do you think its time for another change so that christians will not persecute gays and other non christians.
back then being gay was thought of as a disease.. and all those who had a disease were thought of as sinners... today there is a theory that peopl are born gay. plus the fact that it is not a disease...
dont u think god is testing us.. instead of persecuting gays and calling them sinners.. we should not tell them they are going to hell cause they are gay and because it says so in the bible...
the mind of people when the bible was written has changed from the mind today.. why cant the bible evolve as well?
2006-06-20 09:04:21 · 8 answers · asked by she 3 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Philosophy
Your assumptions aren't exactly accurate.
We do know that large portions of the Old Testament is pretty close (barring what's considered "cosmetic" deviations) in content to what we have now, based on the Dead Sea Scroll documents discovered 1948 or so. Those documents were dated around the time of Christ.
Since the New Testament was being transmitted along with our verison of the OT, this gives some extra credibility to the text.
Your reference to Nicea is simpy where the books that were considered legitimate were codified. The canon was already tacitly recognized by that point; it simply became "official" then, so it's not like a bunch of power-hungry religious nuts burned everything they disagreed with. They simply validated what was already agreed upon, at the "canon" level (i.e., which books were legitimate), rather than editing out anything internal to the accepted books.
Homosexuality was not considered a disease, as far as I can tell. Rather than being an "identity" as our culture has proclaimed to be (for perhaps one of the first times ever in human history), it was considered unnatural *behavior.* Homosexuality was an action, not an attitude, and it went against what the Jews considered to be the natural order -- and was practiced by the pagan nations as part of their occult rituals in Canaan.
Jews considered it unclean because of this; they drew a very sharp delineation between themselves and the other nations who did not follow Jehovah.
In terms of how the church should be treating homosexuals? Things have gotten pretty ugly nowadays. Homosexuals felt (rightly) mistreated and dehumanized by the sterile Christian culture in the last century, so they defended and justified themselves by making homosexuality into an issue of identity, not behavior. Now the battle lines are drawn; one cannot comment on whether the behavior is healthy or not, because people take it as a slam against their identity.
The church should be treating homosexuals just like they would treat anyone else. We spend far too much time (on both sides) trying to point out why the other guy isn't acceptable or why we are different, rather than relating to them like real people and serving them out of love and respect.
We should be more concerned with helping our brothers and sisters to get through the hard times of life, rather than focusing on what we consider to be their missteps.
Take care of that first, and personal growth and health (whatever that entails) will follow.
2006-06-20 09:47:39 · answer #1 · answered by Jennywocky 6 · 2⤊ 0⤋
First of all, I don't think the Bible has changed at all. It has always been the same. The only changes was the languages of the Bible so people can understand it. And the different versions also so people can understand it. I don't think people are born gay. God gave us a free will and we choose whether we want to be straight or gay. Either way God loves us all.
2006-06-20 16:12:35 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
The bible is such a mix of different writings, different authors, different origins, different facts. It is a wonderful historical record - but of what facts, it is not clear.
It has been translated many times. Even the original language is not uniform: some parts are originally in aramaic, others in hebrew, others in greek. It is a challange to translate something of such an extent, and it explain why interpretations have been so widely different!
No, I don't believe that willfully changing the content will make it any more true. Either it is the word of god (personally I don't believe it), or it is not. If it is, then it would be blasphemy to adapt it, if it is not, then it does not matter.
2006-06-20 16:22:19 · answer #3 · answered by OneLilithHidesAnother 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Being Gay is no different from being Black or White. It is a term that is used to classify and stereotype people. Along with the Bible God also gave us the ability to independently think. We don't need to change the Bible to know that it is wrong to persecute persons because of their lifestyles. On the same token we do not need to make special considerations for persons because of their lifestyles as well.
2006-06-20 16:16:42 · answer #4 · answered by JazzyJB 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Actually, it wasn't gay in and of itself, but a misuse of commodity.
It was felt that a man had a limited amount of semen and it shouldn't go spurting into space or up someone's bunghole.
It had to go into the woman. (By the way, the sin of Gomorrah is female oral sex)
At a time when you could be one birth away from annihilation, keeping women pregnant all the time makes sense. Not now.
2006-06-20 16:09:12 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Great idea, I think the Bible would benefit tremendously from a complete rewrite. Of course, you are about to get slammed by the fundies.
2006-06-20 16:09:14 · answer #6 · answered by rainfingers 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It's been changed many times. And things have been lost in translation. I say WHY NOT? It's a flawed text anyway...hell put in "Thou shalt not talk on your cell phone as loud as hell"
2006-06-20 16:08:50 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
History repeats itself and people never change. Get that straight and work from there.
2006-06-20 16:09:36 · answer #8 · answered by detritus12 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋