Hadrianus:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=7574640#post7574640
forums.catholic-questions.org/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=7574920
H,
Through the fluff in your two posts above, what you are saying is that the sin of Sodom is primarily inhospitality, not the homosexual lusts of its men, even if you qualified that Sodom’s homosexual sins still figured as a reason why God destroyed it (with Gomorrah).
Yours is still a revisionist interpretation, with just a little variation from what gay advocates claim: Sodom was punished for inhospitality, not for the sin of homosexual lust. First, although you do not touch on it, the translation of the Hebrew word “yada” in Genesis 19:5 where the men demanded that Lot bring out the guests, could not be so that the men could “get acquainted” with the guests. The context clearly provides the meaning in the Scripture that what is meant is to “know” or “have sex with.” If the men of Sodom only wanted to check out whether Lot’s male guests were intruders, then why would Lot offer these men the right to have sexual relations with his two daughters? This makes no sense. Lot’s terrible offer of his daughters was to satisfy their lust, not their concern for community safety (Genesis 19:5-8).
The context is clear that the men of Sodom wanted to sodomize Lot’s male visitors. While the men were undeniably inhospitable, they were primarily immoral, not the other way around, which is the context you are favoring.
Your Ezekiel 16:35 cite (which I did read) is a weak support. Why? The general wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah is not in question. That homosexuality was part of that wickedness would not be surprising. Genesis shows that homosexuality was the principal behavior at issue in that passage. Ezekiel simply enumerates additional sins. The prophet doesn’t contradict Moses, but rather gives more detail.
Stinginess and arrogance alone did not draw God’s wrath. Ezekiel anchored the list of crimes with the word “abominations.” This word takes us right back to homosexuality. The conduct Moses refers to in Genesis 18 he later describes in Leviticus as “abomination” in God’s eyes.
As to your claim of inaccurate translation of the Jude 7 passage, “other flesh” is closer in association with Sodom’s sins as "sexual immorality and perversion such as homosexuality” than with the sin of inhospitality!
To modern people the idea of inhospitality to strangers seems a weak crime, but in the ancient Near East travellers could easily die if turned away from a settlement and forced into the wilderness.
Sorry, the sentence above of yours is just too John Boswell-ish.
Further, as much as I respect your opinion in this forum, I would take exegesis from a publication that Catholic Answers uses with good basis before a subjective or tentative one of a poster.
Finally, although you are not arguing it, it’s telling that the origin and development of the word sodomy is confined to one and only one thing: anal sex.
c.1300, from
O.Fr. sodomie, from L.L. peccatum Sodomiticum “analsex,” lit. “sin of Sodom,” from L. Sodoma, ult. from Heb. s’dom “Sodom,” morally corrupt city in ancient Palestine, said to havebeen destroyed, with neighboring Gomorrah, by fire from heaven(Gen. xviii-xix). Sodomize coined 1868.
Btw,
Nihil Obstat means: attestation by the Roman Catholic Church that nothing in the publication is against faith and morals.
Imprimatur means: official sanction by the RC.
It is unlikely that the RC would affix said marks blindly or without reviewing the interpretation or exegesis of scripture that a publication cites.
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