Do you think it's possible that Jesus and the Apostles were gay?

Okay, so to some this is totally blasphemous, but growing up Catholic I always considered it a truly valid question. I know it can't be proved, but neither can the notion that Jesus was white.

so chose other.

I was in a Catholic theology class once where the priest asked the class: Name a book that chronicles the history of a people.

My answer: Gone with the Wind.

The poor man went totally insane, screaming NO NO NO and jumping up and down on the radiator. Then he called on someone who said: The Bible... and he smiled.

Crikey. Neither one is anything more than fiction or myth... and I would challenge anyone to prove that Jesus and the apostles were real, historical people. I think that they are fictional composites arising out of the imaginations of a people... though there might be a few qualities that are based on real people that the writers or their predecessors once knew.

ananda

By that, I mean that it's difficult to "prove" the existence of anyone in antiquity. And that should not be the standard. You have to look at the preponderance of evidence.

In this case, the closest you can come is Josephus's reference to Jesus' brother. He was not a believer, had no vested interest in the issue, and mentioned James's death purely for historical reasons.

Now the question of whether the real Jesus was the same figure depicted in the gospels is another matter. That is a question for many lifetimes.

after he died. That is, two centuries after Josephus died.

Scholars make a pretty good argument that the Jesus mention was inserted into Josephus's history at the time that the church was consolidating its power in the 3rd century, Nicean creed and all that. IOW, a short time after the gospels were written.

There are obviously some Christian additions, and they stand out (the phrase "He was the Christ" does not fit into the passage at all.) But the sequence dealing with James's death doesn't make a lot of sense if the whole reference is fabricated. All that I'm claiming is that Josephus mentioned James's death as a predecessor to the revolt.

To hold a position that Jesus was not real, among other things you would have to account for the groups who believed he was a person within the lifetime of eyewitnesses. And a branch of the church, the Ebionites, who claimed to be descended from Jesus' family. And the emperor Domitian, who dragged up Jesus' great grand-nephews as descendents of David as potential threats against Rome.

Personally, I doubt Jesus was anything like the way he is usually depicted. But believing he was invented requires as least as much of a leap of faith as believing he lived.

"I think that they are fictional composites arising out of the imaginations of a people."

I think Jesus and all the stories about him are like the Robin Hood stories. Just stories that got started and added onto. There probably were people who were somewhat like Jesus or Robin Hood, but they weren't anything like the stories that have come down to us.

On edit: And GWTW is full of a lot of myth, too. Sad thing is a lot of Americans believe the antebellum South was really like that, that ALL white families had mansions and dozens of slaves. Except for sorry ones like Jonas Wilkerson, the Yankee overseer, and the Slattery family, who were apparently the only non-slaveowning whites in the county.

n/t

i picked the gaydar answer to start shit;)

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and entrust the care of his mother to?

although there is a good essay out there that frames John as being Mary Magdalene.

but one question that always piqued my interest was as follows: If Jesus truly did live as men did, did He ever jerk off?

And which cheek did he lift when he farted?

I agree that it's a valid question, and if asking it ruins Jim Dobson's sunny afternoon in Colorado Springs, ask away.

13 guys and one woman. Many of the apostles likely were married yet left to become members of the ministry of Jesus.

Jesus himself unmarried at age 32.

Hmm.

:hide:

And, for someone living on the continent of Africa, in that region, during those times, chances are pretty damn good he wasn't "white." I mean, "Moses was an African" but Cecile B. and Charleton Heston seem to have erased that from the collective memories of all those good Bible-reading folks. Oh, sure, they like to drag the Caucasian tribe argument into it, but it's pretty thin. I suppose Jesus could have been an albino....

But it sure would matter to a hell of a lot of his followers.

His so-called followers are some of the worst examples of humans I've ever had the displeasure of meeting. The minute someone tells me that they regularly go to church, alarm bells go off everywhere.

I have many sane and liberal friends and family members who go to church regularly. I'm sorry you will never know the pleasure of their acquaintance because of your closed-mindedness.

I have no problem with people of faith as long as they don't try to convince me that I need to have the same beliefs that they do.

But I have little respect for someone who blindly follows any authority figure, particularly when the principles these authorities claim to follow were quite literally made up by a bunch of politicans (Which king do you prefer? James or Gideon?) Jesus's own words in the Bible are few and simple. Nobody, not even a child, would need a religious leader to interpret them. Yet we need religious leaders to tell us how to interpret the Bible. Why is that?

Jesus also suppsedly said that whenever two or more gather in my name, that is church. It's also a private thing, since Jesus wasn't very keen about public proclamations of faith. In other words, worship is a private affair. So why do churchgoers feel they must collect with a bunch of strangers and shower one of their own with money? Why is going to church so much better than gathering with your family or even a group of close friends and really talking about what Jesus would do? And it's free!

Show me a church that doesn't push its followers to donate money. Isn't it enough that churches are exempt from paying taxes? There's one of every damn street corner where I live. If the word of even one church is true, why do we need so many churches?

I could obviously go on and on. But I cannot think of anything the church is good for beside indoctrination and training kids to grow up to be nonquestioning, authority-accepting adults who will reinforce those precepts even further.

The pastors there made a huge point of not beating people over the head with pleas for money, although they did pass the plate every week and people gave what they could or wanted to. Then the church grew by leaps and bounds and they had to start a building fund to build a larger church.

Guess what? The church quit growing. One pastor retired and the other moved to a different church, and now the church is huge and they have a pastor who is more of a businessman. And I'm not there anymore.

There was, however, a Sunday School class called "Financial Freedom" which taught that if you gave money to the lord He would bless you proportionately. Not real subtle but not nearly as blatant as in some churches I've visited and pretty standard in fare in much of today's happy-happy-joy-joy-God-is-Love doctrine of selling religion to the masses.

We all understand that the wonderfully uplifting service she puts on every week costs money (musicians, rent, her salary, etc.), and so we donate an amount we can afford (the average donation is about $15-$20, a fairly modest sum in view of incomes in this area.

We do not believe in an outside authority figure, nor do we blindly follow anyone or anything. We believe we are all equally divine.

We gather to celebrate our diversity and uniqueness, and to harness our mental power. We gather to socialize. When I do that, I am gathering with close friends.

I'm never pressured or indoctrinated; we're free, rather like the Unitarian-Universalists, to explore various wisdoms and spiritualities. We are encouraged to question, and that is how my daughter is being raised.

So, not every church is the spiritually-damaging church or the likes of what you describe. Try a philosophy that is progressively-minded sometime; it is very healing.

Of course, if you are quite content now, don't bother. Please do what makes you happy; I honor that. But there IS a choice. We don't have to go to Southern Baptist or Assembly of God churches, for example.

As to the issue the Original Poster presented, I'll bet that 7-8% of the disciples were gay, because I'll bet that statistic has been fairly consistent over the years. I doubt that anyone would have described themselves as homosexual, though. They probably saw no conflict between getting married and a little sinning on the side (with a male or a female); as usual, there were probably people who provided those services if one couldn't make other arrangements. Just my thoughts.

I put it didn't matter; I focus on the wisdom to be gleaned in the Biblical stories. It is clear, in view of descriptions of Greek and Roman activities that same-sex relationships have been around as long as humankind has been around.

C'mon, there are good Christians out there. :hi:

See my rant above....

I wondered the same thing, why do they need all my money? Why do I have to show up every Sunday?

Now I see it as community. I enjoy the people I see at church and appreciate our time together after church. The church I attend gives the money it doesn't use to keep the lights on to the food bank, homeless shelters and other charities.

I don't get the big monster churches that are cropping up everywhere, but if that's how they worship, so be it.

I keep getting back to the fact that I can't see a world without a greater power than man, I've always believed there must be something out there that keeps me from doing wrong, keeps me honest, keeps me wanting to help others. For me that power is God.

I can't argue if you don't believe and won't condemn you either.

Especially today, when a sense of community is hard to come by, I can totally see where you're cocming from and I'm sorry if I said stupid , offensive things (something I do often, so please don't take it personally!).

how wonderful we all are to you :bounce:

We keep getting invited to the new 'monster' churches that take up three acres of land south of town. I guess they assume that Catholics are all heathens and need to be 'saved'.....:eyes:

shiny bronze -- and curly white hair -- like wool.

not very white sounding.

or is this from the original Aramaic? And since when is bronze white? Hair like wool, huh? You mean like many Africans have?

but i think that physical description followed through the other translations.

I absolutely agree that Jesus was not a blond-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian (well, unless he was an albino in which case his eyes would have been pink). But Palestine - and the rest of the Fertile Crescent, with the exception of Egypt, do not lie on the continent of Africa, but rather the continent of Asia. I also don't think that Moses looked like Charleton Heston (or Ramses II like Yul Brenner for that matter), but I also don't think that he was African either.

Also, Palestine is considered the bridge connecting Asia, Africa and Europe, so we're not too far.

And common sense tells you that he had to have been black. The pharoahs of eqypt were black. How can you raise a white child in a black household and pretend that it's your child?

There's another scene in the Bible in which God turns Moses' hand white. What does that tell you?

Back in those days, the entire middle east, including arabia, were a much darker people than are the people living there today.

that Moses didn't exist. He's a myth, as is the "surviving 40 years in the desert on magically-produced manna" story, and all the associated miracles and massacres. King David is the first named biblical character that any serious scholar is willing to accept as a real character - and he's disputed too.

real life basis for Moses. Some of the pharoahs had moses in their names such as tutmoses.

I agree though that the figure of moses as presented in the bible is myth.

in their 30s who lived with their mothers.

Even the Bible mentioned Peter's Mother in law (She is not named but referred to as Peter's Mother-in-law). By tradition ALL of the Disciples were MARRIED. Now that does NOT say they could not also be gay, but given Jewish traditions as to Homosexuality I seriously doubt it. You just could NOT be a JEWISH religious leader and be a Homosexual. On the other hand it was a Mediterranean tradition for religious leaders to have a select set of followers (Generally 12, more by tradition than anything else). Thus it was quite common for religious leaders to have 12 men around him.

My point here is they is NO EVIDENCE of any homosexual acts or activity by Jesus or his followers and we should give them the benefit of the doubt (I.e. unless you have HARD EVIDENCE, NOT SPECULATION) we must assume they were Heterosexuals.

Please note we have not that many more written documentations on the life of the Caesars than of Jesus. This is more a product of the technology of the time period (Parchment was the main thing written on and being dried out animal skin to expensive for day to day records, it was not to the introduction of Lenin Paper in the 1300s that you start to see Books and papers on common everyday things, prior to that all that was written was meant as some sort of permanent copy for use later, and then only after long thought so to minimize errors).

"we must assume they were Heterosexuals." Why? Because hetero is normal and gay is abnormal? I mean seriously, that's what you are saying.

social norm and gay was persecuted unto death.

The reason he is not married at 32 is that the Paulists who created the church were extraordinarily repressed and they deleted all mention of his wife, Mary, from the gospels. Those mentions do exists in a few surviving heretical texts, in the Acrophya and, I think, one or two Coptic texts.

But Paul said that if you absolutely had to have sex, you should marry, but it would be better to castrate yourself in the name of Jesus (loosely quoted).

He was one screwed up dude.

I don't make any judgement on a person based on their sexual orientation. To give them the benefit of the doubt is to say that we shouldn't think the worst of them. You give someone accused of commiting a crime the benefit of doubt. I see no crime in being gay, so I'll give them no such benefit.

I am always amazed at people who ask people to understand them and their lives and then just refuse to do so for other people. I notice this mostly in historical settings, when people just do NOT want to accept the norms of a past period, even if you have to understand those norms to understand that period and the people who lived at that time.

In Judea of the time of Christ, homosexuality was not only illegal but openly rejected by the population. Yes, they were homosexuals at that time but most tried to pass themselves off as Heterosexuals (Unlike Greece and to a more limited extend Rome of the same time period where Homosexuality was more accepted). Given that they were Greek Cities in Syria and Egypt, and Jewish communities in both areas, if a Jew was Gay he would tend to go to such locations NOT STAY IN JUDEA. Thus, unless they is some evidence to the contrary, a presumption of Heterosexuality has to be assumed whether you want to accept such an assumption or not.

I firmly believe that they existed and that the culture that they lived in was much different than ours. Remember that homosexuals were stoned back then. I also believe that the culture was much different than ours...sex was not as much of an obsession. Just my beliefs.

Of course culture was different back then. But we know that the Greeks were legendarily free about gay sex, so why not Jesus and the Apostles? I respect your belief, I guess I just have a tendency to be drawn to the open questions. That's why I am a former Catholic not a currently practicing one - the church tended to not really like my inquisitive nature.

the Mosaic law was not friendly to homosexuality. As a rabbi, Jesus would likely have not ventured into forbidden activities. Although he did challenge them on petty issues...Mosaic law did not take sexual issues lightly...you risked being stoned.

No way Jesus could have lived the life he did, had gay sex, and been able to live with himself and go on teaching. His head would have exploded. I don't beleive Jesus was the son of God, but I do believe he lived according to the Jewish moral framework of the time, which ruled out any sex outside of a monogamous heterosexual marriage.

It's a modern notion that celibacy is impossible. There have been celibate holy people in many different traditions.

He is NOT mentioned in the New Testament AFTER Jesus visit to the temple at about age 12. Given that it was Jewish custom that is was the Father's duty to get his son a wife, the fact Jesus was NOT married implies Joseph died sometime after Joseph, Jesus and Mary's visit to the Temple but before Jesus turn age 14. That is about the time of an Attack on Galilee by Roman Forces to suppress opposition against Roman Rule and Joseph might have been killed during that expedition (Through the tradition is that Joseph was already an old man when he married Mary and thus might have died of old age).

As I said above, all of the Disciples were married (at least by Tradition) and Peter's Mother-in-law is mentioned directly in the New Testament when Peter and Jesus visits her.

He was a temple priest, a lifelong Nazirite, and did not eat meat, drink wine, cut his hair, or wear wool (presumably it was a product of sexual intercourse), and took daily cold baths.

Other than Peter, Jesus' disciples are phantoms, and not too much is really known about them. Paul does say that Peter was married, as well as other members of Jesus' family. A lot of it depends on when Jesus prepared himself (or was groomed) for his special role, and how that was perceived. For that reason, it would not necessarily depend on his father's being alive.

As far as the story of staying in the Temple when he was twelve, Josephus tells the same story about himself, which to me casts some doubt on its authenticity.

His focus was His mission. JMO!

I've read research that insists that Jesus was married to Mary Magdeline, that James was his brother, etc. etc. I know that the way people viewed gays back then was far different than it is today.

Thus the story of Jesus staying in the Temple when he was about 12, Mary thought he was with Joseph and the men, Joseph thought he was with the Women and Children. Thus until they arrived home neither one knew he was still in the Temple. They then traveled back to the Temple and picked him up.

It is only in the Middle ages that people started to do things as members of a Nuclear Family. Even in Church Men were on one side, women on the other (and this is still the tradition among Muslims).

of faith; but my sense is that they would so have had other things on their minds O8)

Who knows? It is a distinct possibility, but there is almost no mention of the personal lives of Jesus or the Apostles apart from their interactions with each other. However, there are people in the Bible who can be interpreted as GLB or T without huge stretches. One person is David, who is one of Jesus' distant ancestors. During Jesus' life, the area was under Roman occupation, so homosexuality was not unknown. Some think that the Roman soldier's servant who Jesus healed was also that soldier's lover. Jesus probably had knowledge of homosexual relationships and chose not to say anything about them, or at least no one recorded anything. It is important to read the Bible with an open mind, be aware that it is full of contradictions and complexities, and certainly not crystal clear on issues of sexuality. It is frustrating to hear Christians place authority every place else by Jesus Christ for their condemnations of GLBT people.

OK, Jesus loves everyone, but he REALLY loved John. Really really. At least that's what it says in the Bible.

Paul. Another one (like Jesus) who was an unmarried Jewish man in his 30's, at a time when that was VERY unusual in his culture.