Many Scholars Challenge the Orthodox Interpretation of Sodom and Gomorrah


If some standard were available for "sin," surely it would include taking a story in the Bible and twisting it to mean something different than what it meant. Equally sinful would be assuming one knows what a passage means when no one knows what the writer was trying to convey. Either would make it a sin to use the story of Sodom and Gomorrah to condemn homosexual people or homosexuality.

The link outlines the problems in using the Bible to claim homosexuality is any kind of "sin" let alone a serious high ranking sin. There is simply no place whatsoever in the Bible that declares someone with an attraction to the same sex is a sinner. Collection plates have been filled and denominations split over a mistake in understanding the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and other stuff in the Bible.

A favorite verse of prejudice Christians is Leviticus 18:22, it is an abomination for a man shall not lie with a man as with a woman. Every anti gay Christian site I ever looked at concludes this condemns homosexuality, same sex attraction. Where does it say the men were attracted others of the same sex? It may well have referred to heterosexual men who hated each other. There are references in the Bible of victorious armies humiliating the losing soldiers by raping them. In doing so they were referring to the losing men as nothing but women. Maybe this happened in other circumstances as well as following battles. 

The Sodom and Gomorrah story is equally problematic. Orthodox interpretations tell us the cities were wall to wall homosexual men. That is so unlikely as to be laughable. Why is there reason to believe there would have been such a place ever anywhere? Whatever point the authors were trying to make it is almost certain the men in the audience were heterosexual. Enlightened scholars have pointed the story most likely referred to man on man rape, humiliation. The link points out the story is a lesson on hospitality. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were inhospitable. Even Jesus was quoted as saying this.

As time goes on, weaponizing the Bible to puff up the self righteous has become more difficult.

 

   

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