A re-examination of nothing

Jet_A_Jockey said:

about what, your source?

I know wiki is not 100% reliable information but its kind of hard to find any info about the guy without going to a totally biased site.




From what I've read of his work it just seems like he spent most of his short life trying to find that one breakthrough that would ultimately allow the orthodox church to accept his sexuality.

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I'm not aware of having cited him at all.

Phineas seems to think its enough to say "gay bias" or "Boswell" and no further discussion is required. I'd like someone to tell me anything that is factually wrong with anything I have posted in the last few pages... specifically.

Dear EnemyPArtyII

so... no specific factual errors then?

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From you no. The purpose of the thread is examination fo scriptures that show countenance for same-sex sex. So far you have presented nothing

Phinehas2 said:

Dear EnemyPArtyII
From you no. The purpose of the thread is examination fo scriptures that show countenance for same-sex sex. So far you have presented nothing

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The scriptures don't specifically have to countenance same sex... its enough that they countenance loving commited couples coming together.

EnemyPartyII said:

The scriptures don't specifically have to countenance same sex... its enough that they countenance loving commited couples coming together.

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Scripture denounces same-sex couples. Loving or not--it's still an abomination to God. What man considers "good" is obviously warped and distorted. It's what God thinks that's important---not man.

EnemyPartyII said:

One more thing, some scholars will try to snow you with a faulty method of doing "word studies." In this method, they'll pull compound words like arsenokoites apart (arsen / koites), define each half (male / bed), then stick the word back together again with the combined definitions. Sounds great but....hmmm....okay, here's my thought: if this doesn't work on English words, then why does it work on ancient Greek words? You can't simply pick a compound word apart that you don't know and say it means the combination of all the smaller words contained therein. Do you get it? Try it with the following words: foot/ball (soccer?); under/stand (to stand under?); dark/room (simply a room that’s dark?); hall/mark (a crayon mark on the wallpaper?); pee/been (something you ask a small child before bed?); AND ARE YOU BEGINNING TO BELIEVE ME?

Furthermore, even when this approach gets the definition approximately right, you’ve still lost all the nuances that truly bring the term to life—you’ve just got the corpse of the term, not its spirit. Therefore, I salute Dale Martin's confession that "I should be clear about my claims here. I am not claiming to know what arsenokoites meant, I am claiming that no one knows what it meant" (Martin, p.123). Despite my praises of Martin, he, too, couldn’t resist guessing the mystery word, saying it seems to have referred to some sort of economic exploitation by means of sex but not necessarily limited to male-male sex.
http://www.queerme.com/appendix_a.htm

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Dale Martin's "arsenokoites and malakos" tried and found wanting.

Thus, Martin clearly goes too far when he says that this methodology (interpreting a compound word by first looking at its root words) is not only linguistically invalid but also naive and indefensible. In fact, we could say that one not only may start there but probably should! However, one ought not base one's final conclusions entirely on that method or tool. It is necessary also to consider the context in which the word is used, both in the specific verse referenced in the text being considered and as the culture used that word at the time the verse was written. When we do so, context would certainly seem to indicate that the traditional translation of arsenokoites is both defensible and justifiable, as I demonstrate below.

Arsenokoites and ancient lists of vices

As an example, he refers to a list from the Sibylline OraclesSibylline Oracles: see Pseudepigrapha.
..... Click the link for more information. (2:70-77, a third- or fourth-century Jewish and then Christian source--see http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/sib/sib04.htm). Martin notes that arsenokoites appears here in a list of "economic sins." However, he admits, the list also includes other sins such as murder, betrayal of information, and abusive speech--sins that seem to have little in common with sins of "economic injustice or exploitation." Nonetheless, he argues that even these sins (murder, betrayal ...) probably referred to economic sins in their day but that their meaning is lost to us.

The reader will notice that Martin is making quite an assumption here. There is no evidence whatsoever from the text to indicate that murder, betrayal, and abusive speech should be included in the category of economic sins, yet Martin says they probably had some (unknown to us) hidden exploitative/economic meaning and thus should be included in the category of economic sins--and we are simply to accept that as fact!

However, out of fairness I should say that Martin's analysis of other second-century material--for example, his analysis of some SyriacSyriac (sēr`ēăk'), late dialect of Aramaic, which is a West Semitic language (see Afroasiatic languages). The early Christians of Mesopotamia and Syria gave the Greek name Syriac to the Aramaic dialect they spoke when the term Aramaic acquired the meaning of "pagan" or "heathen.
..... Click the link for more information. fragments of a Bardesanes Bardesanes (bärdəsā`nēz), 154?–222?, Christian philosopher and poet of Syria, missionary among the Armenians. Conflicting traditions report him both as defender of the faith against various Gnostic sects and as a heretic and founder of Bardesanism. text--is well done. Nevertheless, all the analysis of Bardesanes' text does is to speculate on possible meanings for arsenokoites vis-a-vis other texts of that period. Some of this analysis is interesting, but, like the other lists we have already examined, this one too is far from conclusive or satisfactory. The best we can say after examining Martin's argument regarding later material is that arsenokoites might have been occasionally used in texts considerably later than Paul to designate homosexual rape or sex by economic exploitation. On the other hand, it may also have been used to refer to homosexuality in general. More than that we cannot say.

_______________________________________________

Arsenokoites in Leviticus

More important for us is to see how the word was being used in an Old Testament Jewish context, which probably would have been the greater influence on Paul and his understanding of the word. So let us consider those passages in Leviticus that prohibit a man from lying with a male as with a woman.

Although originally written in Hebrew, we look to see how these OT passages were rendered in Greek. In the SeptuagintSeptuagint (sĕp`ty əjĭnt) [Lat.,=70], oldest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible made by Hellenistic Jews, possibly from Alexandria, c.250 B.C.
..... Click the link for more information. (a third-century B.C. Greek translation of the OT), we find that Lev 18:22 and 20:13 both use the two Greek words arsenos and koiten together (the root words for arsenokoites). The phrase from Lev 20:13 is rendered in Greek: kai os an koimaythay meta arsenos koiten gunaikos bdelugma etoiesan amphoteroi ("and if a man might lie with a male as with a female, abomination/desecration they both have done"). Notice that arsenos and koiten not only both appear in this sentence, but arsenos immediately precedes koiten. Thus, it is no stretch to see how Paul, who undoubtedly would have been familiar with these verses from the Septuagint, could have from their influence put the two words together to form a new word, arsenokoites, and as he did so, clearly had in mind "a man bedding a male as a female" (Lev 20:13).

This conclusion is not based on arsenokoites appearing in unrelated lists from a century or two after Paul and then speculating on what might have been the intended meaning. It is based directly on analysis of a text Paul would have been familiar with and whose meaning was and is clear. Even though at the time the Septuagint was written the two words had not previously (so far as we know) been joined together to make the single word arsenokoites, the essential meaning had already been established in the Septuagint's rendering of these verses. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that Paul would have been referring to and proscribing male homosexuality in general in the sense of a male lying with a male as with a woman as did Leviticus.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Dale+...+malakos"+tried+and+found+wanting-a0153025991

The above paragraphs are are pulled out of a longer article, and are not placed in the order they are written. These are given as someone elses views on Dale Martin's research and the way he choose to define and explain the word arsenokoites.

Also given is the person who evaluated Martin's research and his thoughts on the word in question.

This post is given just to show other views and thoughts.

EnemyPartyII said:

Arsenokoités and Malakos: Meanings and Consequences
http://www.clgs.org/5/5_4_3.html

Dale Martin's "arsenokoites and malakos" tried and found wanting.http://http://www.thefreelibrary.co...+malakos"+tried+and+found+wanting-a0153025991

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Oops I guess you already posted this sorry.

EnemyPartyII said:

I'm not aware of having cited him at all.

Phineas seems to think its enough to say "gay bias" or "Boswell" and no further discussion is required. I'd like someone to tell me anything that is factually wrong with anything I have posted in the last few pages... specifically.

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According to Prof. Boswell:
refer to post #776. are you reading through the snippets that you are cut and pasting in your replies?

i thought i explained his obvious bias and vast attempts to rationalize same-sex sex with the orthodox church.

EnemyPartyII said:

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 "arsenokoitai" 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 arsenokoitai 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

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No proof. Biased.

From a gay authored promoting website where the author alleges that Jesus had a sexual life and hints that he may have been homosexual.

I recommend going in and having a look around however. It shows the lengths that people will go to justify their own interpretation of scripture to support their lifestyle rather than taking accepted scripture and applying it on because of it's own merits. I also recommend checking each link that this forum member has on her "proof" and every author quoted as a source within the proof. On the internet this kind of investigation is easy. Also check out on msn search "arguments against homosexuality" for a varied offering contradicting proof.

sacerdote said:

No proof. Biased.

From a gay authored promoting website where the author alleges that Jesus had a sexual life and hints that he may have been homosexual.

I recommend going in and having a look around however. It shows the lengths that people will go to justify their own interpretation of scripture to support their lifestyle rather than taking accepted scripture and applying it on because of it's own merits. I also recommend checking each link that this forum member has on her "proof" and every author quoted as a source within the proof. On the internet this kind of investigation is easy. Also check out on msn search "arguments against homosexuality" for a varied offering contradicting proof.

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Again... if anything that supports homosexual rights is written off as "biased" regardless of the actual information it contains, then you are admiting you are only interested in ideological errors, not factual ones.

i.e. not interested in honest, open minded discussion

Floatingaxe said:

Scripture denounces same-sex couples. Loving or not--it's still an abomination to God. What man considers "good" is obviously warped and distorted. It's what God thinks that's important---not man.

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Scripture never mentions same sex couples... you have been missinformed

Jet_A_Jockey said:

According to Prof. Boswell:
refer to post #776. are you reading through the snippets that you are cut and pasting in your replies?

i thought i explained his obvious bias and vast attempts to rationalize same-sex sex with the orthodox church.

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is his error that he says things you don't like... or, you know, ACTUAL errors?

EnemyPartyII said:

Again... if anything that supports homosexual rights is written off as "biased" regardless of the actual information it contains, then you are admiting you are only interested in ideological errors, not factual ones.

i.e. not interested in honest, open minded discussion

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Actually I believe that I am and at my soonest available opportunity I'm going to start bringing forth some of that evidence for public scrutiny then we can all see and respond to how good and factual we think it is.

EnemyPartyII said:

Scripture never mentions same sex couples... you have been missinformed

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It mentions homosexual acts. People who practice them are condemned. Therefore, condemnable people practicing condemnable acts living in pseudo-marriages is condemnable. Why should such "relationships" be mentioned? In Biblical times, to get to that point, Scripturally, people would have to have avoided the death sentence.

It isn't mentioned, because good Jews didn't sin so grievously. They respected the Law, and the few who didn't weren't allowed to live long enough to form such relationships.

It isn't mentioned, because good Jews didn't sin so grievously. They respected the Law, and where they didn't, they weren't allowed to live long enough to form such relationships.

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Ahhh! Then it's a good thing we're not Jews huh?
tulc(hey sis!)

tulc said:

Ahhh! Then it's a good thing we're not Jews huh?
tulc(hey sis!)

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Ah, but we are Sons and Daughters of Abraham by virtue of Christ. We are grafted in. We are beholden to God and His righteous standards.
Flo (hey bro!)

sacerdote said:

Actually I believe that I am and at my soonest available opportunity I'm going to start bringing forth some of that evidence for public scrutiny then we can all see and respond to how good and factual we think it is.

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look forward to seeing it.

Floatingaxe said:

It mentions homosexual acts. People who practice them are condemned. Therefore, condemnable people practicing condemnable acts living in pseudo-marriages is condemnable. Why should such "relationships" be mentioned? In Biblical times, to get to that point, Scripturally, people would have to have avoided the death sentence.

It isn't mentioned, because good Jews didn't sin so grievously. They respected the Law, and the few who didn't weren't allowed to live long enough to form such relationships.

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so good jews don't sin, so they don't need the law spelt out to them, but laws about what they can and can't eat have to be?

They just naturally understand that homosexual marriage is sinful, so it doesn't need to be mentioned, but things like, well, murder, stealing and rape need to be specified as bad?

That does not make sense. You're confabulating again

Floatingaxe said:

Ah, but we are Sons and Daughters of Abraham by virtue of Christ. We are grafted in. We are beholden to God and His righteous standards.
Flo (hey bro!)

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Does this include the Abrahamic standard of stoning rape victims who don't scream?

EnemyPartyII said:

Does this include the Abrahamic standard of stoning rape victims who don't scream?

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Yes, skip over the depth and splash in the puddles.

Floatingaxe said:

Yes, skip over the depth and splash in the puddles.

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refuse to answer a direct question and put up a smiley graphic.

You don't thing whether or not innocent rape victims should be stoned to death is important?