The Pauline ListsThere are a number of places in the Pauline corpus where the Apostle reels off lists of sins and sinners. On
two occasions, he uses two words which don't appear in any other Greek literature of the time. We have no way of knowing what the meaning of these words is. One can transliterate them, of course, but to do so is dangerous. To erect an ethic on such a flimsy foundation would be both grossly irresponsible and rather silly!
One word is "
arsenokoitai". Literally "arsenos" means
male person in Greek and "koitai" means
bedders. The other word "
malakoi" seems to mean something like "softie".
"Arseno- is a prefix meaning 'male'. The 'male' can be either the subject or object of the action in question (gramatically as well as sexually). 'Koitis' is a feminine noun meaning 'bed'; in the singular it can be used either literally as a generic 'bed' or figuratively, as in 'The marriage bed is undefiled'. In the latter case, it connotes sexual monogamy, among other things. In the plural, 'koitai', it is used to mean 'bedding around' [cf Rom13:13], a more appropriate term for promiscuity than 'porneia', which properly mean prostitution.
Now, one might just combine the terms and say that 'arsenokoitai' means literally, 'male fornicator' or really, 'promiscuous male'. Although feasible, this runs into some difficulties. First, 'arsenokoitai' is a feminine plural noun! Does this simply reflect the grammatical gender of 'bed' or does it represent the gender of the offending party? It isn't at all obvious that it was used to identify a group of men. Perhaps it refers to promiscuous women! Typically, a male suffix would be used if males were meant. This would resut in the form 'arsenokoites' (not "-is") for the singular, and 'arsenokoitoi' for the plural. St. John Chrysostom, and other Church Fathers from the Fifth Century onwards, occasionally use 'arsenokoitai' in referring to the prostitution of boys, but more frequently use other words. In the works of the earlier fathers (e.g. the Didache), the term 'paidofthoreo' is used to mean 'sexual abuse of boys'." [George Battelle "gbattell@netcom.com", quoted on the Axios website]
A correspondent has commented on this quote as follows:
"This is mistaken. The noun 'arsenokoites' is masculine, and its plural is 'arsenokoitai' (also masculine). It is wrong to say that the correct plural for masculine 'arsenokoites' is 'arsenokoitoi'. What probably confused Mr. Battell is that many feminine nouns (those ending in -a or -e) have a plural in -ai. On the other hand, many masculine nouns (those ending in -os) have a plural in -oi. But masculine 'agentive' nouns (sort of like English nouns ending in '-er' or '-or' like 'actor' or 'thinker') have a nominative singular in -es, and a nominative plural in -ai. There are hundreds of such words. One common biblical word following the same pattern, for example, is 'mathetes' ('disciple'). The plural is 'mathetai', which looks feminine to people who've only had a few weeks of Greek, but is really
masculine. Or, from Classical Athens, there's 'dikastes', 'judge' the plural of which was 'dikastai', 'judges'."
["DP" private communication (2006)]
I suspect that "DP" is correct in this matter.
Now one might imagine that arsenokoitis might mean "a man who has sex with a man", but on that basis
lady-killer would mean "a murderer of one or more upper-class women", but this English word doesn't mean that at all: not even remotely! To a "Trinity Man" such as myself, the english phrase "male bedder" clearly means "a man who works as a housekeeper" ("bedders" are - generally female - cleaners that serve residents of Cambridge Colleges). In fact we have no idea what St Paul meant by the word "
arsenokoitai" and have no obvious means of ever learning his meaning. Some people argue that:
- There was no contemporary word equivalent to our "homosexual" (this is contentious),
- therefore St Paul was forced to invent one.
- He did so, calling upon the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint.
- This renders the Levitical injunction against (ritual) same sex prostitution(?)
by using "arsenos" and "koiten" as two separate words:
"kai hos an koimethe meta arsenos koiten gunaikos...".
Now, while it is plausible that St Paul meant by "arsenokoit
ai" whatever
he understood Leviticus to be referring to, we still don't know what this was! Moreover, if the Apostle invented a new word in order to prohibit
all male homosexual behaviour, why doesn't he also invent a complementary word prohibiting
all female homosexual behaviour? There was
certainly no ready made word that would do this! The conspicuous absence of such a prohibition suggests that Paul had no intention of condemning "all homosexual behaviour", but
at most male homosexuality.
According to Prof. Boswell:
"Jerome, following the older Latin translations, rendered the Greek .... as 'masculorum concubitores', a vague phrase suggestive of multiple interpretations. Most obviously, it would be the active counterpart of the concubinus, a passive male concubine. This would correspond almost exactly to the Greek, and it is not unlikely that Jerome's chaste pen would have preferred the more clinical 'concubitor' to the vulgar 'exoletus'."
[J. Boswell: "Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality" (1980)]
"masculorum concubitores" literally means [those who are] of males (plural noun) the bedfellows.
According to a priest friend [28th Oct 2002]:
"'Masculorum concubitores' cannot ever mean 'male bedfellows' but only 'bedfellows of men'. The word concubitores is masculine, but masculine words also include the feminine. Mixed plurals are always masculine; only when all members of a group are female can a feminine plural be used (if one exists). Thus grammatically the bedfellows could theoretically be either, but it is quite clear from the context that 'bedfellows of males' means 'male bedfellows of males'."
Of course, in the greek original, the noun is femanin; so on this basis arsenokoit
ai must mean promiscuous women!
As for "softie", I ask you! Elsewhere in the scriptures it is used (ironically of St John the Baptist) to mean
fops or
dandies; those who "dress up in fine clothes"
[Mat 11:8, and esp Lk 7:25] and the physically infirm
[Mat 4:23, 9:35, 10:1]. Historically it has been understood to mean anything from "effeminate male" to "
a person who masturbates", but could easily mean "those with no backbone". Note again the extreme danger of transliteration, if St Paul had been a Twentieth Century Englishman, and had written "those with no backbone" one shudders to think what he might be understood as meaning one or two thousand years later, when English was a lost language and no other instances of this phrase were known!
Instances of the use of malakoi in earlier secular literature are:
Herodotus: Histories 7.153 & 13.51;
Aristophanes: Wasps 1455, Plutus 488;
Aristotle: Nichomachean Ethics 1150a:33;
Plato: Republic 556c.
Here it can have sexual connotations, though not homosexual. Aristotle says specifically that "malakos" refers to unrestraint in respect to bodily pleasures. Of course there is no good reason to interpret St Paul's usage in terms of classical authors writing hundreds of years earlier while discounting the contemporary usage of Sts Matthew and Luke!
http://www.geocities.com/pharsea/scripture.html
