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Author | Topic: Politcally Correct Christ | |||||||||||||||||||||||
arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Well, Paul uses the greek word "arsenkoites" in Corinthinans. It's a word of his own invention, as near as we can tell. no, it's used in other (non-christian) texts of the period.
quote: arsenokoites does mean homosexuality, but a very particular kind: pederasty. as far as i know, there simply was no common practice of two adult males engaged in a consentual relationship in the ancient greek world. but there was a very common custom of older men taking in younger boys as apprentices and lovers. paul is likely advising against this. (though i have no problem with paul being a homophobe. he also trashes the effeminate.)
Scholars of greek see the root "koitai" used in other contexts, some completly normal - referring to couches or beds - and in other context, as synonyms for sex or prostitution. i'm not sure which verse this is about, but it likely includes another greek word, pornos, which means "prostitute."
In Hebrew, though? The thing is - the Hebrew word for "father" was often used in a gender-neutral sense*, much as some people use "man" in a gender-neutral sense to try to describe both male and female humans. So, "father" could mean "parent" - in Hebrew. Do you see how that could pose an issue in translation? That simply transliterating from "father" in Hebrew to "father" in English means sacrificing a potential alternate meaning of the word as it was used in Hebrew? no.
‘ (aba) means "father," a singular male parent.
(ima) means "mother," a singular female parent. (horah or horeh) means "parent," also singular, and the gender depends on the vowels. the plural is: (horim), or "parents." groups of both genders take the masculine plural. but only in plural. (adam), more correctly, means "man" as in "mankind" not a singular male. though it is also the name of the first member of mankind. though it's wrong to assume that "mankind" applies to women -- the bible is NOT a feminist text, and women are not given their fair share. adam and eve are refered to as "man(kind) and his woman." while the story starts of with eve being adam's equal, the language is quite in line with the patriarchal society that spoke it.
How is the core experience of Christianity altered if they aren't raised to believe that God has a big cosmic penis? there is a female presence of god in the torah too, that resides in the holiest of holies.
And if he doesn't have Godly male genitals, what's the justification for asserting maleness when maleness may not have been implied by the original text? hebrew is not a gender-neutral language. everything is either masculine or feminine. it's not something we're used to in english, but nearly every other language on this planet is like that. things have to be assigned a gender. is there any good reason to assign god a female gender? in most semitic languages, male is the default gender. if you don't know the gender of something (say, an unknown caller on the phone) you refer to him in the masculine. this isn't really a suprise, we do this in english too. so, if god were of an indeterminant gender (either androgynous, incompatible with our understanding, or just unknown) he would be refered to in the masculine. which might have been what you were meaning to get at.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Tell this to Crashfrog. It sounds like you and I are in agreement. sort of yes, sort of no. see above.
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nator Member (Idle past 2199 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: I hope your pique causes you to raise your awareness of the sexism inherent in the English language, and in Christianity. Is your God male? Does God have a thingie?
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
while i agree that most of these are silly, this one's actually close to being right:
quote: the phrase in hebrew is ‘- (ben-adam), but mark quotes daniel 7:13, written in aramaic. the phrase used there is ‘ (ki-bar enash). (man) comes from (enosh, mankind/mortal), which in turn comes from (anash) which means sick, frail, or weak. the phrase, "son of man" here and in ezekiel is god's particular way of referring to his prophet, or perhaps the prophet himself being humble (equivalent to "your humble narrator" in english). idiomatically, it means "lowly mortal" but that tends to lose the sense of prophecy, self-identification, and the (post-ezekiel) messianich connotation it seems to have gained.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
I hope your pique causes you to raise your awareness of the sexism inherent in the English language, and in Christianity. if we changed the gender neutral pronoun to "it" people (especially women) would get offended at being portrayed as objects and/or babies. if we changed the gender neutral pronoun to "she," women would get offended that their gender now lacks meaning and distinction. see for instance the feminist take on calling boats by female names. Edited by arachnophilia, : typo
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nator Member (Idle past 2199 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: We can use "they" as a gender neutral pronoun.
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nator Member (Idle past 2199 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Isn't this true of every version of the bible?
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nator Member (Idle past 2199 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Does that mean that you read the Bible in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek?
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ReverendDG Member (Idle past 4139 days) Posts: 1119 From: Topeka,kansas Joined: |
The Word means what it says and says what it means. But this push in the West for sensitivity training has been going on now for a good 15 years steadily.
i'm not sure its 15 years but more like a good 50 years, antropology is built on being sensitive to other cultures, to me i see the 15 years as being an extremist view of cultural sensitivity to the point that we can say nothing without fearing some offence. but this view is a distortion or as far extreme you can get, nor is it common, dispite some peoples claims it is common
Yeah, I know you think Christianity is archaic and looking from the outside in I understand your view, perhaps more than some atheist/agnostics could ever believe, but yes, this is a bit much.
no i don't think its archaic, at least not if you understand where it came from and why it says the things it does. You just can't use laws from that time for this time or think the same way, that just is wrong, at last imo you should have laws and understanding based for your day and age not one from two thousand years ago
Well, the Divinci Code spins the yarn that the early Church was out to eradicate the matriarchal notion of female pagan deities so that it could institute its own patriarchal rule. This, of course, is pushing the boundaries of reality because the Tanakh (Old Test) came thousands of years before and so ascribes male attributes to Yahweh long before there ever was anything known as a 'Church.' But its been said that the Shekina glory of God expresses feminine attributes. I don't ascribe to an athropomorphic God, however, changing the text is just, no.
yes the devinci code does do that but being fiction with no evidence i think like many christians, its wrong, but i have different reasons.the fact is the church was out to replace the older gods with jesus, or why take up christmas easter and other non-christian holidays? in our eyes the tanakh is sexist, arach reminded me that its purely a product of thier culture and to pass judgement from our stand point is not really good or worth it, to change this changes more about the text than just the words, it changes the spirit of the text. this is what they beleived, to change this is to destroy the legecy of a people, even if we find it sexist and disturbing as for god being both sexes, this is true, many scientists have found that the early hebrews tried to incorprarate both male and female attributes to yehwah to satisfy people who worried about crops and rain and children, which were all female gods areas. people would fear for these things because they didn't think yehwah could effect them
Well, that's just it. If someone wants to view the Bible as sexist or misogynistic or whatever other denunciations they feel are expressed within the text, then simply don't believe in it. But to change the Word in an attempt, I guess, to trick people into liking it better is something demeaning to the atheists who don't like it for a reason. I believe in miracels. The miracle in this case is that the translators hands were not at once palsied for their blasphemy.
most of the reasons for people disliking the bible is the changes in culture over the last 500 years. they also feel that christians today try to deny these facts. the bible is sexist and misogynistic and racist and religiously bias, but thats the way people were.from our standpoint this is wrong so realisticly we can not place full value on this text as being the center of our morality, at least not in america, it just doesn't work But to change the Word in an attempt, I guess, to trick people into liking it better is something demeaning to the atheists who don't like it for a reason.
i think its to satisfy those that get hung up on the words used, athiests i think wouldn't care, unless they were trying to argue for one view based on the authors words, i think everyone has done this but, mainly because people say this is the word of god and its written by god
I believe in miracels. The miracle in this case is that the translators hands were not at once palsied for their blasphemy.
maybe, but the translaters of the kjv wern't eather, considering how wrong they were too
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ReverendDG Member (Idle past 4139 days) Posts: 1119 From: Topeka,kansas Joined: |
We can use "they" as a gender neutral pronoun.
the problem i see with doing this is we do not use this term for one person we use it for more than one, unless we change how we use all of our words this really doesn't work reminds me of my college english teacher, but she was the other way around, she didn't like the fact that people were trying to insert 'thier' instead of the long accepted 'his' when you do not know the subject while i agree we may need a new gender neutral word in english i don't think co-opting another word that means something else will work
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
We can use "they" as a gender neutral pronoun. "they" is plural. but then again, so is "you" ...
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
the problem i see with doing this is we do not use this term for one person we use it for more than one Speak for yourself, I do it all the time. I was speaking to one of my cusomers earlier - they do it to.
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ReverendDG Member (Idle past 4139 days) Posts: 1119 From: Topeka,kansas Joined: |
Speak for yourself, I do it all the time. I was speaking to one of my cusomers earlier - they do it to.
sure i do this too, it doesn't mean it should be done, its confusing and bad english.i'm a very literal minded person so reading they or their or whatever does throw me off though. i really was refering to formal usage and writing, it is really just bad form.
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ramoss Member (Idle past 641 days) Posts: 3228 Joined: |
Sure. Its a free country, and perhaps many people would actually prefer the newer version. The Bible is just a book---its not an object of worship. Personally, I have no use for (the all inclusive translation), but interpretations of anything are poetic license. The more that the fundies get up in arms over it, the more copies it will sell!
Why not. that worked for Harry Potter, that workd for the 'Da Vinci Code'. Edited by ramoss, : No reason given.
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nator Member (Idle past 2199 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Using "he" to refer to women is confusing. Saying that it is "bad english" is just a resistance to the inevitable evolution of language. We don't speak the same English that was spoken 200 years ago. Do we speak "bad" English?
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