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A quick rule for most: if you think you understand Paul, then you don't. As to fornication, that word does not appear in the Bible. — tim wood

I certainly don't fully understand fully Paul. I wasn't raised Christian. Happy to be corrected.

In ancient Judaism fornication -- sex outside marriage -- was frowned upon. It just doesn't receive the same type of penalties as something like adultery or homosexuality. The attitude towards it is biblically-based.

edit: In deut 22 the topic is mentioned. Women should be virgins before marriage -- i.e. should not have sex outside of marriage.

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More likely, the person who has done at least some of the work to understand Paul will be modest in his claims — tim wood

I hope I was. Feel free to point out what you think is out of line on my part.

And yes, biblical, just not the modern word or sense of the modern word. — tim wood

Deut 22 deals with a woman maintaining purity before marriage. Men are not to deflower women before marriage or another man's wife. Is that not the topic of fornication? I.e. sex outside of marriage.

And translations that are off, or in some cases just plain wrong, part of the problem. — tim wood

Agree. I recommend Alter's translation. Word for word. With commentary.

Best advice I had about the Bible was to keep in mind that it was not written to me, for me, or about me, and that anyone who claims that it is telling me what to do is taking several leaps that are not in the Bible.

Hm. I sort of agree? It's the literature of a civilization. Was it written specifically for you, Tim Wood, a 21st century human being? No. It was certainly written for a certain civilization though and there is literature in there that is universal in scope. It's a collection of ~39 different works with different purposes. Some document history, others cultic practices, theological experiments/exercises.... it's a wide mix compiled over ~1000 years. It's not until the New Testament that Paul (and Jesus I guess) tries to graft on the rest of humanity. Regardless of whether Paul is successful in his project, universalistic elements remain.

TLDR: In the OT some is universal others is clearly geared towards a specific people - Israel. The NT takes Jesus and runs with it hard. New divine revelation. One can appreciate the old and not the new. I despise those who only appreciate the new but not the old.

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— tim wood

You may like this series of lectures. — tim wood

:up:

Anyway. I invite you to weigh that word "purity," — tim wood

I can avoid the word and re-state my position. I was simply discussing ancient Jewish and biblical perspectives towards fornication -- sex before marriage. Whether or not we agree with these is another matter altogether. A woman's virginity was valued at marriage; that's all I should have said and I should not have used the word "purity" as it is not mentioned in deuteronomy.

He may not be exactly right all the time — tim wood

According to Alter translation is a trade off so he must choose one word where many may fit. I will sometimes cross-reference his translations with others but his is my gold standard, although admittedly not always as readable as something like the NIV. Still, better something than nothing imho. If you're very serious you can start learning the biblical hebrew (or greek with the NT).

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I usually delight in quibbling, but don't feel you must peruse your cache of quotes regarding the naughtiness of sodomy on my account. I don't doubt there were those who disapproved of it and pederasty in particular, but I think most were indifferent to it compared to the angry fascination with it we see later.

As to Caesar, as I noted, the Romans thought a man taking the passive role in gay sex was ridiculous. So, Caesar was mocked for taking the passive role, in other words becoming another man's woman.

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All right, you've convinced me that Achilles wasn't gay. Point taken. To my understanding, however, pedestry was an institution within ancient greece where younger men would be tutored/groomed by their older mentors. This persisted for centuries and was phased out with the rise of Christianity.

@Ciceronianus is your source on all things Roman. But again, a different sexual ethic than the Christians (and Jews). AFAIK upper class Roman men basically had free reign sexually when it came to the lower classes and especially slaves whose bodies could be used on demand. Extreme promiscuity within the slave ranks. But I would say compared to Jewish-Christian notions of sexuality the Romans (and paganism in general -- constantly associated with sexual libaciousness in the bible) definitely had greater degrees of sexual access and looser/different norms. The romans for instance distinguished between penetrator and penetrated -- in the Hebrew Bible both receive the same harsh treatment and the same carries over into Christianity.

I'm not calling all of them sexual degenerates. That's a value judgment that I'm not at liberty to make. But Roman men (and surely Greek ones too) were allowed to use their slaves and have their dalliances. The Maccabees fought a very bitter war against the Greeks due to Greek ways intruding and the sexual ethic surely played into it.

Judaism and Christianity with its emphasis on monogamy ushered in a stricter sexual ethic than the polytheistic world. I don't believe Jews used their slaves sexually like the Romans did although I'd like to find more info on this topic.

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I don't see how that is relevant, as the time frame is intermediary between the two events of interest. — Lionino

Well then I think you missed the point, try again.

Long before we started making anthropological investigations of those people. Thus, the results of those investigations may have been caused by contact with outsiders. Not to speak of the Arab slave trade in Africa: — Lionino

So the Pygmies reinvented there whole oral history from thousands of years ago just because they heard something knew, very doubtful.

And they had contact with the Egyptians long before that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_(Greek_mythology)

One story in Ovid describes the origin of the age-old battle, speaking of a Pygmy Queen named Gerana who offended the goddess Hera with her boasts of superior beauty, and was transformed into a crane.

In art the scene was popular with little Pygmies armed with spears and slings, riding on the backs of goats, battling the flying cranes. The 2nd-century BC tomb near Panticapaeum, Crimea "shows the battle of human pygmies with a flock of herons". — Wiki

So if the Pygmies had contact with the Egyptians way back in

Again the question, "When did the Genesis version of creation get written down?"

Could it be that the story was already know in Egypt even before someone wrote it down?

I doubt it.

Moreover, most Pygmies now speak Niger-Kordofanian (e.g., Bantu) or Nilo-Saharan languages, possibly acquired from neighboring farmers, especially since the expansion of Bantu-speaking agriculturalists beginning ∼5 kya (Blench 2006).

And ideas get spread by ways other than demic diffusion. An unmixed DNA doesn't say much about one's culture. — Lionino

Oh dear, so now we are discussing modern times, I am getting confused by your time jumping. Please keep the topic to the time period under discussion to keep it relevant.

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Regardless, let's have our way with our fantasies. Romans and Greeks were gay. Yeah. They are still not part of your culture. Are you Greek or Italian, or, at the very least, Mexican? No? So they have nothing to do with you. Make some history of your own so you don't have to take it from others. — Lionino

They are not my culture because I am neither Greek nor Roman nor even Mexican. Yet my culture interacted with & still, to an extent, interacts with these cultures. Hellenism influenced my people.

Make some history of your own so you don't have to take it from others.

:snicker: Don't mind my people we just wrote the Bible.

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Let us speak of these things. Or let us speak instead of the proof (proof, not scant and conditional and specific evidence) that Greeks and Romans were generally sexual degenerates. I don't see proof of that anywhere. Even then, anyone who makes such a claim is making the historical confusion of generalising a period of over 1000 years to appease their personal bias and politics. — Lionino

I think that the problem here is that in modern times, under the christian umbrella, people tend to see so many parts of sexuality as degenerate. The ancient civilizations had a much broader, more relaxed view on such things as shown in much of the writing and art of those times. There are plenty of what would now be called deviations spoken of and show in their art.
Does that mean maybe that for them it was not deviant behavior?

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Jews may claim Greeks were a factor in their culture, that privilege doesn't apply to folks from other nations. Yet, a factor in a culture isn't the same as part of one's culture. Greece was an inextricable part of Latin/Roman culture, from its inception to the fall of the West, yet Latins saying "Aristotle and Zeus and Perikles are my culture" would be awfully weird, Augustine, Jupiter, and Scipio are their culture instead. — Lionino

Sure. Yet according to the Bible Japeth (progenitor of the Greeks) and Shem (progenitor of the Hebrews) are both sons of Noah. "God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant." Greek methods of storytelling/literature work their way into the Bible. The Jews love Alexander the Great yet go to war with the Seleucids.