Bibles with “homosexuals” give us a bad translation of the Greek original

✓ ENGLISH

➔ ESPAÑOL

➔ CATALÀ

The experts are clear about this, not just those who hold an “affirm­ing” or “pro-gay” posi­tion, but also those who main­tain a tra­di­tional theo­logi­cal stance on homo­sexua­lity [1]: Bibles that speak of “homo­sexuals” in 1 Corin­thians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 mis­trans­late the Greek terms arseno­koites and malakos used in the ori­ginal texts.

Not only that, in their desire to render them into modern English, they give a slap in the face to gay and les­bian Chris­tians that read their trans­lations!

Photo designed by Freepik.

They don’t get any better when they use “effemi­nate” to trans­late the plural malakoi, let alone when they use the term “sodomites”.

If you’re a Chris­tian in the LGBTQ+ com­mu­nity, you pro­bably already know what I’m talk­ing about. But if not, here are two of examples of 1 Corin­thians 6:9-10, from fairly modern and widely used English-lan­guage Bibles: the NKJV and the NASB1995 [2].  I give only frag­ments, with the gaps marked […], to spare you the entire list of evil­doers they include:

Do not be deceived. Neither […], nor homo­sexuals [malakoi], nor sodom­ites [arseno­koitai], nor […] will inherit the king­dom of God. (NKJV)

Do not be deceived; neither […] nor effe­mi­nate [malakoi], nor homo­sexuals [arseno­koitai], nor […] will inherit the king­dom of God. (NASB1995)

Some Bibles, like the NASB2020 and the TLB [3], con­flate the two terms and trans­late them both with the single word “homo­sexuals”, like this:

Do not be deceived; neither […] nor homo­sexuals [malakoi + arse­no­koitai] nor […] will inherit the king­dom of God. (NASB2020)

Let me explain why these trans­la­tions are so prob­lem­atic, if not plain wrong. But before you decide to chuck out your Bible with the word “homo­sexuals”, let me warn you that it’s actually very dif­fi­cult, prac­ti­cally impos­sible, to achieve a really good trans­la­tion of these verses.

This is because these passages con­tain illus­tra­tive lists, with no con­text, made up of terms that are evoca­tive but that in some instances don’t have a very pre­cise mean­ing. That’s cer­tainly the case with the first Greek word I shall com­ment on: malakos.

Before I start, let me just clarify that this English ver­sion of my post is not simply a free trans­la­tion of the Spanish ori­ginal, as is norm­ally the case. Instead, the ori­ginal post has been adapted at various points to take into account how major English-lan­guage bibles have handled the rele­vant verses. Some of these adap­ta­tions are in the body of the text. Others are in the foot­notes, which include addi­tional com­ments and English-language sources.

Malakos

  

It literally means “soft”. But, as I explain in my book, it may well not refer to the “passive” par­ti­ci­pant in male-male sexual encoun­ters, as a num­ber of Bibles suggest [4], but simply to any person hooked on unbridled sexual relations, since it has been documented as applying to men who commit excesses with… women! Not only that, malakos as an insult could be applied to someone who was lazy, fearful, weak, extravagant or lacking in self-control in a wide range of behaviours [5].

One or two English trans­la­tions do appear to take this into account, at least par­tially, by using less spe­ci­fic adjec­tives, such as “per­verts”, to trans­late the plural malakoi in 1 Corin­thians 6:9 [6]. And a recent Spa­nish trans­la­tion opted for luju­rio­sos, which nor­mally trans­lates into Eng­lish as “lustful” [7]. Some­thing along these lines has least has two advantages:

1. It avoids “effemi­nate” which, frankly, is totally out of place. It is true that in many con­texts the adjec­tive “effe­mi­nate” has nega­tive con­no­ta­tions, but nowa­days it hardly brings to mind immo­ral beha­viour, which is the sub­ject of the passage.
2. Terms like “lust­ful” or “per­verts” do suggest unhealthy or corrupt sexual con­duct, but with­out it being neces­sa­rily homo­sexual in nature.

However, if the Greek malakoi can also describe a lack of con­trol in other spheres, maybe it would be more appro­priate to trans­late it with an even more wide-ranging adjec­tive, such as “dege­ne­rate” or “dis­so­lute”. That way, we would have a highly evo­ca­tive but vague term, suggest­ing some­thing pretty bad with­out spe­ci­fy­ing exactly what.

If that’s the impres­sion that the original reci­pients of Paul’s letter would have had with malakoi, we would be much nearer the mark with “dege­ne­rate” or “dis­so­lute”. In tech­ni­cal terms, we would have achieved good dyna­mic or func­tio­nal equi­va­lence [8].

Arsenokoites

With the other Greek term, arseno­koites, the literal mean­ing is not the problem. It is a word com­posed of two very com­mon words: arsen (mean­ing “male” or “man”) and koite (mean­ing “divan”, “sofa” or “bed”). So the Bibles that trans­late the plural arseno­koitai with an expres­sion like “men who have sex with men” [9] are fairly close to the original.

By the way, it is true that the word arseno­koites doesn’t appear in any earlier Greek docu­ments and was pos­sibly coined by the apostle Paul himself. But that, of itself, shouldn’t make us doubt its plain mean­ing. If you can under­stand me per­fectly well if I talk of a cat that’s a “fly-gobbler” (a made-up word), there’s no reason to sus­pect that the reci­pients of Paul’s letters would have problems under­stand­ing him if he spoke of men that were “man-bedders” [10].

Photo created by Grok.

All this leads to the first criti­cism of the use of “homo­sexuals” in 1 Corin­thians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10. The Greek term arseno­koites refers to a beha­viour, whereas the modern term “homo­sexual” refers to a cha­rac­te­ristic of certain people: they are sexually attracted to people of the same sex. So Bible trans­la­tions that use “homo­sexuals” are actually con­demn­ing even gay Chris­tians that are con­vinced that they must not give expres­sion to their sexual urges, but remain single and celibate.

There’s another problem too: arseno­koites can only refer to male homo­sexua­lity. If you are les­bian, these par­ti­cu­lar verses say nothing about your pos­sible sexual beha­viour. This is another clear reason for not using the plural “homo­sexuals”: it could be under­stood as refer­ring to both men and women that are gay, which is impos­sible for this par­ti­cu­lar Greek term (but not for most of the other words in the lists, like “thieves” or «greedy” people).

Up to this point, even the most “tradi­tion­alist” of theo­lo­gians should be in agree­ment. But the last cri­ti­cism, which I will now explain, goes fur­ther in its approach.

Going beyond the literal meaning

Even with arseno­koites (the term with the clear­est mean­ing) there may be very legi­ti­mate reasons for ques­tion­ing its appli­ca­bi­lity to all sexual rela­tion­ships between two men. It’s not unrea­son­able to argue that it should not be applied to two gay people that are partners in a cove­nan­tal rela­tion­ship based on mutual love and com­mit­ment, for the follow­ing reasons:

1. It’s likely that for both the apostle Paul and the reci­pients of his letters the term arseno­koites would have basic­ally brought to mind forced, abu­sive homo­sexual rela­tions with male slaves or pros­ti­tutes. This idea is rein­forced by the inclu­sion of adul­te­rers, thieves, swindlers, mur­der­ers and kid­nap­pers in these same lists; in other words, pretty nasty people.
2. Obviously, Paul or his readers then couldn’t have ima­gined the pos­si­bi­lity of a “gay marriage” , because it was abso­lutely unthink­able in the cul­tu­ral con­text of that period.

Photo designed by Freepik.

If you’re shocked by the idea of not apply­ing some­thing the Bible says, I recom­mend you read my pre­vious post “We can’t take as abso­lutes what indi­vi­dual Bible verses say”. You’ll see it’s some­thing that we all do on occasions (even the most lite­ral­ist or fun­da­men­tal­ist among us).

Not only that, the socio­cul­tu­ral con­text is essen­tial for dis­cern­ing how or when it’s reason­able to do so. That’s some­thing I’ll ela­bo­rate on in my next post. 😊

📌 If you would like to comment on this post (in the language of your choice), you can do so at the end of the Span­ish ver­sion, here.

Notes

[1] The latest author from the tra­di­tion­alist camp to make a harsh cri­ti­cism of the use of “homo­sexuals” in these verses that I know of is Preston Sprinkle, in «Con­ver­sation 8» of his book Does the Bible Sup­port Same-Sex Marriage? – 21 Con­ver­sa­tions From a His­to­ri­cally Chris­tian View, David C Cook, Colo­rado Springs, USA, 2023.

[2] NKJV: New King James’ Version, full text and more infor­ma­tion: here. NASB1995: New Ame­ri­can Stand­ard Bible, 1995 edition, full text and more infor­ma­tion: here.

[3] NASB2020: New American Standard Bible, 2020 edition, full text and more information: here. TLB: The Living Bible, full text and more information: here.

[4] The “passive par­ti­ci­pant” inter­pre­ta­tion of malakoi in 1 Corin­thians 6:9 is offered by, amongst others, the NIV (New Inter­na­tional Ver­sion), in a foot­note. A full list of the myriad ways this verse has been trans­lated can be gener­ated on the Bible­Gate­way portal: here.

[5] The wide range of beha­viours asso­ciated with malakos (soft) and malakia (soft­ness) in ancient Greek lite­ra­ture are described in detail in: Martin, Dale B., Sex and the Single Savior – Gender and Sexual­ity in Bib­lical Inter­pre­tation, West­mins­ter John Knox Press, 2006, pages 43-47. They refer to the weak­nes­ses typi­cally asso­ciated with women in the (male-domi­na­ted) societies of the time. Hence the trans­la­tion of malakoi in 1 Corin­thians 6:9 by J.N. Darby as “those who make women of them­selves”, full text and more infor­ma­tion: here.

[6]  The CEV (Contem­po­rary English Ver­sion) trans­lates malakoi with “per­verts”, full text and more infor­ma­tion: here. The RSV (Revised Stand­ard Version) uses “sexual per­verts” to cover both terms, full text and more infor­ma­tion: here.

[7] The Spanish Bible in question is the BCEE, the Spanish Bishops’ Conference Bible (Sagrada Biblia – Versión oficial de la Conferencia Episcopal Española), Madrid, 2011, which can be consulted: here. The term luju­rio­sos could also be trans­lated “licentious” or “debauched”.

[8] Functional or dynamic equi­va­lence in trans­la­tion involves trying to pro­duce a reaction or under­stand­ing equi­va­lent to that of the ori­gi­nal reci­pients of the text, even if that means depart­ing from a lite­ral word-for-word trans­la­tion. There are many web pages which explain this, for example: here.

[9] For example, the NIV. You can see other examples on the list gene­rated by the Bible­Gate­way portal: here.

[10] The tech­ni­cal expla­na­tion for this, which I spell out in chapter 10 of my book (in Spanish), is as follows: It is only true to say that the com­po­nent parts (the etymo­lo­gical roots) of a com­pound noun do not neces­sa­rily indi­cate its current mean­ing if the word in question has been in use for a very long time, so that its meaning may have changed. So Dale Martin’s argu­ment, in chapter 3 of Sex and the Single Savior (see footnote 5) with the example “under­stand”, which does not mean to “stand under”, is inva­lid, because that word has been around for cen­tu­ries. But this is never true of new com­pound words, invented for a par­ti­cu­lar situa­tion, such as “under­wrap­ping” in an instruc­tion manual, which no com­pe­tent English speaker would have trouble with, even though you’re unlikely to find it in a dic­tio­nary.