opinion
The Conversation
Topic:LGBTQIA+
The Bible never condemns same-sex marriage, partly because it doesn't address the issue directly. (Flickr: Caro Wallis, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
As Australia faces a postal survey on same-sex marriage, we are seeing a steady stream of articles arguing the Yes or
No case.
Many on the No side are prone to citing the Bible or appealing to "biblical values". But what does the Bible actually say about human sexuality and homosexuality in particular?
What follows represents a summary of critical biblical scholarship on the issue.
Critical biblical scholarship draws on a range academic disciplines including literary criticism, archaeology, history, philology, and social science to offer the most plausible, historically grounded interpretation of the Bible. It is not simply a matter of personal belief or citing official church doctrine.
Australian scholars are among leaders in the field when it comes to sexuality and the Bible. William Loader has [...]
What is The Bible? The Bible is a canonical collection of texts sacred in Judaism and Christianity. There is no single "Bible" and many Bibles with varying contents exist. The term Bible is shared between Judaism and Christianity, although the contents of each of their collections of canonical texts is not the same
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Different religious groups include different books within their Biblical canons, in different orders, and sometimes divide or combine books, or incorporate additional material into canonical books.
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The Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, contains 24 books. Christian Bibles range from the 66 books of the Protestant canon to the 81 books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church canon.
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The first part of Christian Bibles is the Old Testament, which contains, at minimum, the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible divided into 39 books and ordered differently from the Hebrew Bible. The Catholic Church and Eastern Christian churches also hold certain deuterocanonical books and passages to be part of the Old Testament canon.
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The second part is the New Testament, containing 27 books: the 4 Canonical gospels, Acts of the Apostles, 21 Epistles or didactic letters, and the Book of Revelation.