Clobbering back with the Clobber texts: Taking the Bible Seriously - Are There Clobber Texts in the Bible? Rev. Dr. Thomas Hanks Part 4: Deconstructing our homophobia: with Paul in Romans |
| "I am not ashamed of Jesus' Good News to the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized, because this Gospel communcates God's empowerment for the integral liberation to everyone who believes, first for the Jews, then for the Gentiles. For in Jesus' Good News God's liberating justice is revealed, a liberating justice that is by faith from first to last" (Romans 1:16-17a). INTRODUCTION: Ideology, Propaganda and Biblical Interpretation
applied to any scholar or writer who seeks to question traditional homophobic interpretations and translations. However, since Jacques Ellul's classic study in 1962, students of propaganda remind us that "majority propaganda" (in this case heterosexist) is always much more pervasive and likely to be much more insidious than anything various minorities manage to come up with. A sober review of the history of interpretation and translation of the six basic "clobber texts" studied thus far makes abundantly clear that vicious homophobia has been operative in biblical interpretation -- and in half the texts (Jude 7; 1 Corinthians 6:9; 1 Timothy 1:10; see Deuteronomy 23:17-18) even in the translation. Two texts (Genesis 19 and Jude 7) present the sin of Sodom as involving cruel refusal of hospitality and attempted gang rape of God's angel messengers; six texts in the Hebrew Scriptures referring to male (cult?) prostitutes were mistranslated with the term "sodomite"; two pauline texts (1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10) use a rare, euphemistic term ("male- beds") whose meaning remains sharply debated even after decades of intensive study; and two texts (Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13) prohibiting unprotected male anal intercourse, reflect the patriarchal, procreation sexual ideology of a book neither orthodox Jews nor traditionalist Christians use as binding or normative for modern life (especially in such minutiae). Jesus and Paul both set aside the creation ordinance commanding procreation and one of the Ten Commandments as not literally binding or normative for Christians (as well as countless other teachings of the Torah); and Jesus never said a single word against any kind of same-sex genital acts. When inspiring the Bible, if God really wanted to provide a clear, precise, universal ethical absolute to condemn "homosexuality" (including lesbians, never referred to in any of these texts), certainly this was a strange way to go about it! |
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