From: JLOCK00@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Joseph L. Lockett)
Newsgroups: tx.politics,rice.politics,rice.galor
Subject: Bible, Homosexuality, Translations, etc.
Date: 31 Aug 92 05:50:27 GMT
Organization: Rice University

In article <G-cBr*sV0@caleb.UUCP>
jdp@caleb.UUCP (Jim Pritchett) reads inadequately, then writes:
 
>In article <1685314B1.JLOCK00@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU>, Joseph L. Lockett writes:
>
>> Yes, if it's not done with careful thought and sufficient knowledge.  Much
>> of the furor over homosexuality derives from a mistranslation in the King
>> James Bible -- 'sexual aberrancy', or some such, was translated by zealous
>> clerics as 'homosexuality', so while it really should have applied to rape
>> and such crimes, today we get crusading gay-bashers and such.  (I support
>> gay rights, in case you couldn't tell.  Does that make me completely
>> irredeemable? (-: )
>
>It makes you very (willfully?) ignorant of the Bible.  The ban on homosexuality
>is explicitly mentioned many times in many different ways in both the Old and New
>Testaments.  There is no possible way that a single translation error could
>produce what you claim.  You really ought to read the Bible.  Then you would know
>what it really says.  (By the way, the KJV is still the best English translation.)
I HAVE read the Bible, bud -- Old and New Testaments, and also some of the
Apocrypha.  Have YOU read it?  Let's hear chapter and verse for your claims,
then.  Quote me anything from the sections with Old Testament law (such as
Deuteronomy), and I'll certainly ask why you aren't applying the other
strictures from that book -- the ones you so conveniently deleted in your
followup.  Scared of philosophical inconsistency?  Oh, I suppose you could
quote the Apostle Paul at me, but the man was a complete misogynistic
asshole, and shouldn't ever have been canonized if the Church hadn't gone
on such a woman- and sex-hating kick after Augustine.  I may well know
your subject better than you, so cut it with the generalities.
 
KJV as the 'best' translation?  Well, maybe, but it depends heavily on
your interpretation of 'best'.  Yes, many people are used to it.  Yes,
it was specifically written to be beautiful.  But to create that result,
the translators often stretched various meanings.  Moreover, the translation
was done in the early seventeenth century (King James, right?), and the
English language has CHANGED since then -- some of those words may no longer
mean what you think they mean.  Studied Elizabethan or Jacobean English
lately, Jim?  KJV is only good if you're either interested in doing enough
scholarly research to get it right, or else if you don't care what it says,
just how it sounds.  Which are you, Jim?
 
I generally preferred Revised Standard Version, myself.
 
>> >>An example -- Jewish religious law REQUIRES an abortion in cases where
>Note:  Rabbinical lore is NOT the Bible.
 
I never said it was.  Yank off your damn ideological blinders and start
reading what I actually wrote, instead of pushing your own buttons (or do
you enjoy that sort of thing?  Augustine wouldn't have approved....)  My
point was that banning abortions would constitute a violation of religious
freedom for the Jews.  Last I heard, the Constitution protected that sort
of thing.  Unless the Jews don't matter, Jim?
 
Joseph L. Lockett
jlock00@ricevm1.rice.edu