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"And in a 2018 scholarly article, he used similar approach to advance a startling claim: that an earlier version of Leviticus, rather than forbidding sex betwee
by benjohnson 6y ago
"And in a 2018 scholarly article, he used similar approach to advance a startling claim: that an earlier version of Leviticus, rather than forbidding sex between men, had actually permitted it."
I'm a poor scholar of the ancient Jewish faith, but explicit permission of male on male sexual intercourse in the five books seems a bit of a stretch.
While I'd like to judge the merits of this man's claims, this has echos of the whole "Jesus wife" fiasco of seeking attention by being edgy.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoGuilt by association does not mean Dershowitz is necessarily being duped.
- svat 6y ago(Disclaimer: I have no interest in this matter; my interest here is only in the structure of the argument.) If you follow the link to the 2018 "startling claim" (https://archive.is/QAa5x https://archive.is/QAa5x), what's presented there is not a claim of "explicit permission" as you say, but a reasoning from the principle that "For example, a sign declaring an office to be closed on Sundays suggests that the office is open on all other days of the week". (That is, in that article Idan Dershowitz suggests that an earlier version of Leviticus 18 forbade homosexual incest, which if true would in turn lead to the conclusion that homosexuality wasn't forbidden in general.)
- R0b0t1 6y agoI have also seen it construed the original prohibition was against pedastery as practiced by the Greeks, not homosexuality in general.
- andrewflnr 6y agoPretty sure that pertains to the New Testament (e.g. Paul), not the Pentateuch. I don't know the exact timeline, but I don't think the ancient Greeks as we know them were a factor when the Old Testament law was written.
- InfiniteRand 6y agoThere’s some decent evidence that the Philistines were Greek, although they would have been Greeks before the period when Greeks wrote much about pedastery so your point probably is still valid
- andrewflnr 6y agoAh, that's fascinating. TIL.
- R0b0t1 6y agoI think pederasty was relatively common, I didn't mean to associate it just with Greek influence.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> Dershowitz suggests that an earlier version of Leviticus 18 forbade homosexual incest, which if true would in turn lead to the conclusion that homosexuality wasn't forbidden in general. That's fine as far as it goes, but it seems unlikely that there would be a specific prohibition on homosexual incest as opposed to incest in general.
- rsynnott 6y agoSo, Leviticus doesn't just say "no incest, please"; it has quite a long list of forbidden combinations. 18:7 and 18:14 refer to both male-male and male-female incest but are weirdly worded; Dershowitz's contention is that after the putative addition of 18:22 (the "no sex with men" one) they were reworded to de-emphasise the male part (as, if there's a general prohibition on male-male sex, they'd seem a bit superfluous.)
- lucas_membrane 6y agoWhy? In more recent times in America, the New Amsterdam colony prohibited adulterous sex with heathens.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]