Buzzfeed, 1662
Sep. 17th, 2016 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
steepholmPerhaps, like me, you've often seen memes mocking fundamentalist Christians who condemn homosexuality or crossdressing because they're banned in Leviticus or Deuteronomy, while blithely ignoring other practices outlawed in the same places, such as eating shellfish, mixing linen and wool, wearing tattoos, etc.
Where did this meme begin? I don't know, but I give you a contender for the earliest example: Sir Richard Baker, Theatrum Redivivum, or, the Theatre Vindicated (1662):
There is nothing new under the sun, sayeth the Preacher.
Where did this meme begin? I don't know, but I give you a contender for the earliest example: Sir Richard Baker, Theatrum Redivivum, or, the Theatre Vindicated (1662):
Indeed, he cites a text of scripture for it, Deut. xxii. 5: 'The women shall not wear that which pertaineth to the man, neither shall a man put on a woman's raiment.' A pregnant place indeed, but where finds he this precept? Even in the same place where he finds also that we must not wear clothes of linsey-woolsey; and seeing we lawfully now wear clothes of linsey-woolsey, why may it not be as lawful for men to put on women's garments? But if he will have this precept to stand in force, though it be no part of the moral law, yet because it may have a moral construction; how will he then defend his own eating of black-puddings against the precept for the eating of blood? For this precept against eating of blood hath a stronger tie than that for wearing of garments.
There is nothing new under the sun, sayeth the Preacher.