If you’re referring to the Bible verse Leviticus 20:13, well, I’m sorry to say that the excerpt from “The God Delusion” or wherever you learned this simplistic piece of misinformation is, in fact, incorrect. Shocker.

In fact, there is no account of capital punishment, in regards to this law (killing homosexual men), in Jewish history.

As for Judaism, Rabbinic tradition understands the Torah's system of capital punishment to not be in effect for the past approximately 2,000 years, in the absence of a Sanhedrin and Temple.

And as for Christianity, Leviticus and indeed the entirety of the Law of Moses was fulfilled by Jesus Christ.

And so no, neither Jews nor Christians practice this at all.

But the book straight up says that, right? Like regardless of what was actually done, it literally says it right there:

'If a man lies with a man as with a woman, they have both committed an abomination. They must surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.'

That sounds like ancient Jewish law. The whole point of Christianity is that the ancient Jewish law isn’t valid anymore because of Christ.

Incorrect: https://biblehub.com/matthew/5-17.htm

The christian bible was independently written by multiple authors over hundreds of years.

If you are going to treat these writings as a single cohesive narrative, you still have to keep in mind the context.

One of the most interesting aspects of the writings Jesus, is that he only ever taught Jews. Jesus in fact never really laid out a formal theology of what to do after his death, he simply stresses that the second coming would be very soon.

The only person to discuss the applicability of the Torah to non jewish followers of Jesus is Paul. Paul is extremely clear that the Jewish law does not apply to non Jews.

It's also interesting that Paul never met Jesus, that Paul persecuted christians until a burning bush talked to Paul in a moment of divine inspiration, and afterwards Paul largely relied on his excellent knowledge of jewish scripture to explain why the jewish scripture no longer applied anymore.

I think this point could use more commentary and context.

There are many verses which deal with “what now if the law?”, and I think a fuller understanding requires reading more than one of them.

For example, there is, of course, the parts about the dietary restrictions part of the law.

But that isn’t all. Male converts to Judaism were required to be circumcised, but NT verses say that this is not required to convert to Christianity (though, not phrased like that of course), and in talking about this, it also talks about what the law succeeds in, and what it, well, not fails in, but, it’s insufficiency in the face of human failure?

I’m saying this not to say that the NT condones sex between two cisgender men (indeed, I believe that at one point after the resurrection, some apostles are on an island, and are telling the people there about Christ, and the text describes the homosexual sexual practices practiced by those native to the island as (in at least one common translation. This is by memory.) as “unnatural”, which seems to me to indicate disapproval, though I haven’t looked at commentary on how this was worded in the original Greek.)

My apologies for not including links and citations; I haven’t gotten out of bed yet this morning, and am typing this on my phone.

Did not know about it, so just checked +20 different versions/translations[1] of the said verse in the bible, and scripture could not have been sharper and clearer on several points;

- men who had sex with another men

- should be killed

- they deserve it

Would you point me to a source/insight maybe?

Else I will believe, that this is too, as I have witnessed countless times personally, nothing but an apologetic approach to horrors religious scripture in modern age.

1: https://biblehub.com/leviticus/20-13.htm

It says the same thing about men who have sex with their wives during the latter’s menstrual cycle, in the same chapter.

OTOH, like virtually of the rest of the old testament statutes applicable to the Jewish people, these and most of the other prohibitions in that chapter and the surrounding ones is voided as to non-Jewish Christians (though one might infer from it a continuing prohibition on same sex marriage from it), see Acts 15:28-29, where the apostles, addressing the acts of some in the early Christian community attempting to apply the Mosaic law in its entirety to gentile Christians, declared: “It is the decision of the holy Spirit and of us not to place on you any burden beyond these necessities, namely, to abstain from meat sacrificed to idols, from blood, from meats of strangled animals, and from unlawful marriage. If you keep free of these, you will be doing what is right. Farewell.”

Now, it's true that some modern Christians do exactly (or, rather more often, a cherry-picked subset of it) what the council in Acts 15—directed, as Scripture says, by the Holy Spirit—reacted against and declared invalid.

.. so we should be thankful that there's even worse ideas in there that nobody is doing!

3 Galatians is largely a deprecation notice for all the Old Testament laws (at least in the context of Christianity). But yeah, some people like to ignore that and use Leviticus to bolster their twisted political views, and if you take it in isolation, it does come across as pretty clear-cut.

(edit: and if you accept their four-degrees-of-game-of-telephone translation at face value, as sibling comment points out)

Right... the argument that “that isn’t the original Hebrew” is moot. People read their versions of the Bible and most versions are explicit in their aversion to gays.

I think you have misinterpreted the parent comment. I'm pretty sure they're saying "if all these translations unanimously agreed that's what the original Hebrew said, then that really is what it said", but you seem to have interpreted it as "look at how many translations are wrong!".

Is that right, or did I misunderstand you? If that is what you're saying, do you have a reason to disagree with all of those translations? Can you offer your own for that passage?

As a professing Christian, I would say your reading is correct, but this verse (like the rest of the ceremonial and judicial laws) is a command given specifically to Israel, not to all readers. Capital punishment is very common in this code of law, as it was in other civilizations from this time period. There are many laws that have to do with keeping sin and impurity/health risks out of the camp, and this is, by biblical standards, both of those. By modern standards it's a terrible law, but it was never intended for modern use.

So why is it still there?

I'm sure that at least some Abrahamic writings didn't get included in the Christian Bible. Or even in the Tanakh.

> So why is it still there?

Why is it part of the Christian Canon? Because it provides important context for later material, e.g., Acts 15. The controversy in the early Christian Community over the application of the Jewish ritual law to gentile Christians is hard to understand without the Jewish ritual law.

Also, not all Christians are gentile Christians.

Thanks.

Maybe this is a dumb question (having had no religious instruction) but do all modern Christians (except, I guess, some fundamentalists) understand that the Old Testament doesn't apply to them? If that's so, it seems like that stuff should be flagged somehow, to avoid misunderstandings.

Or do some modern gentile Christians perhaps go further, and believe that the old Jewish ritual law was a misunderstanding, and not an accurate statement of God's will? And if so, who are they?

Also, who are the modern non-gentile Christians?

I found a site that explains some of this,[0] but have no clue about its reliability. The root is here.[1]

0) http://www.winternet.com/~swezeyt/bible/origins/jwGn.htm

1) http://www.winternet.com/~swezeyt/bible/origins/originsMain....

> Maybe this is a dumb question (having had no religious instruction) but do all modern Christians (except, I guess, some fundamentalists) understand that the Old Testament doesn't apply to them?

I know of no modern Christian group that doesn't have a general understanding that the applicability of the OT law to Christians is, at a minimum, limited by the explicit terms of Acts 15. OTOH, there's obviously quite a bit of variation in what particular bits of the OT law modern Christian groups think actually still applies.

> If that's so, it seems like that stuff should be flagged somehow, to avoid misunderstandings

It's kind of (in general, not necessarily the specific passage in particular) the reason that the Catholic Church spent a very long time not being particularly happy with people without specific training reading the Bible themselves rather than going through tainted clergy as gatekeepers.

> Or do some modern gentile Christians perhaps go further, and believe that the old Jewish ritual law was a misunderstanding, and not an accurate statement of God's will? And if so, who are they?

Without getting into boundary disputes about where "Christian" ends, sure, there are probably groups that identify as Christian that believe that.

> Also, who are the modern non-gentile Christians?

One interpretation is that anyone who has ever been a Jew remains one and boundy the law even if they become Christian. (Of course, even the Jewish understanding of Jewish law seems to have h evolved—and become quite diverse—considerably since Christianity split off, and I'm not sure how much that influences theology as to what precepts, precisely, apply to modern Jews who become Christians.)

Thank you.

> It's kind of (in general, not necessarily the specific passage in particular) the reason that the Catholic Church spent a very long time not being particularly happy with people without specific training reading the Bible themselves rather than going through tainted clergy as gatekeepers.

OK, that makes sense. There's some of that perspective in the sciences about misunderstanding of the literature.

FWIW, I've met a Dominionist family that practiced the entirety of OT, including all the ritual purity laws. I never really clarified it, but it sounded like it was a thing in their local denomination in general.

They also did believe that the government should be structured according to those same OT provisions, and enforce them as laws.

> rather than going through tainted clergy as gatekeepers.

“trained” rather than “tainted” was the intent here.

Yes, I figured that :)

But from the Protestants' perspective, "tainted" arguably works too.

> Also, who are the modern non-gentile Christians?

That sounds like Messianic Judaism.

Ask yourself (and your bible) "what did Jesus say"? And "what would Jesus do"?

I believe that Jesus did not speak at all about homosexuality. There is no indication that he attacked or held any anger towards homosexuals.

Conversely Jesus was strongly anti-capitalist! No money changing or animal selling in temples folks!

But fundamentally - when reading the bible your question must be "am I a Christian - or not?" what is the purpose of Jesus's ministry and passion if he did not bring a message and a purpose beyond and more significant than the messages revealed to prophets and his servants? If you are a Christian surely your preoccupation must be his word - and more importantly his meaning; interpreted in the context of his explicitly stated principles and lived actions.

It’s fine that you interpret the bible that way. Certainly I’ve seen Christian pro-gay-rights memes that say Jesus never mentioned homosexuality.

Unfortunately, this whole thread seems to be on the topic of “It’s a shame that mass-dissemination of information demonstrably fails to make the best ideas into the most popular ideas [0]” — and although you interpret the bible that way, I’ve witnessed many profess Christianity while also condemning gay men.

[0] Well, unless you take the memetic evolution attitude that “best” isn’t a moral statement but shorthand for “best at reproducing”, but if anyone on this thread has said that, I’ve missed it.

To paraphrase someone else "to the extent that their beliefs and actions differ from the words and deeds of Christ they are not Christians".

Remember there have been 1000's of people practicing grotesque child abuse while professing Christianity, and yet one of the most frank and flat statements of Christ is "But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."

Ick factor aside, that sounds like a “No True Scotsman” argument to me.

Be aware that if I, as a lapsed neopagan, am asked to judge which Christians are acting in accordance with the deeds and words of an entity that I regard as fictional as my own pantheon, there might not be any “True Christians” left.

To focus on the point, how about a biblical example: Parable of the Sower, specifically that sown on the path and in the thorns.

If that approach is followed consistently, we'd likely have to conclude that "real Christians" were largely wiped out in the early persecutions. The modern Christian tradition is firmly rooted in the government-mandated imperial cult that was established by the Edict of Thessalonica.