Badlands, you gotta live it everyday Let the broken hearts stand As the price you’ve gotta pay| We’ll keep pushin’ till it’s understood And these badlands start treating us good — ”Badlands,” Bruce Springsteen “Badlands” has long been one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs.
What is a eunuch ‘by birth’? A curious, enigmatic, debated, and often dismissed, verse is found in the 19th chapter of the New Testament’s Gospel of Matthew. Some scholars for the past 40 years or so have argued that it includes a reference to men
Washing feet: A Biblical fetish? In the movie The Big Chill, during a weekend of reminiscing about their college days in the ’60s, the once-aspiring journalist who is now a reporter for a gossip magazine says, “I hate to think that all we stood for
During the reign of Hezekiah from 726-697 the southern kingdom of Judah was prosperous. Judah had been made a vassal state of Assyria after the Syrio-Ephraimite war in 734-732 and was flourishing under these conditions despite paying heavy tribute to Assyria. Material wealth among the
When Judah saw her, he thought her to be an harlot; because she had covered her face. And he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee. (Genesis 38:15-16) When we read Scripture we
Karl Barth, the premier theologian of this century for Germany, and the major contributor to the document that freed the German Church from Hitler’s influence, said that all Christian theology must begin and end with the person of Jesus Christ, or it is not Christian
Part of a series of essays on the Bible and homosexuality. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah Genesis 19 describes how two angels visited Sodom and were welcomed into Lot’s house. The men of the city gathered around the house and demanded that Lot send
Back to Index In summary: Homosexual activity in the temple by male prostitutes is clearly prohibited by the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament). Homosexual activity in general may have been prohibited at the time by the Holiness Code, but that code is no longer binding on
Most people seem to “know” that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by God because of homosexuality. Well, I haven’t been able to find the phrase, “homosexuality” anywhere in Genesis or Judges or anywhere else in the Bible refering to Sodom and Gomorrah.
Editor’s note: For more on this and the other “clobber passages” commonly used to justify scripture-based condemnation of homosexuality, you may also enjoy our essay series “The Bible and Homosexuality.” The supposed ‘Sin of Sodom’ The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is the biblical story