Won't this upset the assholes?

[emjay]

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.

Yeah, I understand that and tbh see this a bit like a Necker cube; sometimes seeing your interpretation and sometimes seeing his, switching between the two, both seeming to make full sense when in focus. From the skeptical POV there's also the feeling that perhaps he is taking things a bit too literally... as you say in your example logical but not how it works in practical terms... but also just in the sense that some things may have been implicit. After all there is the implicit understanding that it is addressed to men, but there may also be the implicit prohibition of male-male sex basically as the complete opposite of the idea of its explicit absence as an exception to the general rule... ie the difference between not stated because it is implicitly allowed, and not stated because it's implicitly understood by everyone to be not allowed. So more Necker Cubishness

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.

I think I see what you're saying here, since it is more like how my own Bible's phrase it... in terms of the disgrace involved:

eg Lev 18.14

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

So yeah, that makes sense also, and brings me back to the Necker Cube on this question also... that different translations suggest different things, but assuming that as a scholar, he'd have access to the most accurate source material. Anyway, it wasn't that I was seeing this as a smoking gun... for instance, I'd like to know if he has any bias in this question... but it's still interesting to me, and something I'd like to follow to see how it develops.

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

I take it it worked then... cool