Were any of the disciples gay?

Ethyl

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dreamer20 said:
The Apostle Paul definitely refrained from relations with women.

Actually, before his conversion, "Saul" was thought to have been married, but there is no mention of this when he became "Paul". But he's still the most likely candidate.
 

Heather LouAnna

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stud_hunter said:
GC: Did you know I went to Catholic School for 12 years?
Friend: Then how come you're not Catholic?
GC: Because I went to Catholic School for 12 years!
I went to ten year's of Christian school. From Pre-K to fifth grade, I went to a Presbyterian one (St. James') and from sixth through freshman year of high school with a Catholic (St. Joseph's) school. I agree whole heartedly with Carlin and am now an avid and pushy string theorist.
 

GoneA

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mercurialbliss said:
Actually, before his conversion, "Saul" was thought to have been married, but there is no mention of this when he became "Paul". But he's still the most likely candidate.
He did mention a "thorn in his side". He was never clear on exactly what he was referring to, but some scholars maintain he was referencing a 'battle' in his sexuality.
 

Freddie53

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dreamer20 said:
The Apostle Paul definitely refrained from relations with women. Regarding Jesus,was the wedding in Cana his wedding? (St. John 2). Also you can look at this missing part of the New Testament
http://www.rotten.com/library/religion/bible/historical-construction/new-testament/secret-gospel-of-mark/

and see that Michael Jackson & Jesus may have had similar interests.


lol dreamer20 :wink:
Paul was not one of the twelve disciples of Jesus. Paul converted to Christianity sometime after the resurrection and long enough that the Christian Church had already spread to Damascus. Many Christians today ignore the fact that Paul named himself an apostle. After Judas hanged himself, the remaining disciples selected his successor. After that the church did not name new apostles to replace those as they died.

So, there are some though in a small minority of Christians that don't accept Paul as an apostle.

It is accepted by traditional historians that there is no record that Paul ever met Jesus while Jesus was alive here on earth.

It is Paul who condemns homosexuality in the New Testament and that in only I believe one place. Otherwise the New Testament is totally silent on the subject of homosexuality.

It is my personal belief that Paul was a closet gay. And his denunciation in his letter was a coverup for this fact.

Paul says in nearly every letter or epistle he wrote that the message was intended for the church that received it. Paul admits in several places that some of what he wrote is his opinion and not the word of God.
 

fortiesfun

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Some rather emminent churchmen, especially Bishop John Shelby Spong have advanced the theory that Freddie propounds in the previous post. He argues that Paul's denunciation of the offending member of the body is precisely his "member." Also, it is important to read the passage in which he supposedly condemns homosexuality carefully, as it is one of the stranges passages of scripture in the New Testament. He actually says, not that homosexuality is a sin, but that it is burden imposed on the "sufferers": a very different point. Paul was a man of his time, but he was not a Levitican priest by any means...
 

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Statistically, at least one of these guys must have been. Are there any known gay Saints?

I'd never given this any thought. of course statistics aside there's the chance that none were gay and an chance they all were.


More troublesome to me right now is that I can't remember the names of the disciples.
 

D_Tim McGnaw

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I'd never given this any thought. of course statistics aside there's the chance that none were gay and an chance they all were.


More troublesome to me right now is that I can't remember the names of the disciples.


Considering that the canonical Gospels don't agree on exactly who they were, it's not so terrible you don't remember them all.


Edit: Mind you there's a difference between the 12 Apostles, and the disciples of Christ. Christ had many more than merely 12 disciples according to the New Testament.
 
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midlifebear

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Peter, Paul, John, Luke, Matthew, Andrew, James the Greater, James the Lesser, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Thaddeus, Simon, and Judas Iscariot, Grumpy, and Sleepy.

Hmm . . . wait a minute, that's sixteen!

EDIT: Oh, yeah . . . I forgot Rudolph the Red Nosed.
 
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eurotop40

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Hum, looking at Leonardo's last supper, the sixth disciple from the left (if I recall) is not an example of masculinity. But there might have been also a butch gay disciple too...
 

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In the gospels jesus was known to be around the "unworthy people" in their time, gay, deformed, sick, prostitues, poor, old, so the chances that some of the disciples or even jesus himself being gay is fairly high
 

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In the gospels jesus was known to be around the "unworthy people" in their time, gay, deformed, sick, prostitues, poor, old, so the chances that some of the disciples or even jesus himself being gay is fairly high

I agree with this comment. Jesus embraced the marginalized and was even criticized for it often in the Bible.

Its my theory that if Jesus returned on some Saturday night, his first stop would either be an AA meeting or a gay bar.
 

D_Tim McGnaw

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Its my theory that if Jesus returned on some Saturday night, his first stop would either be an AA meeting or a gay bar.


As much as I'd like to believe you could be right on both accounts I have a very very strong feeling that Christ wasn't a fan of the Homos.

The very fact that all the other kinds of outcast get a mention in the NT except homosexuals says volumes to me. You could argue that any mention of them might have been redacted out by the Church but they demonstrably didn't do that with adulterers, prostitutes, beggars, lepers, Samaritans, usurers, tax collectors etc. Homos don't even get a mention as being part of the congregation or melieu of Christ in any of the apocrypha....
 
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^^ Interesting, Hil.

I do think it's worth mentioning, on the other hand, that of all the sins Christ mentioned in the NT...homosexuality wasn't one of them. I wonder if he'd use a gay bloke as the good samaritan in a modern-day telling of that parable? < Someone who was traditionally looked down of as 'sinful', but who actually was an example in many ways.

I don't think the apostles were gay - altho...John and Jesus were pretty close apparently. As were David n' Jonathan in the OT.
 
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^ Lol...Judas biggin himself up?

Gospel of Judas has been accepted as spurious tho, I think??
 

JustAsking

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As much as I'd like to believe you could be right on both accounts I have a very very strong feeling that Christ wasn't a fan of the Homos.

The very fact that all the other kinds of outcast get a mention in the NT except homosexuals says volumes to me. You could argue that any mention of them might have been redacted out by the Church but they demonstrably didn't do that with adulterers, prostitutes, beggars, lepers, Samaritans, usurers, tax collectors etc. Homos don't even get a mention as being part of the congregation or melieu of Christ in any of the apocrypha....

I hear you, hil, but I wonder if homosexuality wasn't mentioned in the NT because it was not a big deal to first century people. The OT passages that most people cite as homophobic are really more concerned with unjust use balances of power in sexual relationships and other things like that.

The only mention I can think of in the NT is Paul's listing of it in Romans. So what can you infer about something that is not even mentioned by Jesus in any form.

Consider the number of parables about tax collectors, who were local thugs who extorted tribute from starving citizens on behalf of Rome. In one parable Jesus makes a big public show of calling to a tax collector and inviting himself to the guy's supper table.

Inviting someone to share your table is a huge welcoming gesture in those times, and Jesus extends it to the most heinous person that the public has marginalized (deserving or not).

Sexual transgressions don't get much of a mention in the NT, except for the adultress for whom Jesus recommends clemency to her pursuers.

I have to conclude that except for Paul's passage in Romans, the NT is pretty silent on sexual transgressions.

I still stand behind my belief that Jesus would extend love and compassion to gays without question.
 

D_Tim McGnaw

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I hear you, hil, but I wonder if homosexuality wasn't mentioned in the NT because it was not a big deal to first century people. The OT passages that most people cite as homophobic are really more concerned with unjust use balances of power in sexual relationships and other things like that.

The only mention I can think of in the NT is Paul's listing of it in Romans. So what can you infer about something that is not even mentioned by Jesus in any form.

Consider the number of parables about tax collectors, who were local thugs who extorted tribute from starving citizens on behalf of Rome. In one parable Jesus makes a big public show of calling to a tax collector and inviting himself to the guy's supper table.

Inviting someone to share your table is a huge welcoming gesture in those times, and Jesus extends it to the most heinous person that the public has marginalized (deserving or not).

Sexual transgressions don't get much of a mention in the NT, except for the adultress for whom Jesus recommends clemency to her pursuers.

I have to conclude that except for Paul's passage in Romans, the NT is pretty silent on sexual transgressions.

I still stand behind my belief that Jesus would extend love and compassion to gays without question.




Oh yes it's that very reticence of the NT on sexual matters which makes me wonder.

I mean wasn't the real contemporary issue behind how shocking Judeans found Jesus's fondness for tax collectors more to do with the fact that it was unholy to give tax to Rome rather than the Temple (Roman taxation wasn't quite as exacting as later Christian folk-history would have us all believe after all) and this indicated that Jesus was opposed to the Temple priesthood and their tax-jealous orthodoxy?

I think there's no doubt that homosexuality was deeply abhorred in 1st century Judea. One of the things contemporary Judeans found most disgusting about Hellenistic culture which came with the Seleucid and Ptolemaic hegemony over Judea and Syria in the centuries just prior to Christ was the celebration of various kinds of male homosexual love and intimacy. Though peculiarly hellenised Jews all over the Hellenistic world seem to adopted the custom of the Greeks pretty quickly.

The point being that orthodoxy and traditionalism in the Jewish homeland remained strong even if attitudes where more heterodox (so to speak) in the diaspora.

I'm willing to accept that it's possible you could be right JA. But I have a very strong suspicion that so deeply abhorred by 1st century Judeans was homosexuality that no mention of it appears in the NT exactly because it was beyond question that a sin of that nature could be so explicitly given forgiveness as Tax-collection, adultery or murder and theft.