I Cor 6:9 Paul lists a many activities that will prevent people from inheriting the Kingdom of God. One has been variously translated as effeminate, homosexuals, or sexual perverts. The original Greek text reads malakoi arsenokoitai. The first word means soft; the meaning of the second word has been lost. It was once used to refer to a male temple prostitute. The early Church interpreted the phrase as referring to people of soft morals; i.e. unethical. From the time of Martin Luther, it was interpreted as referring to masturbation . More recently, it has been translated as referring to homosexuals . Each Translator seem to take whatever activity that their society particularly disapproves of and use it in this verse.
TRANSLATIONS (Along with year and rendering)
Koine Greek (56) malakoi, arsenokoitai
Latin Vulgate (405) molles, masculorum concubitores
Wyclif (1508) lecchouris, synne of Sodom
Tyndale (1525) weaklings, abusers of themselves with mankynde
Reims-Douai (1609) effeminate, liars with mankind
King James (1611) effeminate, abusers of themselves with mankind
Revised Version (1881) effeminate, abusers of themselves with men
American Standard Version (1901) effeminate, abusers of themselves with men
Revised Standard Version (1946) sexual perverts
Jerusalem Bible (French) (1955) effeminate, people with infamous habits
Jerusalem (French ed.) depraved persons of sordid morals
Interlinear Greek-English NT (1958) voluptuous persons, Sodomites
The Amplified Version (1958) those who participate in homosexuality
New American Standard Bible (1963) effeminate, homosexuals
Today's English Version (1966) homosexual perverts
Jerusalem Bible (German) (1968) sissies, child molesters
Jerusalem Bible (English) (1968) Catamites, Sodomites
The Living Bible (1971) homosexuals
New International Version (1978) male prostitutes, homosexual offenders
New King James Version (1979) homosexuals, sodomites
Jerusalem, New (Engl. 1985) self-indulgent sodomites
New American Catholic (1987) boy prostitutes practicing homosexuals
Other bible translations:
"men who practice homosexuality," (ESV);
"those who participate in homosexuality," (Amplified);
"abusers of themselves with men," (KJV);
"practicing homosexuals," (NAB);
"homosexuals," (NASB);
"homosexual perversion," (NEB);
"homosexual offenders," (NIV);
"sodomites," (NRSV);
"liers with mankind," (Rhiems); and
"homosexual perverts." (TEV)
Apparently, lesbians are not included in many of these condemnations
I CORINTHIANS 6:9-10
It is amazing the number of times that you will see the word "sodomite" or "homosexual" or "pervert" in different translations concerning this text. There is a double irony to this since, as it is now generally recognized, Sodomites were not punished for homosexuality. It is also amazing because no one knows exactly what the words of these passages in the original text mean!
The layperson, unfortunately, has no way of knowing that interpreters are guessing as to the exact meaning of these words. Pastors and laypersons often have to rely upon the authority of those who have written lexicons (dictionaries explaining the meaning of words) of Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic words. The authors of scriptural lexicons search for the meaning of the word within the scriptures themselves and also go outside of scripture and research literature written around the same time the scriptures were written.
If the interpreter is already prejudiced against homosexuality they can translate these words as condemning homosexual sex even based upon little usage of that word in the Scriptures and little if any contemporaneous usage of that word.
The truth is that the word some translators "transform" into "sodomite/homosexual/pervert" in I Corinthians 6:9-10 is actually TWO words. Some translators combine them because they "think" they go together but they DO NOT KNOW. This uncertainty is reflected in the fact that other translators keep the words separate and translate them "effeminate" and "abusers of themselves with mankind".
The two words in the original Greek are "malakoi" and "arsenokoitai". Malakoi is a very common Greek word. It literally means "soft". It is used in Matthew 11:7-18 and Luke 7:24-25 in reference to soft clothing and infirmity or malady in Matt 4:23, 9:35, and 10:1. Scholars have to look at material outside of the Bible in order to try and figure out just what this means.
The early church Fathers used the word to mean someone who was "weak" or "soft" in their morals and from the time of the reformation to the 20th century it was usually interpreted as masturbation. In Greek this word never is applied to gay people or homosexual acts in general. "No new textual data effected the twentieth-century change in translation of this word: only a shift in popular morality.
Malakoi in other contexts was used to mean "sick," "weak-willed," "cowardly," "debauched," "wanting in self control." It is "never used in Greek to designate gay people as a group or even in reference to homosexual acts generically..." (Boswell, p. 107)
Gay men in that period were rarely considered effeminate, according to Boswell (pp. 339-340), unless they acted in an effeminate manner besides engaging in homosexual activity. Other words were used to refer to effeminacy, but malakos was more "associated with masturbation or general moral laxity."
The idea that "malakos" (soft, effeminate) links it to homosexuality ignores the hebrew culture. Gay men were not viewed as effeminate unless they exhibited feminine characteristics in addition to being gay. Many heterosexual males were called effeminate and there is no essential connection between this and sexual preference in any ancient literature. Other greek words were used for homosexuals but never "malakos", and the other words are never used in scripture.
Boswell points out that it is frequently used in moral context as licentious. Scroggs points out it also has been used as the effeminate call-boy prostitute in pederasty, but has nothing to do with homosexuality as we know it today. (see Herodotus, Histories 7.153 and 13.51; Aristophanes Wasps 1455, Plutus 488; Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics 1150a:33; Plato, Republic 556c)
Since few people any longer regard masturbation as the sort of activity which would preclude entrance to heaven, the condemnation has simply been transferred to a group still so widely despised that their exclusion does not trouble translators or theologians." (See Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, John Boswell, University of Chicago Press, 1980, page 105-107) "Arsenokoitai" is discussed in the next section as it is found here and in I Timothy 1:8-11.
The word MALAKOS was also applied to heterosexuals who were wanton or loose. It is a general condemnation of moral looseness and lewd, lustful behavior.
The strongest argument that leads one to believe that Paul was referring specifically to general homosexuality is the possibility that Paul coined this term himself. If this is the case, then he probably created this compound word from the Septuagint (the ancient Greek version of the Old Testament) translation of Leviticus 20:13 (kai hos an koimethe meta arsenos koiten gunaikos...). However, this passage refers specifically to the holiness codes and thus implies some kind of ritual uncleanness ( and again, this "assumes" both that he coined the term, and that he intended the term to refer back to this passage, neither of which have strong evidence). Moreover, one wonders why, if Paul is going to go to the extent of creating a novel word to prohibit male homosexual behavior, why doesn't he, in the same verse, create a complementary word prohibiting female homosexual behavior. The conspicuous absence of such a prohibition implies that if Paul is using the term arsenokoitai to refer to homosexual behavior at all, he is not prohibiting all homosexual behavior, only some type of male homosexual behavior that produced ritual uncleanness in the mind of the first century church, most likely a Canaanite sacred sex ritual.
Note: Greek contained no word which compares to the English noun "homosexual orientation" In fact the word "homosexual orientation" was not even coined until the late 1800'S by German psychologists, and introduced into English only at the beginning of the 1900's. (See Christianity, Social Tolerance, and homosexuality, John Boswell, University of Chicago Press, 1980, page 42) However, during scriptural times there were a number of Greek words to describe homosexual sex acts and the two words "malakois" and "arsenokoitai" do not appear among them (on "arsenokoitai" see Boswell, pp 345-346.) "In fact, the first use of the term"homosexuals" in an English Bible did not come until 1946, with the publication of the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament." Certainly, there was no understanding of the term in the modern sense, informed by careful scientific study, of a person whose inherent sexual orientation is toward another of his or her own gender. Many of the writers on the subject of "homosexuality" and the Bible use the term loosely to mean same-sex genital activity in some context.
I Cor 6:9, no way refers to homosexuality. The original Greek word often quoted as sexual immorality, Paul used was "porneia" which means "a harlot for hire". In Corinth in the temples of Venus, the principal deity of Corinth, where Christians went to worship, a thousand public prostitutes were kept at public expense to glorify and act as surrogates for the fertility Gods. This sex with the pagan Gods is what Paul was talking about - fornication is an admitted mistranslation and has nothing to do with gays or singles sex. This rendering reflected the misinterpretation of the translators rather than an accurate translation of Paul's words to a culture of 2000 years ago worshipping pagan sex gods.
As to context, Scroggs points out that the specific intent of Paul is to attack practices he has heard are taking place in the Corinthian church and which he identifies in chapter 5 and 6. None of them have to do with homosexuality. They are a man living with his father's former wife, church members going to civil courts against each other, and church member going to female prostitutes.
The greek words pornoi, arsenokitai and malikos, were no doubt promiscuously available throughout the city, a city famous for her libertine rites in the worship of idols. Acrocorinthus was the dominant geographic feature enshrouding the Corinthian skyline and rose to a great height of 1750 ft. above the city. Corinth, herself, was a metaphor of fertility and libertine sexuality among the ancient cities of Mediterrania. Paul as a whole is condemming some very sexually active people here and would have nothing to do with todays homosexuality in general which is capable of loving responsible relationships.
"Koites" generally denotes licentious sexual activities, and corresponds to the active person in intercourse. The prefix "Arsen", simply means "male". It could mean a male that has sex with lots of women.
A biblical scholar when a word is unknown, looks for similar greek words to find a possible meaning. Boswell concludes Paul writing in Koine Greek, took a word from Attic Greek combined with a word from Old Testament Greek to mean the active male prostitute. These were common in the Hellenistic world in the time of Paul. They served as prostitutes for both men and women. BINGO!
Scroggs relates it to pederasty in the context it is used in conjunction with "malakos", the effeminate call-boy prostitute. It follows that "arsenkoites" is used to describe the adult active partner of the effeminate call-boy prostitute. Again this is a specific style of pederasty characterized by a young, passive, for-hire call boy and the adult customer. What is clear it has absolutely nothing to do with homosexuality as practiced today.
The lesson to be learned in these verses is that these principles apply equally to both hetero- and homosexuality.
I TIMOTHY 1: 8-11
I TIMOTHY 1: 8-11 again refers to malakoi arsenokoitai.
Dr. Rembert Truluck writes of arsenokoitai:
The term is Greek arsenokoites, which was formed from two words meaning "male" and "bed". This word is not found anywhere else in the Bible and has not been found anywhere in the contemporary Greek of Paul's time. We do not know what it means. The word is obscure and uncertain. It probably refers to male prostitutes with female customers, which was a common practice in the Roman world, as revealed in the excavations at Pompeii and other sites.
The Timothy passage is part of a unit that runs from verse 8 through verse 11: "Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it legitimately. This means understanding that the law is laid down not for the innocent but for the lawless and disobedient, for the godless and sinful, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their father or mother, for murderers, fornicators [pornoi], sodomites [arsenokoitai], slave traders [andrapodistai], liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me."
The word "arsenokoitai" (sometimes translated "abusers of themselves with mankind") literally means male-bed. "Bed" is a euphemism for copulating. This word is extremely rare in Greek. Paul was apparently the first author to use this word. The word taken literally (male-copulator) is very ambiguous. Take, for example, the word "lady-killer". Does it mean "a lady who kills" or "someone who kills ladies"? In our language it means the latter, but even then it is not clear because we do not mean that someone literally kills ladies but that their charm "kills" them. So taking the word "arsenokoitai" or "male-copulator", does it mean "a male who copulates men"; does it mean "a man who copulates with women"; does it mean "a man who is copulated"?
The Bible does not clarify. These are the only two passages in the whole Bible where this word is used... Apparently there is no known contemporaneous literature in which this word is used. However, relatively close to the time Paul wrote it was used to refer to a male copulator connected with temple prostitution. It probably had this meaning until the late 4th century AFTER which it came to mean a lot of different things, including homosexual activity. (See The Bible and Homosexuality, Michael England and Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, John Boswell, University of Chicago Press, 1980,)
Even IF the words "malakoi" and "arsenokoitai" COULD be connected with a male homosexual sex acts it STILL would not tell us WHAT KIND OF HOMOSEXUAL SEX ACT IS BEING CONDEMNED. They could refer to sex practices connected with the worship of idols, pederasty or some other sexual act which is exploitive.
The list of vices seems connected in the order given, with pornoi, arsenokoitai and andrapodistai grouped together. So lets study what each of these words mean.
Pornoi in normal Greek usage means a male prostitute and appears many times in literature of the time pointing to either the male who sells himself, or the slave in the brothel house. (e.g. Demosthernes, Against Adrotion 73; idem, Epistle 4,; Aristophanes, Plutus, lines 153-157 etc
Hellenistic Jewish and early Christian usage, however, skews the apparent straightforward definition. The word does not appear in any Septuagint book except the post Old Testament Sirach 23:16-18. I does appear a few times in the New Testament.
The problem here is that the word in Sirach and in the New Testament seems to have a meaning broader than "male prostitute" and is usually taken by scholars to refer to sexual crimes in general. But this assumption may be due to lack of awareness of the prominence of the male prostitute in Greco-Roman society which may have misled some away from it's more narrow original usual meaning.
Within the text of 1 Tim there is no reason to assume it meant anything more than male prostitute. The juxtaposition of pornos with arsenokoites, however, should give pause before translating the word in a more general fashion. There is no reason why the same relationship between malakos and arsenokoites, that is, between the youth who is used and the adult who uses him, could not also pertain to the two words in 1 Timothy. Pornos may effectively function in relations to arsenokoites in precisely the same way as malakos does in 1 Corinthians.
This possibility is further supported by the third word: andropodistes. This word means "kidnapper" or "slave dealer". While in our culture these definitions carry differences in meaning, in the culture of the first century they would be synonymous. One reason a handsome boy or beautiful girl would be kidnapped is to provide slaves for brothel houses. Thus the kidnapper or slave dealer is the one responsible for the pornos, who is used by arsenokoites. Should "kidnapper" not be related to the preceding words in some fashion, it would be unique in this list, since all the other words have some connection with a previous or following word.
The three words would thus fit together and could be translated: "male prostitutes, males who lie with them, and slave dealers who procure them. Spong agrees with this interpretation. (Spong, 153)
If we reflect on the Septuagint it makes sense. There is the injunction against arsenokoites (Lev 18,20), pornos (Deut 23:18), and the kidnapper (Exod 4:16; Deut 24:7). Since arsenokoites must be a Hellenistic Jewish coinage, and since the vice list here does not seem dependent on that in 1 Cor 6:9-10, it may indeed be likely that this list originated in the Hellenistic Jewish circles.
Further, the I Co 6:9 usage of the juxtaposed terms arsenokoitai and malakos has been seen by some commentators as a prohibition of both dominant and submissive roles (which would suggest Paul was talking about male owners of slave boys that were used as prostitutes that were prominent in that culture at that time)
Pederasty was the issue of the biblical texts, not today's homosexual relationships.
It is clear that the translation of these two words as "sodomite", "pervert" or "homosexual" has very little, if any, sound basis and is a result of homophobia.
Homosexuality itself was so commonly written about that Paul could have used any number of words (arrenomanes, kinaidos, paiderastes, paidophthoro, pallakos and others) if he wanted to condemn homosexual behavior, but he didn't.
England notes that "[o]ne way for translators to surmise an unknown word's meaning is from the context of a sentence. A series of words in a list, however, does not lend itself well to this kind of educated guess." (England, 43.) He also indicates that "translators are uncertain about the actual definitions of a number of words in the list in 1 Corinthians because the words are adjectives used in noun form and do not appear in this form elsewhere."(Ibid) The result in these cases is a wide variety of translations. Hardly any translations are the same and, as noted by both England and Furnish, the confusion is compounded because some translate Paul's two distinct nouns as one. (England, 44; Furnish, 68) Lance, quite literally, puts this graphically.
For further study on arsenokoites look here
"Arsenokoites" The later, according to Scroggs, came to mean marriage bed and then sexual intercourse in general. (Scroggs, 106) Scroggs states that, as far as he can determine, its use in I Cor. 6:10 is the earliest extant occurrence of the term. There is therefore no recoverable history of the use of the term prior to Paul's use of it to draw on as an aid in translation. (Ibid., 107; see also Lance, 146)
Scroggs reports that Boswell argues that the first word in the compound is the subject, rather than the object, and the definition is "a male lying"-that is a fornicator or a male prostitute who services women and/or men. (Scroggs, 107; see also John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 341-53) Scroggs himself feels that the term may be an attempt to translate a rabbinical quasi-legal term used to describe male homosexuality into understandable Greek and that in this context it refers to the active partner who keeps or hires the "malakos."(boy prostitute) Thus the list denounces both partners in this form of pederasty. "Seen in this way, the list shares the disapproval of this form of pederasty in agreement with the entire literature of the Greco-Roman world on the topic!" (Scroggs, 108) Again, Furnish basically agrees. (Furnish, 68-69)
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