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From: smb@ulysses.UUCP (Steven Bellovin)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Black's ravings (comment about Sodom)
Message-ID: <10022@ulysses.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 14-Mar-85 22:52:23 EST
Article-I.D.: ulysses.10022
Posted: Thu Mar 14 22:52:23 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 15-Mar-85 05:41:11 EST
References: <5100@fortune.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
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> From: brower@fortune.UUCP (Richard Brower)
> Subject: Re: Black's ravings (comment about Sodom)
> Message-ID: <5100@fortune.UUCP>
> Date: Tue, 12-Mar-85 17:23:20 EST

> In article <362@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP> scott@gargoyle.UUCP ( Deerwester) writes:
> >Genesis 19:5 says,
> >
> >   "They called to Lot, `Where are the men who came to you
> >   tonight?  Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with
> >   them.'" (NIV)
> >
> >The passage goes on to say that the angels struck all of the men
> >blind, told Lot to gather up his people, and nuked the city.

> So the "Christianoids" have retranslated the bible to agree with their
> prejudgements.  Are there any people who read Hebrew well enough to
> to dispute this?  This is the only version I have heard that translates
> this passage this way.  None of the Jewish people with whom I have
> discussed this passage have translated the Hebrew this way either.

I can't translate the Hebrew on my own, but the Jewish Publication Society
translation (a fairly new, very scholarly version that's officially accepted
by Conservative Judaism) renders the passage as:

	Where are the men who came to you tonight?  Bring them out to us,
	that we may be intimate with them.

Of course, Jewish tradition holds that the sin of Sodom wasn't homosexuality
but gross lack of hospitality.