Won't this upset the assholes?

[Angrboda]

I've reached the end of my free articles for the New York Times.  

Damn paywalls.

(Reading an opinion piece about the Dershowitz article, his reasoning seems rather thin.)

Perhaps you just need to clear your cookies to get access again?... unless they store your IP address... as that seems to be the only way they could know how many articles you've read. For me it says four free articles left.

I think the full article is very interesting and a compelling argument. Basically, if I'm understanding the logic correctly... which I might not have... or not fully, it all focuses on Leviticus Chapter 18 and how Lev 18.7 and Lev 18.14 are the only two verses in that paragraph that mention (potentially) homosexual incest, whereas all the rest only mention heterosexual incest. But that those two verse are ambiguous; the first, Lev 18.7:

"The nakedness of your father and the nakedness of your mother you shall not uncover; she is your mother, you shall not uncover her nakedness"

And the second, Lev 18.14:

"You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's brother.
[*] you shall not approach his wife, she is your aunt"

Arguing that the latter parts of each were added/edited at a later date, to obscure what could otherwise be considered exceptions to a general rule... in order to be consistent with the overall prohibition of homosexual sex in Lev 18.22. Ie if they only said "the nakedness of your father you shall not uncover" and "You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother", then it could be implied that these were exceptions... ie based on incest alone... to a general rule that did not explicitly prohibit homosexual sex.

*Not sure if it's a full stop, comma, or semi-colon here as they article splits those two lines into two quotes, for its commentary, and I don't have the same version of the Bible as he does to compare.

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Not that I think any of this really matters in a world of "Paulianity" posing as Christianity, but nonetheless I think it is an interesting argument.

The argument that a specific prohibition need not be made if a general one were already in place is logical, except that it's violated all the time in reality. We often voice both specific and general prohibitions indiscriminately without regard to overlap, so that point is rather weak.

As to the other, if I'm understanding him correctly, he's implying that a prohibition against uncovering a [man's] nakedness followed by a specification of it being applied to a related female is an indication that editing has occurred. If that is his argument, I suspect it is contradicted by the fact that, IIRC, in the bible, a man's nakedness not only extended to his own , but also to that of any wife or any daughter, as women were his property and therefore uncovering them was uncovering his nakedness. If that's the case, there is no sign of editing so much as a misunderstanding of cultural convention.

(Btw, thank you for the tip on clearing my cookies.)