Saturday, January 19, 2019
Is there any evidence that there were any gay people in Sodom?
Is there a single shred of evidence in the text that consensual gay activity was ever committed in Sodom? Raping an outside visitor could easily be explained in terms of an interest in domination, as opposed to homosexual attraction. Let me ask again: is there any real evidence that there were any gay people in Sodom, and that the homosexual interest in the visitors had anything to do with same-sex attraction?
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4 comments:
Is rape a common form of establishing dominance over another man at any point in history?
Hal,
Other than prison - which has no women - I have never heard of a straight man raping another man to establish dominance. Hence my question.
You responded too quickly, since I just got done reading some information that this was indeed done to enemy soldiers in the ancient Near East. Doesn't explain everything, but my question was answered.
I've seen Hal's referenced passage from Ezekiel before, and it syncs with my own idea that Sodom and Gomorrah were basically just generic "cities", which to the author of Genesis (and to many of the prophets) were in and of themselves evil. Similar to how much of the rural US population today looks down on cities as cesspools of debauchery and crime.
2 Peter 2:7
And if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard);
It seems that Lot was familiar with the intentions of the crowd of Sodom citizens did not interpret the proposal as mere inhospitality or a wish to dominate the 2 guests. Instead he offered his daughters to satiate them. So it seems Lot understood their intentions as sexual desire.
That also seems to be the historic Jewish understanding too:
2 Josephus writes "And when God had replied that there was no good man among the Sodomites; for if there were but ten such men among them, he would not punish any of them for their sins, Abraham held his peace. And the angels came to the city of the Sodomites, and Lot entreated them to accept of a lodging with him; for he was a very generous and hospitable man, and one that had learned to imitate the goodness of Abraham. Now when the Sodomites saw the young men to be of beautiful countenances, and this to an extraordinary degree, and that they took up their lodgings with Lot, they resolved themselves to enjoy these beautiful boys by force and violence; (201) and when Lot exhorted them to sobriety, and not to offer anything immodest to the strangers, but to have regard to their lodging in his house; and promised, that if their inclinations could not be governed, he would expose his daughters to their lust, instead of these strangers—neither thus were they made ashamed." [Ant. 1.200-201] and Philo writes "and so, by degrees, the men became accustomed to be treated like women, and in this way engendered among themselves the disease of females, and intolerable evil; for they not only, as to effeminacy and delicacy, became like women in their persons, but they made also their souls most ignoble, corrupting in this way the whole race of man, as far as depended on them" [T. ab. 136]
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