Blog Post 13

Last time we saw that many excellent biblical scholars have concluded that the most common translations of 1 Corinthians 6:19 and 1 Timothy 1:10 related to gay people are actually mistranslations.  Today we continue . . .

In fact, when the executive director of the translation committee for the first edition of the New International Version was asked what the translators meant by the term “homosexual offenders” in the NIV’s original translation of I Corinthians 6:9, he replied that they were not referring to homosexual people per se but rather to people such as homosexual child molesters or rapists.  This explanation is consistent with the conclusions of multiple biblical scholars.

We should address one more argument that people have used in favor of the traditional interpretation of these passages.  Some biblical scholars have observed that the word arsenokoitai could be derived from a Greek translation of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint.  The Septuagint’s translation of the laws in Leviticus 18 and 20 that condemn same-sex sex includes words that could easily have been the root of the word arsenokoitai.  In other words, it could be that Jewish scholars coined the word based on the Septuagint’s (Greek) translation of Leviticus 18 and 20.

I have studied this carefully, and I think this is almost certainly true.  However, that does not mean that therefore I Corinthians 6 and 1 Timothy 1 condemn marriage for gay couples.  We still have to ask what Paul would have had in mind when he used this word.  As any student of language development knows, words change meaning over time.  So we still have to ask what sort of same-sex relationships Paul had in mind when he used the word arsenokoitai.  So once again we need to look at the historical context and ask what particular expression of same-sex relationships was most prominent at the time.  That is most likely what Paul would have had in mind. 

In summary, it appears very likely that these two passages have often been mistranslated—and that they do not refer to the loving, mutual, adult marriages of couples who are gay in orientation.  At the very least, we need to acknowledge that reputable scholars disagree about the translations, and so we must not use them to condemn gay people or marriage for gay couples.

This concludes our study of the Bible passages typically used to condemn gay people and marriages of gay couples.  We have seen that none of these passages condemn gay people or the marriages of gay couples as we understand them today.  So does that mean that the Bible doesn’t have anything to teach us related to marriage for gay couples?

No.  There is much biblical teaching that can provide indirect guidance as we consider the morality of marriage for gay couples.  That is where we are going to turn next.