Cor And Tim Study Notes

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 revolve around controversial translations of the Greek words “malakoi” and “arsenokoites.” Paul was a Jewish author writing in Greek to a largely Greek (hellenized) audience. Therefore, we must understand 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 a version that was written after 1946. Prior to the 1946 Edition of the Revised Standard Version, the words that homosexual had begun to replace in many modern versions included boy prostitutes, effeminate, those who make women of themselves, sissies, the self-indulgent, sodomites, lewd persons, male prostitutes, and the unchaste. o See “Malakoi in 44 Translations” (http://www.pdfcoke.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 the New 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 mean homosexual. • 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 they cultivated knowledge without malakia, meaning softness or effeminacy. o Plato, 427-347 BC, in The Republic, has Socrates opine that too much music effeminates 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, and shuns those of things painful, of hunger and thirst and heat and cold and all 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 commit suicide in defeat or who enjoyed too much luxury. This usage does not indicate 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 he regarded as unable to absorb true philosophy. This usage does not indicate homosexuality. (Epictetus, Discourse 3:9.) o Dio Chrysostom, AD 40-120, used malakos to refer to those made soft by too much 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 to John the Faster around AD 575. The Catholic Church has long interpreted malakia to mean masturbation. (John The Faster, Penitential). Why the soft, effeminate ones were “condemned” o Crossing of Gender Roles

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For Jews this would have broken the Holiness Code (see “Violation of Identity” in Leviticus notes). Creation was sacred. To be born as a man was to be a man. To change this was to find fault in God’s creation.  For Greco-Romans (including Roman Christian converts) Being effeminate was threatening to the whole structure of society by crossing the fragile line between man and woman in a world where to be male was to be superior and to be woman was to be intrinsically inferior. Being effeminate included such behavior as bathing frequently, shaving, frequent dancing or laughing, wearing cologne, eating too much or wearing fine undergarments. (http://www.sisterfriendstogether.org/words-matter-1-corinthians-1-timothy/) Moral Weakness: “Words translated as ‘effeminate’ imply ‘unmanliness’ in the sense of weakness or self-indulgence rather than gender roles or sexual behavior. It was probably not the passivity of [the gays] in Rome which inspired hostility, 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 masculine than their heterosexual counterparts, by the logical (if unconvincing) argument that men who loved men would emulate them and try to be like them, while men who loved women would become like women, i.e., ‘effeminate.’” (Boswell, 24) o “Manly” gay role-models: Gay men were not expected to be effeminate

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The army: Plato argued that pairs of male lovers would make the best soldiers. The gods: Hercules is associated with 14 male lovers. “Hercules could engage in any number of homosexual liaisons 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. (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 than 74 times in the intervening millennia, with 56 of these in the six centuries after Paul coined it.  At the time of Paul (and before), there were vast writings on the subject of homoerotic sexuality in Greek in which this term does not occur. It is extremely difficult to believe that if the word actually meant “homosexual,” no previous or contemporary author would have 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 can conclude that he probably meant something different from persons who engaged in malemale 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 and 20:13.  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 must be derived from these passages as well. Since Paul invented the word and made no effort 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, used euphemistically to mean having sex. o This, however, does not mean someone who lies in a bed with a man any more than “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 condemns shrine prostitution, given the context of Leviticus 18 and 20.  “Arsenokoitai,” then, means mail sexual agents, i.e., active male prostitutes, who were common 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 this word he created. This might be because it didn’t “stick.” It is more likely because they understood 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 preFreudian writer. Greek was his native language. His writings abound with New Testament 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 1 Cor 6:9! o Augustine discusses homosexuality both independently and in relation to biblical texts. Nowhere does he quote the word from the Pauline epistles or use any words 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 paragraph dealing with incestuous relations, and if translated as ‘homosexuality,’ the sentence 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 sex forced upon a woman, it pretty clearly had nothing to do with homosexuality. o As late as the 12th century, when the original meaning of arsenokoitai had long been lost in the west, Peter Cantor ransacked the Scriptures for all possible references 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

Timothy 1:10

o For more examples, see Boswell, 346-350 and http://www.jeramyt.org/gay/arsenok.htm