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Re: arsenokoites and malakos



In message <9401251940.AA19143@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu> you write:
>> 
>>    There is very little direct biblical reference to homosexuality.  A major
>>    component of the arguments on both sides is over the interpretation of these
>>    two words - thus my research into them  :)
>> 
>>    The `traditional` translations of these as referring to 'homosexuals' in 
>>    general has come under a lot of fire, but at the minute I haven't many 
>>    references to detailed discussion of them.
>> 
>> The real question, in my mind, is whether the "traditional"
>> translations are traditional at all.  They only seem to go back to the
>> fifteenth century at the latest.  St. John Chrysostom, who wasted no
>> love of gay people, never used those words in that context, nor did he
>> refer to the vice lists in which they occur.
>> 
>> John Boswell (while a bit hasty in much of his exegesis) presents a
>> good description of the history of translating those words in his
>> _Christianity,_Social_Tolerance,_and_Homosexuality_.  (But if this is
>> a graduate dissertation, wouldn't you have already read that??)
>> 

Indeed I have - It's pretty much the standard work on the matter ....
However his interpretation comes under attack from quite a lot of sources
and as my knowledge of Greek isn't as good as I would like it to be ......

I have the most of Boswell's text on these words in my account here, and 
could forward it to the list or to individuals if anyone is interested.


Tony

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Tony Bowden, Belfast, N Ireland    | I have discovered a truly marvelous flaw
dejavu@athmail1.causeway.qub.ac.uk | in Wile's proof of Fermat's last theorem
(or)      aj998@yfn.ysu.edu        | which unfortunately this 4 line .sig is
                                   | not large enough to contain.
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