Genesis 19:5 says sungenåmetha autoîs to say hello to them. The root in sun-g-e-nå-metha is gnå- to know. Words from this root occur many times in the OT and NT. 934 to be precise.
Of these, the aorist imperfect knew may be a euphemism for "heterosexual" copulation. This occurs 8 times in the OT (several times in Genesis 4, such as “And the man knew his wife Eve…”) and once in the NT (Matt 1:25 “And he knew her not before she had given birth to a Son…”).
Which makes possibly 9 times out of 934 – the context permitting.
But sungenåmetha is a different word: to say hello…
Outside of the Noble Art Of Exegetics, words and forms aren’t interchangeable with each other...
Now to the Text:
Transcription of Genesis 19:5 according to the LXX after the Codex vaticanus (c:a AD 300) ed. Brenton (1854):
kaì exekaloûnto tòn Låt, kaì élegon pròs aitòn,
poû eisin oi ándres oi eiselthóntes pròs sè tän núkta;
exágage autoùs pròs ämâs ína syngenåmetha autoîs.
Translation:
And they called out Loot and said to him:
Where are the men who came to you this night?
Bring them out to us that we may know them!
The Parisian Versio vulgata (around 1200) renders as usually correctly,
after the reliable 2nd Century ff. North African Vetus Latina:
vocaveruntque Loth et dixerunt ei:
ubi sunt viri qui introierunt ad te nocte,
educ illos huc ut cognoscamus eos.
The Swedish State 1917 also translates correctly:
Dessa kallade på Lot och sade till honom:
Var äro de män som hava kommit till dig i natt?
För dem ut till oss så att vi få känna dem.
But, in 1955 Derek Sherwin Bailey published Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition, in which he showed that the Sodom story wasn’t sexual but addressed the regularly recurring OT commandment to Hospitality, to receive the Levite, the Poor and the Stranger – a question of survival in a Clannish pre Modern Society.
The result was that some 45 references to Sodom in both Testaments, including Jesus's own, were changed back to from sex to material in translations after 1955.
post 1955 things begin to happen with Genesis 19. Dr Calvinus’s claim “to know in the Biblical sense” had gotten too sound a thrashing that the current “translations” were changed in order to defend the traditional homo-sexualization which the academics now knew was wrong.
Le Bible de Jérusalem, the French Dominicans' translation after Codex sinaïticus; La Sainte Bible, traduite en français sous la direction de l’École Biblique de Jérusalem, was actually the first in 1961:
Ils appelèrent Lot et lui dirent:
Où sont les hommes qui sont venus chez toi cette nuit?
Amène-les nous pour que nous en abusions.
This has followers in different languages, such as the 1966 English Jerusalem Bible:
Calling to Lot they said,
”Where are the men who came to you tonight?
Send them out to us so that we may abuse them.”
The Roman New American Bible, though officially after the official Roman Bible, the Versio vulgata, Catholic Publishers Incorporated, New York & Nashville, Tennessee, (1966) 1969 follows the Jerusalem Bible closely:
They called to Lot and said to him,
”Where are the men who came to your house tonight?
Bring them out to us that we may have intimacies with them.”
The New English Bible 1961/1970 is a paraphrasing collaboration between Oxford and Cambridge, which strong and justified criticisms have had a great influence on later “translations”, not least the last Swedish State NT 1981 and Bibel 2000. One might have thought that Oxford and Cambridge in collaboration should have come up with something useful, but the opposite is true: the more cooks, the worse the soup:
They called to Lot and asked him where the men were who had entered his house that night.
”Bring them out” they shouted,
”so that we can have intercourse with them.”
Good News Bible; Today’s English Version 1976, a ”common Language” paraphrase; in an impoverished language, not unlike that of NT 1981 – which occasionally translates TEV versions, not the Text – and meant for sectas, USA Free church proselyting in Latin America. Interestingly enough the TEV adds the Renaissance Academic interpretation after the Text as a gloss:
They called out to Lot and asked,
”Where are the men who came to stay with you tonight?
Bring them out to us ína syngenåmetha autoîs.“
The men of Sodom wanted to have sex with them.
Bibel 2000 dramatises:
De ropade till Lot kaì élegon pròs aitòn:
Var är männen som kom till dig i kväll?
Skicka ut dem till oss, vi skall ligga med dem.
The invention of the last Swedish State Bible Commission: vi skall ligga med dem; we shall lay with them – which ultimately derives from Filo’s failed essay in Symmetrical Concepts – also was brought into Judges 19:22, Romans 1:27, 1 Cor 6:9, alias 1 Tim 1:10 and alias Judas’ Letter verse 7...
A lie which is not repeated will not be believed...
This means that the NT 1981 versions in 1 Cor 6:9-11 and alias 1 Tim 1:10 were changed in Bibel 2000! There are in fact a few such very interesting changes – but such are officially denied…
A couple of decades later, in the 1976 Today’s English Version (Good News Bible) Judges 19:22 and the Letter of alias Jude, verse 7 joined in. And in 1981 the new Swedish State homosexualized also 1 Thess 4:6 (which in the latest Danish Bible still addresses Honesty in Commerce between Christians… ; = )
ante Bailey – and still correct – is the 1947 Revised Standard Version of the New York Bible societies:
and they called to Lot,
”Where are the men who came to you tonight?
Bring them out to us, that we may know them.”
As is the ancient Spanish Santa Biblia, versión Reina 1569/Valera 1602, revisada 1960:
Y llamaron a Lot, y le dijeron:
?Donde están los varones que vinieron a ti esta noche?
Sácalos, para que los conozcamos.
It is interesting to see that the various ”translations” post 1955 differ so fatally, even where they agree… They defend the same old erroneous interpretation, but happen to be produced independently of each other, out of different traditions of translation, in different ecclesiastical surroundings.
Renaissance Volkssprache translations don’t expose themselves to such calamities nearly as openly, because they are made from the same “original”, the Scholastic Versio vulgata of Paris.
The horrid story of Judges 19 to 21, which starts as a paraphrase on Genesis 19 but turns into something very different, ethnical cleansing in the manner of the Ezraic, Persian inspired, “reform” of BC 398 can perhaps better wait 'til yet another time…
fredag, september 12, 2008
Sodom and Sodomia IV
Allegory is an imagery, where only the back-side counts. It permits the in-and-out-reading of just-any-thing.
Allegory was developed in the centuries BC by the academics at the Museiwn to de-sexualise Homer’s’ Odyssey and Iliad – the amorous adventures of the Olympian un-deadly were un-tasteful to the very serious Alexandrian philosophers…
But Filon of Alexandria (dead sometime after 40) and later “Christian” Neo Platonists have used (abuse) it to sexualise the holy scriptures of the Bible.
As you understand, in bygone days one did not have to worry about “Biblical proofs” – allegory was enough in itself.
The craving for ”proofs” only came with the new Neo Platonism, and Indo European Integrism however (something also found in, particularly Egyptian, Islam) of Neo Humanism: with the renewed Renaissance of the 16th century.
The situation has become much worse in our days, especially in Anglican churches in the 20th century due to the Inerrantism of the American Sects (the word Inerrantism is not even known in these parts) which originated around 1610 with Arminianism a Dutch Calvinist Sect, and later immigrated to America.
Indo European Integrism was problematic to Dr-at-Law Johannes Calvinus.
San Pietro had coined the word sodomia as a general reference to Luxuria; the Superbia, Greed, Sloth and so on of Sodom… manifested in the disdain of its inhabitants for the Sacred Commandment to Hospitality to the Levite, the Poor and the Stranger – namely the visiting Angels.
Filo of Alexandria may have sexualised the Sodom story in his efforts to present Judaism to his anti Semitic colleagues as more anti sex than Philosophy itself, but hardly anyone followed suit for the next 1500 years.
And a Jewish heretic philosopher around BC wasn’t much in the eyes of the world in Calvinus’ Time… (in the 20th century, when the academic teachings of the 2nd Millennium have begun to be questioned, Filon has become all the more popular – almost an honorary Father of the Church).
So, in order to join San Pietro’s Concept sodomia – which remained for very long a squarely “Hetero-“sexual category – to Ganymedes, Dr Johannes invented a linguistic ruse “to know in the Biblical sense”.
When Scripture and Teaching must concord – experience shows that it will be Scripture which is accommodated to Teaching...
Allegory was developed in the centuries BC by the academics at the Museiwn to de-sexualise Homer’s’ Odyssey and Iliad – the amorous adventures of the Olympian un-deadly were un-tasteful to the very serious Alexandrian philosophers…
But Filon of Alexandria (dead sometime after 40) and later “Christian” Neo Platonists have used (abuse) it to sexualise the holy scriptures of the Bible.
As you understand, in bygone days one did not have to worry about “Biblical proofs” – allegory was enough in itself.
The craving for ”proofs” only came with the new Neo Platonism, and Indo European Integrism however (something also found in, particularly Egyptian, Islam) of Neo Humanism: with the renewed Renaissance of the 16th century.
The situation has become much worse in our days, especially in Anglican churches in the 20th century due to the Inerrantism of the American Sects (the word Inerrantism is not even known in these parts) which originated around 1610 with Arminianism a Dutch Calvinist Sect, and later immigrated to America.
Indo European Integrism was problematic to Dr-at-Law Johannes Calvinus.
San Pietro had coined the word sodomia as a general reference to Luxuria; the Superbia, Greed, Sloth and so on of Sodom… manifested in the disdain of its inhabitants for the Sacred Commandment to Hospitality to the Levite, the Poor and the Stranger – namely the visiting Angels.
Filo of Alexandria may have sexualised the Sodom story in his efforts to present Judaism to his anti Semitic colleagues as more anti sex than Philosophy itself, but hardly anyone followed suit for the next 1500 years.
And a Jewish heretic philosopher around BC wasn’t much in the eyes of the world in Calvinus’ Time… (in the 20th century, when the academic teachings of the 2nd Millennium have begun to be questioned, Filon has become all the more popular – almost an honorary Father of the Church).
So, in order to join San Pietro’s Concept sodomia – which remained for very long a squarely “Hetero-“sexual category – to Ganymedes, Dr Johannes invented a linguistic ruse “to know in the Biblical sense”.
When Scripture and Teaching must concord – experience shows that it will be Scripture which is accommodated to Teaching...
Sodom and Sodomia III
From Peter Lombard’s pupils comes the Scholastic re-working of the Old Latin translation (2nd century North Africa ff), to accord with the versions used by Peter in the Sentences, complete with chapters and all and finished in the 1210s.
In 1243 it was called Versio vulgata; the usual version (in Paris).
The order and the chapters of the Parisian Versio vulgata remain to this day, supplied with verse-numbers from Etienne’s 1555 Geneva Bible.
The Parisian Versio vulgata was based largely on the text of Alcwin of Northumberland c:a
800, in a small but handy format, in gothic lettering, but contains Philosophical changes to the
Texts dating back to Ambrosius of Milan and other early Platonist Academics in church offices. The Cambridge History of the Bible Vol. 2 (1969) tells about how the words in caelis were
omitted from Matt 18:10 quia angeli eorum in caelis semper vident faciem patris mei in order
to put the guardian angels firmly on earth, following the views of Hieronimus.
A similar change was made in Luke 12:35 Sint lumbi vestri praecincti et lucernae ardentes
where in manibus vestris in your hands was added because Gregory the Great and Bede had thought the lamps signified good works… (few of those in the Bible).
Most additions like these have been removed from the latest edition of the Versio vulgata, the Paul VI 1978 (whereas the extra bed in Luke 5:25 is still around in the 2000 Swedish State
;=)
Nevertheless, Maître Pierre wrote a couple of writs called Verbum abbreviatum; A Short
Word, and De vitio sodomitico; On the Sodomitic Sin, in which he invented a great number of
verses against Ganymedes – for, contrary to San Pietro, some 130 years earlier – Maître Pierre
was anti Gay. He didn’t care as much about clerks, as about Ganymedes.
Most of these "proofs" have had to be abandoned with Time – but as a compensation, anti Modern translators have invented several new ones in the late 20th Century.
Reading Leviticus 18:22 – Maître Pierre found the Idea of the Church Apostate, still alive and kicking in today’s anti Modernism. For to his dismay, he realized that the Church had not once supported the Gnosticist teachings (Sperm = Soul) of Neo Platonism.
Indeed She resisted them up to c:a 1300 (which Maître Pierre found shocking: How can it be, he asked, that the Church leaves that unpunished which the Lord punished so harshly? And as the Levites punished, may She punish equally! The rest presents itself...
And they burned people in the squares because Leviticus forbade the spilling of blood.
Maître Pierre was also the first since Johannes Chrysostomos to believe that Romans 1:26-27 talked about homosexuals, instead of bisexuals on the loose.
The theologians of the 1st Millennium agreed (pace Johannes Chrysostomos) that Romans 1:26-27 was about hetero-sexuals who exchanged what they had, for what they didn’t have. The important word in Romans 1:19-25/26-27/28-32 being ällaksan; change, (in the gloss met-ällaksan: ex-change) and Neo Platonist John Chrysostomos underlined (in his note to verse 1:27 ou gàr eipen oti ärasthäsan (from Eros) kaì epethumäsan allälån), that the gloss does not talk about persons who are enamoured and desire each other, but persons burning with Lust.
To burn with Lust was of course something utterly despicable to the very serious Alexandrians, but Note! that John takes for granted that:
1) persons of the same sex do fall in love desiring each other, and
2) the gloss 1:26-27 isn’t about this.
(not to mention, that before Johannes Chrysostomos no one thought verse 26 address lesbians
– and very few afterwards, until Maître Pierre ; = )
With the help of extreme 1179 Lateran III, the 1210 Paris Council, and 1215 Lateran IV
sodomitas became one of the 6 Phantom categories (3 theological, 3 social) to be excluded
from the Church, as they were excluded from Society:
Jews, Muslims, Heretics,
Bastards (children out of wedlock, but aimed at Priests sons), Lepers and Sodomitas.
Repentance within a year and a day, that is next Thursday before Easter, at the latest, was
required. Otherwise – Heraus!
A closer inspection reveals that these categories are impossible to define (who is a Jew? Leprosy can’t be diagnosed without difficulty even today…) but this is what makes them eminently suited for Oppression, for crowd control… But mark! that the persecution of the 6 Minorities really was all about the Social Disciplining of the Majority.
With Time, the 6 Phantom categories introduced themselves into most legal systems – but far from in all. And with the new hate crime legislations after 1945 this development is being reversed. For apart from Leprosy (which has virtally disappeared from developed countries), the minorities which are considered objects for particular protection in late modernity, are precisely those that Laterans III and IV most vilely excluded from Society.
Exegetically, not the least interesting with these High Medieval Social Policies is the Scholastics’ sloppy method. They did precisely what everybody (officially) agree is not to be done. They took a verse here and there, allegorizing them in order to transform their Alexandrian ideas into novel Social, Political and Moral policies.
Loudly claiming the Apostasy of the Church…
In 1243 it was called Versio vulgata; the usual version (in Paris).
The order and the chapters of the Parisian Versio vulgata remain to this day, supplied with verse-numbers from Etienne’s 1555 Geneva Bible.
The Parisian Versio vulgata was based largely on the text of Alcwin of Northumberland c:a
800, in a small but handy format, in gothic lettering, but contains Philosophical changes to the
Texts dating back to Ambrosius of Milan and other early Platonist Academics in church offices. The Cambridge History of the Bible Vol. 2 (1969) tells about how the words in caelis were
omitted from Matt 18:10 quia angeli eorum in caelis semper vident faciem patris mei in order
to put the guardian angels firmly on earth, following the views of Hieronimus.
A similar change was made in Luke 12:35 Sint lumbi vestri praecincti et lucernae ardentes
where in manibus vestris in your hands was added because Gregory the Great and Bede had thought the lamps signified good works… (few of those in the Bible).
Most additions like these have been removed from the latest edition of the Versio vulgata, the Paul VI 1978 (whereas the extra bed in Luke 5:25 is still around in the 2000 Swedish State
;=)
Nevertheless, Maître Pierre wrote a couple of writs called Verbum abbreviatum; A Short
Word, and De vitio sodomitico; On the Sodomitic Sin, in which he invented a great number of
verses against Ganymedes – for, contrary to San Pietro, some 130 years earlier – Maître Pierre
was anti Gay. He didn’t care as much about clerks, as about Ganymedes.
Most of these "proofs" have had to be abandoned with Time – but as a compensation, anti Modern translators have invented several new ones in the late 20th Century.
Reading Leviticus 18:22 – Maître Pierre found the Idea of the Church Apostate, still alive and kicking in today’s anti Modernism. For to his dismay, he realized that the Church had not once supported the Gnosticist teachings (Sperm = Soul) of Neo Platonism.
Indeed She resisted them up to c:a 1300 (which Maître Pierre found shocking: How can it be, he asked, that the Church leaves that unpunished which the Lord punished so harshly? And as the Levites punished, may She punish equally! The rest presents itself...
And they burned people in the squares because Leviticus forbade the spilling of blood.
Maître Pierre was also the first since Johannes Chrysostomos to believe that Romans 1:26-27 talked about homosexuals, instead of bisexuals on the loose.
The theologians of the 1st Millennium agreed (pace Johannes Chrysostomos) that Romans 1:26-27 was about hetero-sexuals who exchanged what they had, for what they didn’t have. The important word in Romans 1:19-25/26-27/28-32 being ällaksan; change, (in the gloss met-ällaksan: ex-change) and Neo Platonist John Chrysostomos underlined (in his note to verse 1:27 ou gàr eipen oti ärasthäsan (from Eros) kaì epethumäsan allälån), that the gloss does not talk about persons who are enamoured and desire each other, but persons burning with Lust.
To burn with Lust was of course something utterly despicable to the very serious Alexandrians, but Note! that John takes for granted that:
1) persons of the same sex do fall in love desiring each other, and
2) the gloss 1:26-27 isn’t about this.
(not to mention, that before Johannes Chrysostomos no one thought verse 26 address lesbians
– and very few afterwards, until Maître Pierre ; = )
With the help of extreme 1179 Lateran III, the 1210 Paris Council, and 1215 Lateran IV
sodomitas became one of the 6 Phantom categories (3 theological, 3 social) to be excluded
from the Church, as they were excluded from Society:
Jews, Muslims, Heretics,
Bastards (children out of wedlock, but aimed at Priests sons), Lepers and Sodomitas.
Repentance within a year and a day, that is next Thursday before Easter, at the latest, was
required. Otherwise – Heraus!
A closer inspection reveals that these categories are impossible to define (who is a Jew? Leprosy can’t be diagnosed without difficulty even today…) but this is what makes them eminently suited for Oppression, for crowd control… But mark! that the persecution of the 6 Minorities really was all about the Social Disciplining of the Majority.
With Time, the 6 Phantom categories introduced themselves into most legal systems – but far from in all. And with the new hate crime legislations after 1945 this development is being reversed. For apart from Leprosy (which has virtally disappeared from developed countries), the minorities which are considered objects for particular protection in late modernity, are precisely those that Laterans III and IV most vilely excluded from Society.
Exegetically, not the least interesting with these High Medieval Social Policies is the Scholastics’ sloppy method. They did precisely what everybody (officially) agree is not to be done. They took a verse here and there, allegorizing them in order to transform their Alexandrian ideas into novel Social, Political and Moral policies.
Loudly claiming the Apostasy of the Church…
Sodom and Sodomia II
According to San Pietro’s writ to the Bishop of Rome, the problem without procreative intent had become much worsened since Christianity arrived on the scene, being especially rampant in monasteries (although, apparently, not in his own, the Fonte Avellana ;=) Thus San Pietro demanded from Leo IX that all priests and monks who – if only once – had ejaculated, should be put into isolation.
But at this hour in Time, around 1050, only Anchorites (recluses) endured (self imposed) isolation – monasteries had Dormitories for their professed – and lay (= serfs) – members.
San Pietro classified his sodomia according to method: 1. with one self; 2. with somebody else (man, woman, child, animal); 3. inter femore (between the buttocks – it remains unclear exactly what this is); and finally 4. what we would call anal copulation.
And in accordance with the idea of Traducianism it was the person who Spilled Semen who was the culprit.
Mutuality didn’t exist for this beaten child.
Nothing of this had anything to do with homosexuality the way we define it, but was about (hetero-sexual) Monks and Priests, particularly married Priests, declared Lateran IV in 1215.
In 1139 Lateran II hade ordained Celibacy Mandatory for Priests, declaring their marriages invalid and the Bastardy of their sons. That is, they were excluded from the inheritance. Daughters weren’t mentioned. That a daughter could inherit apparently didn’t occur to messrs Neo Platonists, although daughters kept their right to inherit in all lands throught the 13th century, and in most through the 14th… In some to this day.
The Spilling of Semen was the Horror at least in Academic circles. Sperm being perceived as the soul of the (male) Academic, inherited from Ol’ Adam (= Traducianism) and this little nous was in strange ways twinned to the Big NOUS; The Highest Being of the Neo Platonists, their a-personal divinity (it is this, The Highest Being not being a theòs, that makes Philosophy not a theología but a filo-sofía; a Love of (absolute) Truth.
Consequently, from the 10th century the word malakós in 1 Cor 6:9 became important, it was henceforth claimed – in the West as in the East – to refer to “men who spill their Semen”.
The importance of this propaganda is made clear by the fact that malakós in Modern Greek as come to mean masturbation. For both women and men…
But in itself malakós means ”soft”. It is used of textiles. So in Luke 7:25 and Matt 11:8, when Jesus from Nazareth speaks about his cousin John the Baptist: Whom did you go out to see? A man in soft clothing? Such are found in Palaces…
Luke 7:25 and Matt 11:8 are the only 2 places in the NT, where malakós is (almost) correctly translated. The Swedish State 1917 has fine clothes, NT 1981 (= 1982) and Bible 2000 the same.
But then, the meaning cannot be mistaken…
In 1 Cor 6:9 the word is used in a secondary sense: ”sloppy” – referring to ”sloppy” Husbanders (think Count Almaviva in Figaro). But that one can wait until an other time…
In 1966 malakós was dramatically re-interpreted in Pater Zerwick’s Roman Analysis philologica Novi Testamenti graeci from masturbation, a predominantly hetero-sexual activity, to homo-sexual “Orientation” as identity, in late 20th century fashion; “passive” gay man.
It was now clamed to be a synonym for the (authentic) Greek loan in Latin catamita (a distortion of Ganymedes, the name of the shepherd abducted by Zeus in the form of an eagle).
At the same time the Abstinence/Chastity Paradigm of 10 century Academia “men who masturbate” lingers on in the New Catholic Encyclopaedia of the same year (1966) – and, naturally, in the East. But that one can wait until an other time…
But back to Leo IX. He doesn’t seem to have been at all amused by San Pietro and his conspirational theories, but gave him a wholesome trashing in a 1051 bull with the interesting name Nos humanius agentes Us acting (more) humanely… in which he rejected San Pietro’s methods 1, 2, and 3...
However, this rejection – and the remaining nr 4: anal copulation (something already Justinian in his battles with the Byzantine Church had made a Crime against the State castrating oppositional Monks) – a century later, on the left banks of Paris, turned San Pietro’s novel Concept (he had seen sodomitas as an identity, as the “incurable” Inhabitants of an abstract Sodom…) into a hazard for contemporary Ganymedes; the gay sub culture of the Metropolis of the day.
Important in this context is a figure, called Maître Pierre Chanteur (Peter Cantor, for you lot) having sometimes been Singing Master, thus also School master, at Nôtre Dame in Paris.
Like the pupils of a previous School Master, Petrus Lombardus, Bishop of Paris 1159-1160, whose Neo Platonist “teaching” had been rejected as heretical by the 1164 Provincial Council of Sens, Maître Pierre was ousted from the Cathedral school, dying c:a 1197 in one of Emperor Louis’ “reformed” Benedictine monasteries (requiring quarterings…), somewhere on the Loire.
Upon leaving Nôtre Dame Peter Lombard’s former pupils had opened their own place rive gauche – which in 1200 became la Sorbonne (le Sorbon was the fellow they got the house from in 1257) – where they busied themselves with Moorish Aristotelian Averroës (= ibn Rushd) and later with his enemy Tomas ab Aquino, who a century later still worked on Peter Lombardus’ famous Compendium; his 4 Books of Sentences… (Trinity in Book I, Creation in Book II, Christ the savior of fallen Creation in Book III, the Sacraments in book IV).
Theology was born.
But at this hour in Time, around 1050, only Anchorites (recluses) endured (self imposed) isolation – monasteries had Dormitories for their professed – and lay (= serfs) – members.
San Pietro classified his sodomia according to method: 1. with one self; 2. with somebody else (man, woman, child, animal); 3. inter femore (between the buttocks – it remains unclear exactly what this is); and finally 4. what we would call anal copulation.
And in accordance with the idea of Traducianism it was the person who Spilled Semen who was the culprit.
Mutuality didn’t exist for this beaten child.
Nothing of this had anything to do with homosexuality the way we define it, but was about (hetero-sexual) Monks and Priests, particularly married Priests, declared Lateran IV in 1215.
In 1139 Lateran II hade ordained Celibacy Mandatory for Priests, declaring their marriages invalid and the Bastardy of their sons. That is, they were excluded from the inheritance. Daughters weren’t mentioned. That a daughter could inherit apparently didn’t occur to messrs Neo Platonists, although daughters kept their right to inherit in all lands throught the 13th century, and in most through the 14th… In some to this day.
The Spilling of Semen was the Horror at least in Academic circles. Sperm being perceived as the soul of the (male) Academic, inherited from Ol’ Adam (= Traducianism) and this little nous was in strange ways twinned to the Big NOUS; The Highest Being of the Neo Platonists, their a-personal divinity (it is this, The Highest Being not being a theòs, that makes Philosophy not a theología but a filo-sofía; a Love of (absolute) Truth.
Consequently, from the 10th century the word malakós in 1 Cor 6:9 became important, it was henceforth claimed – in the West as in the East – to refer to “men who spill their Semen”.
The importance of this propaganda is made clear by the fact that malakós in Modern Greek as come to mean masturbation. For both women and men…
But in itself malakós means ”soft”. It is used of textiles. So in Luke 7:25 and Matt 11:8, when Jesus from Nazareth speaks about his cousin John the Baptist: Whom did you go out to see? A man in soft clothing? Such are found in Palaces…
Luke 7:25 and Matt 11:8 are the only 2 places in the NT, where malakós is (almost) correctly translated. The Swedish State 1917 has fine clothes, NT 1981 (= 1982) and Bible 2000 the same.
But then, the meaning cannot be mistaken…
In 1 Cor 6:9 the word is used in a secondary sense: ”sloppy” – referring to ”sloppy” Husbanders (think Count Almaviva in Figaro). But that one can wait until an other time…
In 1966 malakós was dramatically re-interpreted in Pater Zerwick’s Roman Analysis philologica Novi Testamenti graeci from masturbation, a predominantly hetero-sexual activity, to homo-sexual “Orientation” as identity, in late 20th century fashion; “passive” gay man.
It was now clamed to be a synonym for the (authentic) Greek loan in Latin catamita (a distortion of Ganymedes, the name of the shepherd abducted by Zeus in the form of an eagle).
At the same time the Abstinence/Chastity Paradigm of 10 century Academia “men who masturbate” lingers on in the New Catholic Encyclopaedia of the same year (1966) – and, naturally, in the East. But that one can wait until an other time…
But back to Leo IX. He doesn’t seem to have been at all amused by San Pietro and his conspirational theories, but gave him a wholesome trashing in a 1051 bull with the interesting name Nos humanius agentes Us acting (more) humanely… in which he rejected San Pietro’s methods 1, 2, and 3...
However, this rejection – and the remaining nr 4: anal copulation (something already Justinian in his battles with the Byzantine Church had made a Crime against the State castrating oppositional Monks) – a century later, on the left banks of Paris, turned San Pietro’s novel Concept (he had seen sodomitas as an identity, as the “incurable” Inhabitants of an abstract Sodom…) into a hazard for contemporary Ganymedes; the gay sub culture of the Metropolis of the day.
Important in this context is a figure, called Maître Pierre Chanteur (Peter Cantor, for you lot) having sometimes been Singing Master, thus also School master, at Nôtre Dame in Paris.
Like the pupils of a previous School Master, Petrus Lombardus, Bishop of Paris 1159-1160, whose Neo Platonist “teaching” had been rejected as heretical by the 1164 Provincial Council of Sens, Maître Pierre was ousted from the Cathedral school, dying c:a 1197 in one of Emperor Louis’ “reformed” Benedictine monasteries (requiring quarterings…), somewhere on the Loire.
Upon leaving Nôtre Dame Peter Lombard’s former pupils had opened their own place rive gauche – which in 1200 became la Sorbonne (le Sorbon was the fellow they got the house from in 1257) – where they busied themselves with Moorish Aristotelian Averroës (= ibn Rushd) and later with his enemy Tomas ab Aquino, who a century later still worked on Peter Lombardus’ famous Compendium; his 4 Books of Sentences… (Trinity in Book I, Creation in Book II, Christ the savior of fallen Creation in Book III, the Sacraments in book IV).
Theology was born.
Sodom and Sodomia I
Today I shall write about two things that originally had nothing to do with each other, namely the Sodom story in Genesis 18-19 and sodomia as a word for Homosexuality (and a few other things)…
1050 or thereabouts, a rather beaten child by the name of Pietro Damiani (*1107 †1072) invented the Concept sodomia in his Liber gomorrhianus a writ dedicated to the first “Reform” Pope, Leo IX (Bruno von Egisheim-Dagsburg, Bishop of Rome 1048-1054). His errand was the Spilling of Semen (particularly by Priests and Monks) without an intent to procreate.
According to Neo Platonist Academics this was far worse than murder, because it threw the un-baptised souls of little boys (the Academics believed Semen consisted of little ready-made miniature boys) into Limbo; the place wherefrom Heavenly Bliss could be beheld by the un-baptised, but not enjoyed... (Rumours say that Benedict XVI is planning to skip this Limbo, as Tridentinum abolished Purgatory).
Consequently Luxuria was a sub-division of the changed Moral (and therefore disciplining) Concept “Sin” (from German Sind Flut; the Great Flood in Genesis 8) of the new Carolingian State Ideology, imported from State Church Byzantion:
Superbia, Greed, Lust, Sloth, Gluttony, Wrath, and Envy.
In the Bible this wanting on the part of humans to be God-like is invariably called by various archery terms, in Greek amartía: “missing the mark”, shooting over the goal, miss-stepping, from trying too much...
It may be pointed out for us in late modernity, who have been taught to see “sex” (a Modern to late modern category) everywhere, that it is only the third of these; Concupiscentia – which may be sexual…
In the interest of Empire Crowd control the 12th century Parisian changes in the Latin translation (2nd to 3rd century North Africa) Versio vulgata added Concupiscentia to the Text of Colossians 3:5, turning 10th Commandment epithumía; (material) Greed, into Luxuria; Lust.
Luxuria itself was added to Galatians 5:19…
For San Pietro and other adherents of Emperor Louis’ the Pious (†843) ecclesiastical “Reforms”, it was necessary for office holders to contain their Semen – especially since Abstinence; the self-imposed Martyrium of the Neo Platonist Academic, gave them auctoritas over the lay…
An intent to procreate was the only possible excuse for the Spilling of Semen.
Un-surprisingly, according to Johannes Chrysostomos (†407) and other Neo Platonists, (monogamous hetero-)Marriage was a lesser celibacy. This basically Gnosticist view lasted till about 1970, when Hetero-sex suddenly was transmogrified into God’s particular Gift to Adam and Eve (Focus on the Family and others…)
I distinctly remember how chocked I was (in 1968) when I first heard this anti Modern fabrication from my confirmation pastor (he was also, although a Priest in the Church of Sweden, appointed as Pastor of the Moravian (= 19th century Pietist) Brothers in Gothenburg).
1050 or thereabouts, a rather beaten child by the name of Pietro Damiani (*1107 †1072) invented the Concept sodomia in his Liber gomorrhianus a writ dedicated to the first “Reform” Pope, Leo IX (Bruno von Egisheim-Dagsburg, Bishop of Rome 1048-1054). His errand was the Spilling of Semen (particularly by Priests and Monks) without an intent to procreate.
According to Neo Platonist Academics this was far worse than murder, because it threw the un-baptised souls of little boys (the Academics believed Semen consisted of little ready-made miniature boys) into Limbo; the place wherefrom Heavenly Bliss could be beheld by the un-baptised, but not enjoyed... (Rumours say that Benedict XVI is planning to skip this Limbo, as Tridentinum abolished Purgatory).
Consequently Luxuria was a sub-division of the changed Moral (and therefore disciplining) Concept “Sin” (from German Sind Flut; the Great Flood in Genesis 8) of the new Carolingian State Ideology, imported from State Church Byzantion:
Superbia, Greed, Lust, Sloth, Gluttony, Wrath, and Envy.
In the Bible this wanting on the part of humans to be God-like is invariably called by various archery terms, in Greek amartía: “missing the mark”, shooting over the goal, miss-stepping, from trying too much...
It may be pointed out for us in late modernity, who have been taught to see “sex” (a Modern to late modern category) everywhere, that it is only the third of these; Concupiscentia – which may be sexual…
In the interest of Empire Crowd control the 12th century Parisian changes in the Latin translation (2nd to 3rd century North Africa) Versio vulgata added Concupiscentia to the Text of Colossians 3:5, turning 10th Commandment epithumía; (material) Greed, into Luxuria; Lust.
Luxuria itself was added to Galatians 5:19…
For San Pietro and other adherents of Emperor Louis’ the Pious (†843) ecclesiastical “Reforms”, it was necessary for office holders to contain their Semen – especially since Abstinence; the self-imposed Martyrium of the Neo Platonist Academic, gave them auctoritas over the lay…
An intent to procreate was the only possible excuse for the Spilling of Semen.
Un-surprisingly, according to Johannes Chrysostomos (†407) and other Neo Platonists, (monogamous hetero-)Marriage was a lesser celibacy. This basically Gnosticist view lasted till about 1970, when Hetero-sex suddenly was transmogrified into God’s particular Gift to Adam and Eve (Focus on the Family and others…)
I distinctly remember how chocked I was (in 1968) when I first heard this anti Modern fabrication from my confirmation pastor (he was also, although a Priest in the Church of Sweden, appointed as Pastor of the Moravian (= 19th century Pietist) Brothers in Gothenburg).
onsdag, september 10, 2008
Reply to Ben W
This is an answer to a comment (c:a nr 59) by Ben W on Thinking Anglicans (klick on the head-line)
Ben W wrote: “On Sodom, the wider issue is hospitality, but as part of that we get the action of the men of Sodom toward "the men" who have come to visit (Gen 19:5). The hospitality is seen precisely in how they responded to these visitors! They demand, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them" (to know here – the same term regularly used when a man and woman have sexual relations). That is the key event here, from it the other terrible events unfold. Lot to avoid this dreadful violation of the visitors – "I beg you ... do not act so wickedly" v 7 – looks for a way out.
So you want say, "The sin of Sodom wasn't sexual...?" Read it for yourself! What happened to Lot's daughters was evil piled on this evil (whether Lot thought that they would restrain themselves because the daughters were part of and so with some support in this community is not clear – he himself was threatened v 9b, clearly a desperate act). We can say the sin was sexual from first to last but hardly "not sexual"!”
Dear Ben W,
This is all wrong, but very often claimed. And this claim is a late modern “Homo”-sexualization. It is absent from all elder translations however. It is the late modern fixation with sex, and anti Modern Social Politics.
It appears for the first time after 1955 (DS Bailey’s book Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition – only that I would say that this tradition is Hellenist/Platonist/Academic, but n o t Christian.
Dr Bailey showed convincingly that the ("hetero"-)sexualization of the Sodom story is “intertestamental”. It appears in Hellenist and Jewish Hellenist literature (which also is Hellenist, but not Jewish) around the year 0, such as philosophical renegade Filon of Alexandria and double-traitor “Flavius” Josephus, né Levi.
The result was that some 45 references to Sodom and Gomorra in both Testaments were changed back in most translations after 1955 from “sexual” to material, including Jesus’ own 2 in the Gospels.
However, from 1961 (Bible de Jérusalem, the translation of the French Dominicans from the Codex sinaïticus; La Sainte Bible, traduite en français sous la direction de l’École Biblique de Jérusalem), to underpin the exploded dogmatisms new passages (which never had been associated with the Sodom story) were “homo”-sexualised, such as Judges 19:5 (gnåmen autois) and (the most scandalous change of all) Gnosticist Letter of Jude verse 7 (sarkòs etéras) (both TEV). Others – namely the Scholastic “proofs” post Lateran II 1139 – followed suit after 1970, being changed from "proving" clerical Abstinences to anti Gay.
However, sun-g-e-nå-me-tha autois in Genesis 19:5 means to say hello to them. It is a different word from the root gnå- than the gnå-men; to know, in Judges 19:22.
The original manipulation (= the false claim that sun-g-e-nå-me-tha autois mean “to know in the Biblical sense”) seems to be Renaissance; Dr Calvinus himself.
The corresponding claim (also wrong) about late Persian Judges 19-20 is post 1970, unheard of before Dr Bailey.
Words from the root gnå- occur 934 times in the OT, euphemistically referring (circumstances permitting) to Hetero-sexual copulation 8 times in the younger parts of the OT, such as Genesis 4:1 “And Adam k n e w his wife Eve…" [probably not part of the original OT because the eldest existing LXX, the Codex vaticanus (early 300s) starts only in Genesis 46:8 Taûta dè tà onómina tån huôn Josäf tån eisälthónton eis Aïgypton… These are the names of the Sons of Joseph who went down to Egypt…) and Kings, and (perhaps) once in the NT (Matt 1:24 “And he didn’t k n o w his wife before she had given birth to a Son…”)].
Thus a possible total of 9 times out of 934. That is a frequency of less than 1 %! So NOT “the same term regularly used“ as Ben W calls it.
But sungenåmetha is a d i f f e r e n t word and a d i f f e r e n t form ; = )
In Matt 1:24 the word used is the aorist e-g-í-nå-sken autón – the change of the -e- to -i- is late Koíne; 2nd century, as is Matt on the whole.
In fact, Dr Calvinus’ innovation “To know in the Biblical sense“ makes this the first Dynamic Equivalence translation.
The Swedish State translation 1981 (made by 2 converts to Rome – one secret ;=) changes also 1 Thess 4:4-8, which in the Danish Bible still refers to Honesty in Commerce, but was used from Lateran II 1139 for Consecrations and Ordinations, “proving” Mandatory Abstinence – and this even in the Church of Sweden after the Reformation (Church Ordinance of 1571).
So Genesis 18 and 19 is about the commandment to Sacred Hospitality “under the shadow of my roof” towards “the Levite, the poor and the Stranger” – practically a condition of survival for peopåle outside the Clans, for those excluded from clannish pre Modern Societies. According to (questionable) legends (folk-etymologies explaining the place-names “the burnt”, the devastated”) the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah didn’t.
Consequently, what has been stressed in Jewish tradition is Abrahams repeated pleas to save the City if even there was o n e righteous human in it, not sex. As Dr Bailey showed so convincingly as to de-sexualise most translations of the 45 references to Sodom, the (Hetero)-sexualization is Hellenist. So is the Gnostic idea of the “Wives of Sodom running after strange flesh” (the Angels). Despite Platonist influence, it has never been anything like Kosher.
But to the everlasting shame of Modern Academia the sexualization (and the late modern canonization of Messrs Filo and Josephus as some kind of honorary Fathers of the Church) has survived.
Ben W cites: "I beg you ... do not act so wickedly" v 7”
This is Jewish rhetoric, dear Ben. The Bible comes from a different culture, with different mores (Think the way Jesus talks to the Samaritan woman in the Gospel). The point still is the Sacredness of Hospitality “under the shadow of my roof” towards “the Levite, the Poor and the Stranger”.
So Loot says verse 7 “Don’t do this to me!” This aims to show the inhabitants how absurd it is to infringe on Sacred Hospitality.
Un-surprisingly “so wickedly” is not in the Text; making it an addition by dishonest translators (for obvious reasons ; = )
Genesis 19 does not address the late modern category of “sex” but the pre Modern one of Hospitality “under the shadow of my roof”. There is no rape in the story, only a suggested one (by Loot), which, however – Loot being the Pater familias – isn’t rape according to pre Modern sensibilities, cf. Abraham delivering Sarah to Pharaoh in Genesis 12:15, and to Abimelek in Genesis 20:2, and Isaac delivering Rebecca in 26:7 (also cf. a case when this happened without the Pater familias’ permission in alias John 8, in originally Luke 21:39ff).
However, the rape suggested by Loot in Genesis 19:8 never comes off. To claim that the Sodom story is about rape or “sex” is, resolutely, an anti Modern Academic fantasy. An intentional invention, followed by forging the sacred Text.
Conclusion; in the Bible the sin of Sodom isn't sexual which Dr Bailey showed so convincingly that the translators changed their erroneous translations of the 45 references, from “sex” to material.
Anti Modern Socio-Political Policies (Roman and American Calvinist), of which these un-wisely suggested "moratoria" is a part, are built on very loose sands, indeed.
Ben W wrote: “On Sodom, the wider issue is hospitality, but as part of that we get the action of the men of Sodom toward "the men" who have come to visit (Gen 19:5). The hospitality is seen precisely in how they responded to these visitors! They demand, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them" (to know here – the same term regularly used when a man and woman have sexual relations). That is the key event here, from it the other terrible events unfold. Lot to avoid this dreadful violation of the visitors – "I beg you ... do not act so wickedly" v 7 – looks for a way out.
So you want say, "The sin of Sodom wasn't sexual...?" Read it for yourself! What happened to Lot's daughters was evil piled on this evil (whether Lot thought that they would restrain themselves because the daughters were part of and so with some support in this community is not clear – he himself was threatened v 9b, clearly a desperate act). We can say the sin was sexual from first to last but hardly "not sexual"!”
Dear Ben W,
This is all wrong, but very often claimed. And this claim is a late modern “Homo”-sexualization. It is absent from all elder translations however. It is the late modern fixation with sex, and anti Modern Social Politics.
It appears for the first time after 1955 (DS Bailey’s book Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition – only that I would say that this tradition is Hellenist/Platonist/Academic, but n o t Christian.
Dr Bailey showed convincingly that the ("hetero"-)sexualization of the Sodom story is “intertestamental”. It appears in Hellenist and Jewish Hellenist literature (which also is Hellenist, but not Jewish) around the year 0, such as philosophical renegade Filon of Alexandria and double-traitor “Flavius” Josephus, né Levi.
The result was that some 45 references to Sodom and Gomorra in both Testaments were changed back in most translations after 1955 from “sexual” to material, including Jesus’ own 2 in the Gospels.
However, from 1961 (Bible de Jérusalem, the translation of the French Dominicans from the Codex sinaïticus; La Sainte Bible, traduite en français sous la direction de l’École Biblique de Jérusalem), to underpin the exploded dogmatisms new passages (which never had been associated with the Sodom story) were “homo”-sexualised, such as Judges 19:5 (gnåmen autois) and (the most scandalous change of all) Gnosticist Letter of Jude verse 7 (sarkòs etéras) (both TEV). Others – namely the Scholastic “proofs” post Lateran II 1139 – followed suit after 1970, being changed from "proving" clerical Abstinences to anti Gay.
However, sun-g-e-nå-me-tha autois in Genesis 19:5 means to say hello to them. It is a different word from the root gnå- than the gnå-men; to know, in Judges 19:22.
The original manipulation (= the false claim that sun-g-e-nå-me-tha autois mean “to know in the Biblical sense”) seems to be Renaissance; Dr Calvinus himself.
The corresponding claim (also wrong) about late Persian Judges 19-20 is post 1970, unheard of before Dr Bailey.
Words from the root gnå- occur 934 times in the OT, euphemistically referring (circumstances permitting) to Hetero-sexual copulation 8 times in the younger parts of the OT, such as Genesis 4:1 “And Adam k n e w his wife Eve…" [probably not part of the original OT because the eldest existing LXX, the Codex vaticanus (early 300s) starts only in Genesis 46:8 Taûta dè tà onómina tån huôn Josäf tån eisälthónton eis Aïgypton… These are the names of the Sons of Joseph who went down to Egypt…) and Kings, and (perhaps) once in the NT (Matt 1:24 “And he didn’t k n o w his wife before she had given birth to a Son…”)].
Thus a possible total of 9 times out of 934. That is a frequency of less than 1 %! So NOT “the same term regularly used“ as Ben W calls it.
But sungenåmetha is a d i f f e r e n t word and a d i f f e r e n t form ; = )
In Matt 1:24 the word used is the aorist e-g-í-nå-sken autón – the change of the -e- to -i- is late Koíne; 2nd century, as is Matt on the whole.
In fact, Dr Calvinus’ innovation “To know in the Biblical sense“ makes this the first Dynamic Equivalence translation.
The Swedish State translation 1981 (made by 2 converts to Rome – one secret ;=) changes also 1 Thess 4:4-8, which in the Danish Bible still refers to Honesty in Commerce, but was used from Lateran II 1139 for Consecrations and Ordinations, “proving” Mandatory Abstinence – and this even in the Church of Sweden after the Reformation (Church Ordinance of 1571).
So Genesis 18 and 19 is about the commandment to Sacred Hospitality “under the shadow of my roof” towards “the Levite, the poor and the Stranger” – practically a condition of survival for peopåle outside the Clans, for those excluded from clannish pre Modern Societies. According to (questionable) legends (folk-etymologies explaining the place-names “the burnt”, the devastated”) the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah didn’t.
Consequently, what has been stressed in Jewish tradition is Abrahams repeated pleas to save the City if even there was o n e righteous human in it, not sex. As Dr Bailey showed so convincingly as to de-sexualise most translations of the 45 references to Sodom, the (Hetero)-sexualization is Hellenist. So is the Gnostic idea of the “Wives of Sodom running after strange flesh” (the Angels). Despite Platonist influence, it has never been anything like Kosher.
But to the everlasting shame of Modern Academia the sexualization (and the late modern canonization of Messrs Filo and Josephus as some kind of honorary Fathers of the Church) has survived.
Ben W cites: "I beg you ... do not act so wickedly" v 7”
This is Jewish rhetoric, dear Ben. The Bible comes from a different culture, with different mores (Think the way Jesus talks to the Samaritan woman in the Gospel). The point still is the Sacredness of Hospitality “under the shadow of my roof” towards “the Levite, the Poor and the Stranger”.
So Loot says verse 7 “Don’t do this to me!” This aims to show the inhabitants how absurd it is to infringe on Sacred Hospitality.
Un-surprisingly “so wickedly” is not in the Text; making it an addition by dishonest translators (for obvious reasons ; = )
Genesis 19 does not address the late modern category of “sex” but the pre Modern one of Hospitality “under the shadow of my roof”. There is no rape in the story, only a suggested one (by Loot), which, however – Loot being the Pater familias – isn’t rape according to pre Modern sensibilities, cf. Abraham delivering Sarah to Pharaoh in Genesis 12:15, and to Abimelek in Genesis 20:2, and Isaac delivering Rebecca in 26:7 (also cf. a case when this happened without the Pater familias’ permission in alias John 8, in originally Luke 21:39ff).
However, the rape suggested by Loot in Genesis 19:8 never comes off. To claim that the Sodom story is about rape or “sex” is, resolutely, an anti Modern Academic fantasy. An intentional invention, followed by forging the sacred Text.
Conclusion; in the Bible the sin of Sodom isn't sexual which Dr Bailey showed so convincingly that the translators changed their erroneous translations of the 45 references, from “sex” to material.
Anti Modern Socio-Political Policies (Roman and American Calvinist), of which these un-wisely suggested "moratoria" is a part, are built on very loose sands, indeed.
måndag, augusti 04, 2008
The Structure of the 10 Commandments
This structure – not counting the possibility that there were 12 originally (think 12 Tribes, 12 Apostles), for 10 is the “perfect” number in Hellenism and must consequently represent a later re-working – is really 1 + 3 + 3 + 3.
The Great Commandment: Ego Kúrios, o Theós sou, o eksagagån se ek gäs Aigúptou; eks Oikou douleías; I AM the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the House of slavery, followed by the 3 Cultic Commandments (the relationship of the Husband /pater familias to his God), the 3 Collective Commandments (the relationship of the Husband/pater familias to his Household), and the 3 Social Commandments (the relationship of the Husband/pater familias to his to his Neighbour and the next House).
The 10 Commandments are written in the 2nd person singular imperative masculine to the Husband/pater familias. They are about his relationships, for instance the 7th Honour your Father and Mother means in their old age, it’s not about telling little children to eat their porridge long gone cold and stale...
The Commandments changed with Time, became less centred on the Husband himself. Ezraism c:a 398 was increasingly interested in the Collective; the Congregation, the Ethnic People, living as they were as a preferred Minority in Persian Babylonia.
The 10 Commandments became a law unto (almost) all men.
Jesus is somewhere on this road from collectivistic to individualistic; in the 10 Commandments the Husband is above his House, in Matt 5-7 he is still not part of the Household proper, whereas by Paul in 1st Cor 6:9-11 he is included as a member of the new Household, God’s eukemenä, the not biological but elect Congregation of the Holy.
Each tradition divides the Commandments differently, yet all count them as 10, even as they discard some. Only the Jewish Tradition still starts with the Great Commandment, the one immediately preceding the Christian 10, in Deuteronomy 5:6 and Exodus 20:2.
All (Calvinists excepted) disregard the part of the 2nd Commandment about Images/Idols (cf Icons, Saints, Crucifixes, & c.).
Most ignore the 3dr Commandment about mis-using God’s Name for farmakía; Black magic, and the 4th Commandment about the Sabbath, the founding principle of Judaism as Luther noted in What’s the use of Moses for the Christian? his booklet on the Civil Wars in 1525. It is linked to the Egyptian Slavery in Exodus 20:10-11 and to Creation itself in Deut 5:14.
However Black Magic (think Witches) and Sabbath are still important to Calvinists – the first action of the Absolutist State church was His Royal Majesty’s Renewed Edict on Oaths (bad language) and Sabbath-breakings in 1687…
For to Luther all days are equally holy and every lay profession is God’s holy calling.
Interestingly Dr Martin in his Greater Catechism followed the Leviticus 19 changes to the 8th Commandment Ou pseudomarturäseis katà toû Pläsíon sou marturían pseudä; Don’t give false witness about your Neighbour, witnessing falsely, from a Court of Justice situation (the Elders in the Gate) to everyday gossip, separating the Court of Justice situations in Lev 19:10-15 from gossip and vengeance situations in Lev 19:16-18.
There is a lot about everyday gossip in his Catechism, less about Courts of Justice.
Dr Martin also in his Catechisms forsook Deuteronomium 5:21 for Exodus 20:17, exalting the Neighbour’s House into a separate 9th Commandment, thereby reaching the magic number of 10 ; = )
The Great Commandment: Ego Kúrios, o Theós sou, o eksagagån se ek gäs Aigúptou; eks Oikou douleías; I AM the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the House of slavery, followed by the 3 Cultic Commandments (the relationship of the Husband /pater familias to his God), the 3 Collective Commandments (the relationship of the Husband/pater familias to his Household), and the 3 Social Commandments (the relationship of the Husband/pater familias to his to his Neighbour and the next House).
The 10 Commandments are written in the 2nd person singular imperative masculine to the Husband/pater familias. They are about his relationships, for instance the 7th Honour your Father and Mother means in their old age, it’s not about telling little children to eat their porridge long gone cold and stale...
The Commandments changed with Time, became less centred on the Husband himself. Ezraism c:a 398 was increasingly interested in the Collective; the Congregation, the Ethnic People, living as they were as a preferred Minority in Persian Babylonia.
The 10 Commandments became a law unto (almost) all men.
Jesus is somewhere on this road from collectivistic to individualistic; in the 10 Commandments the Husband is above his House, in Matt 5-7 he is still not part of the Household proper, whereas by Paul in 1st Cor 6:9-11 he is included as a member of the new Household, God’s eukemenä, the not biological but elect Congregation of the Holy.
Each tradition divides the Commandments differently, yet all count them as 10, even as they discard some. Only the Jewish Tradition still starts with the Great Commandment, the one immediately preceding the Christian 10, in Deuteronomy 5:6 and Exodus 20:2.
All (Calvinists excepted) disregard the part of the 2nd Commandment about Images/Idols (cf Icons, Saints, Crucifixes, & c.).
Most ignore the 3dr Commandment about mis-using God’s Name for farmakía; Black magic, and the 4th Commandment about the Sabbath, the founding principle of Judaism as Luther noted in What’s the use of Moses for the Christian? his booklet on the Civil Wars in 1525. It is linked to the Egyptian Slavery in Exodus 20:10-11 and to Creation itself in Deut 5:14.
However Black Magic (think Witches) and Sabbath are still important to Calvinists – the first action of the Absolutist State church was His Royal Majesty’s Renewed Edict on Oaths (bad language) and Sabbath-breakings in 1687…
For to Luther all days are equally holy and every lay profession is God’s holy calling.
Interestingly Dr Martin in his Greater Catechism followed the Leviticus 19 changes to the 8th Commandment Ou pseudomarturäseis katà toû Pläsíon sou marturían pseudä; Don’t give false witness about your Neighbour, witnessing falsely, from a Court of Justice situation (the Elders in the Gate) to everyday gossip, separating the Court of Justice situations in Lev 19:10-15 from gossip and vengeance situations in Lev 19:16-18.
There is a lot about everyday gossip in his Catechism, less about Courts of Justice.
Dr Martin also in his Catechisms forsook Deuteronomium 5:21 for Exodus 20:17, exalting the Neighbour’s House into a separate 9th Commandment, thereby reaching the magic number of 10 ; = )
About the same time the 7th Commandment was replaced by his Gnesio-Lutheran followers by the new 1579 Haustafel, because the important Household Commandment had been emptied in Carolingian times through having its focus (and its Gender) changed, via the Latin translation moixoì = adultera (both masc. plur.), from the Social into the Sexual; from Loyalty of the Husband towards his House into the sexual infidelity of the additional/superfluous Exogamous 2nd Wife (adaltrach in contemporary Irish law) cheating on her Endogamous Rival, the Spouse of their shared polygamous Husband…
This Socio-Political attack against the traditional customs of the Clans was lead by Emperor Louis the Pious (the Neo Platonist) in his 829 Council of Paris, claiming Leviticus 18 as Biblical justification against Endogamy; a command forbidding 7 Degrees of Kinship (modified to 4 by Lateran IV in 1215).
Emperor Louis’s Forbidden Degrees were preached to the Yeomanry, but not to the Princes: it would have barred all genteel marriages well into the 20th century ; = ) As to secondary marriages, there are still some around in German Princely Hausgesetz...
Not to mention that novelties like Registered Partnerships form a new secondary entity, unequal in law, because secondary...
According to Laterans I to IV and the 1238 Canon Law of Rome, the legally married adaltrach was a mere concubine/whore – together with the equally superfluous wives of Priests – and the Gender-bender manipulation moixoì (masc. plur.) => adultera (masc. plur.) => adaltrach (fem. sing,) of the 7th Commandment was instrumental in the process.
However this policy failed in some distant Church Provinces; Sweden & Finland, and Iceland. The early 14th century laws regulate the inheritance of not only Priests but Bishops as a matter of course.
The “canonical” testament never caught on. From the 15th century several married Priests and Bishops (some divorced) are known. The Provincial council of 1537 finally admonished Swedish Priests to get married to their wives, making them honourable women, not Roman concubines ; = )
The 1579 Haustafel defended the age-old societal notions of Patriarchy, Clan and Household well into the 20th century, though gradually and in part abolished, in 1858 (disciplining all employees), 1908 (disciplining wives), 1929 (disciplining employees under 16), 1954 (disciplining schoolchildren), 1965 (disciplining one's own children, forbidden in 1979) but vestiges of the ancient rights of the pater familias are still around in Swedish Industrial/Employment law.
To be continued.
This Socio-Political attack against the traditional customs of the Clans was lead by Emperor Louis the Pious (the Neo Platonist) in his 829 Council of Paris, claiming Leviticus 18 as Biblical justification against Endogamy; a command forbidding 7 Degrees of Kinship (modified to 4 by Lateran IV in 1215).
Emperor Louis’s Forbidden Degrees were preached to the Yeomanry, but not to the Princes: it would have barred all genteel marriages well into the 20th century ; = ) As to secondary marriages, there are still some around in German Princely Hausgesetz...
Not to mention that novelties like Registered Partnerships form a new secondary entity, unequal in law, because secondary...
According to Laterans I to IV and the 1238 Canon Law of Rome, the legally married adaltrach was a mere concubine/whore – together with the equally superfluous wives of Priests – and the Gender-bender manipulation moixoì (masc. plur.) => adultera (masc. plur.) => adaltrach (fem. sing,) of the 7th Commandment was instrumental in the process.
However this policy failed in some distant Church Provinces; Sweden & Finland, and Iceland. The early 14th century laws regulate the inheritance of not only Priests but Bishops as a matter of course.
The “canonical” testament never caught on. From the 15th century several married Priests and Bishops (some divorced) are known. The Provincial council of 1537 finally admonished Swedish Priests to get married to their wives, making them honourable women, not Roman concubines ; = )
The 1579 Haustafel defended the age-old societal notions of Patriarchy, Clan and Household well into the 20th century, though gradually and in part abolished, in 1858 (disciplining all employees), 1908 (disciplining wives), 1929 (disciplining employees under 16), 1954 (disciplining schoolchildren), 1965 (disciplining one's own children, forbidden in 1979) but vestiges of the ancient rights of the pater familias are still around in Swedish Industrial/Employment law.
To be continued.
söndag, augusti 03, 2008
A de-sexualised reading
As my Blog is suddenly functioning again, I think I will do what I intended from the beginning, make a coherent presentation the 10 Commandments and their importance in the Bible and in Theology generally: for they, not the laws of men, are God’s Law.
Much of the Bible, even the Sermon on the Mount in Matt 5-7, Mark 7 and the so called “Catalogues of Sin”, is structured according to the order of the 10 Commandments, the chiefest of them being 1 Cor 6:9-11 (because authentic).
What I am aiming at is a de-sexualized reading as if the Platonizing and Neo Platonist Academy hadn’t been, beyond Ancient Gnosticist teachings on the Sanctity of Sperm and Modern distortions.
For I believe that the Greek of the Bible (the Septuagint and the New Testament) is different from its accustomed readings, namely material, contrasting the later sexualization of the Scholastics, and later still, Modern Dynamic Equivalence.
This sexualization started pretty early in the first Millennium, Academics like the (later so called) Church “Fathers” quite naturally reading Bible Greek (Koíne) as their own Academic, but Bible Greek was a derivation/translation from Hebrew Theological Concepts (think active verbs) not Academic ones (abstract nouns).
In short it was material and above all specific – which also meant fewer meanings to a word. The traditional error of theology is to Generalise, but there is also in Academia a tendency to create congregational discipline; crowd control. Generalisations and Sexualizations are useful in that regard.
The best example to my mind is epithumía. Theologically it is about selfish Greed, disregarding Social, Collective, and even Cultic considerations. It is always Sexualized as “Covet”. But in Academic Greek it means simply “desire”; a n y desire, also sexual desire. However “Sex” is not a separate category in the Bible, distinct from ordinary Life; Lechaim, as it has become in especially Modern translations – maybe because sex is a Modern or late modern Concept... “Sex” was still un-heard of when and where I was a child (Sex meant “Gender” – and there was only one! ;=)
In Bible Greek epithumía speaks of material desire, the 10th Commandment is an instance of this theological/technical/material approach.
Oux epithumäseis tän gunaîka tou pläsíon sou, ouk epithumeseis tän Oikían tou pläsíon sou, oúte tòn agròn autoû, oúte tòn paîda autoû, oúte tän paidískän autoû, oúte toù Boòs autoû, oúte toû Upåzugíou autoû, oúte pantòs ktänous autoû, oúte pánta ósa tå pläsíon sou estí.
“Don’t want the Wife of your Neighbour; don’t want the House of your Neighbour; or his Field; or his Boys/Servants; or his Girl/Servant; or his Ox; or his Donkey; or any of his animals, or anything which belongs to your Neighbour.”
“The Wife of your Neighbour” refers to her Dowry and her Connections. Not to the unfortunate woman herself. It’s Material.
You may also notice that epithumeseis is a Verb. These words generally are in the OT, but nearly always become first Nouns, and then (2nd century) abstract (the influence of Philosophy?).
What I will be trying to do is a de-sexualized reading of the 3 central Commandments – the Cultic 2nd, the Collective 7th and the Social 10th – the 3 most frequent in the NT (some are declared no longer currant, such as part b. of the 2nd Commandment about Images (the Church declaring that God became visible in the Incarnation and that Christ accordingly may be pictured); or barely mentioned such as the 1st, the Great Commandment (Deuteronomium 5:6, quite forgotten in later traditions); some are only criticised “the Sabbath is made for humans, not humans for the Sabbath”).
In the de-sexualizing process I also restitute 6 Greek words as specific, theological/technical Concepts:
2nd Commandment porneía; sacral prostitution, 7th Commandment moixeía; deceit, unfaithfulness, 10th Commandment epithumía; regardless selfish Greed.
To this comes the words of the so called Catalogues of Sin akatharsía; cultic impurity, asélgeia; “ravings” i.d. taking part in Bacchanals, and finally koítän; the Bed – the only Bed there was to a House in Antiquity, often rendered by medical macaroni Latin coitus), and finally 6 infamous “clobber”-verses (Genesis 19:5, Judges 19:22, Leviticus 18:22, Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, the Letter of “Jude”, verse 7) – some of them traditionally mis-taken (Academy), some of them quite new (after 1970).
To be continued.
Much of the Bible, even the Sermon on the Mount in Matt 5-7, Mark 7 and the so called “Catalogues of Sin”, is structured according to the order of the 10 Commandments, the chiefest of them being 1 Cor 6:9-11 (because authentic).
What I am aiming at is a de-sexualized reading as if the Platonizing and Neo Platonist Academy hadn’t been, beyond Ancient Gnosticist teachings on the Sanctity of Sperm and Modern distortions.
For I believe that the Greek of the Bible (the Septuagint and the New Testament) is different from its accustomed readings, namely material, contrasting the later sexualization of the Scholastics, and later still, Modern Dynamic Equivalence.
This sexualization started pretty early in the first Millennium, Academics like the (later so called) Church “Fathers” quite naturally reading Bible Greek (Koíne) as their own Academic, but Bible Greek was a derivation/translation from Hebrew Theological Concepts (think active verbs) not Academic ones (abstract nouns).
In short it was material and above all specific – which also meant fewer meanings to a word. The traditional error of theology is to Generalise, but there is also in Academia a tendency to create congregational discipline; crowd control. Generalisations and Sexualizations are useful in that regard.
The best example to my mind is epithumía. Theologically it is about selfish Greed, disregarding Social, Collective, and even Cultic considerations. It is always Sexualized as “Covet”. But in Academic Greek it means simply “desire”; a n y desire, also sexual desire. However “Sex” is not a separate category in the Bible, distinct from ordinary Life; Lechaim, as it has become in especially Modern translations – maybe because sex is a Modern or late modern Concept... “Sex” was still un-heard of when and where I was a child (Sex meant “Gender” – and there was only one! ;=)
In Bible Greek epithumía speaks of material desire, the 10th Commandment is an instance of this theological/technical/material approach.
Oux epithumäseis tän gunaîka tou pläsíon sou, ouk epithumeseis tän Oikían tou pläsíon sou, oúte tòn agròn autoû, oúte tòn paîda autoû, oúte tän paidískän autoû, oúte toù Boòs autoû, oúte toû Upåzugíou autoû, oúte pantòs ktänous autoû, oúte pánta ósa tå pläsíon sou estí.
“Don’t want the Wife of your Neighbour; don’t want the House of your Neighbour; or his Field; or his Boys/Servants; or his Girl/Servant; or his Ox; or his Donkey; or any of his animals, or anything which belongs to your Neighbour.”
“The Wife of your Neighbour” refers to her Dowry and her Connections. Not to the unfortunate woman herself. It’s Material.
You may also notice that epithumeseis is a Verb. These words generally are in the OT, but nearly always become first Nouns, and then (2nd century) abstract (the influence of Philosophy?).
What I will be trying to do is a de-sexualized reading of the 3 central Commandments – the Cultic 2nd, the Collective 7th and the Social 10th – the 3 most frequent in the NT (some are declared no longer currant, such as part b. of the 2nd Commandment about Images (the Church declaring that God became visible in the Incarnation and that Christ accordingly may be pictured); or barely mentioned such as the 1st, the Great Commandment (Deuteronomium 5:6, quite forgotten in later traditions); some are only criticised “the Sabbath is made for humans, not humans for the Sabbath”).
In the de-sexualizing process I also restitute 6 Greek words as specific, theological/technical Concepts:
2nd Commandment porneía; sacral prostitution, 7th Commandment moixeía; deceit, unfaithfulness, 10th Commandment epithumía; regardless selfish Greed.
To this comes the words of the so called Catalogues of Sin akatharsía; cultic impurity, asélgeia; “ravings” i.d. taking part in Bacchanals, and finally koítän; the Bed – the only Bed there was to a House in Antiquity, often rendered by medical macaroni Latin coitus), and finally 6 infamous “clobber”-verses (Genesis 19:5, Judges 19:22, Leviticus 18:22, Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, the Letter of “Jude”, verse 7) – some of them traditionally mis-taken (Academy), some of them quite new (after 1970).
To be continued.
Heureka!
I have found it! how to re-activate my blog, that is. I haven't been able to reach it since November 2006.
Somebody on a Blog somehwere gave a link to Blogger Help Group the other day. Happily it worked!
Expect new post in a few days...
(but I don't know yet how to up date the Links :-/
Nor does this new Password work for making Comments, I have to use my Blogglink for that ;=)
Somebody on a Blog somehwere gave a link to Blogger Help Group the other day. Happily it worked!
Expect new post in a few days...
(but I don't know yet how to up date the Links :-/
Nor does this new Password work for making Comments, I have to use my Blogglink for that ;=)
lördag, november 11, 2006
7 Holy Criteria
I have been brooding a bit further over theology and translations in the 2nd Millennium, and have come to conclude the following criteria for dating the Holy Scriptures (always in the plural) of the Bible. Some suggestions:
AFFIRMATIVA:
1. Language: either Koíne; general Greek, which is either ordinary (Paul) or late (Pastorals) or else the artificial Greek of the Platonic Academy (e.g. Hebrews),
2. Dialect: Asian, Syrian, Alexandrian Koíne or Attic, Jonic, Alexandrian,
3. Vocabulary: theological/specific as of the LXX (pórnoi) or general (porneía),
4. Vocabulary may be concrete (pórnoi being persons) or abstract (porneía),
5. Forms of words: early (aiônos) or late (aiwníos in Jude v. 7),
6. Time: most everything in the Bible is presentic (perfect being used for God in Heb),
7. Choice of word: normal (gynai) or extreme (theleiai; cunts, in Romans 1.26-27),
8. Syntax: this may be typical or atypical for the claimed author,
9. Links: quotes/dependencies (for instance Mark/Luke contra Paul/Matthew),
10. Theology: Marcian, Pauline, Lucan, Johanneic or Alexandrian,
11. Cosmology and Creation: biblical (Paul), gnosticistic (Marcion) or philosophical (Clement of Alexandria),
12. Worldview: this is harmonic, antithetical or antagonistic, respectively,
13. View of Society: non-identity (Paul), identity (Pastorals) or antagonism (Clement),
14. Law: the X Commandments contra the laws of men,
15. Congregation: equality; ethnically, socially and biologically as in Galathians (Jew/Greek, slave/free, man/woman) or the subordination of women and slaves as in the Pastorals,
16. Manuscripts: differences between the General text (including Vetus latina and other 2nd century translations) and the papyri and pandects of the Alexandrian Sondertradition (Vaticanus, Sinaïticus, Alexandrinus). These are harmonized from the late 3rd century in the Byzantine version of the General text,
17. History of Theology: are there quotes in Patres – if so in which form; General or Alexandrian?
NEGATIVA– what we find instead:
1. Language: all Koíne is read already by the Patres as if it were the Greek of the Academy,
2. Dialect: question not posed,
3. Vocabulary: both theological/specific LXX language and general are universalized,
4. Ditto: Concrete becomes abstract (12th century scholastic concepts),
5. Forms of words: are not dated (the a-historic language theory of Platonism; words are un-changeable in eternity)
6. Tempus: presentic becomes perfect and future (the already hear and now, but not quite yet becomes ”pie in the sky when you die"),
7. Choice of words: in Rom 1.18-32 no less than 29 words are said to be non Pauline, but commenters don't specify them,
8. Syntax: is a non-question,
9. Links: these are seldom mentioned,
10. Theology: the 4 Patriarchates are all assumed to have had the same theology,
11. Cosmology and Creation: Alexandrian Philosophy is taken for granted,
12. World view: a non-question,
13. View of Society: question is put only if there is a need to ante-date (Colossians),
14. The Law: the laws of men are treated as Commandments overtaking the Gospel,
15. View of the Congregation: hierarchic subordination is written into all scriptures,
16. Manuscripts: the Alexandrian Sondertradition is treated as normative (Weston & Hort: "neutral") different layers are not mentioned, contradictions are harmonized,
17. History of Theology: neglected (nothing ever happened).
The academic Theology of 2nd Millennium Europe harmonizes differences in the Bible (time, geography, philosophy & c.) identifying Christianity with Alexandrian teachings on works and merit (Neo-Platonism).
The result is sexualization and dogmatization accommodating the translator’s own late 20th century tradition (often a form of Calvinism). ”Abomination”, “impurity” and ”sexual immorality” are examples of universalizing sexualizations, just as fornication, adultery and covet are sexualizations of specific cultic, collective and social terms of the II, VII and X Commandments, respectively.
Sexualized words in their turn sexualize each and every phrase where they occur, distorting the content – together several hundred times in the OT and NT.
The language theory of Neo-Platonism (dominating in Anglo-Saxon countries) regard languages as consisting of isolated "words" which have eternal and fixed meaning. This is quite wrong; languages consist of forms and structures. If languages consisted of ”words” in this way, we would have to pronounce every letter/sound… which we don’t. And the exact meaning of most words depends on context.
Late modernity homo-sexualizes pre-modern sexualizations introducing new ones (Judges 19.22, 1 Thess 4.6, Jude v. 7, 2 Peter 2), along with new sub-ordination proof-texts (slaves in 1 Cor 7.21, women in 2 Peter 2.14).
The theory of Dynamic equivalence introduced by the American Bible Society around 1940, abandons the traditional method of concordance (one word for one concept) explaining the translation, turning it into paraphrase.
Text and interpretation collapse into each other, accommodating text to teaching…
A secondary consequence is that the result cannot be checked against the method, making it impossible for the lay person to judge the quality of the translation. This is hardly a coincidence.
Of late there seems to be (at least in some parts) a sobering of kind, The New English Version (2002) has returned to the late 12th century Versio vulgata systematic errors of the KJV 1611/1785/1947 tradition.
But at least – being systematic – they are easy to spot.
AFFIRMATIVA:
1. Language: either Koíne; general Greek, which is either ordinary (Paul) or late (Pastorals) or else the artificial Greek of the Platonic Academy (e.g. Hebrews),
2. Dialect: Asian, Syrian, Alexandrian Koíne or Attic, Jonic, Alexandrian,
3. Vocabulary: theological/specific as of the LXX (pórnoi) or general (porneía),
4. Vocabulary may be concrete (pórnoi being persons) or abstract (porneía),
5. Forms of words: early (aiônos) or late (aiwníos in Jude v. 7),
6. Time: most everything in the Bible is presentic (perfect being used for God in Heb),
7. Choice of word: normal (gynai) or extreme (theleiai; cunts, in Romans 1.26-27),
8. Syntax: this may be typical or atypical for the claimed author,
9. Links: quotes/dependencies (for instance Mark/Luke contra Paul/Matthew),
10. Theology: Marcian, Pauline, Lucan, Johanneic or Alexandrian,
11. Cosmology and Creation: biblical (Paul), gnosticistic (Marcion) or philosophical (Clement of Alexandria),
12. Worldview: this is harmonic, antithetical or antagonistic, respectively,
13. View of Society: non-identity (Paul), identity (Pastorals) or antagonism (Clement),
14. Law: the X Commandments contra the laws of men,
15. Congregation: equality; ethnically, socially and biologically as in Galathians (Jew/Greek, slave/free, man/woman) or the subordination of women and slaves as in the Pastorals,
16. Manuscripts: differences between the General text (including Vetus latina and other 2nd century translations) and the papyri and pandects of the Alexandrian Sondertradition (Vaticanus, Sinaïticus, Alexandrinus). These are harmonized from the late 3rd century in the Byzantine version of the General text,
17. History of Theology: are there quotes in Patres – if so in which form; General or Alexandrian?
NEGATIVA– what we find instead:
1. Language: all Koíne is read already by the Patres as if it were the Greek of the Academy,
2. Dialect: question not posed,
3. Vocabulary: both theological/specific LXX language and general are universalized,
4. Ditto: Concrete becomes abstract (12th century scholastic concepts),
5. Forms of words: are not dated (the a-historic language theory of Platonism; words are un-changeable in eternity)
6. Tempus: presentic becomes perfect and future (the already hear and now, but not quite yet becomes ”pie in the sky when you die"),
7. Choice of words: in Rom 1.18-32 no less than 29 words are said to be non Pauline, but commenters don't specify them,
8. Syntax: is a non-question,
9. Links: these are seldom mentioned,
10. Theology: the 4 Patriarchates are all assumed to have had the same theology,
11. Cosmology and Creation: Alexandrian Philosophy is taken for granted,
12. World view: a non-question,
13. View of Society: question is put only if there is a need to ante-date (Colossians),
14. The Law: the laws of men are treated as Commandments overtaking the Gospel,
15. View of the Congregation: hierarchic subordination is written into all scriptures,
16. Manuscripts: the Alexandrian Sondertradition is treated as normative (Weston & Hort: "neutral") different layers are not mentioned, contradictions are harmonized,
17. History of Theology: neglected (nothing ever happened).
The academic Theology of 2nd Millennium Europe harmonizes differences in the Bible (time, geography, philosophy & c.) identifying Christianity with Alexandrian teachings on works and merit (Neo-Platonism).
The result is sexualization and dogmatization accommodating the translator’s own late 20th century tradition (often a form of Calvinism). ”Abomination”, “impurity” and ”sexual immorality” are examples of universalizing sexualizations, just as fornication, adultery and covet are sexualizations of specific cultic, collective and social terms of the II, VII and X Commandments, respectively.
Sexualized words in their turn sexualize each and every phrase where they occur, distorting the content – together several hundred times in the OT and NT.
The language theory of Neo-Platonism (dominating in Anglo-Saxon countries) regard languages as consisting of isolated "words" which have eternal and fixed meaning. This is quite wrong; languages consist of forms and structures. If languages consisted of ”words” in this way, we would have to pronounce every letter/sound… which we don’t. And the exact meaning of most words depends on context.
Late modernity homo-sexualizes pre-modern sexualizations introducing new ones (Judges 19.22, 1 Thess 4.6, Jude v. 7, 2 Peter 2), along with new sub-ordination proof-texts (slaves in 1 Cor 7.21, women in 2 Peter 2.14).
The theory of Dynamic equivalence introduced by the American Bible Society around 1940, abandons the traditional method of concordance (one word for one concept) explaining the translation, turning it into paraphrase.
Text and interpretation collapse into each other, accommodating text to teaching…
A secondary consequence is that the result cannot be checked against the method, making it impossible for the lay person to judge the quality of the translation. This is hardly a coincidence.
Of late there seems to be (at least in some parts) a sobering of kind, The New English Version (2002) has returned to the late 12th century Versio vulgata systematic errors of the KJV 1611/1785/1947 tradition.
But at least – being systematic – they are easy to spot.
lördag, augusti 12, 2006
The Rule of Law
Jag knycker ännu mer från Americablog.
Kom ihåg! att vi inte har ett motsvarande ord på svenska för the Rule of Law.
Kom ihåg! att vi inte har ett motsvarande ord på svenska för the Rule of Law.
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.
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.
fredag, augusti 11, 2006
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.
Klicka på rubriken!
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?
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?
måndag, juli 31, 2006
The 4 gospels
Liz Calhoun wrote: “And Goran, I recently read a work on NT studies that suggested that the Fourth Gospel was intended to REPLACE the previous three, late in the 1st century.”
A far as I understand, the 4th gospel (John) is the 3rd and the 1st (Matt) is the newest. There is no trace of it in the West before Ireneus’s Adversus Haeraeus around 170, who pleads 4 gospels, saying they are like the 4 winds (= 4 directions ;=)
Up till around 180 there are a number of Greek and Latin Prologues to the other 3 (many of them anti-Marcionite, that is post 140, some monarchic, that is advocating a shift in power from the autonomy of the local congregation to the regional authority of a metropolitan bishop) but there is no Prologue to Matt.
The claim often heard that Bishop Papias talks of the gospel of Matt around 140 is bogus. He does nothing of the sort. He talks of a sayings gospel (like the famous Q); the logia, the words of Jesus collected “in the Hebrew language” (= Aramaic) by (the real) Matthew Levi the Publican and interpreted by all “as best they could”. Pages 8-10 or so of which was found in Oxyrhynchos in Egypt in 1889.
The gospel of Thomas is the same kind of collection of sayings (the latter 1/3 of Thomas to my mind being a later Gnosticist addition).
Originally the 4 gospels were used in different parts of the world, each in its own Patriarchate; the oral Aramaic gospel in Jerusalem or Caesarea, Mark in Rome, Luke in Antioch and lastly Matt – where?
IMO in Alexandria (see the confusion of geographic and historic detail, the “in King Herod’s days” (all Herodian kings were King Herod), the Magi, the slaying of the Innocents, all not so subtly placing the child Jesus in Egypt (cf the horrible “childhood gospels”) and so on.
The present order reflects a time when several gospels were put into use in one place, the resulting collection – as always in Antiquity – being added to a core; the eldest in the middle, the ones newer to that place front and back.
The eldest Western order (preserved in some manuscripts) was Matt, John, Mark, Luke + Acts + Letters of Paul. Later the Catholic Letters (= general subjects, without addressees) + Johannine letters + Apocalypse. Originally these collections were all separate - a state of affairs that lasted well into the 2nd Millennium.
All scriptures were not accepted in all Patriarchates – Alexandria, for instance, not accepting the Corpus johanneum, having their own apocalypsis; The Shepherd of Hermas. Antioch likewise did not accept the 2nd century Alexandrian letters, and so on. The standing and placing of Alexandrian Hebrews and non-Pauline Pastorals differed.
There also were many more scriptures read than are found in our (different) modern post mid 16th century "canonical" Bibles.
The story of the woman in the Temple yard was especially difficult for later generations influenced by Neo Platonism; originally Luke 21:39ff, it ended up in Byzantine manuscripts (in different places) in John (in modern “translations” John 7:51-8:11, if not excised all together ;=)
The order we use today is the (late) Antiochene one (which became the Alexandrian).
Matt was most certainly put together (from both sayings gospel and story gospel) as a lectionary, to be read continuously in the local/regional churches, the way the Torah is read in the Synagogue. It is clearly dependent on the published Letters of Paul (after 100) not seldom following Paul when he disagrees with Mark and Luke. Matt is very clearly competing with the Judaism of its day, which makes me think much of it post-dates the parting of the ways after the 2nd Jewish War of around 130, upon which Judaism became illegal and Christianity hurried to proclaim its loyalty to the Emperor and conformity to the Ways of the World (the Pastorals, Alexandrian letters).
Our present European lectionaries are all based on the Carolingian Lectionary, which used Matt supplementing it with the other 3 for “lacunae”.
A far as I understand, the 4th gospel (John) is the 3rd and the 1st (Matt) is the newest. There is no trace of it in the West before Ireneus’s Adversus Haeraeus around 170, who pleads 4 gospels, saying they are like the 4 winds (= 4 directions ;=)
Up till around 180 there are a number of Greek and Latin Prologues to the other 3 (many of them anti-Marcionite, that is post 140, some monarchic, that is advocating a shift in power from the autonomy of the local congregation to the regional authority of a metropolitan bishop) but there is no Prologue to Matt.
The claim often heard that Bishop Papias talks of the gospel of Matt around 140 is bogus. He does nothing of the sort. He talks of a sayings gospel (like the famous Q); the logia, the words of Jesus collected “in the Hebrew language” (= Aramaic) by (the real) Matthew Levi the Publican and interpreted by all “as best they could”. Pages 8-10 or so of which was found in Oxyrhynchos in Egypt in 1889.
The gospel of Thomas is the same kind of collection of sayings (the latter 1/3 of Thomas to my mind being a later Gnosticist addition).
Originally the 4 gospels were used in different parts of the world, each in its own Patriarchate; the oral Aramaic gospel in Jerusalem or Caesarea, Mark in Rome, Luke in Antioch and lastly Matt – where?
IMO in Alexandria (see the confusion of geographic and historic detail, the “in King Herod’s days” (all Herodian kings were King Herod), the Magi, the slaying of the Innocents, all not so subtly placing the child Jesus in Egypt (cf the horrible “childhood gospels”) and so on.
The present order reflects a time when several gospels were put into use in one place, the resulting collection – as always in Antiquity – being added to a core; the eldest in the middle, the ones newer to that place front and back.
The eldest Western order (preserved in some manuscripts) was Matt, John, Mark, Luke + Acts + Letters of Paul. Later the Catholic Letters (= general subjects, without addressees) + Johannine letters + Apocalypse. Originally these collections were all separate - a state of affairs that lasted well into the 2nd Millennium.
All scriptures were not accepted in all Patriarchates – Alexandria, for instance, not accepting the Corpus johanneum, having their own apocalypsis; The Shepherd of Hermas. Antioch likewise did not accept the 2nd century Alexandrian letters, and so on. The standing and placing of Alexandrian Hebrews and non-Pauline Pastorals differed.
There also were many more scriptures read than are found in our (different) modern post mid 16th century "canonical" Bibles.
The story of the woman in the Temple yard was especially difficult for later generations influenced by Neo Platonism; originally Luke 21:39ff, it ended up in Byzantine manuscripts (in different places) in John (in modern “translations” John 7:51-8:11, if not excised all together ;=)
The order we use today is the (late) Antiochene one (which became the Alexandrian).
Matt was most certainly put together (from both sayings gospel and story gospel) as a lectionary, to be read continuously in the local/regional churches, the way the Torah is read in the Synagogue. It is clearly dependent on the published Letters of Paul (after 100) not seldom following Paul when he disagrees with Mark and Luke. Matt is very clearly competing with the Judaism of its day, which makes me think much of it post-dates the parting of the ways after the 2nd Jewish War of around 130, upon which Judaism became illegal and Christianity hurried to proclaim its loyalty to the Emperor and conformity to the Ways of the World (the Pastorals, Alexandrian letters).
Our present European lectionaries are all based on the Carolingian Lectionary, which used Matt supplementing it with the other 3 for “lacunae”.
Från diskussion på Father Jake Stops the World (länk till höger)
Shellfish - and other animals
Not so New here wrote: ” … are now outdated, while the homosex prohibition remains very, very, very important.”
This is claimed arguing that the word arsenokoîtai in 1 Cor 6:9 is a “compound” of ársen and koítä in Lev 20:13, the law parallel (If a man… then…) to the cultic purity taboo in Lev 18:22, and that consequently all of Lev 18 (intentionally mis-translated as “incest”, Moloch, “homosexuality” and “bestiality”) is brought forth into the NT under the name of “Holiness Code”, thereby turning 1st Temple Levitical cultic purity taboos into “moral” “law” for the Christian congregation.
Well, some of them ;=)
Point 1. arsenokoîtai is probably Corinthian slang never used in writing before 1 Cor (middle of the 50-ies). The Old Latin transla-tion (perhaps only ¾ of a century later) gives it as masculorum concubitores; male bedfellows.
Now, since pre modern bedfellows always were of the same gender (or in the case of wet-nurses, of “none”), most probably arseno-koîtai refers to male “bedfellows” in a secondary sense; well endowed men who prostituted themselves with both men and women (= xärai; widow).
Self supporting women were called “widows”, since widows – and the occasional elder sister standing in for a younger brother, such as Martha in Luke 11 – enjoyed some but not all, of the legal, political and economical rights only men had in Antiquity.
Until the 13th century (Thomas Aquinas’ Summa contra gentiles?) arsenokoîtai was discussed as prostitution.
Point 2. present “moral” is a 12th century Scholastic concept; before, moral meant life, way of life, cf Plutarch’s Moralia: Lives of Famous Men (some of them imaginary, such as the Persian King Sardanapalos – ever even more lascivious than a woman ;=)
Point 3. the fact that two words happen to stand side to side in one context in one text does not make a different word in an other context in a text several hundred years later into a “compound”.
;=)
Nor did anyone think about anything of the sort before the mid 16th century, when this claim was invented by Dr Johannes Calvinus who, because of his Indo European Integrism, needed scriptural “proofs” where the Scholastics simply could do with the bare “verity” of their Neo Platonist Absolute Truth (= the communion of the little nous, the mind/sperm of the male academic with the big Nous, The Highest Being).
According to late 20th century Roman exegesis the man responsible for the present mis-translation of arsenokoîtai as “man-fucker” was Thomas Aquinas in his Summa contra gentiles. I haven’t checked, so I cannot say whether this is factual or an in-reading of late-modern social prejudice, but it is clear that 1 Cor 6:9-11 was not among the several “words” (most of them later abandoned) claimed by the 12th century Scholastics to refer to their Neo Platonist/Gnosticist category Spilling of Semen without procreationary purpose (the Spilling of Semen was of course “heterosexual” to them – had they known the word ;=)
So Roman late 20th century exegesis claims that koítä; bed, is a verb meaning to lay (with) – according to Pater Zerwick 1966 (note to Rom 13:13) it is an euphemism, according to Boswell 1980 (referring to the same) it is gross...
Middle of the road Calvinist exegesis, however (such as the New York-Stuttgart “Novum” of the International Bible Societies), still claim it’s a noun, translating it “bed, marital relationship (Heb 13:4), sperm (koítän exo conceive Rom 9:10) sexual impurity (Rom 13:13)”.
Of course “bed” is the only one among these that is correct, but we can take that an other time…
Thing is they both u n d e r s t a n d koítä as sex. And this is a very interesting example of how the different theological traditions sometimes come to “explain” the same Neo Platonist teaching in ways not only incompatible, but mutually exclusive.
They agree on their Neo Platonism, but they have not coordinated their techniques ;=) Which gives the lie away…
The truth remains that koítä means the Bed of the Master and Mistress, the only Bed there was in the pre modern House. Household members slept on mats and cots on the floor or in the attic all through the 19th century.
Stable boys slept together in the hay – blankets were for the horses!
Conclusion: Dr Calvinus’s claim that 1 Cor 6:9 somehow “saves” a Neo Platonist interpretation of the Levitical cultic purity taboos and the Tradition (LXX and NT nómos is not “law” but Tradition, remember) of the elders as “law”, bringing it into the Christian congregation (contra Mark 7 et al) as Social legislation for Geneva and the other cities of the Plain, makes practically all of post 16th century radical Neo Platonist theology (= Calvinism) dependant on the sexualization of the word Bed.
Which is why they get so upset about the “shell-fish argument” that they discard the kosher taboos of Leviticus 11, but exalt the cultic ones of Leviticus 18.
This – not to mention Dr Calvinus’s defence of usury – threatens the order of things, for without the distortion of the Spilling of Semen as anti-gay being “proved” by Saint Paul’s Corinthian slang word arsenokoîtai in 1 Cor 6:9, much of 20th century Calvinism falls; the congregational discipline, the authority of the Pastor, the “moral” teachings – Transformation itself.
As Rome is not Integrist, nothing of this really matters to them – they still can invent freely according to their nous/NOUS concept of “natural law”.
This is claimed arguing that the word arsenokoîtai in 1 Cor 6:9 is a “compound” of ársen and koítä in Lev 20:13, the law parallel (If a man… then…) to the cultic purity taboo in Lev 18:22, and that consequently all of Lev 18 (intentionally mis-translated as “incest”, Moloch, “homosexuality” and “bestiality”) is brought forth into the NT under the name of “Holiness Code”, thereby turning 1st Temple Levitical cultic purity taboos into “moral” “law” for the Christian congregation.
Well, some of them ;=)
Point 1. arsenokoîtai is probably Corinthian slang never used in writing before 1 Cor (middle of the 50-ies). The Old Latin transla-tion (perhaps only ¾ of a century later) gives it as masculorum concubitores; male bedfellows.
Now, since pre modern bedfellows always were of the same gender (or in the case of wet-nurses, of “none”), most probably arseno-koîtai refers to male “bedfellows” in a secondary sense; well endowed men who prostituted themselves with both men and women (= xärai; widow).
Self supporting women were called “widows”, since widows – and the occasional elder sister standing in for a younger brother, such as Martha in Luke 11 – enjoyed some but not all, of the legal, political and economical rights only men had in Antiquity.
Until the 13th century (Thomas Aquinas’ Summa contra gentiles?) arsenokoîtai was discussed as prostitution.
Point 2. present “moral” is a 12th century Scholastic concept; before, moral meant life, way of life, cf Plutarch’s Moralia: Lives of Famous Men (some of them imaginary, such as the Persian King Sardanapalos – ever even more lascivious than a woman ;=)
Point 3. the fact that two words happen to stand side to side in one context in one text does not make a different word in an other context in a text several hundred years later into a “compound”.
;=)
Nor did anyone think about anything of the sort before the mid 16th century, when this claim was invented by Dr Johannes Calvinus who, because of his Indo European Integrism, needed scriptural “proofs” where the Scholastics simply could do with the bare “verity” of their Neo Platonist Absolute Truth (= the communion of the little nous, the mind/sperm of the male academic with the big Nous, The Highest Being).
According to late 20th century Roman exegesis the man responsible for the present mis-translation of arsenokoîtai as “man-fucker” was Thomas Aquinas in his Summa contra gentiles. I haven’t checked, so I cannot say whether this is factual or an in-reading of late-modern social prejudice, but it is clear that 1 Cor 6:9-11 was not among the several “words” (most of them later abandoned) claimed by the 12th century Scholastics to refer to their Neo Platonist/Gnosticist category Spilling of Semen without procreationary purpose (the Spilling of Semen was of course “heterosexual” to them – had they known the word ;=)
So Roman late 20th century exegesis claims that koítä; bed, is a verb meaning to lay (with) – according to Pater Zerwick 1966 (note to Rom 13:13) it is an euphemism, according to Boswell 1980 (referring to the same) it is gross...
Middle of the road Calvinist exegesis, however (such as the New York-Stuttgart “Novum” of the International Bible Societies), still claim it’s a noun, translating it “bed, marital relationship (Heb 13:4), sperm (koítän exo conceive Rom 9:10) sexual impurity (Rom 13:13)”.
Of course “bed” is the only one among these that is correct, but we can take that an other time…
Thing is they both u n d e r s t a n d koítä as sex. And this is a very interesting example of how the different theological traditions sometimes come to “explain” the same Neo Platonist teaching in ways not only incompatible, but mutually exclusive.
They agree on their Neo Platonism, but they have not coordinated their techniques ;=) Which gives the lie away…
The truth remains that koítä means the Bed of the Master and Mistress, the only Bed there was in the pre modern House. Household members slept on mats and cots on the floor or in the attic all through the 19th century.
Stable boys slept together in the hay – blankets were for the horses!
Conclusion: Dr Calvinus’s claim that 1 Cor 6:9 somehow “saves” a Neo Platonist interpretation of the Levitical cultic purity taboos and the Tradition (LXX and NT nómos is not “law” but Tradition, remember) of the elders as “law”, bringing it into the Christian congregation (contra Mark 7 et al) as Social legislation for Geneva and the other cities of the Plain, makes practically all of post 16th century radical Neo Platonist theology (= Calvinism) dependant on the sexualization of the word Bed.
Which is why they get so upset about the “shell-fish argument” that they discard the kosher taboos of Leviticus 11, but exalt the cultic ones of Leviticus 18.
This – not to mention Dr Calvinus’s defence of usury – threatens the order of things, for without the distortion of the Spilling of Semen as anti-gay being “proved” by Saint Paul’s Corinthian slang word arsenokoîtai in 1 Cor 6:9, much of 20th century Calvinism falls; the congregational discipline, the authority of the Pastor, the “moral” teachings – Transformation itself.
As Rome is not Integrist, nothing of this really matters to them – they still can invent freely according to their nous/NOUS concept of “natural law”.
Från diskussion på Father Jake Stops the World (länk till höger)
tisdag, juli 18, 2006
Ojdå!
Jag kan inte undanhålla er detta!
Det påminner om den gamle tecknaren OA:s serie om mannen som gör vad som faller honom in...
tisdag, juli 11, 2006
Slaveriet i NT
Jag är hemma med feber och ont i halsen, och kom att titta efter hur många pro slaveriställena i Nya testamentet egentligen är.
Och fann följande uttalanden om Slaveriet, emot och för, i krono-logisk ordning:
c:a 57 Paulos själv i brevet till Filémon; Paulos skickar den för-rymde Onésimos (= den snälle/nyttige) tillbaka till sin herre Filémon:
v.12 såsom sände jag åstad mitt eget Hjärta
v. 16 nu icke längre såsom en träl,
utan såsom något vida mer än en träl: såsom en älskad Broder.
Detta är han redan för mig i högsta måtto,
så mycket mer då för dig,
han, din Broder både efter Köttet och i Herren!
v. 17 Om du alltså håller mig för din medbroder,
så tag emot honom såsom du skulle taga emot mig själv. (1917)
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c:a 100 Efesos. Antagligen samme Onésimos (nu Biskop i Efesos) i Efesier: 6:5-8 om slaven, 9 om herren.
c:a 140 Rom. Marcion i Kolosser (samma text som Efesier, men förkortad och med andra värderingar!!!):
Kol 3:22-24, 25 om slaven, 3:26-4:1 om herren.
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c:a 140 Alexandria. 1 Petrus 2:13-3:18a "om undersåtares, tjänares och makars plikter" (ingresser i 1917)
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c:a 155 Pastoralbrevs-kretsen i Smyrna:
Titus 2:9-10 skicka sig dem till behag
1 Timotheos 6:1-2 så att icke Gud och läran bliva smädade
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1981 Riesenfeldts 40-miljonersöversättning i 1 Kor 7:21 Och även om du kan bli fri, så förbli hellre vad du är…
Svaret är alltså det alexandrinska 1 Petrus och Smyrna-kretsens Pastoralbrev; summa 3 ställen, hälften av de 6 misogyna - som ju oxå finns i 2:a århundradets pseudo-epigrafiska Petrus- och Pasto-ralbrev samt i Smyrna-upplagans tillägg i 1 Kor 11 och 14.
Ställena visar en tydlig progression från Paulos själv, som tydligt förutsätter slavens fulla mänsklighet och förnekar slavens sociala under-ordning (jfr Gal 3:25, 26-29), till Riesenfeldts fasansfulla förbli hellre vad du är även om du kan bli fri... (jfr med 1917s över-sättning av samma vers).
måndag, juni 26, 2006
Buden
Någon dag när jag hinner skall jag göra en kommentar till Leviticus-stället nedan. Till dess får ni nöja er med en översättning av Buden.
Dessa var från början 12; sex kultiska och sex kollektiva och sociala. Talet om Budens 2 tavlor är alltså äldre än de nuvarande räkningarna (olika för varje tradition).
Jag markerar den ursprungliga texten med svart och markerar tillägg med rött. I sista budet blir det lite rörigt, för de båda versionerna i 5:e Mosebok och 2:a Mosebok skiljer sig åt i om hustrun eller Huset kommer först, och Luther (vars version är mest bekant för oss) blandar de båda versionerna och delar det sista budet i två; 9 och 10.
Som ni kan se, är inte bara räkningen olika, utan en del Bud har ändrats till sitt innehåll, eller helt strukits (kultbildsförbudet).
Du skall hedra din Fader och din Moder är inte ett bud till det lilla barnet, att äta upp sin kalla och stelnade frukostgröt, utan ett bud till den vuxne mannen att ta hand om sina gamla föräldrar på deras ålderdom.
Buden är skrivna i 2:a person singularis maskulinum imperativ, alltså till Husbonden.
I Ezraisk tid (398 fvt) sågs Buden som vändande sig till alla män. Hos Jesus i Bergspredikan ingår även husbonden i Huset, vilket han ju inte gjorde från början. Hos Paulos i 1 Korinthierbrevet handlar budet om att inte svika om Husförsamlingen: Kristi kropp.
Sexualiseringarna av fyra av Buden kom i sen-Karolingisk tid med Scholastiken; crowd control.
Märk att "6:e" budet säger Du skall icke svika (ditt Hus). Det förvandlades till hustuns äktenskapsbrott i Karolingisk tid, vilket inte skrevs in i Biblarna förrän i och med renässansens över-sättningar till folkspråk.
De kollektiva Buden om Huset motsvarade vår Husbondemakt. Du skall icke döda handlar alltså om Hushållets medlemmar, något som vi idag kallar hedersmord. Dessa förbjöds alltså i Buden för länge, länge sen, i Byzantinska Riket i 500-talet, något senare i Svensk lag - ända till 1929 var det tillåtet för arbetsgivare att (heltvisst i "uppfostrande" syfte) slå anställda under 18 år. Skola-gan avskaffades 1954, barnaga (åven den i uppfostrande syfte) 1966 osv.
1. = de ursprungliga 12 Buden, I. = de X. Judiska buden, (1:a) = Luthers räkning, 1. = Övriga.
DET STORA BUDET.
1. I. Jag är Herren, din Gud, som förde dig ur Egyptens land; ur träldomens Hus.
KULTISKA Bud.
2. II. (1:a) 1. Det skall icke finnas, för dig, andra Gudar,
3. 2. Inför mitt ansikte gör dig icke Avgudar,
inte heller någon Avbild,
av det som är in Himlarna, eller det som är på Jorden, eller det som är i Djupen under Jorden.
4. Tillbed dem inte,
och dyrka dem inte heller,
ty jag, Herren din Gud, är en nitisk Gud,
som återkastar fädernas överträdelser på barnen till tredje och fjärde led av dem som hatar mig, men gör Nåd med tusenden som älskar mig, och följer mina Bud.
5. III. (2:a) 3. Missbruka inte din Herres Gudens Namn till fåfänglighet,
ty icke kan Herren din Gud rena
att du tar hans Namn till fåfänglighet.
6. IV. (3:e) 4. Tag Sabbatens dag så att du helgar den,
så som Herren din Gud bjöd dig.
Sex dagar skall du arbeta och göra allt ditt arbete,
Men den sjunde dagens Sabbat är Herren din Guds,
icke skall de då göra något arbete; din son eller din dotter,
din slav eller din slavinna,
din oxe eller din åsna, eller något av dina djur,
eller främlingen som bor hos dig,
utan de må vila, din slav och din slavinna, och din åsna, likaväl som du.
Och minns hur du bodde i Egyptens land, och Herren din Gud förde dig med stark hand och utsträckt arm, ty bjöd dig Herren din Gud att hålla Sabbatens dag och helga den.
KOLLEKTIVA Bud. (Huset)
7. V. (4:e) 5. Hedra din Fader och din Moder,
som Herren din Gud har bjudit dig,
så att du må tillväxa och bo länge på Jorden,
som Herren din Gud givit dig.
8. VI. (5:e) 6. Du skall icke döda.
9. VII. (6:e) 7. Du skall icke svika.
SOCIALA Bud. (Nästan)
10. VIII. (7:e) 8. Du skall icke stjäla. [= människor för slavmarknaden]
11. IX. (8:e) 9. Vittna inte falskt mot din Nästa genom att säga osanning.
12. X. (10:e) 10. Trakta inte efter din Nästas hustru,
(9:e) trakta inte efter din Nästas Hus, (eller hans åker),
(10:e) inte heller hans slavar, eller hans slavinnor,
eller hans oxar, eller hans åsnor,
(eller några av hans djur),
eller något av det som är din Nästas.
22. Dessa Ord talade HERREN till hela eder Församling
på Berget ur elden, molnskyn och töcknet,
med hög röst – och han talade så intet mer.
Och han skrev dem på två stentavlor, som han gav åt mig.
Märk den gammaltestamentliga teologin i orden: som Herren din Gud har bjudit dig, så att du må tillväxa och bo länge på Jorden, som Herren din Gud givit dig.
Det är summan av Evangelium.
måndag, juni 19, 2006
Ny Presiding Bishop i TEC
The Episcopal Church, USAs anglikanska kyrka, har just valt ny Presiding Bishop, som motsvarar de andra anglikanska kyrkornas Primaser.
Valet föll på nuvarande biskopen av Nevada, Katharine Jefferts Shori.
Ungefär 95 av 108 Stift röstade för henne, men det kommer att bli en del tandagnisslan i vissa delar av den Anglikanska Gemen-skapen - vissa anglikanska provinser har inte ens kvinnor som präster...
Anden blåser dit Hon vill.
Klicka på rubriken!
Den som har stark mage, kan läsa kommentarerna på Virtueonline ;=)
Titus 1:9, Canon Kendall Harmons site - allmänt ansedd som den näst värsta anglikanska - har numera "modererade" kommen-tarer... Här kan ni läsa hur hans Webb-älvor försöker stämma i bäcken. Och här är Titusonenine.
fredag, juni 16, 2006
Lev 18:19-23 - the best Modern version
Like most modern bibles the Roman 1955 Bible de Jérusalem of the French Dominicans (translated into various languages from 1966 onwards), along with the equally Roman 1970 New American Bible and the 1972 Roman version of the 1947/1952 Calvinist Revised Standard Version, is claimed to be a translation from the 9th century Mazoretic OT and the Alexandrian Sondertradition mid 4th century Codex Sinaïticus NT, but, as always, the renderings depend on the specific tradition of the translators, in this case the Roman Latin Version as changed in late 12th century Paris and "canonized" by the mid 16th century Tridentine Councils.
19 Tu ne t’approcheras pas, pour découvrir sa nudité,
d’une femme que ses règles rendent impure.
20 À la femme de ton compatriote
tu ne donneras pas ton lit conjugal,
tu en deviendrais impur.
21 Tu ne livreas pas de tes enfants à faire passer Molek,
et tu ne profaneras pas ainsi le nom de ton Dieu.
Je suis Yahvé.
22 Tu ne coucheras pas avec un homme comme on couche avec une femme.
C’est une abomination.
23 Tu ne donneras ta couche à aucune bête eis Spermatismòn;
tu en deviendrais impur.
Une femme ne s’offrira pas à un animal pour s’accoupler à lui.
Ce serait une souillure.
Note that the Bible de Jérusalem “translates” verse 23 from the LXX, not from the Parisian Versio vulgata... but eis Spermatismòn is still being omitted.
In verse 23 I put “femme” in black, due to the uncertainty created by the dual meaning of the word; as in Greek it’s either woman or wife, depending on context. Here – as generally in LXX Greek – it should read wife, not woman.
The couche in verse 23 is of course not the Macaroni verb of verse 22, but a different word for bed - that is strictly speaking not a bed at all, but a couch – but let us be kind and proclaim that the French Dominicans do, after all, manage all 3 Beds.
Not bad, considering.
19 Tu ne t’approcheras pas, pour découvrir sa nudité,
d’une femme que ses règles rendent impure.
20 À la femme de ton compatriote
tu ne donneras pas ton lit conjugal,
tu en deviendrais impur.
21 Tu ne livreas pas de tes enfants à faire passer Molek,
et tu ne profaneras pas ainsi le nom de ton Dieu.
Je suis Yahvé.
22 Tu ne coucheras pas avec un homme comme on couche avec une femme.
C’est une abomination.
23 Tu ne donneras ta couche à aucune bête eis Spermatismòn;
tu en deviendrais impur.
Une femme ne s’offrira pas à un animal pour s’accoupler à lui.
Ce serait une souillure.
Note that the Bible de Jérusalem “translates” verse 23 from the LXX, not from the Parisian Versio vulgata... but eis Spermatismòn is still being omitted.
In verse 23 I put “femme” in black, due to the uncertainty created by the dual meaning of the word; as in Greek it’s either woman or wife, depending on context. Here – as generally in LXX Greek – it should read wife, not woman.
The couche in verse 23 is of course not the Macaroni verb of verse 22, but a different word for bed - that is strictly speaking not a bed at all, but a couch – but let us be kind and proclaim that the French Dominicans do, after all, manage all 3 Beds.
Not bad, considering.
Lev 18:19-23 - the Renaissance version
As most post 16th century "translations" up to the mid 20th century, the King James Authorized Version 1611, revised 1785, follows the so called Textus Receptus, that is late manuscripts belonging to the 5th century Byzantine version of the General Text, but is in reality (and in the case of the KJV also admittedly) heavily dependant on the theological tradition emanating from the Scholastic novelties in the late 12th century Parisian Versio vulgata:
19 Also thou shalt not approach unto a woman to uncover her nakedness
as long as she is put apart for her uncleanness.
20 Moreover thou shalt not dåsein lie carnally with thy neighbour's wife,
to defile thyself with her.
21 Neither shalt thou let any of thy Seed pass through the fire to Molech;
neither shalt thou profane my holy Name;
I am the LORD.
22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind;
it is abomination.
23 Neither shalt thou dåsein lie sou with any beast eis spermatismòn
to defile thyself therewith:
neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto:
it is confusion.
As in early-modern translations generally, the 3 Beds have all disappeared!
Note that in verse 22, the KVJ is neither a translation of the LXX Greek, nor of the Parisian Versio vulgata!
19 Also thou shalt not approach unto a woman to uncover her nakedness
as long as she is put apart for her uncleanness.
20 Moreover thou shalt not dåsein lie carnally with thy neighbour's wife,
to defile thyself with her.
21 Neither shalt thou let any of thy Seed pass through the fire to Molech;
neither shalt thou profane my holy Name;
I am the LORD.
22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind;
it is abomination.
23 Neither shalt thou dåsein lie sou with any beast eis spermatismòn
to defile thyself therewith:
neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto:
it is confusion.
As in early-modern translations generally, the 3 Beds have all disappeared!
Note that in verse 22, the KVJ is neither a translation of the LXX Greek, nor of the Parisian Versio vulgata!
Lev 18:19-23 - the Scholastic version
The Old Latin translation (2nd century North Africa, and later) as changed by the followers of Peter Lombard +1162/4 of the Sorbonne/Saint Victor 1160-1220, as canonized by the Tridentine councils, according to the 1895 edition:
19 Ad mulierem, quae patitur menstrua,
non accedes, nec revelabis foeditatem ejus.
20 cum uxore proximi tuo
non coibis, nec seminis commistione
maculaberis prós autän.
21 De Semine tuo non dabis ut consecretur idolo Moloch,
nec pollues nomen Dei tui.
Ego Dominus.
22 Cum masculo non commiscearis coitu femineo,
quia abominatio est.
23 Cum omni pecore
non dåseis coibis sou eis Spermatismòn,
nec maculaberis cum eo.
Mulier non succumbet pan jumento, nec miscebitur ei:
quia scelus est.
Note that the 3 Beds have been changed to the verb coibis, to lie, (verses 20 and 23) and the Macaroni noun (generally given as a verb in late-modern translations) coitus (well know from later Medical Speak, as in coitus interruptus) in verse 22.
Note that verse 22 changes the verb koimaomai; lie with, lie, sleep, die, into the invention “commit”, at the same time as it changes the Bed of a wife into “womanly coitus”…
Also note, that verse 23 no longer has very much in common with the Greek text!
19 Ad mulierem, quae patitur menstrua,
non accedes, nec revelabis foeditatem ejus.
20 cum uxore proximi tuo
non coibis, nec seminis commistione
maculaberis prós autän.
21 De Semine tuo non dabis ut consecretur idolo Moloch,
nec pollues nomen Dei tui.
Ego Dominus.
22 Cum masculo non commiscearis coitu femineo,
quia abominatio est.
23 Cum omni pecore
non dåseis coibis sou eis Spermatismòn,
nec maculaberis cum eo.
Mulier non succumbet pan jumento, nec miscebitur ei:
quia scelus est.
Note that the 3 Beds have been changed to the verb coibis, to lie, (verses 20 and 23) and the Macaroni noun (generally given as a verb in late-modern translations) coitus (well know from later Medical Speak, as in coitus interruptus) in verse 22.
Note that verse 22 changes the verb koimaomai; lie with, lie, sleep, die, into the invention “commit”, at the same time as it changes the Bed of a wife into “womanly coitus”…
Also note, that verse 23 no longer has very much in common with the Greek text!
Leviticus 18:19-23 - the LXX version
For your edification I will now post the (probably Cultic) Taboos of Leviticus 18:19-23 in Greek, Latin, KJV and the French 1955 Bible de Jérusalem – the only translation where the word “Bed” actually occurs…
This is to give you an example of what has happened to the Sacred Texts of the Old and New Testaments in 2nd Millennium European platonizing Academia, and to show something of how this accommodation to the Social Policies of the Powers of this World has been achieved, from Ezraic times (398 BC) to the present – and continuing…
You are to look for the 3 Beds. They stand in verses 20, 22 and 23. I mark them blue for identification Bed.
Explanations:
I mark what I think are probably Ezraic glosses with red,
Yellow marks the dittographic gloss in the latter part of verse 23 (repeating the first part of the verse ;=)
Underlined are different words from those of the Greek Text, that is changes deliberate or no,
Bold words are added by the translators,
I mark green what are correct translations.
Greek words appearing in transcript in a translation mean that the translators somehow jumped them.
As the interpretation (admitted or no) of the Bible generally, the reading of the Taboos of Leviticus 18 depend on having some knowledge of the cultural and intellectual millieu of these pre-modern Sacred texts.
Koítän; the Bed, was the only bed found in most Households in Antiquity, being reserved for Master and Mistress. Well into the 17th century, male Household members generally slept on cots or mattresses on the floor, if not on the roof, and later – in colder climates – in basements or attics.
tetrápoun is probably kynä; a bibasthänai, that is "strong" or well endowed, male Temple prostitute, who spends his life on 4 legs… Nothing to do with later “bestiality”, but Cult; II Commandment; ... Don't have, don't worship, don't serve!
Here comes the Text - and again, you are to look for the 3 Beds.
The LXX Greek of the early 4th century Codex Vaticanus, according to Brenton 1852:
19 Kaì pròs gunaika en xårismå akatharsías autäs
ouk eiselísä, apokalúpsai tän asxämosúnän autäs.
20 Kaì pròs tän gynaîka toû pläsíon sou
ou dåseis Koítän Spérmatós sou,
amarthänai pròs autän.
21 Kaì apò toû Spérmatós sou ou dåseis latreúein Árxonti,
kaì ou bebälåseis tò ónoma tò Ágiån,
egå Kúrios.
22 Kaì metà ársenos ou koimethäsä Koítän gunaikeían,
bdélygma gàr estín.
23 Kaì pròs tän tetrápoun ou dåseis tän Koítän sou eis Spermatismòn,
ekmianthänai pròs autó.
Kaì gynä ou stäsetai pròs pân tetrápoun bibasthänai;
mikstaròn gàr esti.
Gynaikeían in verse 22 is actually not in the Vaticanus, but Brenton accomodating to the 12th century Parisian Versio vulgata of the Scholastics, who exchanged the noun "wife" for an adjective - which, however, does not change the Greek reading... it's still the bed of (the) wife.
My own translation of the same Taboos (2006-06-13):
19 And you shall not approach a woman who has gone aside
for the cleansing of her impurity, to uncover her secret parts.
20 And to the woman of your Neighbour,
you shall not give your Seed’s Bed.
You miss the mark thereby.
21 And of your Seed you shall not give to the worship of the Mighty,
and you shall not profane the Name of the Holy.
I am the LORD.
22 And with a man you shall not lay yourself in the Bed of a wife.
Impurity is therein.
23 And to no quadruped shall you give your Bed to get children.
you dishonour thereby.
And a wife shall not give herself to the strong quadruped:
it is mixing.
Note, that verse 21 talks of the Mighty One and of the Name of the Holy One, of God: I am the LORD. No mention of a lesser god Moloch, even less of "going trough the fire"....
And remember Ezraic verse 24, which concludes verses 19-23:
Mä miaínesthe en pâsi toútois,
en pâsi gàr toútois emiánthesan tà éthnä, à Egå eksapostéllå prò prosåpou umån…
Do not dishonour yourselves with any of these;
for in all these the Nations were dishonoured, which I drove out before your face…
Which expresses the Social Policies of the Persian inspired, Ezraic Ethnic cleansing, in the guise of the imagined Conquest of yore.
This is to give you an example of what has happened to the Sacred Texts of the Old and New Testaments in 2nd Millennium European platonizing Academia, and to show something of how this accommodation to the Social Policies of the Powers of this World has been achieved, from Ezraic times (398 BC) to the present – and continuing…
You are to look for the 3 Beds. They stand in verses 20, 22 and 23. I mark them blue for identification Bed.
Explanations:
I mark what I think are probably Ezraic glosses with red,
Yellow marks the dittographic gloss in the latter part of verse 23 (repeating the first part of the verse ;=)
Underlined are different words from those of the Greek Text, that is changes deliberate or no,
Bold words are added by the translators,
I mark green what are correct translations.
Greek words appearing in transcript in a translation mean that the translators somehow jumped them.
As the interpretation (admitted or no) of the Bible generally, the reading of the Taboos of Leviticus 18 depend on having some knowledge of the cultural and intellectual millieu of these pre-modern Sacred texts.
Koítän; the Bed, was the only bed found in most Households in Antiquity, being reserved for Master and Mistress. Well into the 17th century, male Household members generally slept on cots or mattresses on the floor, if not on the roof, and later – in colder climates – in basements or attics.
tetrápoun is probably kynä; a bibasthänai, that is "strong" or well endowed, male Temple prostitute, who spends his life on 4 legs… Nothing to do with later “bestiality”, but Cult; II Commandment; ... Don't have, don't worship, don't serve!
Here comes the Text - and again, you are to look for the 3 Beds.
The LXX Greek of the early 4th century Codex Vaticanus, according to Brenton 1852:
19 Kaì pròs gunaika en xårismå akatharsías autäs
ouk eiselísä, apokalúpsai tän asxämosúnän autäs.
20 Kaì pròs tän gynaîka toû pläsíon sou
ou dåseis Koítän Spérmatós sou,
amarthänai pròs autän.
21 Kaì apò toû Spérmatós sou ou dåseis latreúein Árxonti,
kaì ou bebälåseis tò ónoma tò Ágiån,
egå Kúrios.
22 Kaì metà ársenos ou koimethäsä Koítän gunaikeían,
bdélygma gàr estín.
23 Kaì pròs tän tetrápoun ou dåseis tän Koítän sou eis Spermatismòn,
ekmianthänai pròs autó.
Kaì gynä ou stäsetai pròs pân tetrápoun bibasthänai;
mikstaròn gàr esti.
Gynaikeían in verse 22 is actually not in the Vaticanus, but Brenton accomodating to the 12th century Parisian Versio vulgata of the Scholastics, who exchanged the noun "wife" for an adjective - which, however, does not change the Greek reading... it's still the bed of (the) wife.
My own translation of the same Taboos (2006-06-13):
19 And you shall not approach a woman who has gone aside
for the cleansing of her impurity, to uncover her secret parts.
20 And to the woman of your Neighbour,
you shall not give your Seed’s Bed.
You miss the mark thereby.
21 And of your Seed you shall not give to the worship of the Mighty,
and you shall not profane the Name of the Holy.
I am the LORD.
22 And with a man you shall not lay yourself in the Bed of a wife.
Impurity is therein.
23 And to no quadruped shall you give your Bed to get children.
you dishonour thereby.
And a wife shall not give herself to the strong quadruped:
it is mixing.
Note, that verse 21 talks of the Mighty One and of the Name of the Holy One, of God: I am the LORD. No mention of a lesser god Moloch, even less of "going trough the fire"....
And remember Ezraic verse 24, which concludes verses 19-23:
Mä miaínesthe en pâsi toútois,
en pâsi gàr toútois emiánthesan tà éthnä, à Egå eksapostéllå prò prosåpou umån…
Do not dishonour yourselves with any of these;
for in all these the Nations were dishonoured, which I drove out before your face…
Which expresses the Social Policies of the Persian inspired, Ezraic Ethnic cleansing, in the guise of the imagined Conquest of yore.
måndag, maj 08, 2006
Kardinal Martini tänker högt
Det rapporteras i bladen att förre Ärkebiskopen av Milano, Kardinal Martini, har uttalat stöd för användandet av kondomer för att förhindra spridning av HIV-viruset mellan gifta.
Detta är förstås kardinalens egna funderingar, helt oförenliga med Roms sexualpolitiska läror, som är upphängda på den gnosti-cistiska föreställningen om en identitet mellan samlag och avlelse.
Every sperm is sacred... som Monty Python sjunger.
Under rubriken finner ni ett antal kommentarer på Titus 1:9 en blogg som drives av en anti-modern teolog i Episkopalkyrkan; USAs anglikanska kyrka.
Klicka och läs!
P.S. Titus 1:9 har ett antal "älvor", som av och till plockar bort kommentarer utan synbar anledning (medan en del ganska otäcka får stå kvar...). Här gäller det t.ex. ett flertal utljutelser av pseudonymen CatholicReader. På så vis har nuvarande kommen-taren nr 1. kommit helt i oordning, den borde komma ett gott stycke längre ner.
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