@valkalrie tweeted this thread about how the word ‘homosexual’ was severely mistranslated in the bible to fit bigots anti-gay agenda. She is a classics major and studies ancient Greek and Roman religion and the beginnings of all Christianity. So she actually knows what she’s talking about. Bottom line is the word ‘homosexual’ was never even in the bible, it was actually talking about pedophilia. Anyway, this was posted in response to the very valid question; “Where did religion go wrong when gay kids grow up fearing god’s wrath but racists don’t???”:
Source: @valkalrie
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The bible started as word of mouth (we all know Chinese whispers), then it was written down, which was then translated a number of time; I am sure you have heard the saying “Lost in translation”. How can any of it be trusted!
Love the cogent and well argued information. I wish she could expand a bit on all 6 of the entries against homosexuality, as well as bibles from before 1946 in English. The 1599 Geneva being a good one to look at. She makes solid arguments, but I’d love it if she could do a paper on all of the references that were improperly translated and when. My copy of the 1599 Geneva still has the reference to “male lieth with male”, which came well before 1946.
The thing about Genesis 18:22 and 20:13 (essentially the same sentence) is that there seems to be a typo in the original Hebrew. A literal translation would be something like, “And with a male, males shall not lie layings of a woman.” What does this mean? Well, ‘lie layings’ isn’t found anywhere else, so it’s probably not a phrase on its own. Typically, people insert a preposition in there to make it a complete sentence. However, you can also translate it as “And with a male, males shall not lie in the bed of a woman.” Given that women had separate beds for when they were menstruating (menstruation was considered extremely unclean and just touching something while menstruating would make it unclean), you should not be doing things in an unclean bed.
Another way of interpreting it is by looking at the sentences around the two verses. After all, similar thoughts tend to be grouped together, like how the incest verses are all together. The problem is, the two verses are in different places. Leviticus 20:13 is in the middle of the discussion of what constitutes incest. Leviticus 18:22 is on its own, nowhere near the incest discussion. One explanation for this is that one of them was misplaced and the other is where it’s supposed to be. If Leviticus 20:13 is in the correct place, then it could be referring to something incestuous (men, don’t lie with any males of your family even if you would with a female member of the family) or possibly about self-cest (men, don’t lie with yourself as you do with a woman – if that’s possible). Alternatively, don’t lie with yourself in a woman’s bed.
If Leviticus 18:22 is in the correct place, it comes directly after a warning not to give your children to Moloch. While we don’t know exactly who Moloch was, we can assume that he was a god and that children were probably involved. If we assume that the two concepts are linked, there are two possibilities. One is that the linking concept is children, in which case it’s a condemnation of pedophilia. This is a very common theory. Another possible support would be if 18:22 refers to sleeping with a male still young enough to co-sleep with his mother (though I haven’t looked into whether they did co-sleeping, so I’m not sure about this one). The other is that it’s about temple prostitution and that it forbids lying with men who’ve devoted themselves to Moloch or any other god.
There’s also the oddness of the chapters themselves. Leviticus 17-26 have a notably different style from the rest of the book, with lots of repetition. More like Ezekiel’s writing. 18 and 20 are copies, but in a different order. 26 is stylized like the ending of a law code, even though there are more laws after it. It also addresses all of Israel, even though Leviticus is aimed at the priests and not the laity. So it’s entirely possible that those chapters of Leviticus could be non-canonical additions.
In any case, we can be pretty sure that homosexuality wasn’t criminalized. There are existing records of cases tried by the Sanhedrin, a Hebrew council of judges. There are a lot of records, actually, covering all sorts of crimes. This includes sexual crimes like incest. However, there are none that prosecute a man for having sex with men.
But could that mean that Hebrew men simply weren’t sleeping with men or weren’t getting caught? Probably not, considering that David was sleeping with Jonathan and this was common enough knowledge that it was put in the Bible (though with euphemisms like saying “they made a covenant” three times, once when Jonathan was explicitly naked, and the point of a covenant is that it’s permanent). And yet, while David was punished for sleeping with Bathsheba, he was not punished for sleeping with Jonathan.
And before someone brings up Sodom and Gomorrah: Ezekiel 16 outright states that Sodom’s sin was that they violated sacred hospitality. This is also evidenced by the fate of Lot’s wife. Salt was a symbol of hospitality and giving a guest salt sealed a bond of trust between host and guest. Turning into a pillar of salt was an ironic punishment to show that she shared in Sodom’s sin of a lack of hospitality. Judges 19 has a similar story to Genesis 19; the difference there is that even though the crowd demanded that the man come out even when offered a woman, they stopped and took her after the man threw her out into the crowd. That is the opposite of homosexuality. Yet it was treated as no less heinous and led to the near-total destruction of the tribe responsible for it. This was also specified as being due to a violation of sacred hospitality.
So in short, there’s evidence to suggest that the Hebrews weren’t actually instructed to make homosexuality illegal. And, like the original post says, arsenokoites is mistranslated. Jesus himself was quiet on the subject even though he lived in the Roman Empire and the Romans were pretty gay. (Matthew 19 is about divorce and possibly specifies that gay men – “eunuchs” was a euphemism for gay or asexual men, as evidenced by contemporary legal rulings – shouldn’t be forced to marry women.) All in all, the Bible does not appear to condone homophobia.
I also learned that the sort of sodomy they performed in Sodom was not what we see today. It was an act of denigration, dominance, a tool of warfare. Essentially, they raped people into submission in front of their families.
And the references in the New Testament are poorly translated and misunderstood. Paul makes all of them, and he was against any sex unless it was absolutely necessary to prevent sin because he was convinced Jesus would return within days. The Romans passage might not even be his writings, but something added later. But even if it isn’t, it is directly connected to the previous statement about idolatry. In context, it is clearly a condemnation of either temple prostitution or pederasty.
Arsenokoites doesn’t really appear anywhere else before Paul uses it… So why would Paul use it instead of the many other terms they already had? Chances are good he invented the word, so its translation is largely unknowable. It could mean sodomy, pederasty, male prostitution…
But the third reference, “malakos”, might give an insight into Paul’s mindset here. Malakos is mistranslated because it has no direct translation. The closest we have is “effeminate” or “call-boy” or “catamite” but it wasn’t limited to males. Some claim it was more like being the “bottom” in a relationship, but that makes no sense in context.
There’s a possibility that the last two might also refer to men trading sexual favors as part of a business transaction in lieu of money.
This is about the silliest excuse for a discussion I have ever come across. Especially as a considerable number the contributors don’t actually know anything about bible
So YOU’RE an expert? It’s all ancient mythological nonsense anyway.
Actually, as this site shows, the bible IS pretty horrible: https://www.evilbible.com/