Arsenokoites

NateBlack said:

Passage IV: Romans 1:24-27

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,
25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen.
26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural,
27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error. (RSV)
To understand what Paul is writing about we must look at the event as a whole and not isolate a mere portion of it. Each verse in this story gives us a glimpse into the situation.

Verse 24: “Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity.” If we are painting a picture, it begins with the image of LUST.

Verse 25: “…they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” Now there is a LIE as well as IDOLATRY involved (i.e. worshipping something other than God).

Verse 26: “God gave them up to dishonorable passions…” Now DISHONORABLE PASSIONS are presented. Looking back at this now we see this as a situation of lust, lies, idolatry, and dishonorable passions.

Verse 26 and 27 continue: “Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another…”

Looking at the men first will help to clarify the passage: “The men likewise gave up natural relations with women…” It is easy to overlook what this is saying because of the interpretation that has been ingrained into our minds through poor teaching, but read that carefully. They gave up natural relations with women, and then had sexual relations with on another. There is a movement from point A (having natural relations with women) to point B (giving it up, and having sexual relations with other men). The word translated as “gave up” is the Greek word aphente (afenteV) meaning: to give up, leave behind, forsake, or divorce. How can you give up something you do not have? How can you divorce something you are not bound to? These men, we see, divorced themselves from their own nature, that of heterosexuality (natural relations with women), and were consumed with passion for one another. Women did likewise. As we see, Paul is talking about heterosexual individuals filled with lust and engaging in homosexual sex, which is contrary to their nature.

Why would men do that? As any biblical scholar will tell you: “Context is everything.” This is a situation of lust, falsehood, idolatry, and dishonorable passions. In this account there are a number of men and a number of women. Both an accurate reading of this text, and a little historical knowledge would identify this situation as an orgy, wherein everyone is filled with lust and “dishonorable passions” having sex with whomever however. But why would Paul be talking about orgies? A little Old Testament research uncovers the pagan practice of “sacred sexual orgies.” Baal was the Canaanite deity that was worshipped with sexual orgies on Mount Peor in Moab, a pagan practice with which Paul would have been familiar. With this contextual understanding let us read this story again:

“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error.“

Anyone who isolates verses 26 and 27 to condemn homosexual relations as unnatural is interjecting their own prejudice into these verses and reading this letter entirely outside of context. Even if we were to isolate that phrase it could only be used to condemn heterosexuals who go against their own heterosexual nature and engage in homosexual activity. As Peter J. Gomes, preacher to Harvard University, further clarifies in his book The Good Book, “It is not clear that Saint Paul distinguished, as we must, between homosexual persons and heterosexual persons who behave like homosexuals, but what is clear is that what is ‘unnatural’ is the one behaving after the manner of the other” 3 (italics mine).

Click to expand...

NateBlack said:

From my friend Justin Cannon at truthsetsfree.net...

Passage II: 1 Timothy 1:8-10

“Now we know that the law is good, if any one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, immoral persons, sodomites, kidnappers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine…” (RSV)

Let us keep in mind that the word translated as sodomites is the Greek word arsenokoitai. Right now we should ask, “What exactly does this word mean?” Often when writing lists, common things are grouped together. Looking closely at 1 Timothy 1:9-10, we can see that there are what I will call ‘structural pairs’ that are reflected below in the English as well as in the Greek–the original language of the New Testament.

1 Timothy 1:9-10 (RSV) – English
Row A:
lawless and disobedient
Row B:
ungodly and sinners
Row C:
unholy and profane
Row D:
murderers of fathers murderers of mothers manslayers
Row E:
immoral persons sodomites kidnappers
Row F:
liars perjurers…


1 Timothy 1:9-10 (RSV) - Greek
Row A:
anomoi kai anupotaktoi
Row B:
asebesin kai amartwloi
Row C:
anosioi kai bebhloi
Row D:
patralwai mhtralwai androfonoi
Row E:
pornoi arsenokoitai andrapodistai
Row F:
yeustai epiorkoi

As you will notice there seems to be a relationship between the words in each row. The chart below illustrates that the words in each row are either synonyms or closely related in some manner:
Row A:
lawless & disobedient
= two synonyms
Row B:
ungodly & sinners
= two synonyms
Row C:
unholy & profane
= two synonyms
Row D:
murderers of fathers, murderers of mothers, manslayers
=three types of murderers
Row F:
liars & perjurers
= two synonyms

But what about row E? What do “immoral persons, sodomites, and kidnappers” have in common? To answer this question beyond a shadow of a doubt, we will need to explore the Greek. The three Greek words present in line E are: pornoi (pornoi), arsenokoitai (arsenokoitai), and andrapodistai (andrapodistai).
Some commonly read Bible translations include the King James Version (KJV), New International Version (NIV), New King James (NKJ), Revised Standard Version (RSV), and New English Bible (NEB). These words were, respectively, translated in the following manner:

pornoi​

arsenokoitai​

andrapodistai​

KJV:

whoremonger​

“them that defile themselves with mankind”​

men-stealers​

NIV:

adulterers​

perverts​

slave traders​

NKJ:

fornicators​

sodomites​

kidnappers​

RSV:

immoral persons​

sodomites​

kidnappers​

NEB:

fornicators​

perverts​

kidnappers​

As we see there is no clear-cut agreement as to what these words mean, though the above translations agree on the general sense of such words. To determine the precise meanings, we will use a lexicon. A lexicon is a scholarly dictionary used to determine the meaning of biblical words. A search through the online Greek lexicon available at searchgodsword.org gives the following information on the Greek term pornos, which is the stem of the word pornoi, the first of the three words:

Pornos derives from the verb pernemi meaning “to sell” and the following three definitions are given:
1. a male who prostitutes his body to another’s lust for hire
2. a male prostitute
3. a male who indulges in unlawful sexual intercourse, a fornicator

Andrapodistes, the stem of the word Andrapodistai, the third word, returns the following definitions:
1. slave-dealer, kidnapper, man-stealer
a. of one who unjustly reduces free males to slavery
b. of one who steals the slaves of others and sells them.

Arsenokoitai, as previously indicated, is made up of the Greek words for male (arseno-) and beds(koitai). In Greek, the word koitai, literally meaning beds,is commonly used as a euphemism for one who has sex. Arseno- is an adjectival prefix, thus literally we could translate this as “a man who has sex” or “male bedder.”

We have, first of all, a male prostitute, the “male-bedder” (arsenokoitai), and the slave dealer. The New American Bible offers a footnote that might shed some light on the historical context of the time:

“The Greek word translated as boy prostitutes may refer to catamites, i.e. boys or young men who were kept for the purposes of prostitution, a practice not uncommon in the Greco-Roman world. In Greek mythology this was the function of Ganymede, the “cupbearer of the gods,” whose Latin name was Catamus…” (New American Bible)

It was a common practice in that men of Paul’s time would have slave “pet” boys whom they sexually exploited. Dr. Ralph Blair explains, “The desired boys were prepubescent or at least without beards so that they seemed like females.”3 Today, this practice is referred to as pederasty. Regardless, we know the pornos is a prostitute.

Keeping this in mind, let’s look back at what we have so far: the enslaved male prostitute, the “male-bedder” (arsenokoitai), and the slave dealer. This contextual dynamic leads one to understand arsenokoitai as being the one who sleeps with the prostitute—the man who literally lies on the bed with him. It is as if Paul were saying,
“male prostitutes, males who lie [with them], and slave dealers [who procure them].”2 Not only does the syntactical and historical context point to this understanding, but also the very literal sense of the word arsenokoitai itself: male bed.

If this translation of arsenokoitai is correct, it should also make logical sense where it is also used in 1 Corinthians 6:9, either confirming or refuting this understanding of arsenokoitai.

Passage III: 1 Corinthians 6:9-10

“Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.” (RSV)

The term translated “sexual perverts” above is actually two different words. The first word is malakos, which is the singular form of the word malakoi, and the second term is arsenokoitai. Some commonly read translations include…

malakos​

arsenokoitai​

KJV:

effeminate​

abusers of themselves with mankind​

NIV:

male prostitutes​

homosexual offenders​

NKJ:

homosexuals​

sodomites​

RSV1952:
à homosexuals ß
RSV1977:
à sexual perverts ß
RSV1989:

male prostitutes​

sodomites​

Jerusalem Bible:

catamites​

sodomites​

The term malakoi, as an adjective, literally means “soft.” In Matthew 11:8 it has been used as an adjective in reference to John the Baptist’s clothing. In this text, however, it is used as a noun and its meaning is debated. Does our understanding of arsenokoitai as revealed in 1 Timothy 1:10 as “men who sleep with male-prostitutes” make sense next to this word malakos which is translated by both NIV and RSV as male prostitutes? The Jerusalem Bible even translates the term malakos as catamites, those young soft prepubescent “pet” boys mentioned earlier. The syntactical and historical context of 1 Timothy 1:10 reveals the meaning of the word arsenokoitai as men who sleep with prostitutes, and the fact this also fits the context of 1 Corinthians 6:9 seems to confirm that we have found the meaning of these obscure words. It makes perfect sense that Paul would rebuke not only the prostitute, but also the “male-bedder” or the man who sleeps with that prostitute.

As we see, these two verses are about this practice of prostitution and possibly pederasty, but what about Romans 1:27. It clearly says, “…and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error.” Is this not clear enough? There are no obscure Greek words. How are we to understand this?

Click to expand...

NateBlack said:

How many hundreds of years did it take for the Church to recognize the rights and the annointings of women?

Oh wait! Many churches still don't!

Basically if you're argument is simply "that's the way it has always been and therefore, it's right" is all you got... Then you don't have a very strong position do you?

Click to expand...

Brennin said:

Rather than distort the New Testament I think it is better to abandon it.

Click to expand...

Argent said:

My position is strong enough to gain salvation.

Is yours?

Are you sure?

Click to expand...

Brennin said:

Rather than distort the New Testament I think it is better to abandon it.

Click to expand...

Argent said:

Well, it looks like we have a new kid on the block who's going to show everyone how "wrong" our understanding of the Bible has been for the past 2000 years!

Click to expand...

Argent said:

Lucky us!

Click to expand...

Argent said:

God help those who will be decieved into an eternity in hell.

Click to expand...

Argent said:

My position is strong enough to gain salvation.

Is yours?

Are you sure?

Click to expand...

Argent said:

My position is strong enough to gain salvation.

Is yours?

Are you sure?

Click to expand...