Day O Revelations

The Bible has been wrongly misused for years by the morally conservative groups as a way to back up their personal beliefs and prejudices. I am taking a 'New Testament as Literature' course, which occurs right after this Apocalypse Theory class. For some reason, all of my classes on Friday migrated to the subject of gay rights, civil rights, inclusion and exclusion of the Other, and "Queer Theory" (in our class). As this is only a 'small apocalypse' post, I will focus on what happened in Religion class, but "Queer Theory" can expect a long response later.

Our professor, Sister Terri, was pointing out a passage in 1 Corinthians in which Paul mentions the immorality of an older man having sex with a young boy. A man having sex with a boy should be labeled as pedophilia, and not as homosexuality. Pedophilia is a psychologically driven desire/fetish, and is not related to homosexuality. Sister Terri also brought up the fact that there was a recent survey conducted in which it was found that heterosexual men more commonly engage in sexual acts with boys than do homosexual men.

As the Bible was translated from Greek scriptures, a lot of the true meanings of words are lost in English, or are mistakenly related to our modern day culture, as opposed to being related to the culture in Roman antiquity in which these scriptures were written. In Roman culture at the time, it was very common for men and young boys to be physically involved with one another, and it was considered as the norm. This is obviously not true today, as children do not ask for that kind of attention nor do they welcome it, as they may have back then. In both situations the boy is taken advantage of, but there are definite cultural differences.

Modern translations of the Bible all differ, depending on the version, and as the class read their different translations, the word 'homosexual' appeared a number of times, along with the phrase 'sexual perverts'. Sister Terri is a Biblical scholar, and so we asked her, "what did Paul really mean when he was writing these passages?" She explained that the Greek could be translated into meaning that it is immoral for a man to be with a 'soft' boy, or one that hasn't hit puberty yet. Only recently have scholars been able to put the translations into a relevant context. Also, Paul writes about how the man should always be the one in the position of dominance during sexual intercourse. That's it, though. No mention of anti-homosexual behavior here. (On a side note, Paul frequently includes women in high positions in the Church such as Deacons in his Gospels).

It made me happy to hear that there are reasonable minds in the church today, and that new translations will surface which will transform religion into more of an enlightening tool rather than a hateful one. I was also extremely bothered by this realization, because over the years the church's followers have been one of the largest groups against homosexuality, same-sex marriages, and other basic human rights. They have no right to use the Bible in that way, and won't they feel stupid when they realize that it never said any of what they've been falsely preaching. Sister Terri told us that there are about four references in the Bible which have been translated to include homosexual behavior, but none of these passages actually refer to homosexuality as immoral, or even to homosexuality at all. Instead, these passages refer to different cultural practices , or different Greek words which have been falsely interpreted, much like the example given above.