[B-Greek] ARSENOKOITHS: Did I get this right?
George F Somsel
gfsomsel at juno.com
Mon Mar 14 19:34:26 EST 2005
On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 16:19:08 -0500 Jonathan Robie
<jonathan.robie at datadirect.com> writes:
> I composed the following as a response to someone on another list who
>
> claimed that ARSENOKOITHS is an obscure word, whose meaning is not
> certain, but probably refers to some kind of male prostitute. I
> would
> like to make sure that what I wrote is accurate before sending it -
> does
> this really represent current thinking on the topic, or is the word
> more
> difficult to understand than I think?
>
> By the way, the transliteration I used is not standard B-Greek, but
>
> that's intentional.
>
> Jonathan
>
> If I want to know what a Greek word means, I usually start by
> looking
> at the dictionary. The standard dictionary for New Testament Greek
> is
> BDAG: "A Greek-Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early
> Christian
> Literature", by Baur, Danker, Arndt, and Gingrich, which gives the
> following definition:
>
> A male who engages in sexual activity w. a person of his own sex,
> pederast.
>
> BDAG indicates when a word's meaning is obscure, but it does not do
> that here. Now we could just accept what the standard dictionary
> says,
> which is usually a safe bet, or we can probe deeper to try to
> understand why it gives the interpretation it does, looking up some
> of
> the articles it references. Let's do that just a little in this
> email.
>
> First, let's remember that our thinking may be different form that
> of
> the first century. BDAG goes on to explain that 'homosexual' is not
> a
> proper reading, referring to an article in Vigilaiae Christianae 40
> by
> William Petersen. In this article, Petersen points out a major
> difference between modern thought and Classical or Roman antiquity.
> At
> that time, male sexuality was regarded as polyvalent. "There were
> an
> infinite number of options, any number of which might be pursued
> serially or simultaneously...While individual tastes may vary,
> virtually the total spectrum of known sexual behavior, wiht the
> exception of transvestism, was acceptable (with varying degrees of
> enthusiasm on the part of the chronicler, of course). Thus, a man
> could be characterized sexually by describing his sexual
> ACTS...With
> the emergence of Christianity...new lines were drawn,...but these
> new
> lables were, perforce, applied on the basis of ACTS, just as the
> earlier Greco-Roman labels had been.
>
> In other words, ARSENOKOITES has nothing to do with sexual
> orientation, but with sexual acts. According to Petersen, by the
> way,
> the modern concept of sexual orientation originaged in 1869, when a
> Hungarian physician, Karoly M. Benkert, coined the phrase
> "homosexual"
> to describe "male or female individuals" who were erotically
> oriented
> toward their own sex "from birth".
>
> Of course, a dictionary can be wrong, which is why BDAG cites the
> sources it relies on so that we can check up on them. I'm not
> positive, but I think that Lin was relying largely (directly or
> indirectly) on John Boswell's "Christianity, Social Tolerance, and
> Homosexuality". BDAG cites Boswell, but also cites articles that
> criticize him, and agrees with the critics rather than Boswell. Of
> course, the dictionary or the articles might be wrong, but let's
> look
> at some of the evidence they give.
>
> One useful article is David Wright's "Homosexuals or Prostitutes",
> in
> Vigilaiae Christianae 38. This is a long and rich article, and
> discusses the use of the word in depth in a variety of
> literature. Here are some of the major points (I'm leaving a LOT
> out).
>
> 1. The term ARSENOKOITAI is derived directly from the terms ARSEN
> ('male', especially in sexual contexts) and KOITE ('bed', both as a
> noun and as a verb). It is related to other words, such as these:
>
> METRO-KOITES - having sex with your mother
> DOULO-KOITES - having sex with a slave
> POLU-KOITES - sleeping with many men or women
>
> 2. ARSENOKOITAI closely echoes the Greek (Septuagint) translations
> of
> Leviticus 18:22 (META ARSENOS OU KOIMEHESE KOITEN GUNAIKOS - "you
> shall not lie with a man as with a woman") and Leviticus 20:13 -
> hOS
> AN KOIMETHE META ARSENOS KOITEN GUNAIKOS - "if someone lies with a
> man
> as with a woman".
>
> 3. A careful look at the way other writers of the early New
> Testament
> period used the term ARSENOKOITAI indicates that they understood it
> to
> refer to male homosexual sex (this takes pages and pages, and I
> won't
> try to reconstruct it here).
>
> 4. Translations into other languages in the early Christian era -
> especially Latin, Syriac, and Coptic - use terms that clearly refer
> to
> male homosexual sex in those languages.
>
> My basic problem here is that when I follow the usual rules for
> understanding the meaning of a Greek word, I come up with different
> answers than Lin gives me, and the sources I look at don't suggest
> that there is need for a lot of doubt. Most of the people who
> disagree
> with what you would find in standard scholarly works seem to be
> advocates, and they seem to be rehashing arguments of Boswell,
> arguments that have been refuted pretty strongly in the articles I
> mention above and other places, and which no longer get much
> credence
> on the biblical Greek mailing lists that I've participated on.
>
> In other words, I think the dictionary is probably right, and when
> I
> probe the references for this particular word, they seem
> convincing.
> They also specifically refute most of the claims that Lin made,
> arguments originally made by Boswell.
>
> Jonathan
___________________
I think the difference in length of the two articles s.v. ARSENOKOITHS in
BAGD and BDAG is accounted for by the rise to prominence of the
homosexual agenda subsequent to the composition of BAGD in case anyone
happens to be searching for the references cited in BAGD rather than BDAG
-- you won't find much of it there. Here's one small reason to get the
newer version.
If I understood your sometimes Byzantine twists, you finally arrive at
the conclusion that the word refers to one who engages in homosexual acts
rather than simply to one who functions as a cult prostitute. In ancient
times such persons who were not the dominant party were euphemistically
referenced as "flute-players" for fairly obvious reasons. Such a
relation of Antinous to the emperor Hadrian is fairly well know. In
regard to what a male cultic prostitute would have been called, I refer
you to Re 22.15 where it says ECW hOI KUNES "outside are the dogs." This
is based on an OT prohibition in Dt 23.18 "You shall not bring the hire
of a harlot, or the wages of a dog, into the house of the LORD your God
in payment for any vow, for both these are an abomination to the LORD
your God." So, yes, I think ARSENOKOITHS does refer to one who engages
in the performance of the act without regard to being a cultic
prostitute.
george
gfsomsel
___________
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