This lengthy quote is necessary in order to clarify Matthew Vine’s context. There is no contextual support for linking this term to loving, faithful relationships.” (underline added) This may have involved forms of same-sex behavior, but coercive and exploitative forms. This and some other contextual data indicate that this term referred to some kind of economic exploitation, likely through sexual means. simply looking at a word’s component parts doesn’t necessarily tell us what it means. In the Greek, it is “arsenokoites,” “arsen” meaning “male,” and “koites” meaning “bed,” generally with a sexual connotation. The word translated as “abusers of themselves with mankind” in the King James is a compound word. And so translations of these words that suggest that Paul was using these distinctly modern concepts and categories are highly suspect. The English term “homosexual” was not even coined until the end of the 19th century. The concept of sexual orientation, and of same-sex orientation, in particular, didn’t exist in the ancient world. The first occurrence of this shift came in 1946 when a translation of the Bible was published that simply stated that “homosexuals” will not inherit the kingdom of God. This changed halfway through the last century when some Bible translators began connecting these terms directly to homosexuality. Our keywords for the discussion here are the words translated as “effeminate” and “abusers of themselves with mankind.”. It reads: “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. Because the dispute here is about translation, I’ll start with the King James Version of this passage, which was published more than 400 years ago and so predates this modern controversy. And then he lists 10 different types of people who will not inherit the kingdom. Vines says, “In 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Paul warns against those who will not inherit the kingdom of God.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |