In my recent post I pointed out that Jesus said nothing – nada! – about same sex relations in any of his surviving teachings.   One blog member pointed out a post on a different blog by New Testament scholar Scot McKnight arguing that there are there passages in the Gospels where in fact Jesus *may* have been referring to homosexuality, in condemnatory terms.  I thought, HUH?  THAT’s interesting!  I better look.  So I did.   I don’t think there’s any way this is right, but you can decide for yourself.

This will take two posts.  I’ll cite the the passages, then Scot’s assessment of them (which I summarize), and my response.

Several things to say at the outset.   I have known Scott (not well, but a bit) for many years.  He is a bona fide scholar of the New Testament, a well-trained and careful interpreter of the text.  He is also a committed evangelical Christian, and an interesting one: a few years ago he “converted” (or at least moved on or over) to join the Episcopal church, but still maintains his evangelical views and commitments.  For years he was a professor at North Park Theologial seminary; now he is at Northern Seminary, also in Chicago.  He has published a number of books, principally on the Jesus and the Gospels.

He and I don’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things when it comes to these topics, but we’re not light-years apart and we are both pretty much playing the same game.  I do think his personal theological commitments occasionally leads him to see things in the text that are probably not there.  But he probably thinks the same thing of me.

The post where he discusses the matter is here:  https://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2015/04/06/did-jesus-talk-about-homosexuality/?fbclid=IwAR1zS38fRp–SbQOe6gfYavNJBWik6BWkWCeL7Qm-XyDsgNCiOKL0utbuJ4   You can read it yourself to make sure I’m summarizing it correctly.

Scot agrees that Jesus says nothing *explicit* about homosexuality.  But he does think that there are three passages that *may* be referring to it, one of which he is pretty sure does.  He is basing some of this on the work on the Bible and homosexuality by James Loader, who thinks the Bible does condemn it BUT does not agree with that condemnation himself.  I’m not sure what Scot’s own views are (just because I haven’t looked into it).

So here are two of the passages. ….

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