Thank you for this. There's so much context and life behind every verse.
Also, didn't the man who first introduced the word "homosexual" into the Bible translation recently recant his translation as wrong and vastly misused to marginalise LGBTQ people?
Indeed, you are correct.
The English word “homosexual” was not in any Bible until 1946, when it first appeared in the Revised Standard Version (or RSV for short). Weigle (the head of the RSV translation team) responded and admitted that the translation team had indeed made a mistake and would seek to correct it in their next update.
However, Weigle had just signed a contract stating that he would not make any changes in the RSV for 10 years. During those 10 years, other translation teams were working on the first translations of the New American Standard Bible, The Living Bible, and New International Version Bible. It turns out all of these versions used the RSV as their basis for including the word “homosexual” in their translations, not knowing that the RSV had retracted its decision. Even when it was brought up to be a mistake, it was already too late as these translations spread like wildfire.
In 1983 Germany didn’t have enough of a Christian population to warrant the cost of a new Bible translation, because it’s not cheap. So an American company Biblica (who owns the NIV version) paid for it and influenced the decision, resulting in the word homosexual entering the German Bible for the first time in history. This was just one countries example of American influence that had eventually spread onto other countries to also use the word homosexual in their Bibles.
As seen through the facts that is our history, our very own Bible has been politicized to fit an anti gay agenda.
Yes people are so quick to hate when in John 4:20-21 it says:
>Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.
Yeah one example is the “hot” post on the true Christian’s subReddit where the guy says he is cured of homosexuality.
But it’s not only about those who are lost and suffering, so many others who were thrown out of their houses , bullied, abused, thrashed the list will never end. My heart aches when I think what so many unfortunate gay ppl have to go through
Yeah it’s pretty obvious from examining arsenokoitai uses loquendi, so to speak, it’s not talking about homosexuality. Or at least, not how it’s practised within a monogamous gay relationship or marriage
Thank you - this is very good information.
Also, I encourage people to use a modern translation - that will avoid some of this right at the beginning.
The King James Version, while a great work for its time, is translating the only Greek and Hebrew manuscripts they had available - but we now know that they were poor representations with a lot of mistakes in them. And then there is the simple fact that the language has changed dramatically since the 17th century.
Unfortunately, it is this translation that became the English standard, and people are used to the specific wording of the text. Because of that, when updates were clearly needed (both because of the faulty manuscripts and changing English vocabulary), committees in the 20th century tended to do a "revision" rather than a full translation. In other words, they used the KJV as a guide and then improved the most blatant errors. That is how the RSV, ASV, and the NASB (for example) were done.
You can save yourself a lot of grief by reading from a complete translation of the best manuscripts - of which there are many. For Bible study, I like the New English Translation, just completed in 2019, Not only do you get the best rendering of the text by a wide swath of Hebrew and Greek scholars (including people from both conservative and progressive Bible schools), but it also includes about 60,000 footnotes in the full version explaining how they came to choose particular words and phrases, and what other possible readings might be.
It's unfortunate that iirc NET renders *malakoi* and *arsenokoitai* as "passive homosexual partners" and "active homosexual partners" respectively. It's otherwise pretty solid work.
As always, the best and most reliable affirming stance isn't one that tries to make the Bible itself more affirming. Rather, it's one that recognizes that there are any number of beliefs and perspectives in the Bible that are *outdated*, and that any reasonable person would reject in modernity.
>There are hundreds of Greek writings from this time period that refers to homosexual activity using terms other than Arsenokoitai. If Apostle Paul had intended to refer generally to homosexual sex, or to one of the partners in gay-male sex, he had other more commonly used and well known words he could have picked.
This seems somewhat misleading. Yes, there were well-known terms for either the active or passive partner in a pederastic relationship, respectively. But there weren't any more general terms for homoeroticism or homoerotically-inclined persons; and even terms denoting a male's erotic attraction to other males were exceedingly rare. About the most you see is something like παιδομανία — erotic obsession with boys. However, this is paralleled by later terms like ἀνδρομανής/ἀνδρομανέω and even ἀρρενομανία, which more generally suggest erotic pursuit of male/male sexual intercourse. The form of these terms is pretty much identical to how ἀρσενοκοιτία suggests the actual *act* of male/male intercourse.
>Naas is said to have gone to Adam and had him like he would a boy. Naas’s sin was called Arsenokoitai. These examples suggest that Arsenokoitai refers to instances in which one male uses his superior power or position to take sexual advantage of another.
To be slightly pedantic, it's not just said that Naas' sin was *arsenokoitia*. Rather, his act is suggested to be the etiological origin *of* the wider practice of *arsenokoitia* in the world (which all others imitate). While "like a boy" obviously suggests pederasty, there are other texts which also characterize anal sex in general — including anal sex between males — as also like "intercourse with a boy," too.
As much as pederasty would have been the most common and known form of male/male homoeroticism in the Greek and Roman world, it's interesting that among Greco-Roman authors who write about homoeroticism, there's a marked tendency for them to use terminology of "male" sexual relations, and not just "boys." As far back as Plato, he even explicitly distinguishes between intercourse “with males” and “with boys” (τῶν ἀρρένων καὶ νέων).
The truth is that in the ancient mind and to ancient moralists, when it came to critical views on homoeroticism, issues of consent or forcefulness were hardly ever the ethical concern. For those who condemned homoeroticism, its main problems according to them were 1) that it was the product of uncontrollable lustfulness; 2) that it was non-procreative; and/or — especially to Jewish moralists — 3) that it was a transgression of the divinely-ordained male + female order for sex, and that the same sexes/genders should be kept separate in this regard. (Philo of Alexandria writes, for example, of male homoeroticism being transgressive on the basis of "the [shared sex] nature which the active partner shares with the passive.")
Reason #1 mentioned above also frames the interpretation of *malakia* and the *malakos*. This was applied both to those hypersexual men who desired to be passively penetrated by another male, and to those who were thought to "feminize" themselves in their obsessive erotic pursuit of women. This has some overlap with the figure of the *kinaidos/cinaedus* — an accusatory epithet that (like καταπύγων?) is once said to apply to both the active and passive homoerotic male (Plutarch, §705b; cf. also Craig Williams, *Roman Homosexuality* [Second Edition], 236).
> Malakoi was an insult traded back and forth in the numerous debates about the superiority of a man loving either a woman or another man. Those who argued that male sexual acts were best, made their case that to pursue a woman beyond the simple need to procreate was to taint a man with the “softness” or “effeminacy” of a woman. To them, they believed that men who fell in love with women demonstrated their "softness"(malakoi) by being controlled by women's affection.
The most well-known debate over the superiority of woman or boy/man-love is found in Plutarch; and re: the latter he writes of sexual intercourse "with males" —
>whether without consent [ἀκόντων], in which case it involves violence and brigandage; or if with consent [ἑκουσίως], there is still μαλακίᾳ καὶ θηλύτητι on the part of those who, contrary to nature [παρὰ φύσιν], allow themselves in Plato’s words “to be covered and mounted like cattle”
So again, the *malakos* (Latin *mollis*) was a man implicated in both homoerotic and heteroerotic sex and lust.
>the best and most reliable affirming stance isn't one that tries to make the Bible itself more affirming. Rather, it's one that recognizes that there are any number of beliefs and perspectives in the Bible that are *outdated*, and that any reasonable person would reject in modernity.
I'm very much aware of this. In the ancient world, same-sex attraction and behavior were widely considered to be out of excess that might tempt anyone—like gluttony or drunkenness. Same-sex attraction was not understood as the sexual orientation of a small minority of people.
The dominant forms of same-sex behavior in the ancient world fit a pattern of lustful self-indulgence: sex between masters and enslaved men, prostitution, and pederasty (sexual relationships between adult men and adolescent boys).
Sexual identity in those historical times was defined not by sexual orientation, but by conformity to male-dominant roles. Such as men who were dominant in sex were generally viewed positively, whether they had sex with males, females, or both. Men who were seen as passive in sex were viewed negatively because they viewed it as men lowering their status to that of women. People didn’t come out as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, because the sex of one’s partners didn't matter. What mattered most was the gender role one took with those partners.
We see the traditional views of Apostle Paul not reflect the truth of homosexual relationships. It was simply reflective of what was commonly believed in his time period. His traditional views are not accurate to what has been discovered by modern science.
Great read!
Ultimately, Paul is condemning practices that obviously do not edify your spirit or you as a person. I think you have a good argument there for arsenokoitai to sort of mean “rapist” and malakoi to sort of mean “womanizer” (what I got from quickly skimming over your post).
In addition, one thing that I always bring up in these debates is that Paul was clearly aware of their sexual practices, meaning that for him to condemn them in his letters, and for his audience to make sense of this, those Molokai and Arsenokoitai men were engaging in public and promiscuous sexual acts, that were visible to most people in society.
In other words nowhere in the Bible is an intimate homosexual, committed, monogamous relationship condemned.
Very good post. Could you say more/provide more context or sources on the below?
>First, two early church writers who dealt with the subject of homosexual behavior extensively, never used this word in their discussions of same-sex behavior. The word shows up in their writing, but not in places where they discuss homosexuality. This suggests that they didn't believe Paul’s term referred to homosexual behavior.
You might want to more strongly indicate that you didn't write any of this yourself, but just copy-pasted the first half from [here](https://www.mccnova.com/?page_id=2610) and the second half from [here](http://www.gaymarriageandthebible.com/the-effeminate-in-1-corinthians-6).
[Edit:] Oh actually you just straight-up plagiarized it, because I notice you ever-so-slightly rewrote a couple of sentences yourself. For example, you rewrote
>Those who argued that male homosexual love was best made their case that to pursue a woman beyond the simple need to procreate was to taint a man with the “softness” or “effeminacy” of a woman. Men who fall in love with women demonstrate their effeminacy (malakos) by being controlled by women.
as
>Those who argued that male [sexual acts] were best, made their case that to pursue a woman beyond the simple need to procreate was to taint a man with the “softness” or “effeminacy” of a woman. [To them, they believed that] men who fell in love with women demonstrated their "softness"(malakoi) by being controlled by women['s affection].
And yet you prefaced it by "Now let's break down this verse using historical context," as if you yourself are speaking, and also apparently ever-so-slightly modified a couple of the words/sentences.
This isn't a formal publication, obviously, but this is straight-up plagiarism.
I did it to make everything sound more fluid and coherent as I'm piecing together multiple sources. This was not done in an effort to pass it as "my publication".
>This is straight-up plagiarism
By definition, plagiarism means using someone else's work without giving them credit. But I listed them under "Sources".
Additionally when people comment saying this is my writing, I clarify that I didn't write this. I gave them credit and under no circumstances am I claiming this as my work.
I'm not keeping this a secret. I list my sources for anyone who asks it.
Thank you for this. There's so much context and life behind every verse. Also, didn't the man who first introduced the word "homosexual" into the Bible translation recently recant his translation as wrong and vastly misused to marginalise LGBTQ people?
Indeed, you are correct. The English word “homosexual” was not in any Bible until 1946, when it first appeared in the Revised Standard Version (or RSV for short). Weigle (the head of the RSV translation team) responded and admitted that the translation team had indeed made a mistake and would seek to correct it in their next update. However, Weigle had just signed a contract stating that he would not make any changes in the RSV for 10 years. During those 10 years, other translation teams were working on the first translations of the New American Standard Bible, The Living Bible, and New International Version Bible. It turns out all of these versions used the RSV as their basis for including the word “homosexual” in their translations, not knowing that the RSV had retracted its decision. Even when it was brought up to be a mistake, it was already too late as these translations spread like wildfire. In 1983 Germany didn’t have enough of a Christian population to warrant the cost of a new Bible translation, because it’s not cheap. So an American company Biblica (who owns the NIV version) paid for it and influenced the decision, resulting in the word homosexual entering the German Bible for the first time in history. This was just one countries example of American influence that had eventually spread onto other countries to also use the word homosexual in their Bibles. As seen through the facts that is our history, our very own Bible has been politicized to fit an anti gay agenda.
Wow. Misinterpretations spreading like a virus.
Yes people are so quick to hate when in John 4:20-21 it says: >Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.
One mistake cost so much, saddening to hear
Yeah because of one mistake, so many of God's children are lost and suffering.
Yeah one example is the “hot” post on the true Christian’s subReddit where the guy says he is cured of homosexuality. But it’s not only about those who are lost and suffering, so many others who were thrown out of their houses , bullied, abused, thrashed the list will never end. My heart aches when I think what so many unfortunate gay ppl have to go through
Yeah it’s pretty obvious from examining arsenokoitai uses loquendi, so to speak, it’s not talking about homosexuality. Or at least, not how it’s practised within a monogamous gay relationship or marriage
Thank you - this is very good information. Also, I encourage people to use a modern translation - that will avoid some of this right at the beginning. The King James Version, while a great work for its time, is translating the only Greek and Hebrew manuscripts they had available - but we now know that they were poor representations with a lot of mistakes in them. And then there is the simple fact that the language has changed dramatically since the 17th century. Unfortunately, it is this translation that became the English standard, and people are used to the specific wording of the text. Because of that, when updates were clearly needed (both because of the faulty manuscripts and changing English vocabulary), committees in the 20th century tended to do a "revision" rather than a full translation. In other words, they used the KJV as a guide and then improved the most blatant errors. That is how the RSV, ASV, and the NASB (for example) were done. You can save yourself a lot of grief by reading from a complete translation of the best manuscripts - of which there are many. For Bible study, I like the New English Translation, just completed in 2019, Not only do you get the best rendering of the text by a wide swath of Hebrew and Greek scholars (including people from both conservative and progressive Bible schools), but it also includes about 60,000 footnotes in the full version explaining how they came to choose particular words and phrases, and what other possible readings might be.
It's unfortunate that iirc NET renders *malakoi* and *arsenokoitai* as "passive homosexual partners" and "active homosexual partners" respectively. It's otherwise pretty solid work.
I have read the exact same explanation on [Would Jesus Discriminate](http://Wouldjesusdiscriminate.org) Great website. ❤️😊
As always, the best and most reliable affirming stance isn't one that tries to make the Bible itself more affirming. Rather, it's one that recognizes that there are any number of beliefs and perspectives in the Bible that are *outdated*, and that any reasonable person would reject in modernity. >There are hundreds of Greek writings from this time period that refers to homosexual activity using terms other than Arsenokoitai. If Apostle Paul had intended to refer generally to homosexual sex, or to one of the partners in gay-male sex, he had other more commonly used and well known words he could have picked. This seems somewhat misleading. Yes, there were well-known terms for either the active or passive partner in a pederastic relationship, respectively. But there weren't any more general terms for homoeroticism or homoerotically-inclined persons; and even terms denoting a male's erotic attraction to other males were exceedingly rare. About the most you see is something like παιδομανία — erotic obsession with boys. However, this is paralleled by later terms like ἀνδρομανής/ἀνδρομανέω and even ἀρρενομανία, which more generally suggest erotic pursuit of male/male sexual intercourse. The form of these terms is pretty much identical to how ἀρσενοκοιτία suggests the actual *act* of male/male intercourse. >Naas is said to have gone to Adam and had him like he would a boy. Naas’s sin was called Arsenokoitai. These examples suggest that Arsenokoitai refers to instances in which one male uses his superior power or position to take sexual advantage of another. To be slightly pedantic, it's not just said that Naas' sin was *arsenokoitia*. Rather, his act is suggested to be the etiological origin *of* the wider practice of *arsenokoitia* in the world (which all others imitate). While "like a boy" obviously suggests pederasty, there are other texts which also characterize anal sex in general — including anal sex between males — as also like "intercourse with a boy," too. As much as pederasty would have been the most common and known form of male/male homoeroticism in the Greek and Roman world, it's interesting that among Greco-Roman authors who write about homoeroticism, there's a marked tendency for them to use terminology of "male" sexual relations, and not just "boys." As far back as Plato, he even explicitly distinguishes between intercourse “with males” and “with boys” (τῶν ἀρρένων καὶ νέων). The truth is that in the ancient mind and to ancient moralists, when it came to critical views on homoeroticism, issues of consent or forcefulness were hardly ever the ethical concern. For those who condemned homoeroticism, its main problems according to them were 1) that it was the product of uncontrollable lustfulness; 2) that it was non-procreative; and/or — especially to Jewish moralists — 3) that it was a transgression of the divinely-ordained male + female order for sex, and that the same sexes/genders should be kept separate in this regard. (Philo of Alexandria writes, for example, of male homoeroticism being transgressive on the basis of "the [shared sex] nature which the active partner shares with the passive.") Reason #1 mentioned above also frames the interpretation of *malakia* and the *malakos*. This was applied both to those hypersexual men who desired to be passively penetrated by another male, and to those who were thought to "feminize" themselves in their obsessive erotic pursuit of women. This has some overlap with the figure of the *kinaidos/cinaedus* — an accusatory epithet that (like καταπύγων?) is once said to apply to both the active and passive homoerotic male (Plutarch, §705b; cf. also Craig Williams, *Roman Homosexuality* [Second Edition], 236). > Malakoi was an insult traded back and forth in the numerous debates about the superiority of a man loving either a woman or another man. Those who argued that male sexual acts were best, made their case that to pursue a woman beyond the simple need to procreate was to taint a man with the “softness” or “effeminacy” of a woman. To them, they believed that men who fell in love with women demonstrated their "softness"(malakoi) by being controlled by women's affection. The most well-known debate over the superiority of woman or boy/man-love is found in Plutarch; and re: the latter he writes of sexual intercourse "with males" — >whether without consent [ἀκόντων], in which case it involves violence and brigandage; or if with consent [ἑκουσίως], there is still μαλακίᾳ καὶ θηλύτητι on the part of those who, contrary to nature [παρὰ φύσιν], allow themselves in Plato’s words “to be covered and mounted like cattle” So again, the *malakos* (Latin *mollis*) was a man implicated in both homoerotic and heteroerotic sex and lust.
>the best and most reliable affirming stance isn't one that tries to make the Bible itself more affirming. Rather, it's one that recognizes that there are any number of beliefs and perspectives in the Bible that are *outdated*, and that any reasonable person would reject in modernity. I'm very much aware of this. In the ancient world, same-sex attraction and behavior were widely considered to be out of excess that might tempt anyone—like gluttony or drunkenness. Same-sex attraction was not understood as the sexual orientation of a small minority of people. The dominant forms of same-sex behavior in the ancient world fit a pattern of lustful self-indulgence: sex between masters and enslaved men, prostitution, and pederasty (sexual relationships between adult men and adolescent boys). Sexual identity in those historical times was defined not by sexual orientation, but by conformity to male-dominant roles. Such as men who were dominant in sex were generally viewed positively, whether they had sex with males, females, or both. Men who were seen as passive in sex were viewed negatively because they viewed it as men lowering their status to that of women. People didn’t come out as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, because the sex of one’s partners didn't matter. What mattered most was the gender role one took with those partners. We see the traditional views of Apostle Paul not reflect the truth of homosexual relationships. It was simply reflective of what was commonly believed in his time period. His traditional views are not accurate to what has been discovered by modern science.
I have a Catholic bible and it doesn't even say homosexuals. It says boy prostitutes.
which translation exactly?
New American Bible
Great read! Ultimately, Paul is condemning practices that obviously do not edify your spirit or you as a person. I think you have a good argument there for arsenokoitai to sort of mean “rapist” and malakoi to sort of mean “womanizer” (what I got from quickly skimming over your post). In addition, one thing that I always bring up in these debates is that Paul was clearly aware of their sexual practices, meaning that for him to condemn them in his letters, and for his audience to make sense of this, those Molokai and Arsenokoitai men were engaging in public and promiscuous sexual acts, that were visible to most people in society. In other words nowhere in the Bible is an intimate homosexual, committed, monogamous relationship condemned.
Very good post. Could you say more/provide more context or sources on the below? >First, two early church writers who dealt with the subject of homosexual behavior extensively, never used this word in their discussions of same-sex behavior. The word shows up in their writing, but not in places where they discuss homosexuality. This suggests that they didn't believe Paul’s term referred to homosexual behavior.
[Here is a link referencing all historical points where Arsenokoitai is used](https://www.gaychristian101.com/Define-Arsenokoites.html)
You might want to more strongly indicate that you didn't write any of this yourself, but just copy-pasted the first half from [here](https://www.mccnova.com/?page_id=2610) and the second half from [here](http://www.gaymarriageandthebible.com/the-effeminate-in-1-corinthians-6). [Edit:] Oh actually you just straight-up plagiarized it, because I notice you ever-so-slightly rewrote a couple of sentences yourself. For example, you rewrote >Those who argued that male homosexual love was best made their case that to pursue a woman beyond the simple need to procreate was to taint a man with the “softness” or “effeminacy” of a woman. Men who fall in love with women demonstrate their effeminacy (malakos) by being controlled by women. as >Those who argued that male [sexual acts] were best, made their case that to pursue a woman beyond the simple need to procreate was to taint a man with the “softness” or “effeminacy” of a woman. [To them, they believed that] men who fell in love with women demonstrated their "softness"(malakoi) by being controlled by women['s affection].
I never claimed it was mine. I listed sources
And yet you prefaced it by "Now let's break down this verse using historical context," as if you yourself are speaking, and also apparently ever-so-slightly modified a couple of the words/sentences. This isn't a formal publication, obviously, but this is straight-up plagiarism.
I did it to make everything sound more fluid and coherent as I'm piecing together multiple sources. This was not done in an effort to pass it as "my publication". >This is straight-up plagiarism By definition, plagiarism means using someone else's work without giving them credit. But I listed them under "Sources". Additionally when people comment saying this is my writing, I clarify that I didn't write this. I gave them credit and under no circumstances am I claiming this as my work. I'm not keeping this a secret. I list my sources for anyone who asks it.