Next Big Thing

The next assault is coming. It's a documentary called 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted a Culture. They've finally figured it out. All this time Christians got it wrong. God never said that homosexual behavior was sin. It was a mistake. We've figured it out now. We have it on good authority that the Holy Spirit failed for 2000 years to get this across and now we have it. Whew! All fixed now! As it turns out, Paul did not say, "Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God." (1 Cor 6:9-10) Nothing of the sort. Well, okay, most of the sort, but not that one phrase, "men who practice homosexuality." Definitely not in there. It was a mistake, you see, and all the modern translations that say that were forced to their translations by a mistake. Homosexual behavior has never been a sin and we've all -- from the beginning of time -- just misunderstood.

It's odd, of course, that this kind of stuff would come across as so influential. The weight of history is as light as a feather, apparently. The claim in the documentary is that the term in 1 Cor 6:9 and 1 Tim 1:10 is a mistaken translation, so obviously it erases all the texts. The Old Testament texts (Lev 18:22; Lev 20:13) and the New Testament references (Rom 1:26-27) are no longer of any consequence. Or, to put it more clearly, you're a fool if you think you can reliably understand your Bible.

It's interesting, though. Did Paul say "homosexual" in 1 Corinthians 6 and 1 Timothy 1? The word, as it turns out, is somewhat of a puzzler. It is ἀρσενοκοίτης -- arsenokoitēs. The King James translates it "those who abuse themselves with mankind." It's a two-part Greek word that sticks together "men" and "couch." In the Bible it appears only in those two places and in extrabiblical Greek texts it looks like it doesn't appear until after Paul used it. It could be that Paul coined the term himself. So what does it mean?

Back in 2015 the "glbtq Project" shut down its website because the online advertising business model didn't work. But they archived much of their data, so you can still find this entry on the Apostle Paul. Yes, a project aimed to be "the world's largest encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer culture and history" has an entry on Paul specifically because of his writings on LGBT issues. What do they say? Two words are in play here. One is arsenokoitēs and the other is malakoi. They say on the malakoi, "We can say with certainty, are males -- boys, youths, or adults -- who have consented, either for money or for pleasure, for some perceived advantage or as an act of affectionate generosity, to be penetrated by men." The former they say comes from the Greek translation of the Old Testament -- the Septuagint. It is the word used in those Old Testament passages. They conclude, based on their examination of the language and the history of the word, "The bad news from the Christian Bible is that it condemns same-sex desire and same-sex acts without qualification of age, gender, role, status, consent, or membership in an ethnic community." They are saying that the translation "those who commit homosexual acts" is precisely the intent of the texts. (They also point out that the Romans 1 text was "meant to condemn female homosexuality along with male.") These aren't "radical right homophobes"; these are pro-gay folks. They happily dismiss Paul because "Paul outlawed all sex except that between married couples" and who could take that seriously? But they certainly see that the translation is correct and the prohibition is ... biblical.

You can conclude a lot of things. You can conclude, "I don't much care what the Bible has to say." Lots of people do. You can conclude, "That's just outdated material." You can conclude, "It actually means something much different, albeit more obscure." But you can not conclude that the Bible is reliable, God-breathed, and able to be understood without concluding, as those at the glbtq Project did, that Scripture calls homosexual behavior a sin. Current gay biblical theologians in the 1946 project not withstanding.