SCOTUS Rules 5-4 for Gay Marriage

[Starlight]

Maybe you could trouble yourself to show us specifically where jp's argument fails.

At the part where he doesn't have one. I recommend anyone interested in this topic to browse the free online book by Bruce Gerig on the subject, as that gives an extremely thorough discussion of what the various different scholars think on each and every aspect of the relevant topics.

[JonathanL]

At the part where he doesn't have one.

richard-stacks-chimpanzee-covering-his-eyes.jpg

[Mountain Man]

At the part where he doesn't have one. I recommend anyone interested in this topic to browse the free online book by Bruce Gerig on the subject, as that gives an extremely thorough discussion of what the various different scholars think on each and every aspect of the relevant topics.

So want you're saying is, you don't actually have a rebuttal.

[Starlight]

From shunydragon's source:

"The Holiness Code, which had taken on some additions during the Exile, was once more re-edited and became the nucleus of Lv. To it were added the sacrificial code (chs. 1-7), the ordination rite (chs. 8-10), and the legal purity code (chs. 11-16). Chapter 27, dealing with the commutation of vows, comes from a still later edition."

The prohibitions against homosexuality are contained in Leviticus 18 and 20.

The Holiness Code (H), the part of Leviticus that contains the apparent condemnations of homosexuality, are typically dated to around 600BC, and associated with Ezekiel who lived around that time and whose other writings reflect the same themes and same language. It is, of course, possible that the document is older, or is based on material that is older, which as I said could have been sitting in a library or temple somewhere gathering dust over the centuries. However, prophets commonly believe that God is speaking through them, so the idea that Ezekiel wrote it all himself and believed it to be from God seems a reasonably likely scenario.

There doesn't seem any great level or certainty or consensus on the subject of whether the author of the books of Samuel (seemingly the prophet Jeremiah, or someone from his religious group), who was writing at a similar time to Ezekiel around 600BC (give or take 100 years depending on the particular scholar's view), was aware of the content of the Holiness Code or not.

David himself, remember, lived in 1000BC.

[Mountain Man]

The Holiness Code (H), the part of Leviticus that contains the apparent condemnations of homosexuality, are typically dated to around 600BC, and associated with Ezekiel who lived around that time and whose other writings reflect the same themes and same language. It is, of course, possible that the document is older, or is based on material that is older, which as I said could have been sitting in a library or temple somewhere gathering dust over the centuries. However, prophets commonly believe that God is speaking through them, so the idea that Ezekiel wrote it all himself and believed it to be from God seems a reasonably likely scenario.

There doesn't seem any great level or certainty or consensus on the subject of whether the author of the books of Samuel (seemingly the prophet Jeremiah, or someone from his religious group), who was writing at a similar time to Ezekiel around 600BC (give or take 100 years depending on the particular scholar's view), was aware of the content of the Holiness Code or not.

David himself, remember, lived in 1000BC.

Wikipedia?

And right at the top of the page it even says, "This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it blah blah blah..."

I don't know how you do it, but you seem dumber with every post.

[Starlight]

Wikipedia?

There have been numerous studies that have confirmed wikipedia's general accuracy. It is a great place to start learning about topics, and a good source to follow to further resources and information. Is it always absolutely 100% correct in every single detail? No. No source ever is. Does it give complete information about all topics? No. But is it generally reliable and trustworthy? Absolutely.

If you want a recommendation of a particular scholarly source on the subject of the authorship of the OT, I can personally recommend Who wrote the Bible? by Friedman, which explains clearly to the lay reader why biblical scholars hold the views they do about the authorship of the OT.

[Abigail]

Great, some no-name moron with no credentials runs his mouth and you hop to it like it's gospel. Eat this:

http://www.tektonics.org/gk/gaydavid.php

Our subject here is a Web writer named Jeramy Townsley, but the arguments he offers on this subject are not unique to him, so while we will use his material as a basis, his name and identity is not of the highest relevance. The subject here is the question, "Were David and Jonathan gay lovers, according to the Bible?"

Townsley says of arguments in this regard, "while not quite compelling, [they] leave open the strong possibility that they were involved in an homosexual marriage."

How is the case made? The first point is from 1 Samuel 18:21:

And Saul said, I will give him her, that she may be a snare to him, and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him. Wherefore Saul said to David, Thou shalt this day be my son in law in the one of the twain.

This verse, coming as it does after the following:

And Saul said to David, Behold my elder daughter Merab, her will I give thee to wife: only be thou valiant for me, and fight the LORD'S battles. For Saul said, Let not mine hand be upon him, but let the hand of the Philistines be upon him. And David said unto Saul, Who am I? and what is my life, or my father's family in Israel, that I should be son in law to the king? But it came to pass at the time when Merab Saul's daughter should have been given to David, that she was given unto Adriel the Meholathite to wife. And Michal Saul's daughter loved David: and they told Saul, and the thing pleased him.

...one would immediately suppose that the "twain" or two are Merab and Michal. The words "the one" are admittedly a KJV addition for clarity, but this is apparently all Townsley needs to let his case in:

The actual translation of this phrase is somewhat controversial, being literally translated "You will become my son-in-law through two." In this instance, the correct interpretation of this verse is crucial, because it radically shapes our view of David and Jonathan's relationship, since Scripture only indicates that David had any kind of relationship with two of Saul's children: Jonathan and Michal. Some translations interpret this verse as meaning that Saul "said for the second time," or that David has a "second opportunity" to become Saul's son-in-law. These interpretations, however, are strained, and the Hebrew does not easily lend itself to mean either of these. Most standard translations clearly interpret the verse to mean that David will become Saul's son-in-law for the second time...

Townsley hereafter quotes English versions in the service of suggesting that it means that David "will become his son-in-law for the second time" (where Jonathan was the first). But there are a few social issues Townsley needs to consider before he gets too excited.

To begin, had such a marriage indeed taken place between Jonathan and David, that means that Jonathan would have either become a member of David's house, or David would have become a member of Jonathan's house. Since Saul does not want David in power, as is quite clear, and would also presumably want Jonathan to have the throne after him, there is no way Saul would have permitted either scenario. There would be no threat if a daughter became part of David's house. So a marriage between these two is politically impossible to begin with.

Second, the passages after this tell a differing story: "And Saul commanded his servants, saying, Commune with David secretly, and say, Behold, the king hath delight in thee, and all his servants love thee: now therefore be the king's son in law. And Saul's servants spake those words in the ears of David. And David said, Seemeth it to you a light thing to be a king's son in law, seeing that I am a poor man, and lightly esteemed?"

Would Saul need to send his servants to persuade David of this, or would David ask if it was a light thing to be the king's son-in-law, if he already was?

Finally, 18:21 itself, and the word "twain," can mean "in both" but can mean in a "second". It is in fact the Hebrew word for the numeral two. What Saul is saying here is that David will be his son-in-law in the second daughter offered. There is no call for an idea of a "first marriage" here, other than a wish to see something in the text that is not there.

Next in service, it is noted:

The first offer Saul made to David for a wife was Merab, but she married Adriel of Meholah instead (18:19). The only other covenant made between Saul's family and David was between David and Jonathan in 18:3, which is not a covenant of business or politics, but of friendship/love ("ahbh"). Moreover, this relationship is described in very strong emotive language, starting in 18:1.

We can stop right here and give Townsley a failing grade in Ancient Near Eastern society, because "strong emotive language" is just par for the course for these people in all of their relationships. Townsley knows correctly that platonic relationships as such did not exist in this time, but he's either uninformed of, or ignoring, more relevant data.

We present here material previously used in our item on the alleged homosexuality of Jesus:

To put it bluntly, such arguments view intimate relationships through jaundiced Western eyes. Put your head on the breast of another man today here in America, and the jokes will fly. But in the ancient East, not so; and even today, such affectionate displays are typical on that side of the world, and well-publicized (remember all the news clips of Arab and Middle Eastern leaders kissing each other on the side of the face?), which is probably why we don't hear these sorts of verses brought up in service of homosexual Bible characters, except by the incredibly underinformed.

Abraham Rihbany (The Syrian Christ, 65), a native of the East early last century, bore with some patience the misinterpretations of modern Westerners (he named Robert Ingersoll particularly) who read the Bible through their eyes and tastes and missed certain points about what was being said and done. The particular instance of John 21:20 represents a custom "in perfect harmony with Syrian customs. How often have I seen men friends in such an attitude. There is not the slightest infringement of the rules of propriety; the act was as natural to us all as shaking hands. The practice is especially indulged in when intimate friends are about to part from one another, as on the eve of a journey, or when about the face a dangerous undertaking. Then they sit with their heads leaning against each other, or the one's head resting upon the other's shoulder or breast."

By the same token, Easterners will use "terms of unbounded intimacy and unrestrained affection" to one another: "my soul," "my eyes," "my heart." Paul's holy kiss (Rom. 16:16, etc) is no more of a homosexual exchange.

Townsley is therefore underinformed any time he cites non-sexual, affectionate behavior as meaningful for his case. Yet this he does, going back to 1 Samuel 18:1-4 and finding a "love at first sight" citation:

And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. And Saul took him that day, and would let him go no more home to his father's house. Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.

Townsley admits that there is no linguistic similarity between this and language in Gen. 2 which refers to "becoming one flesh," but he insists that "there is a striking similarity in concepts between the son leaving the parents to join to a spouse, and the two becoming one."

Is there? As noted above, such a linkup would have been political suicide for Saul, David, and/or Jonathan, and this language is no different (indeed, far tamer) than that which Rihbany describes among close, non-homosexual friends.

We may note that commentators regard Jonathan here as passing over his royal insignia -- in effect, his right to the throne -- to David, and those who see a sexual encounter here may note that only one person seems to be getting undressed. And lest anyone make much of that "loved" bit, it is the same word used to say that the Lord loved Israel (Deut. 7:8, 1 Kings 10:9, 2 Chr. 2:11, 9:8, Hosea 3;1). The same word is often used, as Townsley notes, of relationships that would clearly have a sexual component (just look through Song of Songs) but it implies, as agape does, a more practical concern.

Townlsey notes these cites, but does not tell us that the word is used of the relationship between God and Israel.

To his credit, Townsley admits that the evidence here is "persuasive" to him, but "not conclusive," also admitting that he knows of no "other extant Hebrew literature of that era that refers to a gay marriage," and whether "Saul would have seen David and Jonathan's covenant as one of legal marriage." Not that all "covenants" were marriages anyway; it is the same word used to refer to God's promise not to destroy the world again after the Flood, and to God's agreement with Abraham.

On the lack of mention of sexual activity between the two, it is countered that "very few Old Testament relationships which are clearly marriage relationships have subsequent descriptions of sexual activity" (actually, they do, in the form of children; and Townsley only says this, with no accounting at all) and suggests that 2 Samuel 1:26 ("I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women.") may be just such a reference, which means that all of Rihbany's people must be having sex with each other as well.

One might add that "love" is certainly not the same as sex, and one might suggest that a caring, non-sexual relationship can be immensely satisfying -- one wonders how much of our modern, sex-crazed mindset Townsley has absorbed and wrung out on the text.

I'll check out what looniness this Gerig has to say on this story. It ought to be good for a laugh track.

I don't think it is any coincidence that just before the 'son-in-law' accounts, Saul tries, unsuccessfully, two times, to take David out with a javelin. (1 Sam 18:11)

Next we see Saul twice plan to have David taken out by 'another hand'

1 Sam 18:17 "...For Saul said, Let not mine hand be upon him, but let the hand of the philistines be upon him"
and
1 Sam 18:21 "And Saul said, I will give him to her, that she may be a snare to him, and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him"

So to my way of thinking this is just drawing attention to how much God is with David. To wring a gay marriage out of it,

[Mountain Man]

If you want a recommendation of a particular scholarly source on the subject of the authorship of the OT, I can personally recommend Who wrote the Bible? by Friedman, which explains clearly to the lay reader why biblical scholars hold the views they do about the authorship of the OT.

I bet you're not even aware that the JEDP hypothesis fell out of favor with academics decades ago. But of course I'm talking to the moron who thinks that Wikipedia is "generally reliable and trustworthy" and "a great place to start learning about topics" while presenting a poorly referenced Wikipedia article as a primary source for his argument. Seriously, how much dumber can you get? That's not a rhetorical question. I genuinely want to know how much dumber you can get.

As for Friedman's book...

Source: Tektonics.org

The JEDP hypothesis (the idea that the books of Moses were actually composed by four anonymous authors) is in pretty bad shape, but that it persists because no one can think of anything to replace it. Friedman in writing this book does not offer many specifics in defense of the theory, and in fact seems unaware that it is in terminal condition: That's hardly good policy, to treat a patient by ignoring his symptoms.

Nevertheless, there is nothing new here, as psychological mirror-reading is used to create explanations in support of JEDP. Why is Ephraim blessed over Manasseh? Because King Jeroboam was from the city of Ephraim...but doesn't that make Manasseh sort of superfluous? The ancient Israelites sure invented a more cumbersome history than they needed.

Admittedly, Friedman's tone is not that of a hostile critic, and he rightly supposes that later editors did indeed update the books of Moses to eliminate anachronistic information. JEDP, however, simply takes things too far, and its very artificial nature becomes all too evident when one finds so many exceptions to the given rules and has to explain them away with either the random actions of redactors or some obscure psychological or historical explanation without a shred of evidence.

For example, Friedman tries to support his thesis by suggesting that only the Levites were in bondage in Egypt, and that they somehow managed to gain enough influence to take over Jewish religious life to a significant degree. It is amazing how much history is created in the process of trying to explain away the history recorded in the Old Testament.

For all of the creative explaining that is done, Friedman's book is undone by an effort to be too breezy and uncritical in its assumptions that JEDP is set in stone more surely than the Ten Commandments.

http://www.tektonics.org/books/friedmanwwbrvw.php

© Copyright Original Source

[Starlight]

I bet you're not even aware that the JEDP hypothesis fell out of favor with academics decades ago.

I don't know why I'm encouraging you by replying... but I'll just settle for pointing out that the general contours of the JEPD paradigm have had pretty much universal acceptance for decades now and that shows no sign of changing.

Anyway, to get back to David & Jonathan a bit... taking standard views on the dating of the various biblical texts tells us that there is no particular reason to think anyone was against homosexuality at the time David lived, and that there is no particular reason to think that the writer of the book of Samuel was. It is very clear that many of the surrounding cultures of that time period were tolerant of homosexual relationships, as many ANE cultures show evidence of them, Babylon particularly so. So given the background appears to be in a culture that's probably tolerant of homosexual relationships as perfectly normal, the question comes down to: Does the text of Samuel, on balance, appear to be depicting a homosexual relationship? And that answer is that in any other context outside the bible, if the same passage occurred in ancient Greek literature, or on some Babylonian scrolls, there wouldn't be any debate: Everyone would just take it completely for granted that a homosexual relationship is being depicted because the text is pretty clear.

[Mountain Man]

I don't know why I'm encouraging you by replying... but I'll just settle for pointing out that the general contours of the JEPD paradigm have had pretty much universal acceptance for decades now and that shows no sign of changing.

I have no idea what you mean by "the general contours of the JEPD paradigm". If you mean that it is widely accepted that the Torah had multiple editors and some parts may have been redacted after the original writing, that is of course a noncontroversial statement and does nothing to impugn the divine inspiration behind the text. If you mean it's universally accepted that the Torah is a hodgepodge of multiple authors with readily identifiable styles who happily contradicted each other from one chapter to the next then you've been sniffing too much glue because the evidence for such a theory exists only in the fevered imaginations of those who support it.

Anyway, to get back to David & Jonathan a bit... taking standard views on the dating of the various biblical texts tells us that there is no particular reason to think anyone was against homosexuality at the time David lived, and that there is no particular reason to think that the writer of the book of Samuel was. It is very clear that many of the surrounding cultures of that time period were tolerant of homosexual relationships, as many ANE cultures show evidence of them, Babylon particularly so. So given the background appears to be in a culture that's probably tolerant of homosexual relationships as perfectly normal, the question comes down to: Does the text of Samuel, on balance, appear to be depicting a homosexual relationship? And that answer is that in any other context outside the bible, if the same passage occurred in ancient Greek literature, or on some Babylonian scrolls, there wouldn't be any debate: Everyone would just take it completely for granted that a homosexual relationship is being depicted because the text is pretty clear.

Your interpretation of non-Western social customs is anachronistic and bigoted. Suppose you saw two Middle Eastern men who greeted each other with a kiss on the cheek and then walked about while holding hands. You no doubt would assume they were romantically involved, but that's because you're a moron who can't see beyond his own confused ideas of sexuality.

Source: The New York Times

'Holding hands is the warmest expression of affection between men,'' said Samir Khalaf, a sociology professor at American University of Beirut in Lebanon. ''It's a sign of solidarity and kinship.''

In fact, if a man chooses not to touch another in a greeting, it can be interpreted as a sign of distance or disdain. Kissing cheeks, long handshakes and clutching hands are meant to reflect amity, devotion and most important, equality in status, noted Fuad Ishak Khuri, a social anthropologist, in his book, ''The Body in Islamic Culture'' (2001).

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...56C0A9639C8B63

© Copyright Original Source

[Rational Gaze]

I'll just settle for pointing out that the general contours of the JEPD paradigm have had pretty much universal acceptance for decades now and that shows no sign of changing.

It was generally regarded that JEDP has not a single scrap of supporting evidence as far back as 1966 (almost 50 years ago.) Not only that, JEDP is a hypothesis based on several 19th century theoretical and foundational assumptions that have long since been refuted by discoveries in archaeology.

[Cow Poke]

There have been numerous studies that have confirmed wikipedia's general accuracy.

But how do you know they're accurate on the specific issue you're citing? They can be 100% accurate (theoretically) on 95% of the issues, but the issue you're researching may be the grand exception.

It is a great place to start learning about topics, and a good source to follow to further resources and information.

I think that's the value -- a starting place. A quick reference that MAY have sources attached for further study.

Is it always absolutely 100% correct in every single detail? No. No source ever is. Does it give complete information about all topics? No. But is it generally reliable and trustworthy? Absolutely.

Again, the problem is the specific issue for which you use them as a cite - THAT may be one of the problematic ones.

[Mountain Man]

But how do you know they're accurate on the specific issue you're citing? They can be 100% accurate (theoretically) on 95% of the issues, but the issue you're researching may be the grand exception.

I think that's the value -- a starting place. A quick reference that MAY have sources attached for further study.

Again, the problem is the specific issue for which you use them as a cite - THAT may be one of the problematic ones.

It is a problematic one. Right at the top of that particular entry, it flat out says, "This article has multiple issues," and is full of editor's notes saying "citation needed". But that, of course, didn't stop Dimbulb from citing it as authoritative.

[Cow Poke]

It is a problematic one. Right at the top of that particular entry, it flat out says, "This article has multiple issues," and is full of editor's notes saying "citation needed". But that, of course, didn't stop Dimbulb from citing it as authoritative.

Yeah, I frequently use Wiki just for a basic synopsis, and USUALLY it can point you in the right direction for actual research.

[RumTumTugger]

Yeah, I frequently use Wiki just for a basic synopsis, and USUALLY it can point you in the right direction for actual research.

Actual Research is what Starlight seems to be allergic to.