The tale of Sodom prohibits bullying, not homosexuality

* And two messengers (angels) came to Sodom in the evening.  And Lot sat in the gate of Sodom, and he saw and rose to greet them, and they bowed, faces to the ground.

The traditional translation of this is “he bowed, his face to the ground.”  The problem with that translation is that the verb “bowed” is third person plural—THEY bowed.  However, since the “they” in question were “מלאכים” (messengers/angels), translators have felt uncomfortable translating the word accurately, preferring for this plural verb to have as its subject the singular individual Lot.

* And he said, behold, please, my lords, please turn to the house of your servant and stay   and wash your feet and rise and go on your way.  And they said no, [we will stay] on the road (ברחב) at night.

* And he urged them strongly, and they turned to him and came to his house, and he made for them a feast unleavened and baked and they ate.

* Before the men lay down, the men of the city of Sodom surrounded the house, from the young to the old, all the people of the quarter.

* And they called to Lot and said to him, Where are the men who came to you tonight?  Send them out to us so we will know (נדע) them.

* And Lot went to them in the doorway and shut the door behind him.

* And he said, Please, my brothers, don’t do evil (תרע).

* Behold, please, I have two daughters who have not known a man.  I will bring them to you, and you can do to them what is good in your eyes.  But to these men, please do not do anything because they have come under the shelter of my roof.

This is where it gets interesting:  Lot tells the men of the city not to do evil (and he uses the singular masculine future form rather than the plural masculine future in command—תרע—suggesting that he is going to make an agreement with them as with a single party).  He refuses to send his guests the messengers (angels) out to the men of the town, instead offers them his daughters to do to them “what is good כטב in [their] eyes.” 

It says quite a lot about socialization that commentators have chosen to notice only the desire of the men of the city to “know” (נדע) the guests/messengers/angels, yet seem to overlook the fact that the men of the city have stormed the house and bullied and threatened Lot.  The acts of group harassment and intimidation would seem to count for much less than the suggestion of sexual activity.  However, it seems that Lot was amenable to bullying, since he was willing to donate his daughters to the pleasure of the men of the village.  While daughters were useful property, as females they were not considered “people” in the sense that their autonomy was respected.  They were simply reproductive vehicles whose value lay in the advantageousness of the social contracts they could be used for.  So, as reprehensible as it is to us today, in his time and up until the advent of female sufferage, Lot’s offer of his daughters to assuage the harassment  and bullying of the men of the city was seen as proper use of female offspring: to create an advantageous contract.  In this case, the contract of offering his daughters in place of the guests was a contract to ensure his own safety, which was threatened.

It is notable that Lot says his daughters have not known a man—this indicates not simply that they are virgins, but also that they have no experience to distinguish acceptable sexual conduct from unacceptable sexual conduct.  Lot is offering them sacrifices who cannot complain that the treatment they receive is out of the norm because they have no experience of a sexual norm.

Commentators in the NRSV claim that in protecting the messengers (angels), Lot was acting with “oriental hospitality.”  This seems to suggest that somewhere there existed a social norm in which it was acceptable for groups of men to demand that visitors be provided for their sexual entertainment.  However, I have never encountered any report or study that claims that any culture has sexual use of guests/foreigners as part of its social behavior.  It is therefore more likely that the behavior of the men of the village was simply rude and discourteous

* And they said, Stand aside, and they said, one came as a foreigner and he is a judge judging  (שׁפט ישׁפט  or, if we accept that the doubling of the verb in present/future indicates intensification “he is REALLY judging”) now, we will do evil to you from them, and they pressed as a man באישָׁ against Lot strongly, and they came to break the door.

This is the second time “ישׁפט” is used.  The first time is in Gen 16:5, when Sarai says to Avram:  “I was wrong about you:  I gave my maid into your arms and she will see that she conceived and I will be despised in her eyes.  The Lord will judge (ישׁפט) between you and me.”  The use of ישׁפט in the Lot narrative suggests that the men of the city are equating Lot with G-d in passing judgment on them.  And they resent him for it.  There is no indication in the text that the men of the city are unhappy at not having sex with the guests.  Rather, the suggestion is that they are displeased that they have not succeeded at intimidating someone they perceived to be an ignorant foreigner (who, presumably, would accept nighttime bullying and harassment as a social norm).

* And the men stretched out their hands and made Lot enter his house with them and they closed the door.

            The verse is usually translated to indicate that the “men” means the guests.  However the verb used is יביאו

This is the hifil (causative) binyan, indicating that Lot was compelled to enter.

* And the men who were in the doorway of the house were struck with blindness, from the great to the small, and they wearied finding the door.

This is usually translated as “they struck the men who were at the door of the house with blindness…so they wearied themselves to find the door.”  But that doesn’t make sense:  if we understand “the men” of the previous verse to refer to the guests, then they had already pulled Lot into the house and closed the door, leaving the men of the city on the other side.  If, however, we understand that the men of the city succeeded in forcing themselves into the house, then we understand that once inside, they were struck with blindness and could not find the door to leave.  From this, we can infer that they did, in fact, enter the house forcibly and with intent to do harm.  Note there is no indication that they have succeeded in having sex with anyone.

Arguably, the confusion in the text over which men are inside the house and which are outside is deliberate:  both the men who are messengers/angels and the men of the city are identified as “enashim” without any qualifiers of “ha’ir” or “malachim.”  It is conjecturable that this deliberate confusion reflects the chaos of the scene as it is played out.

* And the men said to Lot, Who else is here?  Your daughters and the men they are contracted to and all those of yours in the city you brought to the place.

Because we are destroying this place because their outcry is so great before G-d, and G-d sent us to destroy it.

            The guests tell Lot to get all his people together and flee the city because objections to its residents has become so great that G-d has decided to destroy it.  There is no claim that G-d is objecting to the citizens’ request for sex with men.  More likely, the objections have been to the citizens’ behavior in engaging in harassment and intimidation.  The city is destroyed because its inhabitants are bullies, not because they have sex with men.

Abba, in Aramaic, is NOT "Dad," So much for Jesus calling God "Dad."

Post Vatican II doctrine holds that a salient aspect of Jesus' radicalism was that he had the audacity to call G-d "Dad."

This hypothesis is based on the recognition that אבא means Dad.  In modern Hebrew.

So, assuming post-Vatican II doctrine is correct, not only was Jesus audaciously radical, he was linguistically 2000 years ahead of his time.

However, if one assumes that Jesus was speaking Aramaic (which is generally supposed to have been the vernacular of the period and location), אבא, in Aramaic means "the father."

Aramaic, while using Hebrew letters, has something of a different grammatical structure:  in Hebrew the definite article  הַ  is attached to the noun as a prefix. In Aramaic, the definite article is א and it is attached to the noun as a suffix.

Thus in Hebrew "the father" would be האב, while in Aramaic, it would be אבא.

This is also consistent with social practice of the era--the male parent, as owner, lord and master of his family, was not generally treated with familiarity--that radical shift in familial behaviour was a creation of the 20 century, following the adoption of universal sufferage.  In the ancient world, the male parent (immanent as well as transcendent) was understood to be owner, lord and master of his domicile/domain, and that primacy was unquestioned.  Until the advent of universal sufferage.

The notion that the pronunciation of the tetragrammaton was lost is fiction

Popular wisdom has it that the pronunciation of the Name was "lost," but that it was pointed with the vowels for Adonay.  The transliteration of the consonants YHWH + the vowels for Adonay = Jehovah.

Well....not quite.

Jehovah is the product of the combination of YHWH + the vowels for Adonay.  That part is correct.  The incorrect part is that the text was pointed with the vowels for "adonay."

Why is this incorrect?  because texts of the time were without spacing between words and lacked nekudot (vowel points).

So how do we get "Adonay" as the name substituted for the Name that cannot be pronounced?

The LXX.

We find in the LXX that the Name is not transliterated from Hebrew into Greek (an impossibility because Greek lacks a consonantal sound approximating the soft "h" of ה .  So there was no means by which the Name could be represented as its full complicated verb.  The Name that was substituted in the text was one that would be recognized by all, Greek-speaking/literate Judeans and Greeks/Romans, as a Name to be respected:  κυριος , "lord."

The coda to Lev 20:13, "dying, they will die," is not necessarily a threat

Lev 20:13 contains a coda that Lev 18:22 does not have:  מות יומתו דמיהם בם:  dying, they will die, their blood on/in them.

That sounds dire.  But is it?

Bible scholarship says that when the very is duplicated, as this is
(מות יומתו) it acts as an intensifier.  Thus, "dying they will die" should be interpreted as "they're REALLY going to die."

That still sounds dire.  But is it a threat, or a statement of fact, based on the presumption that a male, attempting to impregnate another male, will fail to do so, and the result of that failure will be that both lines of descent are extinguished due to lack of progeny?  Conversely, it could also mean that the successful impregnation of a male by a male would result in one of the two having to disown the progeny, thereby ending his own family line.

Either situation would make the coda true without making it a threat of harm or punishment to be meted out.

Lev 20:13 also does not prohibit homosexuality. Go figure.

Ok, you say, so maybe Lev 18:22 doesn't prohibit homosexuality.  Lev 20:13 does.

Except, of course, that it doesn't.  In Lev 20:13, we again find משׁכבי אישׁה.  Specifically, the verse says  אִשׁ אשׁר ישׁכבה את זכר משׁכבי אִשׁה בועבה עדו שׁניהם מות יומתו דמיהם בם

"A man who will lie with a male in woman's beds both do ill, they will die, their blood on them."

That sounds dire.  I have translated "toevah" as "ill" because, as we have seen, the severity of the translation depends on the proximity to the Judean people.  I am assuming, in this instance, that the proximity to the Judean people is not the principal issue.

But we have noticed that Lev 18:22 does not make such a harsh declaration.  מה נשׁתנה?  How has this made itself different?

Lev 20:12 says  אשׁ אהר ישׁכב את כלתו מות ימתו שׁניהם תבל עשׂו דמִהמ בם
A man who lies with the woman he contracted to provide heirs for his son (כלתו) both will die, they have made confusion (תבל).  Their blood is on them.

Lev 20:14 says אשׁ אשׁר יקח את־אשׁה ואת־אמה הוא באשׁ ישׂרפו אתו ואתהן תהיה זמה בתוככם
A man who lies with a woman who is also a mother will be burned with fire.  There will be no immorality in your midst.

Le 20:14 says   אישׁ אשׁר יתן שׁכבתו בבהמה מות יומת את הבֶהמה תהרגו
A man who gives himself to lie with an animal will die, the animal will be killed.

All of these events have something in common--the possibility of producing offspring the ownership of which creates problems:  The man who lies with the woman he has acquired to produce heirs for his son (think Judah/Tamar), creates a situation whereby the ownership of the offspring could disinherit the son for whom the woman was contracted.

The man who lies with a woman who is already a mother creates the difficulty of presuming to attempt to steal the offspring of another man.

The man who gives himself to lie with an animal risks th animal producing offspring that is half-human half-animal.

So again, rather than encountering a text that prohibits homosexuality, we find a text in which ownership of the product of the union is a serious legal question, the disputation of which is unwelcome.

First instance of anti-semitism or religio licita? Catalyst for Christianity or Greco-Roman real politik?

At this time of year, it is common to seek a familiar face to retroject onto the person of Jesus.  It is common to revisit what is presumed to be known of the world at that time.  Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, is recalled.  What is not recalled is how Judea came to possess a Roman governor, since at the presumptive time of Jesus, Judea had not been conquered by Rome.

Christian scholarship contends that in the Greco-Roman world, Judaism was a "religio licita."  The phrase is from Tertullian, writing in the late 2nd/early 3rd century.  That alone should make the hypothesis suspect.

Jewish scholarship holds that the destruction of the Temple was the first act of deliberate Anti-Semitism in the west.  Christian scholarship contends that it was the catastrophe that proved the catalyst for the growth of Christianity as a major religion.  Neither are accurate.

In the ancient world, at the time of the rise of Greco-Roman civilization, Judeans were recognized as some of the fiercest fighters, and were sought after as mercenaries.  There were five fully-functioning Temples to the G-D of Judea.  One of those 5 temples was that of the Elephantine garrison community in upper Egypt.

We know from references in Tacitus that Cleopatra had engaged the Elephantine community as an addition to her forces.  We also know from Tacitus that when drought struck Egypt, and pleas were made to Cleopatra to release the corn stores and she refused, the Elephantine garrison switched sides and gave its strength to Augustus, ensuring his victory.

Victory as the result of assistance from Judean mercenaries was problematic for Augustus.  The problem did not arise because the aid was from mercenaries, but because it was not possible to assimilate those mercenaries into the Roman legions.  It was customary to incorporate allies into the Roman empire by giving them a place in the army--to facilitate this, the foreign gods worshipped by foreign fighters were given their Roman approximation.  This was not possible with the Judean mercenaries, whose god could not be represented in physical form, whose name could not be pronounced.  It was impossible to permit the Judean mercenaries to depart, with the possibility that they could rise against Rome.  It was equally impossible to assimilate them into the Roman army.

Augustus found a medium--claim Judea as a Roman "protectorate."  To forestall the possibility that the Judean mercenaries might rise up against him and Rome, Augustus decreed that Judeans were not permitted to carry arms.  In this way, the Judean mercenaries who enabled his victory were both "included" in the Roman Empire, and removed as a threat to it.  Judaism was not a "religio licita" because Judeans had not been conquered, and therefore had not been compelled to renounce their god or his worship.

The Jewish War was an astonishment to the Romans because this people who had been disarmed not only found arms, but made good use of them.  A people who were believed to no longer be a threat suddenly became an active threat.

In this context, the destruction of the Temple was not the first known act of Anti-Semitism in the west, but an act of Greco-Roman realpolitik:  the ancient world's way of saying "my god is bigger than your god and to prove it, I'll knock your god's temple down."  This was believed to be sufficient to show an enemy that the enemy's god was not stronger, and therefore the conquered people (and their god) were now subject to the stronger, victorious god.

Since this was not the first time the Temple had been destroyed (as attested to by the "rededication" as represented in the books of the Maccabees), it was not a cataclysmic action that provoked the uprising of a new sect that identified itself as "christians."

The Bar Kokhba Revolt of 132-136, on the other hand...a revolt by a people who had been conquered, who had been disarmed as a result of that conquest, and yet who found the arms and the courage to rise a second time...