What did Jesus say about homosexuality?

And there are those who believe the earth is flat.

Interesting article.

Regarding Mark 9, it feels like verses 38-41 interrupt a continuous story. In verses 33-37, the disciples are arguing about who would be the greatest, and Jesus shuts them up by putting a child among them and saying that accepting a child in his name would be like accepting God Himself. Verses 38-41 are about someone casting out demons in Jesus's name despite not being part of Jesus's disciples. Verses 42-48 are Jesus's teachings on causing little ones to stumble.

If you skip the exorcism verses, Mark 9:33-37 and 42-48 seem like a coherent, continuous teaching. The disciples are arguing who would be the greatest. Jesus tells them that service is leadership and leadership is service, so much so that accepting little ones in Jesus's name was like accepting God Himself. Then, Jesus elaborates by showing just how dangerous it is to mistreat or mislead children.

In this reading, it makes more sense to say that Jesus is teaching about the dangers of leadership & authority and less specifically about sexual abuse. (Although that would certainly be a misuse of authority.)

Regarding Matthew 11, we have to be extremely careful about the literal words of the Gospels. Jesus almost certainly preached in Aramaic - a language closely related to Hebrew - and the NT was written in Greek. Greek and Aramaic are not only different languages, they also belong to entirely different language families: Greek is Indo-European (like English), Aramaic is Afro-Asiatic. They have different grammars, vocabularies, and writing systems. Moreover, the Gospels were written decades after Jesus's life, probably not by eyewitnesses, and oral transmission and memories go fuzzy after 40+ years.

McKnight is misinterpreting Matthew 11. Malakos is the ordinary Greek word for soft. In those times, the rich wore soft, comfortable clothing, and the poor wore rough, scratchy clothing. Today, even the cheapest pack of T-shirts in Wal*Mart are pretty comfortable; in those days, not at all.

In context, Jesus is chiding the people who complain about both him and John the Baptist. Look at how the passage ends:

"For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'He has a demon'; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds." - Matthew 11:18-19, NRSVUE.

Backing up, Jesus is clearly comparing the rough clothing of John - who basically lived like a hermit or wild man - to the comfortable clothing of the wealthy. Jesus is saying, "Look, you went to John for his message, not his appearance. In the same way, when you come to me, come for my message, not my appearance. John and I don't dress alike or eat the same foods. So what? Listen to my message."

The porneia discussion suffers from the language barrier between Aramaic and Greek. It would be much more helpful if we had Jesus's literal Aramaic words. Sadly, they are probably lost forever.

I don't think we have any surviving teaching from Jesus on men having sex with men. But, Jesus followed the Torah and instructed his followers to not only follow the Torah but go even further beyond it. (Interesting that Christians decided to ignore Jesus's words and stop following the Torah.)

The Torah appears to ban men having sex with men. Some commentators think there's more to those passages than a blanket ban on male same-sex relations. I tried to agree with them and argue for the position, but on further study, their arguments aren't good. I think the Torah bans it, and Jesus commanded others to follow the Torah. Jesus would have been against male same-sex relations, even if we don't have any particular teaching about it. Too bad for Jesus, no one gets 'em all right.

It isn't. Jesus was from Nazareth, and almost all of his ministry was in Galilee. We have independent sources showing that Galilee was an Aramaic-speaking area. Moreover, Galilee was a poor backwater, and there was no public education. There were likely some Greek words and phrases that had made it into the common tongue, but the common people didn't speak Greek, and Jesus would not have preached to them in a language they didn't understand.

Moreover, Flavius Josephus wrote that he learned Greek with a great deal of effort and that learning Greek was very uncommon in Judea. He knew of only a handful of Judeans who had bothered, even though learning Greek was hugely advantageous, since most people in the area spoke "our tongue" (meaning Aramaic).

Jesus may have known a bit of Greek, but he was a construction worker from a backwater preaching primarily to other people from that backwater. He preached in Aramaic, as basically every scholar agrees.



Fair enough. But there's still nothing about same-sex relations in the passage. Malakos is clearly a reference to clothing quality.

"Likely" based on absolutely zero evidence. We have not one surviving clue connecting Jesus to Tzipori.

But come, say it plainly, do you think Jesus preached in Greek or Aramaic?



Of course, but you need context for the insinuation, and the passage doesn't provide it. It's clearly not about sex.