Homosexuality in the Bible?

June 26, 2009 2:21 PM

Homosexuality and translations of the Bible?

In an episode of the documentary series One Punk Under God, assistant pastor Matt Debenedictis says the following with regards to homosexuality and translations of the Bible:

"...the word homosexual never appeared in a translation of the Bible until 1949."

Can anyone find any information with regards to this claim? Such as which particular translation of the Bible and was it in the year 1949?

posted by jca to religion & philosophy (14 comments total)

This isn't exactly surprising, as the word "homosexual" was only coined in the late nineteenth century.

The word "Trinity" doesn't appear in the Bible either, but that hasn't stopped Christians from believing that the Bible has things to say about that and other doctrines the terminology for which was coined after the Bible itself was written.
posted by valkyryn at 2:34 PM on June 26

Biblegateway (the first google result for bible online), shows that homosexual doesn't appear in the King James bible but appears in the New King James bible. I couldn't find some way to search all versions to see in which versions the word appears and in which it doesn't (except manually, one by one, and I'm too lazy).
posted by bjrn at 2:38 PM on June 26

I don't know the answer to this, but as far as I recall, the word "homosexual" wasn't used in the translations of the Bible we used in Catholic school in more recent times at all. The way it was phrased was like "thou shalt not lie with another man as with a woman" or something.

One way to figure this out though would be to search for "homosexual" on one of those bible concordance sites, it'll return you a bunch of verses (most likely from Leviticus), and then you click a verse and it'll show you how that verse was translated in different translations. Like the old Bibles (KJV, Revised Standard, etc.) will have the wording like I have it, and the new ones (Living Bible, etc.) will have it with 'homosexual'. You can then find the oldest one that has that wording, problem solved. At least for tracking it down. As for the reason, can't help you. I mean its certainly easier for the modern reader to understand, and the language in those recent translations is hyper-simplified.
posted by jeb at 2:39 PM on June 26

Well, Wikipedia has a pretty extensive list of modern English-language Bible translations. The only translation published in '49 was the Bible in Basic English, which does not contain the word "homosexual".

The passage in question is probably 1 Corinthians 6:9. You can see what it looks like in various translations here. Seems like the earliest occurrence is the Amplified Bible, which published the NT in '58.
posted by mr_roboto at 2:41 PM on June 26

Yeah, Biblegateway seems to work, but you can only compare five translations at a time. Here's the first five English translations on the drop down menu of Leviticus 18:22.
posted by jeb at 2:42 PM on June 26

Are you talking about this? If so, why not post this question under that entry in his blog?

This sounds either pedantic or just incorrect to me, but I can't find a specific source refuting it. Even if the word "homosexual" was not there, same-sex sex was known about and written about in the Bible (see bottom of this page, which carries over to part 2 here). I think there are many good arguments about why it's not a sin, or not something we should get up-in-arms about, but I don't think this is one of those good arguments.
posted by Houstonian at 2:44 PM on June 26

FWIW, the Greek work in question is "arsenokoitai". It's not a standard word; no other ancient sources use it, so it's hard to tell what it means. A google search will reveal plenty of opinions, however.
posted by mr_roboto at 2:52 PM on June 26

Okay, for those of you who are interested, the place where the word "homosexual" does appear in some modern translations is 1 Corinthians 6:9. The Greek word translated that way is arsenokoites.

Don't get me wrong: there's been a lot of static, particularly in recent years, that suggests that Paul wasn't actually referring to homosexuality per se here. But I can't find any serious scholarly evidence that this is a reasonable interpretation. As far as I can tell, the church has always known what the term meant, namely "men who sleep with men." Origen certainly seems to have thought so, and he, umm, spoke Koine Greek. If anyone can find an example much before about 1950 of a serious, widely-respected theologian interpreting the word to mean something different, I'd be very interested to know about it.

So yeah, the term "homosexual" as such didn't show in in any version of the Bible until the mid-twentieth century. But until quite recently everyone has believed that the Bible has taught something about what we now call "homosexuality" since the day it was written, whenever you believe that to have been.
posted by valkyryn at 2:53 PM on June 26 [2 favorites has favorites]

The Wycliffe New Testament dates to about 1380. The passage in 1 Corinthians says, "Whether ye know not, that wicked men shall not wield the kingdom of God? Do not ye err; neither lechers, neither men that serve maumets [neither men serving to idols], neither adulterers, neither lechers against kind, neither they that do lechery with men"

So, no it doesn't say "homosexual." But it does say "lechery with men." Again, of all the good arguments, I'm not sure "this specific word was not used in English translations until after 1949" is a good one.
posted by Houstonian at 3:00 PM on June 26

The Corinthians/Greek translation argument though only matters though if you believe the NT covenant completely frees Christians from adherence to OT law as outlined in e.g. Leviticus. This is a fraught question, clearly Christians don't think all the law applies to them (shatnes, kosher, etc.), but some of the law (general moral outlines) is considered to be still relevant. The translation issue then is much less problematic.
posted by jeb at 3:43 PM on June 26

This page explores various theories of how one might translate "arsenokoitai" and why, since, as others have said, it is not a standard word.

It was translated as something essentially meaning "homosexual" by many people before 1949, even if that particular word seemed like too much of a neologism for the bible until recently, but that doesn't mean guarantee that's what Paul meant. Still, it's silly to imagine that christians in the middle ages were pro-gay rights.
posted by mdn at 4:01 PM on June 26

He probably means the 1946 Revised Standard Version of the NT which used "homosexuals" in 1 Corinthians 6:9. In the 1971 edition this was changed to "sexual perverts."
posted by gubo at 5:19 PM on June 26

Curiously, arsenokoites clearly refers only to males-- there aren't any clear references to lesbianism in the Bible. Some find it in Romans 1:26, but the Greek only speaks of women acting parà fúsin 'against nature', which could mean many things.
posted by zompist at 5:31 PM on June 26

[comments removed - please keep this question on topic, thanks]
posted by jessamyn at 7:18 AM on June 27