Let the flood gates open.

In my "This is just stupid" post, I had a lot of good responses. Although, the goal of my post wasn't REALLY to say homosexuality was wrong or right. It had more to do with people minding their own business and moving on to more productive aspects of society. Here is some of my reponses to some comments that actually got me thinking...

First off is 1 Corithians 6:9-10:
"Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do no be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards not slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God."

I was actually surpised when I saw this scripture, because of my many years of being involved in the church, I don't remember coming across a scripture that used the word "homosexual". I soon found out why. My family was big on reading (what they called) the original translation from the Greek writings.

What I had seen before was this from the King James Version (KJV):
"Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God."

Notice, then KJV version says "effeminate", while the NIV (New International Version), says male prositutes. Also, notice that the KJV says, "abusers of themselves with mankind", while the NIV says, "homosexual offenders". This can be very confusing to people who come across this since there are about 25 different major translations of the bible.

So here it goes...
The original Greek text had two other words these two sins (in bold above). They were "malakoi", and "arsenokoitai". At the time of Paul's writing (yes Paul wrote this book), the standard word for homosexuals was "paiderasste". In fact, without going into details of research, "malakoi" meant "soft", or "loose". So as in loose men, loose morals, etc. The other word, "arsenokoitai", meant roughly, "an economic exploitation by means of sex". So basically pimping. It is interesting to note though that it used to be translated as "masturbators", until about the 20th century when masturbation become commonly excepted behavior and was then changed to reference homosexuals. The last religious writing in English that interpreted 1 Corinthians 6:9 as referring to masturbation is believed to be the [Roman] Catholic Encyclopedia of 1967.

But anyways, getting back to pimping... this was a big problem in Paul's time... temple prostitution. It is also interesting to note that one of the other verses given in a comment was from (another book by Paul) Romans 1:26-27 (although stated as 2:26-27). These verses seem to be the most obvious as being against homosexuality except that they are a little out of context. So starting at Romans 1:24 we see, "Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another." If you read everything in completness, you see the link to 1 Corithians 6:9-10 about the temple prostiution. Paul is again talking about temple prositution (according to my research). In fact he starts off by talking about these acts between men and women (heterosexual), and then goes on to talk about men and men and women and women. Although, I think the overall point was temple prostitution and not homosexuality.

Phew!!!!...
Well, that sums up my info for today. I love looking at this stuff actually, I have several books about different religions and how they came about and evolved from their start to present day. If we are going to use Paul's words as reference (which statistically you'll have to since he did write 13-14 of the 27 books of the new testament), then let me leave you with this one (which was my whole point in the original post):

Romans 2:1-5
You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God's judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God's judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance? But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed.

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