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Original poster

In thinking that Jesus may possibly have been Gay?

340 replies

nativitywreck · 17/12/2011 15:20

I suggested this in another thread and the effect was like a fart at a funeral; it cleared the room!
It's not so far fetched though. He was 33 when he died, and never married. I would imagine that in the year Dot most people were married by the age of 18, so that is one confirmed bachelor.
And then there is the 'tache'n'beard, the sandals and the twelve guys he hung with..

OP posts:
Napdamnyou · 17/12/2011 19:21

The reference to it being easier for a camel to get through an eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom thing was an injoke: there was a narrow gate in jerusalem city wall through which camels loaded withholds could not pass without having goods removed ( and weighed and taxed) therefore is reference to need to divest self of worldly accoutrements before entering kingdom ie you can't take it with you, blessed are the poor, etc etc.

Napdamnyou · 17/12/2011 19:21

Camels loaded with goods, grrr, typing too fast

TheRuderBarracuda · 17/12/2011 19:22

LRD Agreed - OT Leviticus is very, very practical and we forget nowadays with all our drugs available that in years gone by syphilis and gonnorhea (bad spelling sorry - shoudl have got ready to go out ages ago - too engrossed in this!) sexual intercourse was pretty dangerous and a surefire way to spread disease, not just sexual diseases.

If you live in a desert, miles away from the sea, the odds on shellfish being off by the time you get to eat them is very high. So avoid.

If you rely on your livestock to provide you with food when living in a desert and have to travel long distances for them to graze, don't keep livestock that eats the same food as you and doesn't produce anything edible or warm clothing without being killed first - e.g. Pigs. (I would also hazard a guess that they had a good idea that pork was a similar taste to human flesh and there's something about that they wanted to regulate too! No good having a group of people follow you as leader if they then start eating one another - power is pretty rubbish without anyone left to be in charge of!)

TheRuderBarracuda · 17/12/2011 19:24

Mapdamnyou That's the version I've always been aware of but the hemp thread mistranslation is an interesting alternative I've never heard until today.

LRDtheFeministDragon · 17/12/2011 19:24

Pigs that live in hot, dry climates are apparently not very healthy - it might be that.

But yes, I'd certainly prefer to think of it as practical restrictions.

LRDtheFeministDragon · 17/12/2011 19:25

I forget who mentioned the hemp thread thing ... might have been nickelbabe? It was certainly someone on here and I'd not heard it before, either.

NotADudeExactly · 17/12/2011 20:16

IIRC the OT was essentially compiled from a number of resources at least one of which is essentially a rule book.

I'm not entirely certain about the entirely practical character of OT prescriptions, though. Some of them just make no practical sense whatsoever. Blended fabrics are bad for you? Shaving your beard is bad for you? Can't eat the first three years' fruit off a tree?

There's also a lot of non-rule stuff in there that's plain weird - my favourite being the one where god can't defeat those people who have iron chariots. Confused

I guess an important reason for this plethora of regulations is that, in spite of what is commonly claimed nowadays, the religion of Moses is not in fact strictly monotheistic. I've always seen the OT as some kind of a collection of different local customs and rituals from a variety of traditions.

BobbinRobin · 17/12/2011 23:10

Interesting (and incidentally v funny) thread OP Xmas Smile

Was Jesus gay? Was my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-uncle John gay? Who knows? Who will ever know? No-one!

manicinsomniac · 18/12/2011 00:58

If you're thinking of Jesus as a man/historical figure - then I guess there's around a 10% chance that he was gay (isn't the the approx %age of men who are homosexual?)

If you're thinking of Jesus as the son of God - then I doubt he had a sexuality as such due to being fully divine.

sashh · 18/12/2011 10:28

In what's left after the re-edit no one says he is married or not, which rather implies that he was, if he wasn't then surely it would have been mentioned as it was virtually unknown to be single at that age.

Yep poor MM - some pope declares her demon ridden and a prostetute and it isn't cprrected for years

hackmum · 18/12/2011 15:55

"The reference to it being easier for a camel to get through an eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom thing was an injoke: there was a narrow gate in jerusalem city wall through which camels loaded withholds could not pass without having goods removed ( and weighed and taxed) therefore is reference to need to divest self of worldly accoutrements before entering kingdom ie you can't take it with you, blessed are the poor, etc etc."

Hmm - I think this is one of those myths. No evidence that this narrow gate ever existed. And there are certainly no other examples of Jesus making jokes, "in" or otherwise.

Napdamnyou · 18/12/2011 17:49

I visited the gate in Jerusalem!

Napdamnyou · 18/12/2011 17:54

And there are jokes, and even swearing, whited sepulchre is very rude, or was at the time, and calling Peter a rock was a joke.

KeepInMindItsAlmostChristmas · 18/12/2011 17:58

grow up

ThisIsANickname · 18/12/2011 18:21

Hmm - I think this is one of those myths. No evidence that this narrow gate ever existed. And there are certainly no other examples of Jesus making jokes, "in" or otherwise.

That depends entirely on context and tone. You cannot read sarcasm in words on a page, and the jokes of one language and culture don't necessarily translate.
Jesus was God in human form, which made Him human. He knew anger, sadness and humour.

FWIW, as far as I am aware, there is no legitimate historian that doubts the man Jesus was born in Bethlehem to David's line and that he lived, preached and died on a cross. That is so well documented by so many sources that it is considered historical fact. So assuming that we trust the historians out there, it seems completely ridiculous to assume that there was a person in history that never made a joke in his life, son of God or not.

(And just FYI, there are many places in the New Testament that I read as Jesus telling jokes or being sarcastic)

catsareevil · 18/12/2011 20:12

Can you explain how we can regard Jesus being from Davids line as being historical fact?

catsareevil · 18/12/2011 20:14

And also that he was born in Bethlehem?

DartsAgain · 18/12/2011 21:28

I think if Jesus had been gay, it would have been written about and widely circulated, as jewish men, while maybe marrying late, would not have not married. I recall reading about a rabbi, who lived about 100-200 years after Jesus, and as he never married, there was lots of bitchy writings about him.

Meanwhile, I have come across a theory that rather than being the son of god, Jesus was actually the grandson of King Herod by his son Antipater, who was the heir to the throne. This claim to the throne was backed up by a roman Imperial decree, as Antipater was the friend of whichever emperor was in Rome at the time.

Interestingly, Antipater's wife was called Mariamne (otherwise Mary in our modern day terms), and her mother was called Anne (which fits church tradition), and was a direct descendant of David. Mariamne's father was the high priest. Mariamne disappears from history during a period in which Herod killed Antipater and his oldest children after they were falsely implicated in a plot to assassinate Herod, the plot being instigated by Antipater's brother and aunt who wanted the throne for themselves.

If this theory is true, then it explains why during the interrogation of Jesus by Pilate, Pilate says "I can find no fault in him", in other words, when he claimed he was king of the jews he must have been speaking the legal truth as the imperial decree was still in existance and only a son of Antipater could legally claim to be king of the jews.

I am an atheist, but I do like researching into history and this cropped up when I was looking into something else.

NotADudeExactly · 19/12/2011 06:28

I'm interested to know what the evidence is for anything about Jesus.

So far as I know, there are no eyewitness accounts about his life (the gospels were all written much later and not by the alleged apostles themselves). There are definitely no non-christian accounts that are contemporary. I know some people are fond of quoting the historian Josephus, but he would have been either not yet born or at best an infant at the time of Jesus' death. Not to mention the fact that we have no originals of his works and some experts believe the Jesus bits in there are later additions by christians. All sources I am aware of are at least decades, sometimes a century or two removed as well as geographically different in some cases.

Now, I'm not a christian, so I don't buy into the whole son of god thing. Nonetheless, there seems to be this broad consensus among people that there actually was a Jesus, human or not human.

Can anyone provide any evidence for this? I used to simply assume he must have existed - however, having looked at what's available in terms of sources I have started to suspect that Jesus may be simply a product of hearsay and the combined stories of various myths and itinerant Jewish preachers.

seeker · 19/12/2011 06:39

"SQ - there was no word for homosexuality back then"

What?

So when was there a word for it, 1962????

SirCliffRichardSucksEggsInHell · 19/12/2011 11:10

NotaDude - he was written about by some Roman scholars, non-Biblical sources

Seeker - in arabic there isn't a word, to my knowledge, for homosexuality other than "shaz" which means "abnormal". In Hebrew too, back in the time of Jesus there was no word for homosexuality.

I think it was first coined in 1800 by a German?

And fwiw, the OP was rude and ignorant not because she questioned the sexuality of Jesus, but because of the oh so laughable stereotypes of gays having beards, wearing sandals and having a group of male friends. Hilarious.

hackmum · 19/12/2011 11:18

Thisisanickname: "FWIW, as far as I am aware, there is no legitimate historian that doubts the man Jesus was born in Bethlehem to David's line and that he lived, preached and died on a cross. That is so well documented by so many sources that it is considered historical fact."

"there is no legitimate historian that doubts the man Jesus was born in Bethlehem to David's line and that he lived, preached and died on a cross." Please do share with us the numerous legitimate historians who think that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, to David's line, and that he lived, preached and died on a cross. Because there is precious little evidence for it, unless you know something nobody else does.

No, it's not documented by "so many sources that it is considered historical fact." If you think so, please share those sources.

knittedbreast · 19/12/2011 11:20

demented, mohammad (pbuh) was married?

also i thought Jesus was with Mary Magdalene (look at me, talking like i went to school with them)

AnotherMincepie · 19/12/2011 11:27

I guess it's possible - does it matter?

slug · 19/12/2011 11:35

I don't think there is any doubt that Mohammed liked the laydeez.

The only contemporous account of Jesus is a small comment by Josephus and even that is dispututed and thought to be a later insertion by Christians.

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