Atheist Bible Study 1: Genesis

[Bucky Ball]

God's wrath, or divine judgement is contingent upon sin. If Sin didn't exist there would be no judgement. There is no softening of wrath from OT to NT. Sin is no less an offense to God than it is now.

That's quite incorrect. In the OT there were levels of "abomination". Abomination to god, certain people/cultures, and just in general. 
A perfect being cannot "experience" offense.

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That's why it's called intelligent design instead of a cookie cutter God.

Seriously though, I believe Jewish thought at the time was that the transgressions of Israel are punished in this world and the Heathens heap up woes for the next world and the day of wrath. This is clearly different than mainline Christian thought.

That's totally wrong. 
Hebrews believed all the dead went to Sheol ... both the good and the bad. 
Heaven was where Yahweh lived with the other divine beings. 
The dead did not go to heaven, nor were they "punished".


There is no agreement among archaeologists on which of the various candidates they've found of settlements along the Southwest shore of the Dead Sea, in Southern Canaan, on the Jordan River plain, that might be either one of the two settlements, used as the location for the myth in Genesis, (and it WAS a myth). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bab_edh-Dhra Bab Edh-Drah, is thought by some to be Sodom. It's like the search for Noah's Ark. It misses the point.

The archaeological evidence is not the interesting part. The myth of the "raining of fire and brimstone" was probably taken from a well known Sumerian, (or "Accadian", (Akkadian),/Assyrian-Babylonian myth), written in Cuneiform, which served as their creation myth. Part of that was the "raining" of fire and brimstone, and was written during the Akkadian Empire period, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian_Empire (--2330 BCE). There actually are large Brimstone, (Sulfur) and Lyme deposits in the area. They stink to high heaven.

Anyhow...so the myth most likely got imported/appropriated by the editors of of Genesis, when they were creating the National Story, and they used a common conventional myth from the time to make their point about hospitality, or rather IN-hospitality. The myth of Lot, in Genesis 19, about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, follows upon the story in Genesis 18 of Abraham, and his hospitality towards wandering strangers , (who turned out, in the myth, to be angels). So the ONLY way to understand Sodom and Gomorrah, is to keep it in context. It has NOTHING to do with sex. It all about the treatment of strangers, and stands as an example if IN-hospitality toward strangers, juxtaposed with the Abrahamic example of hospitality towards wandering strangers in the desert environment, which, of course could present a fatal danger.

There's stuff about it here, one of my favorite places : http://sabbathrock.com/tablets.aspx

Homosexuality as an "orientation" was unknown in the history of human ideas until the late Nineteenth Century.
There was no, (supposed), "lifestyle" until the Twentieth Century. The idea of "orientation" arose when Psychology began to develop as a science. All men were assumed to be straight, and only straight, all women straight, and only straight. There was also no notion of a continuum of sexual behaviors, (bisexuality), as science recognizes today.
Any "different" behavior was seen as "deviancy" from an absolute inherent norm, which the person was assumed to inherently possess, completely by virtue of birth gender.

In Ancient Israel class and status distinctions were extremely important.

The injunction in Biblical times, (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13), was against (assumed), STRAIGHT men, (and only men), (as they ALL were assumed to be straight), engaging in same-sex behaviors. (There is a mistaken use of the Sodom and Gomorrah myth in this context also, which is misguided, and I'll deal with that last).

Why ?
It had to do with class structure, and male status. A male, who held the highest position in society, and held the highest class status, was seen to be "feminized" by penetration, and designated as a social inferior, (female), by a male of lower class status, and thus his status was lowered, to that of a woman.
THAT is the reason the culture forbade it. It had NOTHING to do with sex. It was status, and only status. This concept remains very much, (subliminally and overtly), in place today. This law code, in Leviticus, (the latest law code to be written), is the ONLY place this appears in the Old Testament. The author of Leviticus was very interested in the "equality of all" before God. It was that author's agenda. He also said strangers, and others from outside Israel were all to be treated with equal rights and dignity, which was a departure, from other texts and codes. It is ironic, indeed, this equality has been turned on it's head, to treat gay people, less equality. The author of Leviticus WANTED all people treated equally, and that is why he wrote the injunction into the text, in the first place, to PREVENT inequality. The ideal society for this author was classless, and that could not happen if a male penetrates a male, and makes him thereby, a lower class. It's about class, not sex.

This cultural origin was true in the Old Testament culture, as well as the New. That is the reason it ended up in the Bible, and the ONLY reason it was there.

The law in the Old Testament : "You shall not lay a male as with the laying of a woman, it is an offensive thing". (note: the correct translation is NOT, "it is an abomination"). (The word "toi-va" is used, and in archaic Hebrew, EVERYWHERE else is translated, "an offensive thing").

Why is this important ? Because there are levels of "offensive things", and levels of meanings of "offensive things".

There were a number of levels of offensive things in the Old Testament.

#1. was something which was offensive to God, and this was the worst.
#2. was something which was offensive to other peoples and cultures, (for example the same word is used with reference to some foods being "offensive" to other cultures, (as hagas might be to Americans), or for example the Egyptians didn't eat, with non-Egyptians, as that was "offensive", or in today's language, "bad manners".
#3. was something which was just generally "offensive", with no further relational attribution.

So it can be "offensive" to some people, but not everyone, and is relative to the situation, or to god, or just in general.

The injunction against male same sex behavior is the third kind of offensive. It's not related to either God or anything, or anyone else.
(There are other verses around it that are stated to be offensive to God, but not this one).
So in this text, it is offensive to the authors of the text, and that specific culture, (only).

Same-sex behaviors (upper class man penetrated by same class or lower class men), was forbidden, for class reasons.
Equal class men, doing non-penetrating activity, or women together was not forbidden.
( Woman with woman, in general, was not addressed, and the class issue was not important.)

So what does this tell us ?
It tells us the laws were written into the Bible by HUMANS, for human culturally relative, and internally referenced reasons.
The laws in the Bible REFLECTED their OWN culture, of the times, and did not "inform" the culture.
The direction of information flow is crucial. Every Biblical scholar knows this. The Bible was informed by the culture, NOT the other way around.
There are no "ultimate" claims possible from culturally relative, historically rooted, human local customs.

The other main text used to justify the fundamentalist nonsense about homosexuality, is the Sodom and Gomorrah myth in Genesis.

Hospitality of Abraham : In Genesis 18, there is a myth about the hospitality of Abraham, (he welcomes two strangers, who turn out to be angels), as that was an important cultural value, in a society where a wandering desert dweller could get lost, and die.

The myth is followed closely by it's counter example of in-hospitality in the Lot myth, (Sodom and Gomorrah). It is not about sex. It's a counter example to the hospitality story, of in-hospitality. The context is important.

The great irony is that some religious fundies use the Bible to keep gay people away from their "table", and feasts, using the very texts that the Bible intended to teach hospitality, to do the opposite.

ref : Drs. Shawna Dolansky, and Richard Elliott Friedman, "The Bible Now", and "Who Wrote the Bible"

It would really help if religionists got their facts straight, and learned about their fucking Bible.

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God's wrath, or divine judgement is contingent upon sin. If Sin didn't exist there would be no judgement. There is no softening of wrath from OT to NT. Sin is no less an offense to God than it is now.

Oh really ? What sin have infants that die of cancer committed ?