Was Jesus a Drag Queen?

Somebody has been "talking out of school." (That's all)

Some material that was taught in Graduate School 50 years ago is being pushed down into upper-division undergrad work (e.g. 300 and 400 series courses).

Some upper-division material from 50 years ago has migrated into lower-division undergrad work (e.g. 200 series).

ONE such example of graduate material is this: "The translations of the Western Bible are, by no means, certain."

So, to the case in point...

Dr. Tat-siong Benny Liew is chair of New Testament studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Ioudaioi is an Archaic Greek word that is commonly [or conveniently] translated to “Jew” or “Judean.”

What the current cognitive equivalent to Ioudaioi may be is, by no means, certain. It is in a class of perhaps 1500 words that are obscure.

The discussion is about Ioudaioi in context and not about Jesus at all!

Citing the multiple usages of Ioudaioi gospel of John, Liew said that Jesus was a “drag king” who had “queer desires,” that the last supper was a “literary striptease,” and Jesus was gender fluid. (That is "a wake up call" about uncertain words and their multiple definitions (most NOT shared in press). Ioudaioi meant different things in different context - and in many cases the context is obscure. The Levant did not have a rich vocabulary of 250,000 words - like the average college grad of today.

Immature minds "don't get it" and run out and 'tattle on the teacher.' They miss the lesson altogether!

“…What we [hypothetically] have in John’s Jesus is not only a “king of Israel” or “king of the Ioudaioi”, but also a drag king,” he claims in his footnoted and referenced writing. “[Christ] ends up appearing as a drag-kingly bride in his passion.”

Repeat: Ioudaioi is an Archaic Greek word that is commonly translated to “Jew” or “Judean.” A “Jew” may or may not be observant while a Judean might even be an Egyptian in residence in the dry steppes south of the Jezreel Valley. Thus there is no ONE definition that scholars can agree on – especially when one considers context.

From the time I was 7 or 8 years old, I recognized "the Bible" as being a collection of folklore. Later I saw it as "a constrained collection of regional folklore, borrowed without interest."

The writers of the Bible borrowed stories from everywhere that they could! Scholars have been aware of this for 100+ years!

“In addition, we find Jesus disrobing and rerobing in the episode that marks Jesus’ focus on the disciples with the coming of his ‘hour’. This disrobing… does not disclose anything about Jesus’ anatomy,” Liew writes. “Instead, it describes Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. As more than one commentator has pointed out, foot-washing was generally only done by Jewish women or non-Jewish slaves.”



ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Cinderella appears at least TWICE in the Bible (Ruth and Esther).

Buddha is a Saint in the Catholic Church!

So, back to the Drag Queen...

“John is clear that Jesus is an Ioudaios [translation uncertain]; what John is less clear about is whether Jesus is a biological male. Like a literary striptease, this episode is suggestive, even seductive; it reveals and veils at the same time.”

An article in the school’s independent student journal called Liew’s interpretations “unconventional.” (And THAT is all!)

But this isn’t the first time scholars and theologians have suggested that Christ was a little (or more than a little) queer.

The “disciple whom Jesus loved,” also known as “the beloved disciple,” also appears in the gospel of John. His/her identity and relationship with Jesus have long been the subject of debate.

Referenced six times in the gospel – yet unnamed – the disciple is often thought to be John the apostle, one of the twelve disciples and the author of the gospel itself. At other times, he’s identified as Lazarus, whom Jesus dramatically raised from the dead.

Whoever he was, some people think the disciple described as reclining on Jesus’ chest at the last supper was his gay lover.

Anglican priest Paul Oestreicher preached that Jesus intimacy with John suggested he was gay. Oestreicher wrote in the Guardian that John “clearly had a unique place in the affection of Jesus,” and that at the end of the gospel “John becomes unmistakably part of Jesus’s family.”

Ostreicher argues that Jesus wouldn’t have been truly human if he’d been devoid of sexuality. And today his relationship with the beloved disciple would be interpreted as gay - by some. The other option - that Mary Magdalene was THE disciple is so outrageous in a misogynistic culture it is reduced to blasphemy! (Simple minds demand simple answers)

There’s something of a literary tradition here. A lost gospel discovered in 1958, known as the Secret Gospel of Mark also goes into homoerotic detail, describing Jesus relations with a “naked youth” who is often identified as Lazarus.

In her Jesus in Love novels, Kittredge Cherry portrays both the beloved disciple and Lazarus as gay, with the former as Jesus’ lover and the latter as his young gay friend.

Reverend Dr. Bob Shore-Goss, openly gay senior pastor and author of Queering Christ and Jesus ACTED UP: A Gay and Lesbian Manifesto, says that not only was Jesus gay, but he was most likely versatile: both a top and a bottom. (The more you give, the more you shall receive.)

“He broke the rules of his culture, of heteronormativity,” Shore-Goss said in an interview with Vice. “He subverted masculinities and gender codes in his culture.”

And so the debate (of unknowns) drags on (pun intended).