Posted by xXx on July 21, 19102 at 00:39:40:
"Before they [the angels visiting Lot to judge the wickedness of Sodom and determine whether or not to spare it] had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom-both young and old-surrounded the house. They called to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them [lit., 'so we may know them']." Lot went outside to meet them... and said, "No, my friends. Don't do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don't do anything to these men... ." ...And they said, "We'll treat you worse than them." Gen. 19
Very few people doubt that "to know" here means, in vulgar english "to f--k". But it seems to me to be a case of rape.
"If he [God] condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men.." 2 Peter 2:6-7
"In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire" Jude 7
"eternal fire"... oooh there is one of those bad translations again! A more accurate translation is "age-lasting fire" (symbolic fire of course) [there is no such thing as eternal punishment, or even hell for that matter, in the original Hebrew and Greek texts]
Peter doesn't even make a sexual refference. The use of Jude has a very, very serious flaw in it.
Jude mentions "Sodom AND Gomorrah"- however, the events in Genesis 19 only occured in Sodom, NOT Gomorrah. Jude 6-7 thus does not refer to the incident of genesis 19.
Let's get more in-depth here. The NKJV Greek English Interlinear New Testament literally translates II Peter 2:4 as "For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell [tartarosas] and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment..." The word hell here was translated from the Greek "tartarus" and that is the only occurence of the word. "tartarus" is exact same Greek word to denote where the mythical Titans were placed. The Titans were created between unions of gods and women. The real life story was between angels and mortal women (Gen. 6., Enoch 6-8,).
Kenneth Wuest writes of verse Jude 7:
>>> "This verse begins with hõs, an adverb of comparison having meanings of "in the same manner as, after the fashion of, as, just as." Here it introduces a comparison showing a likeness between the angels of verse 6 and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha of this verse. But the likeness between them lies deeper than the fact that both were guilty of committing sin. It extends to the fact that both were guilty of the same identical sin. The punctuation of the A.V. [KJV] is misleading, as an examination of Greek text discloses.
The A.V. punctuation gives the reader the impression that Sodom and Gomorrha committed fornication and that the cities about them committed fornication in like manner to the two cities named. . . . The words "in like manner" are related to the verbal forms, "giving themselves over to fornication" and "going after strange flesh." In addition to all this, the Greek text has toutois, "to these." Thus, the translation should read, "just as Sodom and Gomorrha and the cities about them, in like manner to these, having given themselves over to fornication and having gone after strange flesh." The sense of the entire passage (vv.6, 7) is that the cities of "Sodom and Gomorrha and the cities about them, in like manner to these (the angels), have given themselves over to fornication and have gone after strange flesh."... (Word Studies in the Greek New Testament, vol. II, pp. 241-242). <<<
Verse 7, in Original Greek says that the sexual dimension of Sodom's sin involved going after "heteras sarkos", which literally means "different/-other flesh", in like manner to the angels of verse 6.
Since Gomorrah had nothing to do with Genesis 19, both Peter 2:4-5 and Jude 6-7 refer to the incident of Genesis 6 when the male angels raped the female humans.
Correctly interpreted, Jude and Peter refer to the angel-human sex of Genesis 6.
Even IF the verses did refer to Genesis 19, both verses compare the RAPE of women to the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah. So either way, Sodom's sexual sin was homosexual rape and not homosexuality in general.
A condemnation of homosexual rape cannot be forced into a condemnation of homosexuality in general. If so then we might as well condemn heterosexuality for the condemnation of heterosexual rape in Judges 19 (which is extremely identical to Genesis 19- in this case a male stranger's concubine is raped by the men of the town until she dies)
>>>> The pro-gay interpretation of Sodom's destruction has some merit: homosexual rape was attempted, and the
Sodomites were certainly guilty of sins other than homosexuality. But in light of the number of men willing to join in the rape, and the many other references, both Biblical and extra-Biblical, to Sodom's sexual sins, it is likely homosexuality was widely practiced among the Sodomites. It is also likely that the sin for which they are named was one of many reasons judgment finally fell on them. <<<<
Contrary to Jo Dallas, no apocryphal work describes Sodom's sin as being homosexuality. The closest condemnation to it is 2nd Enoch's condemnation of "child corruption".
Since I have already illustrated that Jude and Peter do not refer to homosexuality but to the rape of mortal women by angels, I think I should say more about "the number of men willing to join in the rape" (it seems like Dallas just contradicted himself there eh).
Think about that for a second. If EVERY male in the city was trying to have sex with the angels, do you really think the angels would let them? The only way "every" male could have sex with them is by rape.
Also when Lot said ".. dont act so wickedly" the men
of Sodom responded saying, "stand back or we will do worse to you....". This implies that they were already planning on doing harm to the angels. Thus their actions were violent and can only be described as rape.
Furthermore, when the men of Sodom asked Lot "where are the men... bring them out so that we may know them".... the word translated as "men" actually means "persons".. so they were actually asking "where are the persons"... they didn't know what sex the visitors were or what they looked like; they just wanted to rape them.
And to make one last comment, any historian on this subject will tell you that during that time period,
in that place and setting, men very frquently raped strangers for humilation value. This is clearly what
the men of Sodom wanted to do.