Homosexuality and the Bible

Homosexuality and the Scriptures
Arlene Robbins
Chapter 1: So What REALLY Happened at Sodom???
Chapter 2: Who is the Law For?
Chapter 3: Paul Talks to the Romans
Chapter 4: Paul Writes to the Sex Capitals of the World
Chapter 5: Huh, What'd He Say?
Chapter 6: A Little "Church" History
An Afterward
Bibliography

Chapter Four:
Paul Writes to the Sex Capitals of the World

Or did you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

1 Corinthians 6:9-10

...law is not made for a righteous one, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching.

1 Timothy 1:9-10 (New American Standard, inclusified)

The towns of Corinth and Ephesus (where Timothy was bishop), world-class cities of their day, were also the sex capitals of the world.

In fact, according to Rev. David Day, in Things They Never Told You In Sunday School: A Primer For The Christian Homosexual, Corinth was so famous for its sexual activities that the name of the city became a way to describe those activities: "'Corinthian girl' ...meant prostitute,... 'Corinthian businessman' ...meant whoremonger,... 'to play the Corinthian' ...meant to visit a house of prostitution.... 'Corinthian' became a Greek slang term for the sexually loose" (p.108)

Day says, too, that "The same-sex activity that Paul would have encountered during his missionary visits here would have been associated with idolatry, pederasty, or prostitution and sometimes all of the above....Many young boys were purchased through the slave trade and castrated to preserve their youthful appearance for the pleasure of their masters" (p.108)

Horner (p.91) says that in Corinth was the temple of Aphrodite Ourania, which had over a thousand prostitutes, and many Greek men continued to visit them after their conversion to Christianity.

In Greek society at the time, these was "no stigma attached to a man's having sex quite casually with a male prostitute or with any other member of his own sex. And to the nobler type of homosexual love Greek society attached honor and even virtue" (Horner, p. 91-2).

In Ephesus, the temple of Artemis is no longer standing, but Horner reports that one of the first structures pointed out to visitors is the door of a house of prostitution. "It is marked by a tremendous erect penis in stone, the sign Priapus, the god of sex. When one has actually seen such things, it is much easier to imagine the intimate connection between religion and sex in Paul's day" (p. 140, note 1).

The Romans had a little stricter view of homosexuality, although they certainly indulged. Like other "vices," homosexuality, because forbidden, was that much more popular, according to The Satyricon of Petronius and The Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius.

Horner reports that a popular Roman board game was one in which virtues and vices were listed along the side of the board. The "naughty" vices were listed in the vulgarest street language and included: fornicators, idolators, adulterers, effeminate, abusers of themselves with mankind, thieves, covetous, drunkards, ervilers, extortioners. Adolf Deissman, in his Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World, tr. by Lionel R.M. Strachan (1910; rev. ed, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1927), p. 316, believed that Paul was influenced by the list when he wrote the passage in Corinthians.

Paul was using a list of commonly known "vices" as an example for his mostly Greek audience. Corinth, though a Greek city, was enormously influenced by Roman culture. And Paul always knew and directed his comments at his specific audience.

The first term, pornoi, means fornication. It is the word from which we get pornography. And in the context, it meant male prostitute to classical Greek writers and to modern Greeks. In the New Testament it referred to "any person who indulged in sexual relations that were considered irregular..." (Horner, p.96).

The way words are translated frequently reflect the translator's prejudice rather than the true meaning. John Boswell, writing in Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality, gives a couple of examples of culturally-provoked mistranslations: "'In Crete it is considered praiseworthy for a young man to have as many [male] lovers as possible'" becomes "'In Crete...for young men to have the greatest number of love affairs.'" And Ovid's "'inpia virgo'" ("'shameless girl'") who seems to have been engaged in homosexual conduct a few lines above ("specifically characterized as 'natural' by Ovid") becomes "'unnatural girl.'" (pp. 20-21)

Two other terms Paul used are the terms frequently translated as "homosexual": malakoi and arsenokoitai. Malakoi actually meant something like "soft things." Jesus used it when He asked the people in Matthew 11:8: "But what did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft (malakos, the singular of malakoi) clothing? Behold, those who wear soft clothing are in kings' palaces."

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."

Boswell goes on to say: "It is crucial to bear in mind how different attitudes on these subjects were in Hellenistic [Greek] cities during the centuries preceding and following the birth of Christ. Hercules could engage in any number of homosexual liasons without the slightest loss of prestige or any hint of decreased manliness, but the simple act of wearing a woman's garment or performing tasks traditionally reserved to females would be considered irredeemably degrading" (p. 340).

The second term, arsenokoitai, is a rarely-used, compound Greek word. The first part, "arseno," is the word for male. The second part, "koitai," according to Boswell "is a coarse word...and in this and other compounds corresponds to the vulgar English word 'fucker'" (p. 340). I like Boswell's comparison of this word to the term "lady killer." In context, we know that this term means someone who is a Don Juan, or a "'wolf.'" But how would someone coming from outside of our culture and unfamiliar with our slang know whether this term means a woman murderer, a murderer of women or what? (Boswell, p.342) In the same way, we cannot know for sure what arsenokoitai really meant.

In fact, arsenokoitai could even have referred to women who took the active role in sex -- such women were roundly condemned by Christian and pagan writers alike (Boswell, p. 345, note 27).

Through analysis of other compound words and context, Boswell has determined that, in actuality, the word most likely meant male prostitutes.

Boswell also researched the hundreds of writers, pagan and early Christian, who mentioned homosexuality. None of them use the word bishop, Eusebius, understood the word to mean "prostitution of men directed toward women rather than other men." (p. 351)

I guess you kinda had to be there.

(Oh, and by the way, "[Male] Homosexual prostitution was not only tolerated but actually taxed by Christian emperors in Eastern cities for nearly two centuries after Christianity had become the state religion." [Boswell, p.131] Homosexual prostitution, according to most scholars and ancient texts was rampant throughout that part of the world, both in and out of cultic worship. Boys were kidnapped and sold regularly for use as prostitutes; many were castrated [made into eunuchs] in order to preserve their youthful appearance longer for their masters.)

Homosexuality itself was so commonly written about that Paul could have used any number of words if he wanted to condemn homosexuality in general, but he didn't.