#Revised Standard Bible

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Song of Trust in God

To the choirmaster. Of David.

1 In the Lord I take refuge; how can you say to me, “Flee like a bird to the mountains; 2 for lo, the wicked bend the bow, they have fitted their arrow to the string, to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart; 3 if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do”?

4 The Lord is in his holy temple, the Lord’s throne is in heaven; his eyes behold, his eyelids test, the children of men. 5 The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and his soul hates him that loves violence. 6 On the wicked he will rain coals of fire and brimstone; a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup. 7 For the Lord is righteous, he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face. — Psalm 11 | Revised Standard Version (RSV) Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. All rights reserved. Cross References: Genesis 1:12; Genesis 19:24; Job 18:15; Psalm 2:12; Psalm 7:9; Psalm 7:11-12; Psalm 10:8; Psalm 16:11; Psalm 56:3; Psalm 82:5; Psalm 87:1; Matthew 5:34; James 1:12; Revelation 4:2

Commentary on Psalms 11 by Matthew Henry

Key Elements of Psalm 11

David encourages himself in God against his enemies

The providence and justice of God

[quotesfromscripture]

Never again

"The rest shall hear and be afraid, and a crime such as this shall never again be committed among you. Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot."

(Deuteronomy 19:20-21 NRSVA, 1995)

[oh-dear-so-queer]

As the monumental RSV stuff-up in 1946 demonstrates, the fault for a lot of negative Christian response to homosexuality lies with those who translate, interpret and preach the Scriptures.

"In/Out: A Scandalous Story of Falling Into Love and Out of the Church" - Steph Lentz

[christianity-crucible]

Hoping to find an article I had but lost track of talking about how messed up the evangelical-favored English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible is, especially compared to the version it was cribbed from, the Revised Standard Version (RSV), which at least according to one telling tried to make it translation as accurate as possible. By contrast, the changes made in the English Standard Version were very political and were LESS linguistically accurate, though more political convenient for evangelicalism.

If I can find that article again, I'll post a link here.

[saintmelangell]

do you have any favourite historical overviews or introductions to christian mysticism that you could please recommend? ilysm habibti

works marked with * are what i would recommend for absolute beginners on the topic.

introductory works:

thomas merton, a course in christian mysticism: thirteen sessions ith the famous trappist monk*

william a. richards, sacred knowledge: psychadelics and religious experiences (on the practical applications of entheogenic, or drug-induced, mysticism)

william james, the varieties of religious experience, especially lectures 16 and 17*

bernard mcginn, the essentials of christian mysticism (arguably the best starter anthology of christian mystical writing)*

mircea eliade, the sacred and the profane

robert s. ellwood, mysticism and religion*

ed. amy hollywood, the cambridge companion to christian mysticism*

steven t. katz (ed.), mysticism and sacred scripture, especially the first chapter, "mysticism and the interpretation of sacred scripture," and the second chapter, "mysticism and scriptural justification"

primary works:

anon, the cloud of unknowing and other works (a.c. sperings translation for penguin is probably the most accessible)

teresa of avila, the life of saint tereesa of avila by herself

simone weil, waiting for god*

julian of norwich, revelations of divine love*

john of the cross, spiritual canticle (i recommend this to newcomers to christian mysticism over dark night of the soul, which is extremely dense and often devastating)

meister eckhart's sermons- though the book i'm linking is essentially a primer to german mystics

hildegard of bingen's scivias; but this selected works is a good place to start

margery kempe, the book of margery kempe by herself*

bernard of clairvaux’s sermons on song of songs*

marguerite porete, the mirror of simple souls

rebecca jackson, gifts of power*

catherine of siena, dialog

secondary works:

evelyn underhill, mysticism: a study in the nature and development of spiritual consciousness

evelyn underhill, practical mysticism*

caroline walker bynum, jesus as mother: studies in the spirituality of the high middle ages

caroline walker bynum, wonderful blood: theology and practice in late medieval northern germany and beyond

caroline walker bynum, holy feast and holy fast: the religious significance of food to medieval women*

grace m. jantzen, "eros and the abyss: reading medieval mystics in postmodernity"

grace m. jantzen, becoming divine: towards a feminist philosophy of religion

denys turner, the darkness of god: negativity in christian mysticism

jeffrey kripal, roads of excess palaces of wisdom: eroticism and reflexivity in the study of mysticism (+a lecture by him)

marsha aileen hewitt, freud on religion*

sarah clairmont, "she'll eat him up she loves him so" (one of my all time favourite papers)

also, the bible: which is probably the most vital of works on christian mysticism, as nothing you read about mysticism will not be influenced by it. i personally have recently been reading a combination of the JPS tanakh and the jewish annotated new testament, but the new revised standard edition (+apocrypha) is generally standard. if you are reading the bible academically for learning about mysticism, or have absolutely no background with reading the bible, i recommend the following books specifically:

the torah (genesis*, exodus*, leviticus, numbers, deuteronomy*)

the major prophets isaiah* and ezekiel*

the minor prophets (all of which constitute my favourite part of the bible) joel*, jonah*, micah*, malachai*

psalms*, job*, the song of songs*

the gospels, especially mark* and john (mark is the oldest and most "jewish," john is the most recent and most "gentile"; matthew and luke are probably more familiar than both)

the epistles: james*, jude*, 1-3 john, 1-2 peter, hebrews

the revelation to john

everything i've recommended here you can find online (internet archive or annasarchive); i've also tried to keep it extremely general and limited to work that i've personally read and vetted. if there's specific aspects or topics you're interested in (ie women's mysticism, medieval mysticism, mysticism and eating, freud and mysticism, commentaries on specific mystics etc) just drop me an ask! very honoured you've asked me beloved <3

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Do you have a list of good sex ed books to read?

BOY DO I

please bear in mind that some of these books are a little old (10+ years) by research standards now, and that even the newer ones are all flawed in some way. the thing about research on human beings, and especially research on something as nebulous and huge as sex, is that people are Always going to miss something or fail to account for every possible experience, and that's just something that we have to accept in good faith. I think all of these books have something interesting to say, but that doesn't mean any of them are the only book you'll ever need.

related to that: it's been A While since I've read some of these so sorry if anything in them has aged poorly (I don't THINK SO but like, I was not as discerning a reader when I was 19) but I am still including them as books that have been important to my personal journey as a sex educator.

additionally, a caveat that very few of these books are, like, instructional sex ed books in the sense of like "here's how the penis works, here's where the clit is, etc." those books exist and they're great but they're also not very interesting to me; my studies on sex are much more in the social aspect (shout out to my sociology degree) and the way people learn to think about sex and societal factors that shape those trends. these books reflect that. I would genuinely love to have the time to check out some 101 books to see how they fare, but alas - sex ed is not my day job and I don't have the time to dedicate to that, so it happens slowly when it happens at all. I've been meaning to read Dr. Gunter's Vagina Bible since it came out in 2019, for fucks sake.

and finally an acknowledgement that this is a fairly white list, which has as much to do with biases with academia and publishing as my own unchecked biases especially early in my academic career and the limitations of my university library.

ANYWAY here's some books about sex that have been influential/informative to me in one way or another:

The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (Michael Warner, 1999)

Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences (Laura M. Carpenter, 2005)

Virgin: The Untouched History (Hanne Blank, 2007)

Sex Goes to School: Girls and Sex Education Before the 1960s (Susan K. Freeman, 2008)

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (Mary Roach, 2008)

Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution (Revised Edition) (Susan Stryker, 2008)

The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women (Jessica Valenti, 2009)

Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex (Amy T. Schalet, 2011)

Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality (Hanne Blank, 2012)

Rewriting the Rules: An Integrative Guide to Love, Sex and Relationships (Meg-John Barker, 2013)

The Sex Myth: The Gap Between Our Fantasies and Realities (Rachel Hills, 2015)

Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Tranform Your Sex Life (Emily Nagoski, 2015)

Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men (Jane Ward, 2015)

Too Hot to Handle: A Global History of Sex Education (Jonathan Zimmerman, 2015)

American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus (Lisa Wade, 2017)

Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy (Hallie Lieberman, 2017)

Histories of the Transgender Child (Jules Gill-Peterson, 2018)

Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers' Rights (Juno Mac and Molly Smith, 2018)

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex (Angela Chen, 2020)

Pleasure in the News: African American Readership and Sexuality in the Black Press (Kim Gallon, 2020)

A Curious History of Sex (Kate Lister, 2020)

Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity (Peggy Orenstein, 2020)

Black Women, Black Love: America's War on Africa American Marriage (Dianne M. Stewart, 2020)

The Tragedy of Heterosexuality (Jane Ward, 2020)

Hurts So Good: The Science and Pleasure of Pain on Purpose (Leigh Cowart, 2021)

Strange Bedfellows: Adventures in the Science, History, and Surprising Secrets of STDs (Ina Park, 2021)

The Right to Sex: Feminist in the Twenty-First Century (Amia Srinivasan, 2021)

Love Your Asian Body: AIDS Activism in Los Angeles (Eric C. Wat, 2021)

Superfreaks: Kink, Pleasure, and the Pursuit of Happiness (Arielle Greenberg, 2023)

[tanadrin]

Fell down a rabbit hole on ancient Israelite child sacrifice and it’s interesting that 1) it’s basically impossible (without jumping through absurd apologetic hoops) to explain important parts of the Hebrew Bible unless they are reacting to, being revised against, or being overlaid on a literary stratum which assumes the existence of Yahwistic child sacrifice; 2) as such it seems there is a very ancient strand of religious law (renegotiated at a very early date!) which specifically commands the sacrifice of all human and animal firstborn males; 3) like all religious law in the Bible, “one group of elites produced religious literature commanding a thing” doesn’t mean that those commandments represent actual universal and uncontested practices—indeed, one of the reasons people produce religious literature is to argue for a set of practices or to shore up their own position by portraying it as normative, and there is very little evidence that the ancient near eastern law codes (religious or secular) produced for propaganda purposes were used like we might use a modern law code; 4) the Canaanite/Phoenecian/Punic/Northwest Semitic religious milieu was certainly one in which infant sqcrifice was at least irregularly practiced, but no such archeological remains have been found in ancient Israel, but by their very nature this kind of infanticide leaves very little remains behind: infant skeletons are small and mostly cartilage, fire seems to have frequently been involved in such sacrifice, and the reason evidence of Carthaginian child sacrifice survived is bc such remains were interred in jars in Carthaginian tophets. 5) While a lot of modern commentators balk at taking the plain meaning of the relevant passages of the Bible seriously, and think that on grounds of basic social and emotional realism they cannot be read as supporting the existence at one time of Yahwistic child sacrifice, we really do not understand the realities of living in an Iron Age society with its attendant phenomenally high infant mortality rates, where many parents seem to have bonded with their children much later, and fertility rates were much higher to compensate for the basic reality of how often babies died. I would add to that my hunch that people in the ancient past were by modern standards just more likely to be traumatized in general, and that probably fucks up how you deal with violence and the value of human life and how you build systems which create social meaning out of death, too. “People in the past were human beings who loved their children” is not incompatible with “people in the past did horrific shit occasionally because they thought it was spiritually, socially, or materially necessary.”

And I am in some ways sympathetic to people who are reluctant to accept evidence of ancient Israelite, or even ancient Carthaginian child sacrifice. It’s so alien to our own moral sensibilities—it is in fact utterly repugnant to them! Ergo the urge to try to read the evidence differently, even if it requires wild contortions. But we know that (for instance) the death penalty and exposure of infants and religious ordeals would have all been common in the region and it seems a small step to me to imagine some ritualization of these practices that at least imbues infanticide with some kind of deeper spiritual significance, if for no other reason than as a kind of cope. In a way it’s encouraging that we have come so far that we refuse to believe any society could have ever endorsed such a thing. Nor is it a recent transition: much of the overt violence and bloodshed of the ancient Israelite law codes was renegotiated away thousands of years ago, and the renegotiation of child sacrifice happened so early that it was a major part of the formation of those codes in the form that we have them now. That too is encouraging—you don’t need modern, historically contingent sensibilities to look at brutal social systems and go “fuck this, let’s replace them with something kinder and more humane.” That tendency is as much a part of the basic forces that drive human history as our violence or our shortsightedness is.

[theonion]

In the first-ever union of the Word of God and the Synthesizer, the Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals voted unanimously Monday to incorporate the lyrics of Yes into the New Testament. The resulting new Bible, the Revised Standard YesScriptures, will replace the Jerusalem Bible of 1966 as the standard accepted record and vehicle of divine revelation.

“Let us rejoice in this momentous occasion,” said Pope John Paul II in a special service at St. Peter’s. “And let no man be unmoved, remembering the words of Jesus: ’In and around the lake, mountains come out of the sky, and they stand there.’ Amen.”

Full Story

[anniflamma]

Can I please ask what version of the bible you read? I wanna read it too but I don't know shit about the bible

It’s hard for me to recommend just one because I always compare and contrast different translations when I read a specific story from the Bible. Buuut….

If you want to read the Hebrew Bible, then I would recommend Robert Alter’s translation.

But if you want to read the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament together, then the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) is the best one I think. Both versions include good footnotes and explanations when reading the text.

[laswells-ashtray]

Catholic prayers and bible, at your service! :D

The Bible is the Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition

I thank you for your helpfulness and send you soup in your future.

Alejandro makes Rudy recite the second one repeatedly until his voice cracks and he cums all over his stomach during "Father almighty".

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

The Good Samaritan

25 And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" 26 He said to him, "What is written in the law? How do you read?" 27 And he answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." 28 And he said to him, "You have answered right; do this, and you will live." 29 But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" 30 Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion, 34 and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.' 36 Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" 37 He said, "The one who showed mercy on him." And Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise." — Luke 10:25-37 | Revised Standard Version (RSV) Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. All rights reserved. Cross References: Deuteronomy 6:4-5; Deuteronomy 6:24; Leviticus 18:15; Leviticus 19:18; Isaiah 58:7; Matthew 10:5; Matthew 18:28; Matthew 19:16; Matthew 24:34; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:52; Luke 10:38; Luke 16:15; Luke 18:31; Luke 19:28

[oh-dear-so-queer]

The clincher was the discovery that the word 'homosexual' first appeared in the Bible (1 Corinthians 6 RSV) in 1946, following an error in the translation of the Greek words 'arsenokoitai' and 'malakos'.

"In/Out: A Scandalous Story of Falling Into Love and Out of the Church" - Steph Lentz

[maybe-boys-do-love]

What are some possibly significant queer associations with St. Bartholomew for Ticket to Heaven?

I'm glad you asked!

For those who don’t know, Bartholomew’s considered one of Jesus’s twelve disciples, but barely mentioned in the Bible. It's generally agreed that he is referred to also as Nathanael in the gospel of John, and as someone with the name Nathaniel, which means gift of God in Hebrew, I can tell you that’s a gay-ass name and will also def make me cry if I think too hard about Gem's character having that parallel during the show).

Bart’s often depicted holding his flayed skin (ew gross!) from when he got martyred, most famously in queer Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo’s "Last Judgment" painting in the Sistine chapel at the Vatican. The skin St. Bart’s holding there is actually a (skinned) self-portrait of the artist. Peek at Aof’s insta and you’ll see that he actually visited the work. It’s giving queer influence in (Catholic) Christianity and autobiographical reference, baby ✨

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Bartholomew and another disciple Philip, who was written to have introduced Bartie to the big JC party and to have traveled with him after JC’s post-post-mortem, are mentioned in a translation by Yale scholar John Boswell of a liturgy for an adelphopoeisis ceremony between two monks from the tenth century. Boswell argued that adelphopoeisis, or spiritual brotherhood unions in the pre-sodomy-law-era early church should be understood as same-sex unions. This, as most discussion of gay shit with the Church, has been controversial, although some of those controversies are issues with Boswell’s translation. There does seem to be some evidence that these spiritual brotherhoods were understood to have the potential to be sexual in nature. Either way, it seems likely Aof has come across Boswell’s ideas because it’s pretty prominent in discourse for anyone looking into gay Christian history.

THEN, although it might be unintentional, the Thai-ification of Bart is homophonic with Bath????!!!! If Bart can be short for Bartholomew, y'all are gonna have to let me stretch a little bit past Aof's official statement so Bath can be short for Bathsheba because...

Giving us another Biblical name reference but from the other gender who's THE example of coveting in the Bible/Torah is such a power move! King David sees Bathsheba bathing from his roof and has her over to sleep with him even though she's the wife of one of David's soldiers who's literally off fighting for his kingdom. Then he gets her pregnant. Then David has the poor guy over for dinner and doesn't admit to it, sends him back out and has him put in the front lines to get killed. He dies and Bathsheba mourns for a bit before becoming David's wife. It's heterosexual failure! It's the temptations of the flesh! It's one of the inspirations for Leonard Cohen's cold and broken Hallelujah! This connection reframes the queer temptations as something no less normal than heterosexual desire.

After all, David is the good guy. The celebrated little David who killed Goliath. It's essential to trace Jesus's lineage back to this most-celebrated king in the Bible for the messianic prophecies to be correct. So giving us a reference to this venerated and simultaneously deeply human figure really complicates the kind of Christianity that expects immaculate humans.

And, Bathsheba wasn't David's only paramour. Researching same-sex relationships in the Bible, David and Jonathan will be at the very top of the list. "The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul...Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his armor, and even his sword and his bow and his girdle." That's coming from the book of Samuel in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which was the first in 1946 to have any reference to word ‘homosexuality,’ using it to replace in the King James Version "abusers of themselves with mankind" and "effeminate” (which at that time did not have the common association with gay men the way it does today) on the list of sinners barred from heaven. Would David have been far enough on the Kinsey scale to qualify? Well, David had some other wives on top of Jonny and Bath, too. Whatever happened to family values!?

Of course, Bath also gives us images of washing and purifying alongside the sacrament of baptism!

The Bartholomew connection deserves more legit emphasis with Aof's statements and actual evidence for his visit to the Vatican, but how fun that the translation gave us another queer part of Christianity even if it wasn't intentional!

Complicating all of this discussion further is Catholicism's very late switch away from Latin and its more emphatic focus on tradition, hagiography, and liturgy rather than the text of the Bible. My ex-Christian fixation is on issues in Reformed Christianities (and I still love me some iconophobia, a topic with which Aof loves to engage), so I know more about the books and interpretations. I'm looking forward to the Catholic and ex-Catholic contributions here as the show gets underway. Like, y'all have been doing the most for production values of a Sabbath!

And to all my ex-Christians who can get sucked into spirals about this stuff, just remember that the concept of God is chill and all if it's just the comforting sense of connection between things in the universe, but any concepts of Christology, sin, or puppet-master deities are literally the most whack things if they're being thought of as anything more than a kind of out-there overly-simplified metaphor for trying to live a life where you can be yourself and get along with other people.

*This info and a great deep dive into the induction of the language and discourse of homosexuality in the Bible and its progressive! roots and aftermath is Reforming Sodom: Protestants and the Rise of Gay Rights.

[jesuschristisgod]

Matthew 11:29–30 in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible reads: 29 "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls".30 "For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light".

[bluecatwriter]

Jonathan: Do I have to read it, oh my dear one?

Me: (cries)

Jonathan: "I will keep my mouth as it were in a bridle: while the ungodly is in my sight. I held my tongue, and spake nothing: I kept silence, yea, even from good words; but it was pain and grief to me. My heart was hot within me; and while I was thus musing the fire kindled."

Me: (cries harder) Do you have to remind me!

OKAY BUT THE INCLUSION OF THIS LINE HAS ME GOING FERAL

(Theological ramble incoming. You have been warned.)

Jonathan is reading from the Book of Common Prayer, but the scripture is Psalm 39. (I originally thought that this was a quote from Jeremiah 20:9, which uses similar language to show the prophet's frustration with burning up inside if he refuses his call to prophesy, but this is even better.)

The psalmist here is a great example of how people's responses to God in the Bible do not fit neatly into the "unquestioning obedience and reverence" framework any more than Jonathan's actions do. The narrator of this psalm speaks despairingly about the vanity of life, begs God to stop heaping hardship on him ("Remove thy stroke away from me: I am consumed by the blow of thine hand"), and while he expresses near the middle that his ultimate hope is in God ("And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in thee"), he also flat-out asks God to leave him alone (the last line of the psalm in King James Version says "O spare me, that I may recover strength/before I go hence, and be no more," though I love the more modern translations such as the New Revised Standard version, which reads, "Turn your gaze away from me, that I may smile again/before I depart and am no more").

It's a gut-wrenching psalm that doesn't flinch from the realities of life: things feel meaningless, hardships are heaped on those who are faithful, humans are fragile, riches cannot safeguard against death— and the right to rage and weep before God is a given. It ends not with the line of hope from the middle but with a challenge to God, and the main conflict of the psalm is not resolved or neatly tied up. Like all the Wisdom literature in the Bible, it invites the readers to sit in the tension and the confusion and the pain, rather than hastening on to a "correct answer" or even a sense of resolution.

I assume this is why it's included in the Book of Common Prayer's burial service: death cannot be tied up with a bow, or smoothed over with platitudes. This psalm expresses solidarity with people from every generation who have tried to make sense of their hardships and pain and the devastating reality of mortality.

Anyway, inclusion of this line in this scene was absolutely stunning. I suspect that many of Bram Stoker's original readers would have familiarity with the burial service since it would be read at every funeral, so adding in the words was wonderful to enhance the experience for the modern non-Anglican reader. This passage helped drive home how thematically resonant these words are with what's happening in the story in the moment. Very cool.

[transhuman-priestess]

“None of these words are in the Bible”

Really? Which translation are you comparing to?

There are hundreds, if not thousands of translations of the Bible available from everybody and their grandma.

I’m not even talking about French vs English vs Arabic etc I’m talking about just within the English language.

You’ve got King James, Revised King James, New International, English Standard, New Living, and those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. Some of those absolutely have the word penis in them. Quit lying, you uncultured buffoons.