The bible verses against homosexuality? Translation error.

[thewayne]

The word came into use in bibles in 1946!!! Prior to that, it referred to child molesters!

This blog post is by "Ed Oxford ... a gay Christian, a graduate of Talbot School of Theology, and a researcher in how the Bible has been weaponized against LGBTQ people."

He collects antique bibles and lexicons in various languages, the older the better. He has friends from various countries and had them read these verses to him, and the results were rather surprising.

In the post:
I had a German friend come back to town and I asked if he could help me with some passages in one of my German Bibles from the 1800s. So we went to Leviticus 18:22 and he’s translating it for me word for word. In the English where it says “Man shall not lie with man, for it is an abomination,” the German version says “Man shall not lie with young boys as he does with a woman, for it is an abomination.” I said, “What?! Are you sure?” He said, “Yes!” Then we went to Leviticus 20:13— same thing, “Young boys.” So we went to 1 Corinthians to see how they translated arsenokoitai (original Greek word) and instead of homosexuals it said, “Boy molesters will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

and later....

I also have a 1674 Swedish translation and an 1830 Norwegian translation of the Bible. I asked one of my friends, who was attending Fuller seminary and is fluent in both Swedish and Norwegian, to look at these verses for me. So we met at a coffee shop in Pasadena with my old Bibles. (She didn’t really know why I was asking.) Just like reading an old English Bible, it’s not easy to read. The letters are a little bit funky, the spelling is a little bit different. So she’s going through it carefully, and then her face comes up, “Do you know what this says?!” and I said, “No! That’s why you are here!” She said, “It says boy abusers, boy molesters.” It turns out that the ancient world condoned and encouraged a system whereby young boys (8-12 years old) were coupled by older men. Ancient Greek documents show us how even parents utilized this abusive system to help their sons advance in society. So for most of history, most translations thought these verses were obviously referring the pederasty, not homosexuality!

As if this will change main-stream religion in America.

I should take a look at my parent's family bible when I'm in Phoenix this weekend and see when it was printed.

Of course the big question: was it a mistake or someone's agenda.

https://www.forgeonline.org/blog/2019/3/8/what-about-romans-124-27

Comments

[dewline]

My paranoid self suggests "agenda".

Reverting the translation back (and maybe a little sideways?) to "child abusers" might save a lot of good people a lot of grief anyways.

[moxie_man]

Considering the number of scandals that have popped-up in various Christian denominations, both Catholic and Protestant, it wouldn't surprise me if it was deliberate.

[silveradept]

Given that every translation of the writings has an agenda, it's unlikely to be an accident.

That it was more likely to be about changing mores about relationships between men and boys doesn't surprise me.

[moonhare]

We have a 1674 German bible here at our library, but, sadly, I don't do German and the font makes it even harder to work with!

[thewayne]

That classic German gothic font is a toughie.

[rain_gryphon]

Scan it. I can probably read it.

[thewayne]

A gryphon of many talents!  I used to be able to read Greek, but that was ages ago, and I had pretty much zero Latin.  My wife studied the latter in high school, ridiculous over-achiever that she is. ;-)

[rain_gryphon]

I can't read Greek, no, although I'm flattered that you'd think it of me. I can sound the words out phonetically, and in classical-era stuff, especially, there's often enough overlap with Latin (as here), and English words derived from Greek, and inclusion of words and phrases that I've heard elsewhere, to get some meaning out of it. That's a long way from being able to read, still less write or speak Greek, though.

Now you, learned as you are in Greek (even if you've forgotten much of it, you still have the advantage of me), surely knew already everything that I argued. Why, then, do you feel that arsenokoitai is more plausibly translated as "pederasts" than as "homosexual males"? What am I failing to see here?

[thewayne]

My retained memory of Greek is all but zero, and what I learned wasn't formal education.  I can't debate that point beyond what the original article posted.

[moonhare]

The best I can do is this little album of random pics
https://photos.app.goo.gl/BKNUYjxMK9kiNcqv8

[rain_gryphon]

That's reasonably modern, at least to the point of readability. I don't think any of these are the proper book, though. That first one with the picture of the sheep looks to be Genesis Ch. 30. It'll prolly say "Mose" at the top of the page, which is the German Genesis. The last two with text are definitely from Genesis. Leviticus may be "Levitikus", but is more likely gonna be "3. Mose". 1 Corinthians would be "1. Korinter". Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13, and 1 Corinthians 6:9 are the ones we hope for, if you have access to get more pictures.

Wonderful pictures! Imagine an age when pictures were rare, and a bible may have been the only book one owned. How much time did the original owner spend meditating on those pictures?

[moonhare]

The ram pic illustrates Genesis 30:37-43, from what I originally found about it online in 2015. The striated rods were used to cause the ewes to give birth to striped and speckled lambs. All of these pics are together in the album to show the age of the book and style of the printing: only the last three are recent. I’ll look for the passages you mention (and I’ll try to stay more on topic).

This bible, with its worm holed cover and spotty pages, is a a wonder from days past. The owner was presumed literate at a time when ~30% of Germany could read and write (https://ourworldindata.org/literacy). There is a family birth record, not too legible, penned in the front pages in cursive. The book collects dust in a forgotten corner of a storage closet :o/

[moonhare]

I feel like Johnny Depp in The Ninth Gate!

New pics added.Godspeed! ;o)

[motodraconis]

Good post! Thank you!

[thewayne]

I found it very interesting, and I’m very happy to help!

[rain_gryphon]

There's always an agenda, hidden or otherwise, in translating a book. The overarching meta-agenda, of course, is that the translator feels the work to be relevant or useful, and thus wants it made available to a wider audience. There's also a longrunning and deeply pervasive agenda in bible commentary to reframe and reinterpret statements and context to reassure everyone that the people who wrote the Bible held modern beliefs about right and wrong. I think that's what we have here.

Arsenokoitai is a rather uncomfortable word. It's not actually Greek, but rather a Greek/Latin hybrid. It appears to be derived from arsenikos (ἀρσενικός), a male, esp. a virile male, and koitai, those who practice coitus, from the Latin coitus, with the Roman c replaced by the Greek k, and the usual group plural form -oi replaced by -ai. Literally, the word appears to mean "virile men who engage in coitus". The word does not appear, at least according to the internet, in any extant classical sources outside of the letters of Paul the apostle.

The Greeks had the perfectly good and widely understood term paiderastia (παιδεραστία) to name the practice of pederasty*. By contrast, there really wasn't a widely-accepted Greek term for 'homosexuality', as we understand it today. Homosexuality, at those times when it met with acceptance in Greece, was lumped in with all other forms of sexual love under such blanket terms as aphrodisia or eros, which did not distinguish the genders of who was participating in the love or sex.

It's difficult to understand why Paul would have used arsenokoitai as a synonym for paiderastoi. It seems far more reasonable to me to conclude that Paul was expressing disapproval of same-sex relationships between adult males, something which the Greek of the time would have needed a new word to do in a succinct fashion.

I suspect that the reason most bibles of the period differed from the KJV on this point is that the KJV was a new translation from the oldest available Greek and Hebrew sources, and corrected an old error from the Vulgate, from which most of the modern-language bibles had been translated. While James I & VI certainly had anti-gay and anti-witchcraft agendas (the man was utterly obsessed with witches), I think we can safely conclude that the KJV truthfully reflects Paul's agenda in this matter.

* And, while it isn't relevant to the argument, characterizing classical Greek pederasty as an abusive system is to impute to the ancient Greeks modern psychology and motives, never an aid to understanding history.

Edit: The word "homosexual" was only coined as recently as 1879. This may well account for the word not appearing in bibles until very recently.