Quintessentialist

elebuufish:

quintessentialist:

Consider the following quote from Wycliffe’s English Bible: “If a man slepith with a man, bi letcherie of a womman, euer either hath wrouyt vnleueful thing, die thei bi deeth; her blood be on hem”. Lechery comes from the Old French lecherie, which is interestingly similar to the French le cher,…

Reblogging for Eric. I think you’ll find this interesting. »

For those who requested an analysis of the Hebrew text:

In the Geneva version of the Bible (translated directly from the Hebrew text and scribed by figures of the Puritan movement), it states that “the man also that lieth with the male, as one lieth with a woman…[have] both committed abomination” (Lev. 20:13). In this chapter of Leviticus, certain things are condemned for their “uncleanness rather than” their weight as “a sin” (Via 2). In a patriarchal society, “homosexuality compromises purity in the production of male heirs”. Women, valued solely for their ability to produce an heir, were ultimately worthless, and therefore an encumbrance as a result of homosexuality. Families desperately seeking to purge unwanted daughters, then, execrated homosexuality as one might loathe insolvency, accumulating daughters like debt. Furthermore, the word abomination, translated from the Jewish ’ebah, is used to mean “the breaking of either a moral or ritual law” and pertaining only to a “certain time and place” (White 2).

If the Wycliffe Bible and the Geneva Bible are free of the word “homosexuality”, and if the word doubled in textual reference between the years 1950 and 2000 (Baptiste), a likely explanation of its astronomical trend is the publication, in 1952, of The Revised Standard Version of the Bible. One million copies were sold in the first two days after its publication, most notably for its unique interpretation of Lev. 20:13; instead of describing “lechery” or “adultery” or “abomination” as a sin, the text used the word “homosexuality”. It was the first English version of the Bible to do so (Barker). As the Civil Rights Movement approached, with women and African Americans threatening to purloin the supremacy of the American social hierarchy, the socially conscious and predominant majority directed their hatred to a new group. Despite the overwhelming evidence contrary the supposed sin of homosexuality, the Revised Standard Version of the Bible combined “the fear of the other, fear of sex, and the fear of the feminine” – as a result, “homophobia [was] well founded in our psyche” (Gomes 5).

(via theredladyelebuu)