From: jdp@caleb.UUCP (Jim Pritchett)
Newsgroups: tx.politics,rice.politics,rice.galor
Subject: Re: Bible, Homosexuality, Translations, etc.
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 1992 20:35:18 GMT
 <G-cBr*sV0@caleb.UUCP> <16854BDD.JLOCK00@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU>
Organization: is sometimes desirable

In article <16854BDD.JLOCK00@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU>, Joseph L. Lockett writes:

> 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,

I read it every day (with very rare exceptions.)

> 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.

Why should I bother?  You reject the Old Testament.  You reject most of the New
Testament (Paul wrote much of it.)  So, why should I bother digging up the quotes
for you?  You've already rejected them before I quote them.  I doubt that you know
it better than I, but even if you do, I have one BIG advantage over you.  I believe
it.  You obviously don't.

You are deliberately lying when you claim that the Bible condones homosexuality.
You already know it condemns it in no uncertain terms.  That is why you keep
trying to fend off the obvious rebuttals before they happen.

> 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?

Oh, hogwash.  It is very easy to understand the KJV English with a few minor
notes in the margins which explain certain drastic changes in meaning.  Most
changes are obvious from the context.  The KJV is best because all the newer
translations I've read try to "adjust" the translation to suit their views.

> I generally preferred Revised Standard Version, myself.

Why?  You already admitted that you don't believe it.

> >> >>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

I read what you wrote.  You are the one with the ideological blinders!  You are
deliberately trying to pervert Christian and Jewish doctrine to support your
strange views.

> 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?

You are really stretching things here.


                                                Jim Pritchett


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