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Thursday, September 26, 2024

Review of Kazen, "Dirt, Shame, Status"

READING ACTS: Thomas Kazen, Dirt, Shame, Status: Perspectives on Same-Sex Sexuality in the Bible and the Ancient World (Phil Long).
Conclusion. Kazen provides an excellent foundation for understanding what ancient Greek and Roman writers thought about homoerotic behavior as a background for reading Hellenistic Jewish writers (like the New Testament) in the correct context. Readers on either side of modern arguments may not appreciate the implication that these ancient texts do not (always) answer modern questions. No one, for example, considered gay marriage a possibility even if they regularly engaged in homoerotic behavior.

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