Last time it was shown that Paul’s unexplained mention of the word “malakoi” is nowhere near strong enough to condemn homosexuality. A better possibility is the next word in the list in I Corinthians 9, “arsenokoitai”, which at least shows up also in I Timothy 1:10. Similar to malakoi, the translations of arsenokoitai are varied depending on the translation (although at least they not conflicting this time). The King James in both translations is “abusers of themselves with mankind”, while the New International Version is more specific than this with “homosexual offender” in Corinthians and “pervert” in Timothy, and the English Standard Version is still more specific by maintaining in the footnotes the arsenokoitai are the active males in gay sex.
So what does this word really mean? Unlike malakoi, which has no inherent connection to sexual activity, arsenokoitai seems to indicate something sexual since arsenokoitai is built from the words “male” and “bed”. However, this word is not used by Paul or any of his contemporaries again, and so there is no way to verify its meaning from context.
But if we know that some word that involves “male” and “bed” is condemned, can’t we assume that Paul is condemning all homosexual acts? Absolutely not! By far the most common form of same-sex activity in Ancient Greece was pederasty. Pederasty was a sickening practice in which an older man “partnered” with a younger man for a mutual exchange: the older man would get the delights of the younger’s body in exchange for being a tutor in whatever field of knowledge in which the disciple was interested. I know that this was common because I was happily reading Plato one day and all of the sudden Socrates started talking about stopping by the young boy’s wrestling class – blah, blah blah, etc, etc, and use your imagination. This practice was apparently very normal and not at all shameful. In fact, the men who participated were some of the most well-respected men in the community, and they had normal families. This exploitive practice was very common in Paul’s day, and certainly deserved a rousing condemnation. To interpret arsenokoitai as pederastic offenders is not a “slam-dunk” – but it is the best guess that scholars can make.
Further evidence for this interpretation is the remainder of the list in I Timothy: nearly all the practices condemned there are exploitive practices, and so it seems that a condemnation of pederasty fits in naturally. Secondly, why would Paul specifically condemn the active partner in the male homosexual act and not any female forms of homosexuality? Or any other male homosexual acts, for that matter – after all, homosexuality is a broad concept. These are both pieces of evidence against the interpretation that arsenokoitai are the class of all homosexual males. And of course, condemning pederasty is no more to condemn all homosexuality than condemning heterosexual sex with minors is to condemn all of heterosexuality. These translations are guilty of the same sloppy scholarship, hasty conclusions, and homophobia that I accused them of in their attempted translation of malakoi. If to be liberal means to translate the word of God so as to fit your theological agenda, then there could be no more liberal translations. For this reason, I have great respect for the translators of the King James Bible – they knew that the meanings of malakoi and arsenokoitai are ambiguous, and they preserved this ambiguity in their English translation. The New International and English Standard translators imply that they know with 100% certainty what was on Paul’s mind that day, even though they do not have such certainty.
