(April 21, 2014 at 9:57 am)FreeTony Wrote: If this is an exercise in showing that you can interpret an old book to mean anything you want it to mean then fair play.
I've been looking for information about Harry H. McCall but could only find what's on his Blogger Profile
Going by what he says he could have written this article to show that the Bible can be interpreted to mean anything you want it to.
Quote:For example, looking critically at the Bible can be upsetting since many people who are attracted to Christianity have learned reverence for the Bible – that it is scared. When you take it apart in a critical way it can shake-up that sense of “here is the final word of authority”. That can be very difficult to deal with. The task of the Historical Critical Method is to help people discover what is true by taking criticism into account and often learning to make sense of conflicting truths such as viewing the Biblical Canon as an anthology composed by scribes with many different ideas about God, history and truth. Thus, contrary to creedal apologetic Christianity, a strong intellect is one that has tested itself. In this sense, critical thinking is validated when one's mental world is expanded; when one is not told what to think, but how to think critically about the Bible and reality!
(April 21, 2014 at 9:57 am)FreeTony Wrote: If this is serious then they are just using the same techniques as the Christians do when they interpret the bible to mean what they want it to mean.
The problem with the article's interpretation is that there's no way of knowing if the author of John's Gospel actually meant this when he wrote it.
(April 21, 2014 at 9:57 am)FreeTony Wrote: Even if you could find really good evidence that Jesus was gay, what would it achieve? You could build a time machine, send the Christians back in time to watch Jesus getting frisky with a man, and they'd still bullshit an excuse.
The idea of Jesus being gay is a hot topic at the moment.
Jesus's Sex Life on the 'Down Low'
Quote:While many biblical scholars have ignored non-canonical texts like the gnostic and apocryphal gospels that suggested that Jesus had a wife, they are no longer ignoring the 2012 discovery of an ancient, faded fragment of papyrus that makes just such a suggestion. According to this month's New York Times article "Papyrus Referring to Jesus' Wife Is More Likely Ancient Than Fake, Scientists Say," the document is known as the "Gospel of Jesus's Wife." However, this discovery disrupts modern Christianity's depiction of Jesus in many ways.
This latest discovery also reopens the "down-low" debate about Jesus' sexuality that not only threatens the pillars of Christianity but profoundly challenges the oppression that women as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people face today in both church and society. And that debate about Jesus' sexuality -- about whether he was married or possibly even gay, not that the two are mutually exclusive if Jesus was on the "down low" -- gets to the heart of several culture-war issues that we are wrestling with today, namely the institution of marriage, women in the church, and gay clergy.
Where are the snake and mushroom smilies?
