; catamite homosexual” that is passive gay man.

In the Modern fashion, this was symmetrical to its change of the following word arsenokoîtai to “(ársen male + koítä bed) sodomite, homosexual”.

Now, symmetry and mutuality – Equality in fact, are Modern values. Pre modern society was built on un-equal power relations Senior => junior. This was thought necessary for stabilitas, for the survival of ordered Society – as long as there was Subordination, everything went.

Equality was a danger to stabilitas – and the scandal of mutuality was the essence of the argument against sex between equals, from Plato' Timaion onwards, cf the gloss Romans 1:26-27.

There were no symmetrical words for sex; Filon of Alexandria tried, in fact, but failed miserably.

The 1955 French Bible de Jérusalem still isn’t overtly homosexualized in this place and – more importantly – has no notion of “orientation”.

So the late-modern change goes from (heterosexual) activity for all, to essentialist identity; to sexual orientation for the newly invented (1890 onwards) social minority.

By 1978 (Don Williams: Will Homosexuality Split The Church? a new, entirely sexualized, Paradigm was ready. A Mandatory Heterosexism cum Fertility Cult was found in Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 under the name of Complementarity and Creation Order, combined with virulent Misogyny; the re-subordination of women.

Not Bible, not Church, not the anti-Heterosex Academic Tradition of most of the 2nd Millennium, but late-modern anti-modern Social Politics: and essentialist identity for the new social minority.

And this is where we stand today; from Chastity to Fertility cult, from anti-Heterosex to anti-Gay. No one knows what will become of it.

Hype or reality?

Jag lånar detta rakt av från Americablog, för jag tycker att det är en klar och redig sammanfattning av läget:

Another big question is how long it's been known, and what were the reasons for revealing the information to the public. Intelligence successes are generally more effective when they remain private, but of course if a threat still exists, and can be minimized through public disclosure, that's a legitimate reason for exposure. Still, considering the past and present political use of terror threats, I think skepticism about timing and motives is understandable. They boy who cried wolf writ large.

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Fjärde gången gillt?

Det senaste året har engelska underrättelsetjänsterna missat ett verkligt bombattentat i Londons tunnelbana (7 juli förra året), skjutit den alldeles oskyldige - men kanske lite mörkhyade - brasilianske medborgaren de Menezes, som dog, och skjutit 2 bröder - som visserligen överlevde, men inte hade varit inblandade i någonting.

Kan det vara rätt denna gången?

Americablog sätter fingret på den sjuka punkten. Klicka på rubriken!

Och vad gör President Bush på sitt sommarställe?

Att han skiter i fattiga svarta i la Nouvelle Orléans är en sak - det gör han ju - men terrorism är hans specialitet; faktiskt hans enda valfråga - varför passar han inte på, varför är han inte i TV och håller tal?