shart1780 said:
1Corinthians 6: ( 9-10 )
"Do you 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."
First off, I've brought up this subject more than once.
I find it curious that "malakos" has finally been translated "male prostitutes." "Malakos" refers to young boys. "Arsenokoitai," horribly mistranslated as "homosexual offenders" (let me guess...you're quoting from the NIV?
), refers to the older men who'd have sex with them in temples. In short, it refers, at minimum, to temple prostitution ("idolatry") and, at most, to pedophilia. In the Greco-Roman era, it was not uncommon for older men to prey on younger boys. Thankfully, this is a practice that has long been abandoned. Not thankfully, we now have a concept in the Bible that we have no modern equivalent, so now all the bigots come out of the woodworks attempting to link it to homosexuality. Sorry, it doesn't work.
In case you don't believe me, homophobic old Roman Catholicism puts contextual footnotes in its Bibles, and has this to say:
"The Greek word translated as boy prostitutes [that your version translated as "male prostitutes"; Greek: "malakos"] may refer to catamites, i.e., boys or young men who were kept for purposes of prostitution, a practice not uncommon in the Greco-Roman world. In Greek mythology this was the function of Ganymede, the "cupbearer of the gods," whose Latin name was Catamitus. The term translated Sodomites [that your version translated as "homosexual offenders"; Greek: "arsenokoitai"] refers to adult males who indulged in homosexual practices with such boys. See similar condemnations of such practices in Romans 1:26-27; 1 Tim 1:10."
You know, specific heterosexual sex acts are condemned, but what people do to the so-called "same-sex" passages is that they make sweeping condemnations of *all* same-sex acts on the basis of these passages, while opposite-sex acts are treated with nuance. That is, if heterosexuals are forbidden to rape houseguests, then it'll be interpreted as a prohibition against rape. If homosexuals are forbidden to rape houseguests, it's interpreted that God hates all homosexual acts. It's a consistent and bigoted pattern.
Melon