homosexuality and the Bible

It would be interesting to know why a group of translators decided in 1946 to include the word homosexual in the Bible for the first time. Translating the Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek original biblical texts into English is always a matter of judgement, because there is rarely an English word with exactly the same meaning as the word in the original language. The task is more difficult when the meaning of the original text is uncertain, or the meaning of particular Greek or Hebrew words is unknown.

In 1946, homosexuality was thought to be a mental disorder. Since then research has demonstrated that homosexuals are psychologically indistinguishable from heterosexuals. Now that homosexuality is considered to be within the normal range of human behavior, most recent translations of the Bible do not use the word homosexual. One exception is the NIV.

Gen. 19:5-8;
The Hebrew verb which is commonly translated as "know" is ya,,da. It appears 943 times in the Hebrew Scriptures. In only about a dozen of these cases does it refers to sexual activity - all heterosexual.

"Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen." Ezekeiel 16:49-50

Lev. 18:22; 20:13;
Many Biblical scholars interpret these verses as referring to temple prostitution, which was a common practice in the Middle East at that time. They note that to'ebah, often translated "abomination", is a religious term, usually reserved for use against instances of idolatry. If the writer(s) of Leviticus wished to refer to a moral violation, a sin, he would have used the Hebrew word zimah. The word "abomination" that we see in English translations of the Bible could better be translated "foreign religious cult practice." The Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (circa 3rd century BCE) translated to'ebah into Greek as bdelygma, which meant ritual impurity.

Deut. 23:17; 1 Kin. 14:24; 15:12; 22:46; 2 Kin. 23:7;
The word qadesh in the original Hebrew text was mistranslated as "sodomite". Quadesh literally means "holy one" and is here used to refer to a man who engages in ritual prostitution in a Pagan temple. The entire verse seems to condemn temple, ritual, prostitution, whether heterosexual or homosexual. It has nothing to say about gay or lesbian sex within either a casual or a committed relationship.

Rom. 1:24,26,27;
The Greek phrase para physin is commonly translated into the English word "unnatural". In Greek, the phrase really means "that which is beyond the ordinary and usual." "Unconventional" would have been a good word to use. Paul uses those very same words para physin to describe how God grafted the Gentiles into the olive tree that is the Jews. Romans 11:24 Now Jew and Gentile are one in Christ. But to graft a wild tree into a cultivated tree is not the ordinary thing to do; it is something unusual. Still, that is what God did through Christ. Paul uses the same two words, para physin 1 Corinthians 11:14, when he refers to long hair on men as unusual and not ordinary.

1 Cor. 6:9; 1 Tim. 1:9,10.
The original Greek text is malakoi arsenokoitai. In both Matthew 11:8 and Luke 7:25, malakoi is translated as "soft" (KJV) or as "fine" (NIV) in references to clothing. The meaning of arsenokoitai has been lost. Some sources in the early Church interpreted the phrase as referring to "temple prostitutes" - people who engaged in ritual sex in Pagan temples, others thought that it meant "masturbators". Much Greek homosexual erotic literature has survived, none of it contains the word aresenokoitai