Johnson
07-15-2004, 10:42 PM
Kosher article, but it makes a good point.
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles4/SilverShrimp.shtml
Shrimp and homosexuality - a strange sounding combination. The Bible forbids the eating of shrimp and other shellfish for Jews as part of the kosher dietary laws. It also forbids homosexual behavior for all humans, Jew and non-Jew alike. In an attempt to justify and normalize homosexual behavior while ridiculing religious opposition, secular fundamentalists claim Judaism and Christianity equate the two because the Bible describes both as "abominations." They are wrong.
Secularists are fond of ridiculing religion and the Bible by pointing out what they think are internal inconsistencies, even attributing them to multiple authors. The problem is that they base their inconsistencies on invalid translations, misunderstandings, and ignorance of the Jewish Oral Law; all needed to properly interpret the Hebrew Bible. Unfortunately, the religious education of most secularists, or at least their targets, rarely rises above the level of a child. They either received some religious education as children or have picked up a little as adults. For the most part they are not even aware of, much less knowledgeable in, the rich and extremely sophisticated higher levels of religious scholarship necessary to analyze and understand the Bible as adults. They use their higher degrees of secular education to falsely argue with "their" own elementary understanding of religion. Not a fair fight!
[..]
Go to an Internet search engine, type in "abomination" and "shellfish," and you will be amazed at the ignorant misinformation being passed off as "biblical" analysis. One of the most ridiculous, but clever, is www.godhatesshrimp.com. This same ignorant misuse of biblical language was presented as a “progressive” put-down of religion on NBC television’s “West Wing.”
[..]
A popular email circulating on the Internet sarcastically asks: "A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Leviticus 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?"
These attempts at "argument by ridicule" are completely baseless for at least four fundamental reasons:
Translation: The words in the original biblical Hebrew, both loosely translated by some as "abomination," are completely different and unrelated: toeivah for homosexual behavior (Leviticus 18:22) and sheketz for shrimp/shellfish and kosher food (Leviticus 11:10). "Detesting" or "loathing" might be better translations of sheketz; while "abomination" seems to be a more appropriate translation of toeivah. Since these words are completely different in derivation, there is no linguistic basis for direct comparison, much less religious equivalence. This alone reduces the claim of equivalence to nonsense, but in fact there are other enlightening differences between shrimp and homosexuality.
Abomination to who? With shrimp (Leviticus 11:10), the full phrase is sheketz hame lachem, "they shall be a detestable thing to you." Lachem means "to you" in the plural. The description of homosexual behavior as toeivah, an "abomination," excludes any reference "to you." For shrimp, this might be interpreted as "detestable to the Jewish people," but for homosexual activity, there is an implied "abomination to God," not "to you" - a major difference.
Another interpretation of the lack of "to you" for homosexual activity points to the universality of this prohibition, compared to the laws of kosher food, which are applicable only to "you," the Jewish people. Judaism considers homosexual behavior a universal prohibition for all mankind as one of The Seven Noahide Laws. These laws, derived from the Five Books of Moses and delineated in the Talmud, are considered by Jewish sages to be Natural Law for non-Jews. The first six are prohibitions against murder, theft, sexual immorality (including homosexual behavior, incest, and bestiality), idol worship, blaspheming God, and eating a limb torn from a living animal (animal cruelty). The 7th law is a positive requirement to institute a system of law and courts to implement the first six.
[..]
Punishments: The "punishments" for homosexual activity include death (not necessarily enacted by humans) and kares (spiritual excision), but death and kares are not punishments for violation of the kosher dietary laws. The punishments assigned to negative commandments within the Torah were not necessarily intended for human enactment, but serve as a deterrent and a guide to the relative importance of the commandments. Obviously, homosexual behavior is clearly a much more serious sin than eating shrimp. Again, direct comparison is meaningless.
Without a deep understanding of the true meaning of biblical prohibitions and punishments, people are easy prey for this type disinformation. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan describes biblical punishments as follows: "Just as some transgressions required sacrifice, others required the atonement of physical punishment administered by the courts. In practice, however, these punishments were almost never invoked, and existed mainly as a deterrent and to indicate the seriousness of the sins for which they were prescribed. The rules of evidence and other safeguards that the Torah provides to protect the accused made it all but impossible to actually invoke these penalties." The Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court, codified the actual practice of non-implementation and voluntarily abolished this system of penalties in the year 30 c.e. (Aryeh Kaplan, The Handbook of Jewish Thought, Volume 2)
Public Sanction: After listing the various prohibited sexual unions, including homosexual acts between two men, God immediately adds an unusual warning not to follow in the immoral ways of some of their neighbors: Keep my charge "so that none of the abominable statutes that were practiced before you will be done…" (Leviticus 18:30). The Hebrew word for "statutes," is chukos. Some translations loosely render it here as "customs," but the usual meaning of the word is "statutes."
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch explains this verse as follows: "Sexual excesses among the Canaanite population had not only ceased to be considered as abominations but had, in fact, become sanctioned by custom or religious cult. They had become 'statutes,' or 'institutions.' As stated in Isaiah 24:5: They have changed the law into the opposite; i.e., they have elevated immorality to become law." If Rabbi Hirsch had not written this 130 years ago, one could easily assume he was writing in 2004 to warn us not to elevate immorality into law through the public sanction via "statute" of same-sex marriage.
There is no warning against "statutes" and public sanction for shrimp or other non-kosher food.
The comparison of shrimp and homosexuality is not even as valid as comparing apples and oranges. It is completely false and irrelevant. But that hasn't stopped intellectually dishonest secular fundamentalists from spreading this disinformation in an effort to ridicule religion and demonize religious people. Shame on them!
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles4/SilverShrimp.shtml
Shrimp and homosexuality - a strange sounding combination. The Bible forbids the eating of shrimp and other shellfish for Jews as part of the kosher dietary laws. It also forbids homosexual behavior for all humans, Jew and non-Jew alike. In an attempt to justify and normalize homosexual behavior while ridiculing religious opposition, secular fundamentalists claim Judaism and Christianity equate the two because the Bible describes both as "abominations." They are wrong.
Secularists are fond of ridiculing religion and the Bible by pointing out what they think are internal inconsistencies, even attributing them to multiple authors. The problem is that they base their inconsistencies on invalid translations, misunderstandings, and ignorance of the Jewish Oral Law; all needed to properly interpret the Hebrew Bible. Unfortunately, the religious education of most secularists, or at least their targets, rarely rises above the level of a child. They either received some religious education as children or have picked up a little as adults. For the most part they are not even aware of, much less knowledgeable in, the rich and extremely sophisticated higher levels of religious scholarship necessary to analyze and understand the Bible as adults. They use their higher degrees of secular education to falsely argue with "their" own elementary understanding of religion. Not a fair fight!
[..]
Go to an Internet search engine, type in "abomination" and "shellfish," and you will be amazed at the ignorant misinformation being passed off as "biblical" analysis. One of the most ridiculous, but clever, is www.godhatesshrimp.com. This same ignorant misuse of biblical language was presented as a “progressive” put-down of religion on NBC television’s “West Wing.”
[..]
A popular email circulating on the Internet sarcastically asks: "A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Leviticus 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?"
These attempts at "argument by ridicule" are completely baseless for at least four fundamental reasons:
Translation: The words in the original biblical Hebrew, both loosely translated by some as "abomination," are completely different and unrelated: toeivah for homosexual behavior (Leviticus 18:22) and sheketz for shrimp/shellfish and kosher food (Leviticus 11:10). "Detesting" or "loathing" might be better translations of sheketz; while "abomination" seems to be a more appropriate translation of toeivah. Since these words are completely different in derivation, there is no linguistic basis for direct comparison, much less religious equivalence. This alone reduces the claim of equivalence to nonsense, but in fact there are other enlightening differences between shrimp and homosexuality.
Abomination to who? With shrimp (Leviticus 11:10), the full phrase is sheketz hame lachem, "they shall be a detestable thing to you." Lachem means "to you" in the plural. The description of homosexual behavior as toeivah, an "abomination," excludes any reference "to you." For shrimp, this might be interpreted as "detestable to the Jewish people," but for homosexual activity, there is an implied "abomination to God," not "to you" - a major difference.
Another interpretation of the lack of "to you" for homosexual activity points to the universality of this prohibition, compared to the laws of kosher food, which are applicable only to "you," the Jewish people. Judaism considers homosexual behavior a universal prohibition for all mankind as one of The Seven Noahide Laws. These laws, derived from the Five Books of Moses and delineated in the Talmud, are considered by Jewish sages to be Natural Law for non-Jews. The first six are prohibitions against murder, theft, sexual immorality (including homosexual behavior, incest, and bestiality), idol worship, blaspheming God, and eating a limb torn from a living animal (animal cruelty). The 7th law is a positive requirement to institute a system of law and courts to implement the first six.
[..]
Punishments: The "punishments" for homosexual activity include death (not necessarily enacted by humans) and kares (spiritual excision), but death and kares are not punishments for violation of the kosher dietary laws. The punishments assigned to negative commandments within the Torah were not necessarily intended for human enactment, but serve as a deterrent and a guide to the relative importance of the commandments. Obviously, homosexual behavior is clearly a much more serious sin than eating shrimp. Again, direct comparison is meaningless.
Without a deep understanding of the true meaning of biblical prohibitions and punishments, people are easy prey for this type disinformation. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan describes biblical punishments as follows: "Just as some transgressions required sacrifice, others required the atonement of physical punishment administered by the courts. In practice, however, these punishments were almost never invoked, and existed mainly as a deterrent and to indicate the seriousness of the sins for which they were prescribed. The rules of evidence and other safeguards that the Torah provides to protect the accused made it all but impossible to actually invoke these penalties." The Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court, codified the actual practice of non-implementation and voluntarily abolished this system of penalties in the year 30 c.e. (Aryeh Kaplan, The Handbook of Jewish Thought, Volume 2)
Public Sanction: After listing the various prohibited sexual unions, including homosexual acts between two men, God immediately adds an unusual warning not to follow in the immoral ways of some of their neighbors: Keep my charge "so that none of the abominable statutes that were practiced before you will be done…" (Leviticus 18:30). The Hebrew word for "statutes," is chukos. Some translations loosely render it here as "customs," but the usual meaning of the word is "statutes."
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch explains this verse as follows: "Sexual excesses among the Canaanite population had not only ceased to be considered as abominations but had, in fact, become sanctioned by custom or religious cult. They had become 'statutes,' or 'institutions.' As stated in Isaiah 24:5: They have changed the law into the opposite; i.e., they have elevated immorality to become law." If Rabbi Hirsch had not written this 130 years ago, one could easily assume he was writing in 2004 to warn us not to elevate immorality into law through the public sanction via "statute" of same-sex marriage.
There is no warning against "statutes" and public sanction for shrimp or other non-kosher food.
The comparison of shrimp and homosexuality is not even as valid as comparing apples and oranges. It is completely false and irrelevant. But that hasn't stopped intellectually dishonest secular fundamentalists from spreading this disinformation in an effort to ridicule religion and demonize religious people. Shame on them!