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  • From: Perry L Stepp <plstepp AT juno.com>
  • To: corpus-paul AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: Musings on Pauline Studies
  • Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 11:21:23 -0500


> On basic difference between Paul and his modern
> interpreters is that homosexuality is now understood
> as an "orientation". Paul understood it as a specific
> act. Paul was not condemning (or condoning) committed
> relationships between people of the same gender. That
> there could even be such a thing as "committed
> relationships between people of the same gender" I
> doubt had even occurred to Paul as an option.

Two points: first, Plato's Symposium mentions and implies prominently the
existence of "committed relationships between people of the same gender."


Second, Philo (I don't have the reference here, but I can get it) has a
rather nuanced discussion of homosexuality and nature, and--as I
recall--he uses FUSIS in much the same way that we moderns would discuss
individual sexual orientation.

These two texts undercut the old Furnish argument (to wit, that Paul's
comments were limited to pederasty because that was the only type of
homosexual relationship widely known in the ancient Mediterranean world.)

PLStepp, Ph.D. candidate, Baylor University
http://www.tapercities.com/PhilZone/plstepp/

"For me, the lame part of the Sixties was the political part, the social
part. The real part was the spiritual part." --Jerry Garcia,
*Rolling Stone* 30 Nov 1989


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