Sodom & Gomorrah - What the bible really says
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Bookmarking this to read later.
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One thing that I can say about ANYTHING that comes from the Bible is that there is very little you can ascertain from reading a translation, especially into a really structurally different language that developed in a completely different cultural context. There is absolutely no way to translate the grammatical nuances, the nuances of vocabulary, the assumed cultural knowledge and usages of terminologies and conjugations and declensions in ancient Hebrew and Greek - literal translations are useless, and if you've only read the translation, it's a stretch to say you've even read the Bible. Yes, you can glean some of the overarching messages of the teachings of Christianity and what the general basics of right and wrong are according to the Bible, but the rest is literally the interpretation of the translator. This is why we have so many perversions of Christianity here in the US and around the world, because it is so easy to use translation to pervert a document, and that's without even mentioning how the document was likely corrupted as it was copied and passed down through the generations, not to mention the way the Bible was constructed and the political biases that existed in terms of what books were included and which were excluded.
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Thanks for keeping this topic alive! Otherwise would likely never have found it and learned to much useful information.
Lots of thoughts occur, reported in somewhat random order.
Pope Pius IX, "Pio Nono," is the one who proclaimed the doctrine of infallibility, which is much more limited that popular perception suggests, especially among "cafeteria Catholics" who like to pick and choose what "God's Vicar on Earth" (aka God's deputy") can speak to authoritatively. Not that I buy the Roman Catholic story, but those who do presumably believe that the spokesman, the mouthpiece, of "the one, true God" needs to be listened to.
Which makes it v amusing for some of us to watch leading members of the dying political party of white racism, warmongering, and hatred saying the current bridgemaster (pontiff) of the see of St. Peter (a "rock" of a pun not possible in the original languages invoked) is just wrong on simple factual matters like climate change because he's "not a scientist." Actually, he is, but who cares, right?
Besides, he speaks for that commie pinko Kike with his silly message of "lovingkindness" and, ick! "compassion" and, ick! "empathy, both much mocked by "the usual gang of idiots," some of who recently began preaching that their god ordains gun ownership as a divine right for all citizens of the allegedly "Christian nation" that is unknown to history.
Despite all the actual contradictions of the Wholly Babble, including conflicting stories of the death and resurrection of their exalted demigod, the essence of the New Testament message is clear, except to those who prefer legalisms. The current pope seems to think the entire Christian thing was not started and promulgated as a bunch of legalisms and proscriptions, but as an optimistic and progressive message in which the primary duty is to love the one true god and then act like it by loving and caring for everyone else.
"Namaste" is one way that can be internalized. The Religious Society of Friends ("Quakers") talk about responding to "that of God" in everyone. There is a Hindu story of the old woman who told her guru that as much as she liked the idea of loving god, she did not actually, honestly, have that experience. After pondering, he asked if there was anyone she did love and was told "I love my little nephew." Aha! "There it is," he said. THAT is your love of God."
"Even though ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto Me."
Also, as my hillbilly grandmother used to say, "Your righteousness is as filthy rags" in God's eyes. Why would anyone think that the creator of all space and time could possibly be impressed that YOUR shit don't stink? Not as if he's never run into saints or martyrs before you came along to wise him up. More like, you get straight with everyone, which is a full time job and not exactly one that leaves room for you to deal with the mote in your neighbor's eye rather than the log in your own. Etc.
All of which Ted Logan (impersonated by Keanu Reeves) summaries, to my mind anyway, as "Be excellent to one another."
And now, with all this Fascist freakout over refugees, blogger Oliver Willis notes, " If only we had a seasonally appropriate story about middle eastern people seeking refuge being turned away by the heartless." To which wingnut christianists reply, yeah, well, that family wasn't wearing suicide vests." Oddly, while trying to out-religion their competition in hypocritical sanctimony, some of the notorious Gang of Plutocrats party have not been onboard with this kind of rhetorical hijacking, pointing out that "we are all God's children" (St. John McCain) and the idea of a government office of christianist propaganda is an idea that has already been tried– called The Crusades (confirmed bachelor warmonger Lindsay Graham).
Wasn't it St. Paul, the first mortal head of the Roman church, who said that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen"? At any rate, he did not say that faith is a great substitute for empirical evidence and that the one true god gave us both brains and sex organs, but forbids us to use either.
It suddenly occurs to me that the universe created from the mythy mind of God has to be the way he wants it to be or he would have done things differently. And, being omniscient, he knew when he started, what was going to happen-- hence all those supposedly fulfilled prophecies. (Pay no attention to the failed forecast of an imminent return of the itinerant carpenter of folklore, the great Non Event of history.)
Anyway, spintendo asked, "Can you imagine the science of aircraft design or cancer and AIDS research not progressing, but going backwards, where things are no longer as useful as they once were?" Well, yes.
Considering the the GOP has named the head of its Science and Technology committee in the US House of Representatives a religionista who says the Big Bang Theory, evolution, climate change, etc. are "lies straight from the pit of Hell," and there are actually people seriously competing for the most powerful elected office on Earth who believe vaccines as dangerous as the great Global Warming Hoax... yeah, that's pretty reasonable to believe, actually.
Who cares about objective facts? COMMIE facts, to be precise, because "Reality has a well known liberal bias." --Stephen Colbert, the man who named the "truthiness" we all see around us. And that is why the failed technology officer responsible for HPV (the deadly Hewlett Packard Virus) and several leading political contenders can claim with a straight face, with their teeth in their mouth and looking you in the eye, they never said what we can clearly see and hear them saying on videotape. For example, there is a certain clueless doctor who insists China is at war in Syria and that at 13 he was reading the magazine "Psychology Today" even though its first issue was not published until a decade later.
These are the people who believe they are each called directly by their god to assume higher secular office, perhaps so they can create a christianist caliphate of their own. In any case, they cannot all be right about who is listening to the one true god and who is following the murderous orders of Son Of Sam's legendary dog. And I'm sure they all agree that the only viable morality is based on religion, otherwise we would all rape, rob, and kill without constraint. Or at least, apparently, they would. Because, without (their) religion, how would anyone know how to behave?
As for homosex, that was known for millennia as part of "sex," just like fapping and sucking, John Boswell as conclusively demonstrated that the Roman Church did not have a problem with same-sex canoodling until well into the Middle Ages. Which, if I recall correctly, is also the general historical period where any pronoun referring to divinity got a capital letter-- let His wll be done, etc. (As if His will could be NOT done!)
One amusing story the late Yale professor tells involves a story he says all RC divinity students know-- the pope who saw a slaver walking his possessions through the streets of Rome, perhaps on their way to being sold. "Who are those angels?" he asked in Latin. They're not angels, he learned, but English. "Non angeli sed angli." Yeah, well, what gets overlooked in this admiration of golden boys is that these minors were all SLAVES. Not worth mentioning, apparently.
(If you have not encountered polylinguist Boswell, take a look at some of his informative, authoritative, and witty talks on YouTube.)
There is a facetious question that says we "know" the sins of Sodom, but what exactly were the sins of Gomorrah? LOL. Yuk, yuk, yuk.
Interesting to learn they had five sinful sibling cities. And Jesus doesn't seem to think the sins of the cities of the plains were much different from those of God's chosen country's Wall Street and Xenophobic party, but if they keep praying loudly in public against the parts of the divinely authored Constitution, perhaps no one will notice. Lot of progress has been made since First Century Christians did not think they had a mandate to make Earth into their idea of Heaven, but one consequence of that is the latest (final?) human generation seems to think Christianism means hatred, violence, and judgmentalism. Whyever would anyone think that? Oh, right....
There is a reason these fools are called Talibangelicals. They forcefully argue for a version of Sharia law for the nation, just under a different rubric. Same principle.
It certainly is difficult to talk about the people and activities interested in same-sex orgasms based on the English language itself. There is a Greek passage-- no, no, I mean a text in the Greek language-- that says something like "and then the men fucked" but which Robert Graves, the great British novelist known for "I, Claudius" and "Claudius the God," translated that as "and then they committed the disgusting and abominable crime against nature."
As if Penguins, Giraffes, and literally hundred of other species routinely practice "unnatural" behavior.
Cannot find the quote online and my books are still packed away inconveniently, but Robert Duncan, considered "the finest high art poet in America" during his lifetime, has a pretty wonderful poem that ends his argument, "The city known as Sodom is blessed in the eyes of the Lord."
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And another thing:
"We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." -– Richard Dawkins
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pornofan, that was an amazing post, I think I'll just re-read it
Not that I agree with everything you say, but it was full of interesting points -
**_Bible are written by men of faith and not by men of science
There are so many translations (interpretations) of The Bible through out the years
There are some scientific explanation(s) of how the destruction of S & G came about, but some religious org. chooses to ignore it or how it was impressed to our mind tha Mary Magdalene was a prostitute when in reality she was not_**
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Great topic. love the comments. It made me think about a lot of stuff.
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Crazy.
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Currently in the United States, we have 297 separate forms of Christianity as registered religions.
There are over 76 different bibles for those religions.
Most are just retranslations of the King James version. A few are retranslations of the original language books.Whats really fascinating about the translations is how each different sect can translate to their own slant on the ancient words. To add to the confusion, English is one of the most dumbed down languages on the planet.
Here's an example.
In all the ancient languages like Sanskrit, There is no single word equivalent to the word MAN. The ancient languages were much more precise in describing things. There are almost 100 variations and words that can be transcribed to mean Man but none are as specific as the original meaning. On top of that, the preceding words of the language can greatly alter the meaning of the word that was written.
In many of the dead languages, scientist are still finding new meanings for words that they thought they had it nailed down for centuries.
Add on top of all that a cultural bias and you get what you want from the text.Like the 10 commandments. Did you know that it's not the same from book to book? Catholics have one set of commandments and Protestants have another. Evangelical and some fray religions have even another set.
Its just a big crazy confusing mess no matter what you do. I can understand why all the religions have tried to kill each other over the centuries.
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An Anglican priest in Australia put up a sign outside his church calling the Australian government minister in charge of immigration a sodomite. He explained that according to a correct reading of the bible, the "sin of sodom" is not a man having sex with another man. The sin of sodom is inhospitality.
"The sin of Sodom is greatly misunderstood by those who usually choose to do so, it has nothing to do with homosexuality, it is all about hospitality, or more to the point lack thereof, and particularly about the condition of the heart that leads to inhospitable behaviour," Fr Bower said in the post.
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**_Bible are written by men of faith and not by men of science
There are so many translations (interpretations) of The Bible through out the years
There are some scientific explanation(s) of how the destruction of S & G came about, but some religious org. chooses to ignore it or how it was impressed to our mind tha Mary Magdalene was a prostitute when in reality she was not_**
The region has major methane pockets. This was one of these that released in an earthquake that caused Jericho to blow up and burn.
I love Israel Finkelstein (archeologist). He's a jew that looks for things in the bible/torah, but says that science is the most important thing. He lets the facts tell the story, whether it agrees with his religion or not. He's done several documentaries on his own and been in nearly 100 others.
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damn i wish i had been part of this discussion.
in my opinion christianity and the bible were founded and written in a contemporary context. no judgement to that. the societies that adopted christianity has profoundly evolved and we live in a completely different world today than the time when christianity was popularised. im glad that some churches of christianity adopts a more liberal approach to the original sin but at the same time all the religiously motivated conversion camp are atrocious and should be illegal in my opinion.
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An Anglican priest in Australia put up a sign outside his church calling the Australian government minister in charge of immigration a sodomite. He explained that according to a correct reading of the bible, the "sin of sodom" is not a man having sex with another man. The sin of sodom is inhospitality.
"The sin of Sodom is greatly misunderstood by those who usually choose to do so, it has nothing to do with homosexuality, it is all about hospitality, or more to the point lack thereof, and particularly about the condition of the heart that leads to inhospitable behaviour," Fr Bower said in the post.
That isn't actually true. Genesis shows that it was sexual. Ezekiel shows the underlying cause.
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Q: How many men escaped the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah?
A: Certainly, a Lot. -
@raphjd Never complimented you on this article. Here goes. I agree with main point, though not with all side points.
Sodom was derived from the Hebrew word "S'dom," which means "burnt."
That's interesting because "faggot" has a meaning of "A bundle of sticks and branches bound together" - that you throw on a fire ie. burnt.
Various stories say how "faggot" came to mean "sexually subordinate male" but I figure it's another time homophobes connected gay bottoms to Sodom.
Why is it that we are told that the bible is an accurate written copy of the precise oral tradition when they can't even remember the actual names of the 2 cities?!
Easy to explain: the disaster made an impression. Bible has many times when something is renamed after big event; and sometimes, old name forgotten or left out.
bring them out so they could "know" them. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing exactly what "know" means in this situation
To me, "interrogate" them - like "get to know them, with undertone of suspicion & questions, potential violence" - is most natural & plausible reading.
No where does it say what the sex of the angels are
That's interesting. Bible usually represents angels as male, when on Earth. But as you say, it's unspecified here - and IF the angels were represented on Earth as female this time, then Lot offering his 2 daughters under a sexual interpretation starts to make more sense.
"anshei ha'ir, anshei S'dom" means "the people of the city [not only men]
Very interesting, if true.
You'd think that with all the fire and brimstone raining down...
This gets us to the scientific part. Sodom's destruction was more a 3900C flash event. (Could have rained stones in outlying areas.)
First - Bible's internal geographic indicators strongly put Sodom at North East end of Dead Sea.
https://www.amazon.com/Discovering-City-Sodom-Fascinating-Testaments-ebook/dp/B008J2BQTA
Known to 19th century scholars. Then 20th century scholars decided to put Sodom at south end of Dead Sea. That view still lives among 21st century scholars - but not all - pendulum begins to swing back.
And indeed there is a key ruin at NE end of Dead Sea, now called Tall El Hammam.
And it was destroyed roughly 3700 years ago by meteor airburst like Tuskunga of 1908.
Here is the paper, written by astrophysicists (NOT Steven Collins):
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97778-3
The question is not whether it happened. The paper went through unusual extra rounds of peer review after people kept questioning it. And survived.
The question, rather, is whether it is correct to move Abraham & Lot into same era & location & thus identify Tall El Hammam with Bible's "burnt - a ruined heap" city.
I say yes. Arguments exist on both sides. But arguments on the "no" side tend to be regressive misunderstandings of the "yes" side by people who simply hate Bible & want it to be 100% myth.
In a generation or two, I think identification of Tall El Hammam with Bible's "burnt - a ruined heap" city will be taken as obvious.
Thus, it will be (or maybe is already) impossible to call Sodom's existence & destruction a myth.
Still the question remains of WHETHER GOD destroyed Sodom and if yes, WHY. Let's get back to that.
Ezekeiel [sic; Ezekiel] 16:49 says "Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy." Again, no mention of homosexuality.
Yes. Well, you must continue into verse 50 which mentions people doing "detestable things". But again, that could mean anything. Still no specific reference to homosexuality.
Matthew 10:14-15 is a quote from Jesus...
Correct. Christ's quote links Sodom to the idea of deep inhospitality - cruelty to the needy & stranger - not to sex.
Judges 19:13-27...
That story, to me, is a little more obviously sexual.
Homophobes often forget how NORMAL, yet still potentially-disgraceful or sometimes-disgraceful, male-homosexual acts are in ancient & Middle Eastern cultures.
Guys will toss each other off, may even fuck each other secretly. But public rape - str8 rape or gay rape - Very disgraceful to the rape victim (female or male), and, since it shows cruelty and inhospitality, somewhat disgraceful to the rapist.
In other words: If Judges story is sexual, then it's a story about cruel public rape.
We can agree that all rape is wrong - whether it's adults having sex by force, or people molested who just can't give a meaningful consent (kids, needy subordinates, the dead).
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This is way too much reading for me (ironically my best friend is an avid reader!)
I would point out that until very recently, there were very limited means of contraception. Because of that, heterosexuals would routinely engage in anal and oral sex as a substitute for vaginal sex. Even today, many people who are not fans of contraception use anal sex as an alternative.
I think the bible is not picking on homosexuals that much.. but instead on the practice of sodomy / anal sex between a man and a woman.
They probably considered homosexuality to be a sacrament reserved for the clergy to have sex with young boys. -
@lololulu19 "Too much reading" - Agree - I skimmed most of it - only responded to @raphjd original piece - which was thoughtful & interesting - whereas other comments here tend to change subject or be a different level.
Bible clearly grates on some people - which is OK in big picture, like "you do you" - but I slightly wonder why such people are in the thread, except maybe just to piss in it.
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@blablarg18 agree 100%
