--- In [email protected], Vaj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Feb 25, 2006, at 5:07 PM, feste37 wrote: > > > I guessed that Vaj's scholarship was as thin as a > > tart's negligee, but the question you ask below is a hypothetical. > > Nothing is known or will ever be known about the sexuality of Jesus > > of Nazareth. > > If you had a question, you should ask.
Right: "Vaj, isn't your scholarship as thin as a tart's negligee?" We had the answer to that without your assistance, although you thoughtfully provide additional evidence in your current post. Since Vaj has carefully snipped both what he had written and my response, I'll restore them here so we can all see *why* he snipped them: ------ > > Well, no, I'm not "making it up". The "gospels" have been edited, > > and the potentially homosexual parts were removed from Mark. We > > know because we found an old copy before the church got it's > > hands on it. So much for Vaj's much-vaunted "scholarship." We didn't "find an old copy." What was found was a letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria that quotes one short passage that does not appear in canonical Mark... ------ In his current post, of course, Vaj omits any mention of his extraordinary misstatement of what was actually found, which was what I was correcting. > Judy makes the false > assumption that these conclusions were mine You mean, the "conclusion" that "we found an old copy before the church got it's [sic] hands on it"? That isn't anybody's "conclusion" but that of Vaj himself, and of course it's completely incorrect. , which is completely > incorrect--a good reason why you should ask if you have a question. Feste didn't have a question. Now, here's Vaj's attempt to pretend my argument was about the purported homosexual implications of the passage rather than his misstatement of the nature of the find: > The assertions and insight are actually from the late biblical > scholar and Nag Hammadi translator Morton Smith of Columbia > University regarding a letter and various known fragments. In fact, Smith made no such "assertions." He was quite clear that his notions about homosexual activity (as opposed to homosexuality per se) during the initiation were speculative: [. . . F]rom the scattered indications in the canonical Gospels and the secret Gospel of Mark, we can put together a picture of Jesus' baptism, "the mystery of the kingdom of God." It was a water baptism administered by Jesus to chosen disciples, singly and by night. The costume, for the disciple, was a linen cloth worn over the naked body. This cloth was probably removed for the baptism proper, the immersion in water, which was now reduced to a preparatory purification. After that, by unknown ceremonies, the disciple was possessed by Jesus' spirit and so united with Jesus. One with him, he participated by hallucination in Jesus' ascent into the heavens, he entered the kingdom of God, and was thereby set free from the laws ordained for and in the lower world. Freedom from the law may have resulted in completion of the spiritual union by physical union. This certainly occurred in many forms of gnostic Christianity; how early it began there is no telling.[ Nor was this the primary thrust of Smith's thesis. It's an interesting notion, and Smith could well be correct, but there's no actual evidence for it, nor is there any sort of scholarly consensus about it. In any case, as I noted above, what Smith proposes is not that Jesus was a homosexual but that his initiations may have involved homoerotic activity, two very different things which may or may not go together. Bottom line, Vaj has misrepresented the situation from top to bottom, whether through ignorance or in an attempt to mislead and deceive. I personally would be thrilled to find that Jesus was in fact gay because of what it would do for the cause of gays generally (and because it might help some fundies develop a more reasonable approach to their religion). But "The Secret Gospel of Mark" does not give us any reason to believe he was. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Join modern day disciples reach the disfigured and poor with hope and healing http://us.click.yahoo.com/lMct6A/Vp3LAA/i1hLAA/UlWolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
