{"id":970,"date":"1992-12-07T23:00:46","date_gmt":"1992-12-08T05:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/?p=970"},"modified":"2012-07-07T23:04:24","modified_gmt":"2012-07-08T04:04:24","slug":"battling-with-beasts-sex-in-the-life-and-letters-of-st-paul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/battling-with-beasts-sex-in-the-life-and-letters-of-st-paul\/","title":{"rendered":"Battling With Beasts: Sex in the Life and Letters of St. Paul"},"content":{"rendered":"

The GLBTRT has been reviewing books and movies in its newsletter since the early 1990s. Trace the evolution of queer publishing through these historic reviews. This review was originally\u00a0published in\u00a0Vol. 4, No. 4, Winter 1992<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"CoverBattling With Beasts: Sex in the Life and Letters of St. Paul; The Issues of Homosexuality, Heterosexuality, and Bisexuality. By Arthur Frederick Ide. Tanglewood Press, 1991. Paper. $12.00. (ISBN 0-934667-09-8)<\/a><\/p>\n

This is Dr. Ide’s response to evangelical fundamentalism.\u00a0Tying onto the coattail of Bishop Spong’s Rescuing the\u00a0Bible From Fundamentalism<\/em>, Ide goes further than Spong\u00a0in his examination of Paul’s sexual objections by\u00a0presenting an argument that Paul did not condemn\u00a0homosexuality, but sexuality in general.<\/p>\n

Ide believes that Paul was so uncomfortable with his own\u00a0sexual identity and propensity that he demanded others\u00a0cover theirs and adopt his own paranoia. Paul’s cry was\u00a0thus, not a cry for people to deny themselves a\u00a0homosexual life style or proclivity, but it was more a\u00a0passionate – pathetic- plea for heterosexuals and\u00a0homosexuals to give up lust, to deny themselves sexual\u00a0stimulation, gratification, reproduction and physical\u00a0intimacy.<\/p>\n

Dr. Ide’s work is an interesting and scholarly reexamination of the human side of St. Paul. It allows the\u00a0reader an inside view into the weaknesses of Paul, and\u00a0how important it is to remember the humanness of all the\u00a0Apostles.<\/p>\n

The text is filled with numerous footnotes and lengthy\u00a0passages in Greek. As a limited reader of Greek, this\u00a0reviewer found them at best interesting and at times, a\u00a0challenge to one’s ability to concentrate on the thesis of the\u00a0argument presented in English. Because of this factor, the\u00a0common reader may perhaps ignore entire sections of the\u00a0work, or even worse, lose interest in the text altogether.\u00a0From a scholar’s or researcher’s point of view, the Greek\u00a0references do serve as good documentation for the skeptic\u00a0who would question the validity of Ide’s thesis or\u00a0scholarship.<\/p>\n

Because of the level of scholarship of this work, it is not\u00a0recommended for the lay person. It is more directed to the\u00a0advanced theological student, seminarian, or theological scholar.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Charles Whitlow<\/strong>
\nAT & T Tax Administration
\nMorristown, NJ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The GLBTRT has been reviewing books and movies in its newsletter since the early 1990s. Trace the evolution of queer publishing through these historic reviews. This review was originally\u00a0published in\u00a0Vol. 4, No. 4, Winter 1992. Battling With Beasts: Sex in the Life and Letters of St. Paul; The Issues of Homosexuality, Heterosexuality, and Bisexuality. By […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27,46,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}