🏳️🌈🏺🛐 Arsenokoitai Bible 9
🏳️🌈🏺 2-GAY IN HISTORY: Bible 9🛐🏳️🌈
In 1946 a committee of translators working on the modern English revision of the Bible made a decision that would shape American Christianity for generations. They added the word “homosexuals” for the Greek word ‘arsenokoitai.’ The translators themselves were not certain what it meant, as depicted in the documentary 1946.
The word appears exactly twice in the New Testament — 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10. It is seemingly coined by Paul and apparently unprecedented in Greek literature before him. You cannot claim certainty about a word whose usage history is nonexistent before the man who may have invented it.
The word is a compound of ‘arsen’ (male) and ‘koitē’ (bed). The traditional argument is that the parts tell you everything you need to know. But in Greek, like English, compounds don’t work by simple addition, under-stand? The parts of a word don’t always equal its meaning.
The earliest appearances of the word after Paul, almost 100 years later, appear consistently alongside economic sins, exploitation, and coercion rather than in lists of sexual sins. Even in 1 Timothy 1:10 it sits directly next to ‘andrapodistais’ — kidnappers and slave traders.
Theologian John Boswell argued the word probably referred to male prostitution or those who exploit them, while Dale Martin argued for an even broader category of economic sexual exploitation. Robin Scroggs claimed it referred specifically to pederasty — adult men exploiting boys — which had largely fallen out of favor by then and was being attacked by pagan writers as well.
The steel man argument is this: the words ‘arsen’ and ‘koitē’ appear together in the Septuagint — the Greek Old Testament — in Leviticus, in the Holiness Code prohibitions. Paul may have deliberately created ‘arsenokoitai’ referencing that text. But even if accepted, it doesn’t settle the question.
The Holiness Code was concerned with ritual purity and Israelite distinctiveness, as discussed earlier, not with universal sexual ethics, and the prohibitions themselves are embedded in a system Paul rejects.
Even in both Corinthians and Timothy it is in the middle of “sin lists” that include the greedy, liars, and adulterers — read: any extra-marital sex.
What is not in dispute is that Paul was not condemning an identity that he had no concept for, as the Roman world had no term for being gay (though they had plenty for the acts that Paul could have used) and it was only understood as an identity in the last couple of centuries.
The act, much less the identity, should thus be no more condemned by Christians than greed or adultery.
Then we must consider the context from which it comes. First Corinthians chapter six opens with Paul rebuking the community for taking their issues to court, saying that the community should care for their own, and not be overly judgmental. Certainly not a sentiment in line with political campaigns against gay marriage or LGBTQ rights.
Directly after the vice list, including ‘arsenokoitai,’ it says: “and such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus.” The list exists to say you have been accepted. Not here are the people to exclude.
Paul’s pastoral letter urging Christians toward mercy has instead become the primary instrument of condemnation against people it was never written to address.
Translators in 1946 put a word in the Bible that couldn’t have been conceived at the time. They weren’t sure what they were doing and admitted as much.
We’ve been paying for that ambiguity ever since. Don’t let one word make you miss the message of the whole.
The whole series is available at ThirstysRVA.com
