Should you say, 'Homosexuality is a Sin.'

The Greek malakos and arsenokoites as found in 1 Cor. 6:9 in the following translations:

KJV/1611 "nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind"
RV/1885 "nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men"
ASV/1901 "nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men"

Using the 1828 Webster's to see what "effeminate" and "abusers" meant earlier in translation:

effeminate - 1. Having the qualities of the female sex; soft or delicate to an unmanly degree; tender; womanish; voluptuous.
abusers - One who abuses, in speech or behavior; one that deceives; a ravisher; a sodomite. 1 Cor 6.
ravisher - 1. One that takes by violence.

YLT/ 1887 "nor effeminate, nor sodomites"

From the literal translation in the NIV Greek-English Interlinear NT by Zondervan, 1976 -
"nor voluptuous persons nor sodomites"

The NJB/1985 "the self-indulgent, sodomites"

Search the dictionaries and a thesaurus and see if you can find "homosexual" and "sodomite" as synonyms and you find they are not! Only a homophobic person will try to equate sodomite with homosexual. In fact, to "sodomize" shows it clearly -

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language -
"To subject to an act of sodomy, especially forcibly."

YourDictionary.com
"To engage in sodomy with; specif., to forcibly subject to sodomy"

Where the KJV renders arsenokoites as "abusers of themselves with mankind" in 1 Cor. 6:9; in 1 Tim. 1:10 it renders arsenokoites as "them that defile themselves with mankind". Again going to the old 1828 Webster's to match closer to the English of centuries past we find:

defile - 5. To corrupt chastity; to debauch; to violate; to tarnish the purity of character by lewdness.
Schechem defiled Dinah. Gen 34. [This is about rape in Gen. 34]

It is quite clear what the body of Christ understood in 1 Cor. 6:9 and it is clear their understanding does not match the meaning of "homosexual". That is a modern perversion of the text!

If you are going to make the genders involved being the same gender and call it "practice of homosexuality", by like logic "adultery" should be "practice of heterosexuality". That is unless you wish to embrace the modern idea of "gay marriage".

Yes, I was ending my participation, but felt one last attempt at sanity on the translations and meanings was important.

It may be the conservatives want a linguistic translation of the Bible, and don't want liberal as injected-- like putting in gender-neutral language to pander to certain liberal social concerns when the Greek uses the masculine.

A lot of this is marketing, too. Conservatives represent a market segment. Bible translations make money. There are also translation choices that would be colored by one views the overall message of scripture. Theological persuasion __does__ play a role since there are multiple ways of interpreting the same passage.

Conservatives also may be concerned that Bible translations could be 'contaminated' by the unbelief of liberals who translate it, or the translation decisions of sexual perverts on committees that translate certain passages.


The problem here is that there is no one-to-one correspondence between English and Koine Greek words for these words. 'Homosexual' is not totally wrong, either. My OP is about the fact that in the social sciences, 'homosexual' has more to do with inclination, 'orientation' and the like than with action. That is the case for the younger generations that have been influenced (or brainwashed) by LGBT propaganda.

But there still are plenty of people that use 'homosexual' to mean 'a man who has sex with a man' and adjectives to describe related concepts. And Bible translators are in the Humanities not the social sciences. Especially decades ago, the LGBT propaganda hadn't had the influence it has now. It wasn't even called LGBT.

If you want to go by a linguistics... and lexicographer's standard, then 'homosexual' was probably not a bad translation pre-1980, since most Americans probably thought of 'homosexual' as someone who had sex with the same sex. From that perspective, 'gay' might have been even better in the 1980's, since it focused particularly on male activity.



Not exactly, but I took a law course in high school, and 'sodomy' referred to certain sexual acts that even married couples (male and female) could commit. I do not recall if that was common law or state law. 'Sodomy' is a bit fuzzy term, also. And some of the acts arsenokoitai did might not exactly qualify as sodomy, either, under some laws. Thigh sex? Is that sodomy? That was apparently a form of 'gay sex' in the Grecco-Roman world.

It is interesting that the complaints about "illicit sex" draw such criticism, but I do not recall such complaints about the boundless ideas when "sexually immoral" is substituted for "fornicators" in 1 Cor. 6:9 ESV.

Click to expand...

I don't know if I have posted my concerns about this on here, but I have addressed it elsewhere at other times in my life. I came across the idea that a spouse who defrauds the other sexually is committing 'sexual immorality' and an argument that this is grounds for divorce according to Matthew 19. the problem with that is though it migh tbe sexual immorality, it is not porneia, which is that the passage mentions.

The plus side of not using 'fornication' is comprehensibility--that it is such an obscure word, the only place most people would encounter it is in older translations of the Bible. A couple of hundred years ago, 'prostitution' might have been a good word to use, but now that word implies an exchange of money, which it did not in the 1800s.

A terrible translation I came across was an older version of the NASB, which translated porneia as 'immorality' in some places-- a truly terrible lack of information there in the choice of word. Maybe the translator put Victorian sensibilities above the need to communicate the word of God.

Another issue is copyrightability. These translations make money. A rule of thumb is 5 words or set collocations in a row that are the same as another work is plagiarism. If a translation is identical to another translation, it cannot be copyrighted. So when the good translations are used up, they resort to poor grammar and substandard translations. An advantage of having a King sponsor a translation is that the new translation can plagiarize the older ones without people batting an eye, like the KJV did with the Geneva in places.

Continued next message.

@Ethan1942




I think you are too critical hear. Paul might actually use 'pornos' more broadly for fornicators. But it does have a history of the 'catcher' in the same-sex relationship, the one in the passive, or somewhat female-imitating role. But if such a person were not hired, might not Paul have used 'malakos' just for that reason?

I did a word study on malakos looking it up in the broader body of Greek literature (in translation; I have just really been studying Classical Greek formally for the past few weeks). Some of it does seem to be 'gay', or kind of effeminate in a broader term. I remember reading the opinion that it was malakos for men to pluck the hair in their thighs. It could be the grooming was considered unmanly, or it could be that was preparation for same-sex sex act. It could be the word is being used to refer to men with a lack of 'male virtue.' There are aspects of Grecco-Roman virtue-ethics that are not really desirable for Christians, IMO, so I do not think Paul is invoking all those ideas. It could be that he is referring to a broad category of participants in same sex sex acts, cross dressers, etc., the kind of folks that Jewish near contemporary Philo thought should be put to death.

The word 'arsenokoitai' is a bit clearer, IMO. According to I Timoth 1, it is against the Torah. The word is a 'productive' grammatical construction. There is an 'uncle-koite' type word that was used in Greek that means a... pardon my French.. uncle screwer-- man who had sex with his uncle. There are other crude phrases. The word Paul uses refers to men who had sex with men, just applying the understood uses of the morphemes. If I recall correctly, there is a picture of two males engaging in an activity that involved the mouth of one and the male part on another on Greek pottery that had the word 'arsenokoite' on it. And 'arsenos koiten' shows up in Leviticus 20 where Moses related the words of God that one who lies with a man as one does with a woman shall be put to death.

Your accusations are not rationale based on the evidence you have presented. It is pretty obvious that, especially a few generations back, 'Homosexual' also referred to the sex acts. From that perspective, it is a good translation. However, social science, and current trends in the understanding of the word based on both social science and LGBT propaganda have led to probably a majority understanding 'homosexual' to have to do with the concept of 'orientation' or something along those lines.

Your message was rather confused, IMO, treating dictionary definitions as way too authoritative. You also seem to have bought into LGBT propaganda that there is such a thing as 'homophobia.' I read in a psychological journal that there was not, as far as the author knew, a real phobia that corresponded to the term 'homophobia.' It's politically and socially charged rhetoric. That's all the term is, like Orwellian Newspeak.

Here is an Oxford English Dictionary definition of 'homosexual.'
a. Characterized by sexual or romantic attraction to, or sexual activity with, people of the same sex; involving or relating to same-sex desire or sexual activity. Both as an adjective and a noun, homosexual was for much of the first half of the 20th cent.

from https://www.google.com/search?q=def...UCJIBBTAuNS4xmAEAoAEByAEIwAEB&sclient=gws-wiz

When I was getting my Bachelors in Linguistics, I took one course from an English lexicographer. They way they are supposed to get definitions is to try to capture what words mean in the mind of the speakers. The Oxford dictionary does seem to try to do that. I have seen some rather selective definitions when it comes to this topic, but Oxford's is professional.

My OP was written because so many young people and now not so-young-people have been indoctrinated with a social sciences/LGBT definition of 'homosexual.' But it is not fair to judge the translators of Bible translations from the 1980's based on a trend that happened later.

It says inherit the kingdom of God.

if you don't Inherit it you will not see it

Where is that written?

1Co 6:9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, 10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.

It is a miracle from God that changes our heart. Any sin that is overcome is a miracle from heaven.

Homosexuality can be overcome by the power of God in you.

I believe a Christian can struggle with homosexual feelings and urges and still be saved . I believe Jesus blood covers all our sins.

It isn't a sin to be tempted, but to give in to the temptation is wrong.
We all struggle with different temptations, and if you let Jesus have full control and crucify the flesh, you can have victory.
Glory to God, we can overcome, by the power of God.
1Jn 1:6 If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: ......9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

It's not my particular temptation. I struggle in different ways.