I’ve said before that the word “homosexual” doesn’t appear in the Bible. I should clarify this. The words “homosexual” and “homosexuality” do appear in some English translations of the Bible, but there is no valid linguistic reason for it. When you go back to the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts of the scriptures, there is no word that can legitimately be translated “homosexual” in any of them.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the word qadash appears several times, notably in 1 Kings 14:24, 15:12 and 22:46. The King James Version translates this by using the English word “sodomite” which can mean any of several things, but which often refers to a male homosexual.

If you translate the word qadash literally, it means “set apart one” or “sacred one.” That meaning doesn’t fit with our understanding of homosexuality at all. It only makes sense when we realize that what is being discussed is a male prostitute in one of the shrines or temples of the gods of the surrounding peoples. The Canaanite peoples believed in “fertility gods” who controlled the crops and the weather. Their religious rituals enacted the story of the sky god having sex with the earth goddess, who became pregnant and “gave birth” to the growing plants and crops.

While we don’t know many of the details of their worship, we know that the temples and shrines employed prostitutes, both male and female. A man could go to the shrine and have sex with one of these qadash or “sacred prostitutes.” It was a symbolic way of asking the Canaanite gods for good crops.

The great majority of modern translations recognize this, and use terms like “male shrine prostitutes” rather than “sodomites.”

The only use of any variation of the word “homosexual” I could find in a modern version of the Hebrew Scriptures is in the New Living Version of the Bible which translates Leviticus 20:13 as:

“Do not practice homosexuality; it is a detestable sin.”

This is a sloppy paraphrase. There is no word that could possibly be translated “homosexual” or “homosexuality” in the original, the word is added in by the writers of the New Living Bible.

Adding words is a common practice in paraphrase versions of the Bible. Sometimes a literal translation can be awkward to understand in English, so a paraphrase will add words or phrases that aren’t in the original to help clarify things. The danger of a paraphrase is that the translator can mistakenly add a meaning that wasn’t there in the original text. The Message is also a paraphrase, but does a job that is much more faithful to the original text:

“If a man has sex with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is abhorrent.”

What is the difference between the two? Well, the word “homosexuality” applies to a sexual orientation, not to a specific act. The word also applies to both gays and lesbians, while the Hebrew test of Leviticus clearly refers only to males. The wording change shifts this from a text banning a specific action to a text condemning a group of people.

As I discussed in the last post, there is no way to be certain what the underlying reason is for the ban in Leviticus 20:13, but it is likely the practice of men going to the qadash or male shrine prostitutes. To make the leap that this passage is a blanket condemnation of homosexuality assumes facts not in evidence. It is an unfair and inaccurate way of putting the passage into English.

In the New Testament there are two words that are often mistranslated. Arsenokoités and malakos appear in 1 Corinthians 6:9 among a list of wicked people who will not inherit God’s Kingdom. By far the best article I have found on these words and the controversy is an essay by Dale B. Martin at http://www.clgs.org/5/5_4_3.html He goes to the historical and linguistic issues far better than I can.

In this passage, malakos and arsenokoités are translated in a variety of ways. In different versions of the Bible they appear as”

“…male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders.” (New International Version)
“…effeminate, nor homosexuals.” (New American Standard Bible)
“…a pervert or (one who) behaves like a homosexual.” (Contemporary English Version)
“…homosexuals, nor sodomites.” (New King James Version)
“…effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men.” (American Standard Version)
“…men who act like women, or people who do sex sins with their own sex.” (New Life Bible)
“…nor effeminate, nor sodomites.” (Young’s Literal Translation)
“…male prostitutes nor practicing homosexuals.” (Today’s New International Version)
“…effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind.” (King James Version)
“…male prostitutes, sodomites.” (New Revised Standard Version)

The first word, malakos is most often rendered as “effeminate.” Some modern versions have pushed this to read “sodomites,” “male prostitutes,” “perverts,” “men who act like women,” or “homosexuals.” The literal meaning of malakos is “soft” and it conveys the sense of being luxurious. Expensive soft cloth or rich food could be referred to as malakos. The word was also used for people who lived luxurious lives.

The use of the word “effeminate” to translate malakos is faithful to the meaning of the word as it was understood in the Roman world. The stereotype of women was that they were physically soft and weak, that they loved luxury, cared excessively about their own appearance, were lacking in courage, and were pampered in every sense of the word. (Though this can be seen as a terrible stereotype of women in our time, it was widely accepted in the ancient world.)

While the ancients considered these traits appropriate in women, they considered them disgusting in men. A pampered, primping, self-indulgent man with a weak character was called malakos.

Some modern translators seem to have assumed that this understanding of “effeminate” equates to the modern understanding of “homosexual.” Possibly this is because many openly gay men affect behavior we consider effeminate. Actually, malakos has nothing to do with sexual orientation and was often used to describe men who cultivated their personal style and beauty in order to seduce women. Outside of the Bible, malakos is most often translated as “weakling” or “coward.”

The second word, arsenokoités (which also appears in 1 Timothy 1:10) is translated variously as “homosexual,” “one who behaves like a homosexual,” “sodomite,” “abusers of themselves with men,” “people who do sex sins with their own sex,” and “practicing homosexuals.” The problem with all of these translations is that no one knows what arsenokoité really means.

We can say that arsenokoités are considered sinners because the everywhere the word appears in Greek literature, or the Bible, it is on a list of condemned behaviors, but what kind of sin they commit is unknown. We can make a guess by comparing the word to the other sins on these lists, but they are inconsistent. In 1 Cornithians arsenokoités is used in a list of sexual sins, in the Sibiline Oracle it is included in a list of crimes exploiting the poor, in the Acts of John it is included in a list of violent crimes, in Thoephilus of Antioch’s treatise To Autolychus it is included in a mixed list of sexual sins and sins of exploiting the poor.

Some point out that arsenokoités comes from two root words that mean “man” and “bed.” They say that it “obviously” means “a man who has sex with other men” but this is not a valid argument. The meaning of words can sometimes be broken down in this way, but more often they cannot. In his article, Mr. Martin uses the example of the word “understand” to show how poorly this reasoning works. If we were to follow the same logic, then “understand” would mean to stand underneath something. The meaning of “understand” has nothing to do with either “under” or with “stand.”

So what does arsenokoités mean? It is clearly meant to describe something harmful and disgusting, but we can’t say what. Perhaps it is a forbidden sexual behavior. Then again, it may be something that exploits the poor. It may even be something that sexually exploits the poor. We can speculate, but we simply don’t know the answer. Perhaps the best way to translate this word is to be vague. I like the way the Message paraphrase handles it:

“…Those who use and abuse each other, use and abuse sex, use and abuse the earth and everything in it.”

While this doesn’t tell us what the word means, it gives us a nice summary of the themes in the larger scripture. We don’t know what arsenokoités means, but we can be reasonable sure that it fits in the parameters of this statement somehow.

When a person takes an unknown word and translates it using a specific meaning, it tells us more about the assumptions and prejudices of the translator than about the meaning of the word. Clearly, many modern interpreters of the Bible think that homosexuality is unacceptable. I don’t agree with them, but that is not my issue here. They have allowed their assumptions to color their work. They have introduced a new meaning into the scriptures. This is not good scholarship, nor is it a faithful use of scripture. Worst of all, people are being hurt by it.

For what it’s worth, I doubt that this mistranslation has been deliberate. When you read the Bible it is easy to project your prejudices into the text without realizing it. As this discussion continues, I hope that conservative translators will correct these errors.