Tenchi MP
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Jesus and Vegetarianism - 2006/10/04 12:58
So when we talk about changing one's life, giving one's time, life, energy, mind, resources to God and worship him with all one's heart mind soul, etc., well we all agree to that.
To be non violent, not to kill others (humans and animals alike, not even for food (it is quite clear that the Early Christians were vegetarians, see below), we all agree on that. We are citizens of the spiritual world and we should not unnecessarily use our valuable time in mundane pursuits. Unless we give up material life and turn with great determination towards spiritual life our life will be a loss and end up in disappointment.
On the other side when we start taking about the resurrection of the flesh and that Jesus died for our sins, well these are theological concepts that were superimposed on the teachings of Jesus from Paul on and really miss the point of his actual teachings to mankind.
Quote from the book "Food for peace":
Major stumbling blocks for many Christians are the belief that Christ ate meat and the many references to meat in the New Testament. But close study of the original Greek manuscripts shows that the vast majority of the words translated as "meat" are trophe, brome, and other words that simply mean "food" or "eating" in the broadest sense.
For example, in the Gospel (Luke 8:55) we read that Jesus raised a woman from the dead and "commanded to give her meat." The original
Greek word translated as "meat" is phago, which means only "to eat".
So, what Christ actually said was, "Let her eat."
The original Greek word for meat is kreas ("flesh"), and it is never used in connection with Christ. In Luke 24:41-43 the disciples offered him fish and a honeycomb and he took it (singular, we can guess which one). Nowhere in the New Testament is there any direct reference to
Jesus eating meat.
This is in line with Isaiah's famous prophecy: "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. He shall eat butter and honey, so that he may know the evil from the good." (Isaiah 7:14-15) (this itself says that meat eating destroys all good discretion in man. It is quite typical, that the second part of the sentence is omitted in Matthew 1:23).
Jesus rebuked strongly the pharisees with the words: "...and if you had known what it means: "I desire mercy and not sacrifice, ...you would not condemn the innocent," (Matthew 12:6) which clearly disapproves of the killing of animals, as this is a verse taken from
Hosea 6:6: "I desire mercy instead of sacrifice, the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings..." (note: again the the 2nd part of the sentence is omitted in Matthew 12:6).
He strongly opposed the custom of temple animal sacrifices, violently driving those who were selling oxen, sheep and pigeons and the money-changers out of the temple (John 2:13-15).
His words: "...you shall not make my father's house a house of trade (which in earlier translations always was translated as "murders' den").
We all know that according to Matthew 3:4 John the Baptist was refusing to eat meat. ("...and his food was wild locust (bean) and wild honey." (orig. Greek: enkris, oil cake and akris: locust/honey)
But we never hear of the sheer overwhelming evidence which points to
Jesus being a vegetarian: No less than seven of Jesus' twelve disciples refused meat food (the rest we do not know). This naturally reflects the teachings of Jesus, as: "...a servant is not greater than his master..." (John 14:16).
The seven are:
1. Peter, "...whose food was bread, olives and herbs..." (Clem. Hom.
XII,6)
2. James: Church Father Eusebius, quoting the Churchfather Hegesippus (about 160 AD) is stating:
"...But Hegesippus, who lived immediately after the apostles, gives the most accurate account in the fifth book of his memoirs. He writes as follow: '...James, the brother of the Lord, succeeded to the government of the Church in conjunction with the apostles. He has been called the Just by all from the time of our savior to the present day;
for there were many that bore the name James.
'He was holy from his mother's womb; he drank no wine, nor strong drink, nor did he eat flesh. No razor came upon his head, he did not anoint himself with oil and he did not use the bath. He alone was permitted to enter the holy place; for he wore no woolen but linen garments. And he was in the habit of entering alone into the temple, and was frequently found upon his knees begging forgiveness for the people, so that his knees became hard like those of a camel in consequence of constantly bending them on his worship of
God...'" (Eusebius, Church History II, Ch. XXIII,5-7, Nicene and Post
Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Oxford, N.Y., 1890, Vol I, p.125)
It is interesting that Hegesippus is saying that James, the brother of
Jesus, was holy from his mother's womb on which would apply that Mary was not eating meat either and that she never fed him meat as a child.
That being the case one would think it to be clear that the whole family of Jesus and naturally he himself was vegetarian. In that sense the statement of Churchfather Eusebius "he was holy from his mother's womb" is most indicative pointing towards the vegetarianism of Jesus.
3. Thomas: The apocryphal Acts of Thomas (Ch. 20), which actually were widely in use among early Christian sects, depict this disciple of
Jesus as ascetic: "He continually fasts and prays, and abstaining from eating of flesh and drinking wine, he eats only bread, with salt and drink and water, and wears the same garment in fine weather and winter, and accepts nothing from anyone, and gives whatever he has to others."
4. Matthew: "It is far better to be happy than to have a demon dwelling with us. And happiness is found in the practice of virtue.
Accordingly, the apostle Matthew partook of seeds and nuts, fruits and vegetables without of flesh. And John, who carried temperance to the extreme, ate locusts and wild honey..." (Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor, II.I,16: On Eating)
(Note here the strong hint of Clement towards the vegetarianism of
John the Baptist.)
5. Matthias (who filled the place of Judas - Acts 1:21-26). His food as told by Church Father Clement of Alexandria was the same as
Matthews. (Clement/Stromata III,4,26)
6. Andrew and 7. Jude: Andrew (Peter's brother in both flesh and faith) and Jude of Bethsaida, originally two of John the Baptists' followers, must have followed the Baptist's austere diet. (See above under Matthew)
Paul also says: "...It is good neither to drink wine or eat flesh..." (Roman 14:20-21) though his commitment altogether seems altogether somewhat less categorical.
Beyond that there are strong arguments of a similar nature by many of the Fathers of the early Church:
"...How unworthy do you press the example of Christ as having come eating and drinking into the service of your lusts: I think that He who pronounced not the full, but the hungry and thirsty 'Blessed,' who professed His work to be the completion of His Father's Will, I think that he was wont to abstain, instructing them to labor for that 'Meat' which lasts to eternal life, and enjoying in their common prayers petition, not for flesh food but for bread only..." - Quintus
Septimius Tertullianus (AD 155).
This knowledge of Tertullianus was supported by fragments of the writings by the Apostolic Father Papias (AD 60 - 125).
"...The unnatural eating of flesh is as polluting as the heathens worship of devils with its sacrifices and impure feasts, through participation in which a man becomes a fellow eater with devils..." (2nd century scripture Clemente Homilies - Hom. XII)
Clemens Prudentius, the first Christian hymn writer exhorts in one of his hymns his fellow Christians "...not to pollute their hands and hearts by the slaughter of innocent cows and sheep..."
Accordingly the Apostle Matthew, "partook of seeds, and nuts, and vegetables, without the use of flesh... is there not within a temperate simplicity, a wholesome variety of eatables, vegetables, roots, olives, herbs, milk, cheese, fruits?" - Churchfather Clement of
Alexandria (Titus Flavius Clemens, AD 150 - 220)
"...We, the Christian leaders, practice abstinence from the flesh of animals to subdue our bodies. The unnatural eating of flesh is of demonic origin." And about the early Christians: "...No streams of blood are among them. No dainty cookery, no heaviness of head. Nor are horrible smells of flesh meats among them or disagreeable fumes from the kitchen.." - St. Chrysostomos (AD 347-404)
A most important purport to a controversy, much cherished and much cited by meat-eating Christians we find in the writings of the
Churchfather Jerome (AD 340 - 420), who gave us the Vulgate, the authorized Latin version of the Bible still in use today.
The controversy is based on the fact that in Genesis 1:29 meat-eating is clearly forbidden, "...I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it.
They will be yours for food..."
However after the flood it appears that meat-eating is all of a sudden permitted: "...The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it..." (Genesis 9:2-4)
Writing in confutation of Jovinian, a monk of Milan, who abandoned asceticism, St. Jerome (died A.D. 440) holds up vegetarianism as the
Christian ideal and the restoration of the primeval rule of life.
St. Jerome says:
"...He (Jovinian) raises the objection that when God gave His second blessing, permission was granted to eat flesh, which had not in the first benediction been allowed. He should know that just as divorce according to the Saviour's word was not permitted from the beginning, but on account of the hardness of our heart was a concession of Moses to the human race, (Matthew 9:8: "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.") ...so too the eating of flesh was unknown until the deluge. But after the deluge, like the quails given in the desert to the murmuring people, the poison of flesh-meat was offered to our teeth. The Apostle writing to the Ephesians (Eph. 1:10) teaches that
God had purposed in the fullness of time to sum up and renew in Christ
Jesus all things which are in heaven and in earth. Whence also the
Saviour himself in the Revelation of John says (Rev. 1:8; 22:13), "I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending."
At the beginning of the human race we neither ate flesh, nor gave bills of divorce, nor suffered circumcision for a sign. Thus we reached the deluge. But after the deluge, together with the giving of the law which no one could fulfill, flesh was given for food, and divorce was allowed to hard-hearted men, and the knife of circumcision was applied, as though the hand of God had fashioned us with something superfluous. But once Christ has come in the end of time, and Omega passed into Alpha and turned the end into the beginning, we are no longer allowed divorce (see Matthew 19:3-9), nor are we circumcised, nor so we eat flesh, for the Apostle says (Rom. 14:21), "It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine." For wine as well as flesh was consecrated after the deluge." (Against Jovinianus, Book I,18)
"The steam of meat darkens the light of the spirit... One hardly can have virtue when one enjoys meat meals and feasts..." - St. Basil (AD
320 - 79)
Besides that contemporary heathen observers describe the early
Christians as abstaining from meat:
Pliny, Governor of Bithynia (where Peter preached) referred to the early Christians in a letter to Trajan, the Roman Emperor, as a ..."contagious superstition abstaining from flesh food..."
Seneca (5 BC - 65 AD), stoic philosopher and tutor of Nero, describes the Christians as "...a foreign cultus or superstition (under imperial suspicion) who abstain from flesh food..."
And Josephus Flavius says about the early Christians: "...They assemble before sunrising and speak not a word of profane matters but put up certain prayers... and sit down together each one to a single plate of one sort of innocent food..."
The scholar E.M. Szekely claims to have recovered and translated from an old Aramaic scripture, "...Therefore, he who kills, kills his brother... And the flesh of slain beasts in his body will become his own tomb. For I tell you truly, he who kills, kills himself, and who so eats the flesh of slain beasts, eats of the body of death... Kill neither men, nor beasts, nor the food which goes into your mouth...
For life comes from life, and from death comes always death. For everything which kills your foods, kills your bodies also. And your bodies become what your foods are, even as your spirits become what your thoughts are..." - E.M. Szekely, Gospel of Peace
And Albert Schweitzer says: "...Ethics has not only to do with mankind but with the animal creation as well. This is witnessed in the purpose of St. Francis of Assisi. Thus we shall arrive that ethics is reverence for all life. This is the ethic of love widened universally.
It is the ethic of Jesus now recognized as a necessity of thought...
Only a universal ethic which embraces every living creature can put us in touch with the universe and the will which is there manifest..."
Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801 - 90) says: "...Cruelty to animals is as if man did not love God... They have done us no harm, they have no power of resistance... there is something dreadful, so satanic in tormenting those who have never harmed us and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power..."
Tolstoy and Dukhobor (Orthodox Russian Christian) were of the opinion that meat-eating is against the tenets of Christianity.
His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Founder-Acarya of ISKCON (Hare Krishna Movement) concludes: "...There are many rascals who violate their own religious principles. While it clearly says according to Judeo-Christian scriptures, "Thou shalt not kill," they are giving all kinds of excuses. Even the heads of religions indulge in killing animals while trying to pass as saintly persons.
This mockery and hypocrisy in human society has brought about unlimited calamities..."
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Shopper-Princess
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re:Jesus and Vegetarianism - 2006/10/04 17:30
· Vegans contribute to the deaths of animals by their use of wood and paper products, and roads and all types of buildings, and by their own diet just as everyone else does.
What vegans try to avoid are products which provide life (and death) for farm animals, but even then they would have to avoid the following in order to be successful:
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JDH
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re:Jesus and Vegetarianism - 2006/10/04 22:02
<snip>
We may assume so, although it is only an assumption.
There are now services which have been written for a vegetarian
Passover supper, which are used by vegetarian and AR-supporting
Jews.
The vegetarians/ARAs who insist that Jesus or the early Christians had to be vegetarians (highly unlikely) are making the same mistake as the Bible-thumping fundies who quote proof-texts which modern scholars now almost universally believe had nothing to do with homosexuality, and certainly nothing to do with gayness as we now understand it -- like the story of Sodom, which deals with lack of hospitality to guests, not gay sex per se. The question is not whether Jesus Himself, incarnate, ate meat. He was a man of his culture. He made no protest against human slavery, or the oppression of women, or the Roman aggressive imperialism. Why should we expect him to deal directly with a post-1970's concept of animal rights?
Yet Christians would universally, today, agree that slavery and racism are anti-Christian. We simply have to wait until it becomes clear to the larger culture that our treatment of animals, and our holding them in slavery, are also contrary to the mind of the loving and just Christ.
What Christian AR supporters need to focus on is the _spirit_ of Jesus's message and the saints' example ( many were vegetarian) -- concentrating on the message of love and non-violence, and the self-giving sacrifice of the higher for the lower we see modeled in Jesus and his disciples, and our obligation as stewards to guard and cherish God's creation, which is not ours, but His.
We do not own anything, certainly not animals. We cannot do with them as we wish. We must do with them what God wishes, and he has said, "I desire mercy, and not sacrifice (of animals)."
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re:Jesus and Vegetarianism - 2006/10/05 00:09
<snip>
Because it is a matter of opinion whom it applies to. I could quote the same verse as applying to you, but I won't, because I believe in charity toward those who disagree with me. I assume you are honest in your beliefs, although I do consider them both misguided and potentially dangerous.
The same goes for Mel Gibson. I was watching his interview last night, and I'm convinced he's honest in his beliefs, and he has a legitimate right to make a literalist version of the Passion. His critics are also right that his version ignores much of modern scholarship and has serious potential to encourage anti-Semitism. I do find it disturbing that Jews were evidently refused access to early showings of the film, and had to sneak in to see it. Swan and I will go see the movie, certainly, and it will undoubtedly be a hot topic of conversation for a while, like the earlier "Last Temptation of Christ" or "Jesus Christ, Superstar". I like "Jesus Christ, Superstar" in its own way; it asks interesting questions and is stylish, if a bit dated now. A graphic portrayal of the Crucifixion is a good corrective to some of the more sanitized versions. I do hope people who see Gibson's version will _also_ read some of the criticisms of it and perhaps see some other versions to get a more balanced view.
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Syntaxis
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re:Jesus and Vegetarianism - 2006/10/05 04:05
Yes, they did. Your argument is as specious as the Baptist tee-totallers' about the alcohol content in wine of that era. Remember the parable of the wineskins: why would they burst if the grape juice didn't ferment? The foods eaten in that era are much the same as today.
Perhaps you were unaware that such practices have been banned in the US and most countries.
Not all meat is injected with hormones or antibiotics. You know this, don't you?
Funny you would choose that argument after Karen abandoned her son.
<snip rest of hyperbole>
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re:Jesus and Vegetarianism - 2006/10/05 12:37
<...>
"Accepted historical context"? Who else accepts this besides you?
<...>
I can say the same of historical-critical methods, particularly with respect to OT criticism. The "scholars" are not in agreement about JEDP sources for every text, nor do they have anything but their conjecture to work from. I've addressed some matters with Lesley from the point that Talmudic Judaism shows a continuity of religious tought over thousands of years. Why don't we find such distinctions about "source" material in their writings?
I would avoid it for plenty of other reasons, including the fact that I find it repulsive.
That's not much of an argument for validity. Plenty of scholars and theologians disagree with yours, too. "Scholarship" is completely worthless if it misses the point. Some "scholars" believe the Bible is a code, some reject the clear meanings and interject their own peculiar and esoteric notions (like Linzey finding AR in the Bible). Such are bellyservers, not God-servers.
The crowd didn't know they were angels. They told Lot, "We don't want your daughters, we want those men."
The fact remains: he wasn't a political activist. He said, "My kingdom is not of this world." You haven't gotten that through your thick skull yet.
To those who believe, yes. To those who continue in sin and unbelief, a much different fate awaits.
Of course: for those who accept the clear meaning of what's written, it means we can eat them; for those who reject the clear meaning and engage in esoteric sophistry to
So would I, dummy. If you've noticed (and you obviously haven't), I don't rely on symbolic visions to formulate doctrine. The clear teachings of Christ and St Paul, not to mention Moses, suffice for that.
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re:Jesus and Vegetarianism - 2006/10/05 15:54
12 On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb, Jesus' disciples asked him, "Where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to eat the Passover?"
13 So he sent two of his disciples, telling them, "Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him.
14 Say to the owner of the house he enters, 'The Teacher asks:
Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?'
(refer to Exodus 12 for details about the Passover food)
Exodus 12
1 The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt,
2 "This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year.
3 Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. [...]
6 Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight.
7 Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs.
8 That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast.
9 Do not eat the meat raw or cooked in water, but roast it over the fire-head, legs and inner parts.
Here's a little something else:
Luke 2
22 When the time of their purification according to the Law of Moses had been completed, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord
23 (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, "Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord" ),
24 and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: "a pair of doves or two young pigeons."
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re:Jesus and Vegetarianism - 2006/10/05 22:51
Of course they did. But they didn't eat the lamb we eat today. The lamb (and the ox, the cattle, etc) was not penned in tiny cages, fed on scraps of its dead kindred, injected with hormones and antibiotics and deprived of its mother's care.
The cattle sacrificed in the temple were not dehorned, branded, fed on chemical-laced pellets, kept in crates as calves, fed the brains of its own species or, after collapsing from illness or broken bones incurred from cruel transportation and herding practises, dragged by a winch into the killing floor to be hung on hooks while still alive, plunged into boiling water and slit from groin to chin with a knife.
If, in fact "you are what you eat", is is any wonder today's society is used to being penned, led, goaded, forcefed and hoodwinked?
A Native American man once told me "No wonder the Euro-Americans live such rectangular lives. Everything you use, see, touch, live in, eat or raise, comes in the shape of a box! Your food comes from square pens in square fields, captive from birth, cut up into square pieces in square store displays, cooked in square ovens... You are molded to fit neatly next to your neighbor and woe betide any one of you who is a shape that can't be stored on a shelf! NOTHING you eat has ever been free, made its own decision, lived its natural life....Your society follows the examples of its aninmals... and you pity the Indian!"
Anyway, I'll leave you all to your usual squabbling... just wanted to toss that bit into the ring.
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re:Jesus and Vegetarianism - 2006/10/06 01:56
No, it remains an assumption unless we have some concrete historical evidence to confirm it. Much of history will always rest on assumptions, but that is still not proof.
None the less, as I said, whether the incarnate Jesus ate lamb at the Passover is irrelevant for the issue of Christian-based vegetarianism in the present day, just as is the probability that
Jesus at some point used items created by slave labor, or was served by slaves at some event. If the servants who filled the water-jars at the wedding at Cana were slaves -- as is certainly possible -- that does not mean we should own slaves today. The support for chattel slavery of humans in the Bible is explicit and overwhelming, even in the example of Paul returning a run-away slave to his master. Our current culture is not that of first-century Judea.
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re:Jesus and Vegetarianism - 2006/10/06 05:55
Karen's incessant butchering of Scripture isn't funny, but I know what you mean by that.
She approves of pedophilia and bestiality:
...I am willing to believe zoophile activity may be harmless, in and of itself, if done responsibly.
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re:Jesus and Vegetarianism - 2006/10/06 16:49
<...>
...obfuscate the real issue, then it's a novel, esoteric, and peculiar teaching.
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re:Jesus and Vegetarianism - 2006/10/06 19:35
No, there is no doubt to whom it applies. It applies to you in every instance.
You *can't*. I don't diminish the Law one bit, nor do I diminish the power of the Gospel. I hold both up. You diminish one at the expene of both.
Yes, I remember how you don't want the church door to hit the Anglican traditionalists on their butts as they leave the apostacy you've supported.
I realize you have an axe to grind with historic Christianity. That is why you've joined the assault on those who uphold the Bible in your church and why you support homosexual "marriage" and ordaining homosexual bishops.
Yes, as do most Christians. Wonder why other Anglican bodies around the world are disfellowshipping your apostate sect?
Ipse dixit. I've read some of the reviews and concerns expressed about this and find the concerns unfounded.
Bullshit. Many ADL leaders were brought in to review it throughout production. Their feedback was used throughout production and post-production, and Gibson even added disclaimers and removed scenes -- some scenes which those who screened it earlier wish had stayed in the final cut.
Neither of which is even comparable to what Gibson sought to portray in the Passion. The former was pure fiction in which Christ was presented as imperfect, the latter was a ghastly, overdone musical.
I think Gibson's is more balanced than most of the critics' views -- especially all the baseless histrionics about anti-semitism. Gibson believes the Bible and wanted to make a film that captured the suffering of Christ. Others have already made films which ignore, take license with, or grossly distort what the Gospels say. Why should he have followed their lead? That kind of redundancy may win the praise of those of you who reject the clear teachings of Scripture, but it's unfaithful to what he believes. He wants to serve God, not his critics.
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re:Jesus and Vegetarianism - 2006/10/06 20:57
No, it was not.
I would suggest reading Daniel Helminiak's book _What The Bible Really
Says About Homosexuality_, which is a short version of the accepted historical context for the interpretation of the texts dealing with the subject. Fr. Helminiak is a Roman Catholic priest. He notes that:
"The line that divides the Christian churches no longer falls between
Catholics and Protestants. The line of division falls between those who follow a literal reading of the Bible and those who follow a historical-critical reading.... So another advantage of the historical-critical method is that it takes history and God's working in history seriously."
He notes the parallel story of the Levite's concubine in Judges, and adds that "Clearly the story of the Levite's concubine is indifferent to homosexuality or heterosexuality -- as is the story of Sodom. A man or woman would serve as equally valid sex objects. And rape in either case was equally heinous. Sexual orientation is not the point. In fact, neither is sex...Not homosexuality, but hardheartedness is the offense of Gibeah and of Sodom." Even Jesus understood the story in that context, because when He tells his followers to "shake the dust" from their sandals if they are not received by a town, he notes that it will be more tolerable for Sodom in that day than for that town.
Obviously, Jesus isn't suggesting His followers will be raped by men --
He is paralleling the inhospitality of the towns in both cases.
The passage in Leviticus refers to ritual purity, not sexual orientation; the mixing of kinds (i.e. male and female roles), similar to the "abomination" of sewing two kinds of seed in a field, or making cloth of two kinds of fiber. This is why Lesbian sex is not mentioned, only male passive sexual activity. It is similar to the condemnation of cross-dressing. "Concern was not at all about homosexuality; such thinking was simply absent. Concern was about purity rules." The one passage supposedly referring to Lesbian sex, Helminiak notes, deals with other taboos actually forbidden by
Jewish law, like sex during the menstrual period or sex with an uncircumcised man, or things which were not common in the Jewish culture but found among the gentile converts of the time (similar to the controversy over "unclean" foods or circumcision ). "Paul introduces this "uncleanness" precisely to make the point that such matters have no importance in Christ." The quote about "alien flesh" in Jude refers to sex with angels, not homosexuality (since the beings sent to Sodom were angels, not humans, and the whole point was abuse of messengers of God ).
There is also the interesting story of Jesus healing the Centurian's slave. Helminiak notes that the word used was not the one used for other servants, but one commonly used for a male lover. He argues that in this case, Jesus actually addressed a male gay _relationship_ and gave no condemnation of it (one might note that he also expressed no condemnation of a slave/master relationship in this case, another example of the different cultural context of the time).
So accept these thoughts or not, at least you have to recognize that your literalist reading -- equally culture-bound within the conventions of our own limited era -- is not the last, or even the most common, scholarly interpretation of these texts today. Your view is a parochial one rapidly becoming an isolated enclave of those trapped in an outdated, historically-illiterate context.
As I say, believe what you want. If you want to avoid homosexual sex because you believe God forbids it -- more power to you. No one is going to force you into it. But accept that your view is only one of the existing interpretations, and others -- other theologians and
Biblical scholars -- disagree.
Or -- sex with angels.
<snip>
Well, he was certainly condemned and executed by the Romans for being exactly that.
<snip>
That is, of course, questionable, depending on how one interprets the texts.
<snip>
And yours as well.
(btw -- in my class this evening, I offered the suggestion that the passage about Peter's dream referred to the controversy over Jewish ritual purity laws, not vegetarianism. My priest agreed. )
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Syntaxis
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re:Jesus and Vegetarianism - 2006/10/06 21:15
Correct. As usual, the OP only sees what she wants in the Bible. If it's about homosexuality, she says it's about bad manners and hospitality. If it's about fishing, as Jesus and his disciples did, it was about something else.
The person (Karen, aka "Rat") to whom you replied is an apostate
Episcopalian. If she even has a Bible, she reads it with rose-colored glasses. Nothing ever means what it says, just what she and her radicals want it to mean.
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re:Jesus and Vegetarianism - 2006/10/07 01:24
It's among the safest assumptions one can make, like the sun will rise in the East tomorrow morning.
Pretty recent developments. A Jew of that era -- with very, very few exceptions -- ate the Passover lamb as commanded.
No. It was about homosexuality, not the lack of a Welcome Wagon lady.
Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
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