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6. Homosexuality and Singleness in 1 Corinthians

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1 Corinthians 6:9-10

Greek and Roman Pederasty

  • The Greeks had institutionalized consensual pedophilia between citizens of equal rank. An older man would enter a sexual relationship with a preadolescent boy that included mentoring and, ultimately, business opportunities. The Romans likewise practiced pederasty, but never within the same rank and not for the purposes of helping the child’s future.
  • Moyer Hubbard: “[P]ederasty was also widely practiced and was considered an acceptable form of sexual expression between an adult male and a prepubescent teen, usually of lower social rank. A common subject for Martial’s epigrammatic wit is lamenting the boy who matures and turns to heterosexual relations; other times he simply extols the delights of pederasty. Indeed, in Martial’s circles, pedophilia was so pervasive that he warns young men about to marry that they had better visit the prostitute’s district and find someone who will train them to enjoy women. … [M]arriage contracts often contained a stipulation against bringing a boy-lover into the home.”1
  • Marilyn Skinner: “[R]ank and class were more decisive in calibrating sexual power relations than physiological manhood. The body of the Roman vir, the adult citizen male, was regarded as inviolable, legally protected from sexual penetration, beating, and torture. … Although sexual attraction to youths was regarded as completely normal, just as it was in Greece, Roman men were rigorously prohibited by law as well as custom from sexual contact with freeborn citizen boys. Violation of the physical integrity of a citizen youth was treated as the equivalent of unlawful relations with married or unmarried women and punished as stuprum, a criminal sexual act. … Pederasty, as an institutionalized cross-generational relationship of two Roman citizens, thus becomes unthinkable. Furthermore, because slaves and prostitutes were the only legitimate objects of male homoerotic desire, relationships with boys were often treated as trivial even by those who viewed them in a favorable light.”2
  • Horace: “When your throat is parched with thirst, do you insist on having a golden tankard [cup]? When famished do you turn up your nose at all but peacock and turbot [expensive fish]? When your organ is stiff, and a servant girl or a young boy from the household is near at hand and you know you can make an immediate assault, would you sooner burst with tension? Not me. I like sex to be there and easy to get.”3 (Horace, Satire 113-119)

    • 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 Two words present significant translation difficulties

    • malakoi (μαλακοί): male prostitutes (NRSVUE), boy prostitutes (NABRE)
    • arsenokoitai (ἀρσενοκοῖται): men who engage in illicit sex (NRSVUE), sodomites (NABRE)
    • Neither of these are very good translations. Each one limits the meaning of both words more than necessary.

      • Arsenokoitai (Ἀρσενοκοῖται)

      • Let’s begin with the second of the two key words (arsenokoitai). The Greek translation of Leviticus 20:13 is the likely background from which Paul was pulling for this word.
      • Leviticus 20:13 (NETS)
        • And he who lies with a male [arsenos] in a bed [koiten] for a woman, both have committed an abomination; by death let them be put to death; they are liable.
      • Thus the Greek reads arsenos koiten (ἄρσενος κοίτην), which are the two words Paul combined into one in 1 Corinthian 6:9 (arsenokoitai). Thus, Paul has in mind a man who is having sex with a man.

        • Malakoi (Μαλακοί)

        • The other word in question (malakoi) derives from the word malakos, meaning “soft” and can refer to soft clothing. However, the standard Greek dictionary (BDAG) includes this second definition: “pert. to being passive in a same-sex relationship, effeminate of catamites of men and boys who are sodomized in such a relationship.”4

          • Effeminate Men in the Ancient World

          • Juvenal: “Supposing none of these exits catches your fancy, don’t you think it better to sleep with a pretty boy? Boys don’t quarrel all night or nag you for little presents while they’re on the job, or complain that you don’t come up to their expectations, or demand more grasping passion.”5 (Satires 33-7)
          • Phaedrus: “Then somebody asked old Aesop what paradoxical process had produced men-women [masculine women] and vice versa [feminine men]. “The same Prometheus … had spent the day producing in separated piles those two parts which decency demands to be concealed by clothes, intending to attach them to their respective bodies. But Bachhus unexpectedly invited him to dinner. He indulged deeply in heaven nectar and only got home late at night, with unsteady steps. Then with heavy head and drunken fumbling he fitted female fixtures onto males, and members meant for males onto females. And that’s why today we all too often see passion diverted into depraved paths.”6 (Phaedrus, Fables15)
          • Juvenal: “Perhaps you despise the unwarlike Rhodians, the scented sons of Corinth – and rightly so: what harm can ever befall you from youths who put on perfume and shave their legs to the crotch? But steer clear of rugged Spain, give a very wide birth to Gaul…”7 (Satires 112-115)
          • Epictetus: 1 He was once visited by a young student of rhetoric who was stylishly dressed and who had a very elaborate hairdo. … 27 “Are you a man or a woman?”

            • “A man.”

            “So adorn yourself as a man, not as a woman. A woman’s skin is naturally smooth and soft; if she’s hairy, she’s a freak and she’s put on display in a freak show in Rome. 28 In the case of a man, this happens if he’s without hair: if he’s naturally hairless, he’s a freak, so if we find a man trimming and tweezing his hair, what are we to make of him? Where shall we exhibit him and how shall we advertise him? ‘Come and see a man who’d rather be a woman!’ 29 What a scandalous spectacle! No one would believe the advertisement! By Zeus, I imagine that even men who tweeze do so without appreciating what it is they’re doing.

            30 “Man, what reason do you have for finding fault with nature in your case? That it brought you into the world as a man? Are you saying that it should bring everyone into the world as women? In that case, what good would all your primping do you? If everyone was a woman, for whom would you be beautifying yourself? 31 You don’t like the way things are? Then why not go the whole hog and remove—what shall I call it?—remove the cause of your hairiness. Turn yourself into a woman in all respects, so that we’re not left in doubt, rather than being half man, half woman. 32 Who are you trying to please? Women? Then please them as a man.”

            “Yes, but they like smooth-skinned men.”

            “Go hang yourself! If they liked sexual deviants [κίναιδος = cinaedus], would you become a sexual deviant? 33 Is that your job, is that what you were born for, to please dissolute women? 34 Is the kind of person we make a citizen of Corinth, and possibly city warden, or superintendent of the cadet force, or commander of the armed forces, or president of the games?8 (On Personal Adornment 3.1.1,27-34)

            • Marilyn Skinner: “To be a Roman vir, a “real man,” was to be hard in every sense—physically to be impervious to pain or fatigue, mentally to be stern and unyielding, and, of course, inevitably to take the insertive position in sexual congress. … The Romans borrowed from the Greeks the word kinaidos, denoting a man who allowed himself to be entered anally. … Latinized as cinaedus, it meant the opposite of vir; thus Romans could be assigned to one of two categories, “man” (vir) or “non-man” (cinaedus).”9

              • Putting It All Together

              • malakoi (μαλακοὶ): the passive participant in male on male sex of any age
              • arsenokoitai (ἀρσενοκοῖται): the active participant in male on male sex of any age
              • Paul spoke to the Corinthians in such a way that communicated both roles were sinful acts. He did not outlaw homosexuality in our modern sense of orientation. Like the Old Testament, Paul solely focused on the sex act itself. Corinthian Christians should not engage in sex with the same sex.
              • Furthermore, Paul fully believed that people who engaged in this activity could become washed, sanctified, and justified (1 Cor 6:11)

                • Singleness

                • Paul was single; Jesus was single; many effective Christians over the last two millennia were single. Marriage is not salvation.
                • 1 Corinthians 7:7-9 Paul thought singleness was better than marriage.
                • 1 Corinthians 7:28  Married people face distresses that singles don’t.
                • 1 Corinthians 7:32-35 Single people can serve God more effectively.
                • 1 Corinthians 7:36-40 What matters most is your relationship with God, not your marital status.
                • God loves masculine women and feminine men. God loves those who are attracted to the same sex. God loves those who don’t like their biological sex. God wants everyone to come to Christ and have eternal life. However, once someone becomes a Christian, he or she is bound to live within the boundaries God has set for behavior. Choosing singleness is available for anyone, but especially those who—for whatever reason—do not want to marry someone of the opposite sex.

                  •  

                  Bibliography

                  Bauer, Walter, Frederick William  Danker, William F. Arndt, F. Gingrich, Kurt Aland, Barbara Aland, and Viktor Reichmann. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. 3rd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000.

                  Epictetus. The Complete Works: Handbook, Discourses & Fragments. Translated by Robin Waterfield. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 2022.

                  Horace. Satires and Epistles. Translated by Niall Rudd. London, England: Penguin, 2005.

                  Hubbard, Moyer V. Christianity in the Greco-Roman World. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010.

                  Juvenal. The Sixteen Satires. Translated by Peter Green. 3rd ed. London, England: Penguin, 2004.

                  Phaedrus. The Fables of Phaedrus. Translated by P. F. Widdows. Austin, TX: Univeristy of Texas Press, 1992.

                  Skinner, Marilyn B. Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture. Oxford, England: Blackwell, 2005.

                  1. Moyer V. Hubbard, Christianity in the Greco-Roman World (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 188.
                  2. Marilyn B. Skinner, Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture (Oxford, England: Blackwell, 2005), 195-7.
                  3. Horace, Satires and Epistles, trans. Niall Rudd (London, England: Penguin, 2005), 58.
                  4. Walter Bauer et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000).
                  5. Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires, trans. Peter Green, 3rd ed. (London, England: Penguin, 2004), 36.
                  6. Phaedrus, The Fables of Phaedrus, trans. P. F. Widdows (Austin, TX: Univeristy of Texas Press, 1992), 102.
                  7. Juvenal, 65.
                  8. Epictetus, The Complete Works: Handbook, Discourses & Fragments, trans. Robin Waterfield (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 2022), 212-6.
                  9. Skinner, 212.
                  The post 6. Homosexuality and Singleness in 1 Corinthians first appeared on Living Hope.
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