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What Does the Bible Say About Gay? (1 Corinthians & 1 Timothy)
The admonitions against homosexuality in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10 revolvearound controversial translations of the Greek words “malakoi” and “arsenokoites.” Paul was aJewish author writing in Greek to a largely Greek (hellenized) audience. Therefore, we mustunderstand these Greek words to understand what Paul was trying to say about sexuality.
“Malakoi” in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10
What it Never Meant: “Gay”
•
Gay:
If the word homosexual appears in your Bible in either passage then you have aversion that was written after 1946. Prior to the 1946 Edition of the Revised StandardVersion, the words that homosexual had begun to replace in many modern versionsincluded boy prostitutes, effeminate, those who make women of themselves, sissies, theself-indulgent, sodomites, lewd persons, male prostitutes, and the unchaste.
o
See “Malakoi in 44 Translations”
(http://www.scribd.com/doc/23841405)
What it Likely Meant: “Soft” or “Effeminate”
•
Biblical References:
o
The word malaka, with the general meaning
soft,
is used multiple times in theNew Testament:
Matthew 4:23, 9:35, 10:1. It is translated
disease
in the KJV and
sickness
in the NAS.
Matthew 11:8 and Luke 7:25, Jesus uses the word to refer to
soft
clothing.
In the Bible, Jesus never used the malakos word group to meanhomosexual.
•
Extra-Biblical writers:
o
Patristic writings
: liquid, cowardly, refined, week willed, delicate, gentle,debauched.
o
Pericles, 495-429 BC, in his funeral oration, lauded the Greeks because theycultivated knowledge without
malakia,
meaning
softness
or
effeminacy
.
o
Plato, 427-347 BC, in
The Republic,
has Socrates opine that too much musiceffeminates a warrior, causing him to be
malakoteroi,
soft, feeble, sensitive
.Plato expressed an ancient Greek concept, that too much music made a man
soft
,
not homosexual. (Plato,
The Republic,
360 BC, Book III.)
o
Aristotle, 384-322 BC, in
Nicomachean Ethics,
used
malakos
to describe
lack of restraint
and
excessive enjoyment of bodily pleasures
.
Aristotle wrote: He “who pursues the excesses of things pleasant, andshuns those of things painful, of hunger and thirst and heat and cold andall the objects of touch and taste... that men are called 'soft' [malakos]with regard to these pleasures...
o
Josephus, AD 37-100, used malakos to describe men who appeared
soft
or
weak through lack of courage in battle
or who were
reluctant to commitsuicide in defeat
or who
enjoyed too much luxury
. This usage does notindicate homosexuality. (
Wars of The Jews,
7.338;
Antiquities of The Jews,
5.246; 10.194.)
o
Epictetus, AD 55-135, used
malakos
to refer to
soft-headed persons
, whom heregarded as
unable to absorb true philosophy
. This usage does not indicatehomosexuality. (Epictetus,
Discourse
3:9.)
o
Dio Chrysostom, AD 40-120, used
malakos
to refer to those
made soft by toomuch learning
. This usage does not indicate homosexuality. (Dio Chrysostom
49:25.)
o
John The Faster, around AD 575. For centuries,
malakia
was said to mean
masturbation
. Use of
malakia,
with the meaning of masturbation, is attributed toJohn the Faster around AD 575. The Catholic Church has long interpretedmalakia to mean masturbation. (John The Faster,
Penitential
).
Why the soft, effeminate ones were “condemned”
o
Crossing of Gender Roles
For Jews
this would have broken the Holiness Code (see “Violation of Identity” in Leviticus notes). Creation was sacred. To be born as a manwas to be a man. To change this was to find fault in God’s creation.
For Greco-Romans
(including Roman Christian converts) Beingeffeminate was threatening to the whole structure of society by crossingthe fragile line between man and woman in a world where to be malewas to be superior and to be woman was to be intrinsically inferior. Beingeffeminate included such behavior as bathing frequently, shaving,frequent dancing or laughing, wearing cologne, eating too much or wearing fine undergarments. (http://www.sisterfriends-together.org/words-matter-1-corinthians-1-timothy/)
o
Moral Weakness: “Words translated as ‘effeminate’ imply ‘unmanliness’ in thesense of weakness or self-indulgence rather than gender roles or sexualbehavior. It was probably not the passivity of [the gays] in Rome which inspiredhostility, but their promiscuity which were signs of moral weakness.” (Boswell,76)
Why “soft” doesn’t mean “gay”
In antiquity, Gay males were not considered effeminate.
o
Men who love men are attracted to the masculine, not feminine (or effeminate)“…it was often assumed that men who loved other men would be more masculinethan their heterosexual counterparts, by the logical (if unconvincing) argument thatmen who loved men would emulate them and try to be like them, while men wholoved women would become like women, i.e., ‘effeminate.’” (Boswell, 24)
o
“Manly” gay role-models: Gay men were not expected to be effeminate
The army:
Plato argued that pairs of male lovers would make the bestsoldiers.
The gods:
Hercules is associated with 14 male lovers. “Hercules couldengage in any number of homosexual liaisons without the slightest lossof prestige or any hint of decreased manliness, but the simple act of wearing a woman’s garment or performing tasks traditionally reserved tofemales would be considered irredeemably degrading. (Boswell, 340)
Arsenokoites: 1 Corinthians 6:9
Historical Considerations: an invented word
In I Cor 6:9, Paul is the first writer we have on record as using “arsenokoites.” After Paul,it occurs no more than74 timesin the intervening millennia, with 56 of these in the sixcenturies after Paul coined it.
At the time of Paul (and before), there were vast writings on the subject of homoeroticsexuality in Greek in which this term
does not occur
. It is extremely difficult to believethat if the word actually meant “homosexual,” no previous or contemporary author wouldhave used it in a way which clearly indicated this connection. (Boswell, 345)
We can be fairly certain that homosexual is
not
the meaning that Paul wanted to convey
when he used “arsenokoitai”. If he had, he would have used the Greek word"
paiderasste
." That was the standard term at the time for male homosexuals. We canconclude that he probably meant something different from persons who engaged in male-male adult sexual behavior.
Origin and Construction
Hellenistic (Greek speaking) Jews coined the word from the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament) based on use of the two roots of the word in Leviticus 18:22 and20:13.
Leviticus 18:22 - meta arsenos ou koimethese koiten gunaikos
Leviticus 20:13 - hos an koimethe meta arsenos koiten gunaikos
Meaning
Given that the word is derived directly from Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, its meaning mustbe derived from these passages as well. Since Paul invented the word and made noeffort to define it, it’s contextual meaning must have been obvious to his readers.
Arseno
is the Greek word for man and
koite
is the Greek word for bed, usedeuphemistically to mean having sex.
o
This, however, does not mean someone who lies in a bed with a man any morethan “lady killer” means “someone who kills ladies.
o
The etymological context of the word must be considered. If the prohibitions of the Levitical Holiness Code informed its meaning,
arsenos koiten
condemnsshrine prostitution, given the context of Leviticus 18 and 20.
“Arsenokoitai,” then, means mail sexual agents, i.e., active male prostitutes, who werecommon throughout the Hellenistic would in the time of Paul. (Boswell, 344)
Other Uses
When authors writing after Paul spoke about homosexuality, they virtually never used thisword he created. This might be because it didn’t “stick.” It is more likely because theyunderstood it not to be about homosexuality, but about temple prostitution.
o
Clement of Alexandria uses at least 13 different expressions for “homosexual,”but none of them are arsenokoiai.
o
St. John Chrysostom wrote about same-sex sexuality more than any other pre-Freudian writer. Greek was his native language. His writings abound with NewTestament references and he quotes Paul extensively. Yet among the dozens of words he uses for homosexuality, arsenokoitai is not among them.
He doesn’t even mention homosexuality when writing commentary on 1Cor 6:9!
o
Augustine discusses homosexuality both independently and in relation to biblicaltexts. Nowhere does he quote the word from the Pauline epistles or use anywords similar to Latin translations of Corinthians or Timothy.
o
Joannes Jejunator (John the Faster, 575 AD), the Patriarch of Constantinople,used the word in a treatise that instructed confessor priests how to ask their parishioners about sexual sin. Here it appears in the context of a paragraphdealing with incestuous relations, and if translated as ‘homosexuality,’ thesentence containing it would read “In fact, many men even commit the sin of homosexuality with their wives.” (Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Graeca,88:1893-96) Though at the time it apparently referred to anal or oral sex or to sexforced upon a woman, it pretty clearly had nothing to do with homosexuality.
o
As late as the 12
th
century, when the original meaning of arsenokoitai had longbeen lost in the west, Peter Cantor ransacked the Scriptures for all possiblereferences to homosexuality. He came up with Genesis (Sodom and Gomorrah),Leviticus (the Law), Romans, Jude – plus many rather fanciful inferences (eg,from Ezekiel, Isaiah, Joshua, Titus, Colossians), but he did not cite 1 Cor 6:9 or 1
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