Hot Steamy Yaoi! (Part 5)

Paul's First Epistles to the Church of the Greek City of Corinth, and to Timothy

Our good friend Paul, again. Such a great guy; but is he as homophobic as some might suggest?

"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."⁴⁴

Another verse commonly taken to sentence queer folk to Hell. Lo and behold, the NIV unsurprisingly skews the translation further:

"Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God."⁴⁵

All this in a passage moaning about in-fighting amongst church members, members suing each other in local courts, and partaking in local (sexual) customs (let us not forget what was previously mentioned of Greek culture and its attitude towards sex). To me, it reads as if Paul is primarily concerned about the public image of the recalcitrant church of Corinth.

Once again, the whole premise rests on ambiguity. Or rather, in this particular instance, colloquialism.

To begin with, Malakos⁴⁶, "effeminate" in the KJV, could be taken to mean, depending on your chosen translation and interpretation: masturbators; limp-wristed, camp, un-macho men; transvestites, or transsexuals; male prostitutes, or the submissive partner in anal intercourse (the latter being the most likely, considering Greek societal stigma³⁶)

Malakos appears twice more in the bible, in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke⁴⁶, describing what the garments of John the Baptist weren't (i.e. "soft", the literal translation of the word). Hmmm....

Wading further into the sea of uncertainty, "abusers of themselves with mankind" are Arsenokoites, or "man-beds"⁴⁷. Déjà vu à la Leviticus, anyone? A unique word, made up of two Greek words translating seperately as "man" and "bed". It appears once more in the entire Bible, in 1 Timothy Chapter 1 Verse 10, written by...guess who? Paul again is not condemning anyone, but explaining who the Law was made for (manbeds, apparently).

So, homosexuality is wrong based on a single, highly equivocal word, seemingly made up by Paul, for he is the only one to ever use it. Even though Greeks were hardly prudish when it came to depicting sex acts of any shape or form, he used a bizarre euphemism to hint at woofters, rather than use a perfectly good word already established in the Greek language? Sure, I can believe that.

My leprechaun believes it too.

Maybe Paul did mean gay people. But I have been unable to find contemporary recordings of Arsenokoites outside of the two mentions by the same author. It's certainly not a word in use today. It gets a few mentions amongst authors referencing Paul's writings, so that's of no use in our epic quest to clarify the essence of the word. The fact remains that to surmise what Arsenokoites means is folly, and no suitable grounds for any argument against homosexuality.

Thus ends the discourse on the only verses in the bible one might consider to be a negative reference on the subject of homosexuality.