Get our feed
Did you know that malakoi
|
 |
of ancient Corinth
The Greek word malakoi, which is the plural of malakos, and the Greek word arsenokoites are both used in 1 Cor 6:9.
Here is how the time-honored KJV translates I Cor 6:9.
"Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate (malakoi), nor abusers of themselves with mankind, (arsenokoites)" -1 Corinthians 6:9, KJV
Malakoi In 44 Translations
- The Apostle Paul - AD 55 - Greek - malakoi
- Wycliffe - 1380 - neische
- Wycliffe - 1388 - letchouris ayen kinde
- Tyndale - 1526 - weaklinges
- Martin Luther - 1534 - weichlinge
- Coverdale - 1535 - weaklinges
- Matthews - 1537 - weaklinges
- Great Bible - 1539 - weaklynges
- Swedish Version - 1541 - weaklingar
- Geneva Bible - 1560 - wantons
- Bishops Bible - 1568 - weaklinges
- Valera Spanish - 1602 - effeminados
- Rheims-Douay - 1609 - effeminat
- King James Version - 1611 - effeminate
- Portuguese - 1690 - efeminados
- Daniel Mace New Testament - 1729 - the effeminate
- Darby - 1884 - those who make women of themselves
- Darby French - 1885 - effemines
- Young’s Literal - 1898 - effeminate
- ASV - 1901 - effeminate
- Weymouth - 1903 - any who are guilty of unnatural crime
- Louis Segund French - 1910 - effemines
- Moffat - 1913 - catamites (boys who have sex with men)
- Lamsa Translation - 1933 - men who lie down with males
- New American - 1941 - sodomites
- Revised Standard - 1952 - sexual perverts
- Amplified - 1958 - those who participate in homosexuality
- NASB - 1963 - effeminate
- New American Bible - 1970 - boy prostitutes
- New English - 1970 - guilty of homosexual perversion
- NIV - 1973 - male prostitutes
- NKJV - 1979 - homosexuals
- JW-NWT - 1984 - men kept for unnatural purposes
- New Century - 1987 - male prostitutes
- Green’s Interlinear - 1986 - abusers
- NRSV - 1989 - male prostitutes
- Bible In Basic English - 1994 - one who is less than a man
- CEV - 1995 - pervert
- NLT - 1996 - male prostitute
- Complete Jewish Bible - 1998 - active or passive homosexuality
- International Standard Version - 2000 - male prostitutes
- The Message - 2002 - those who use and abuse each other
- World English Bible - 2005 - male prostitutes
- God’s Word Translation - 2006 - homosexuals
- The NET Bible - 2006 - passive homosexual partners
The Remarkable Semantic Shift
The remarkable semantic shift in the meaning of malakoi, which by 1958, came to equate malakoi with homosexuality instead of softness, moral weakness or effeminacy, was not prompted by new linguistic evidence. Instead, cultural factors influenced modern translators to inject anti-homosexual bias into their translation.
In ancient times, the malakos word group never referred exclusively to homosexuals and lesbians. The malakos stem rarely, if ever, referred to homosexual behavior.
Further, I have never seen any indication that the ancients used the malakos word group to refer to lesbians.
Yet, translating malakoi today as homosexuals causes the word to include lesbians, something the original text never said and translations never said for 1900 years.
It should be clearly understood that most antigay Christians today interpret 1 Corinthians 6:9 as a universal prohibition of homosexuality including lesbian relationships, this in spite of the fact that most of our spiritual ancestors did not understand the text to say that.
Scripture cannot mean now
what it did not mean then.
The Malakos Word Group
- The word malaka, with the general meaning soft, is used three times in the New Testament, Matthew 4:23, 9:35, 10:1. It is translated disease in the KJV and sickness in the NAS.
The Greek word malaka has nothing to do with homosexuality
- The word malakos occurs four times, in three verses in the New Testament. In Matthew 11:8 and Luke 7:25, Jesus uses the word to refer to soft clothing.
In the Bible, Jesus never used the malakos word group to mean homosexual.
Paul uses malakoi (the plural of malakos) in 1 Corinthians 6:9.
Some translations translate malakoi as "male prostitutes." (NIV, New Century, NRSV, NLT, ISV, WEB).
However, that malakoi means male prostitutes in Paul's usage is highly unlikely since Paul has already mentioned pornoi, meaning male prostitutes, in this vice list.
Because Paul's reasoning is tight and his writing style spare, it is unlikely Paul would repeat himself by using malakoi with the meaning of male prostitutes.
English translations did not translate malakoi to mean homosexual until the Amplified Bible in 1958.
- The word malakoi in New Testament times, was sometimes an epithet for being effeminate, not homosexual.
The ancients did not equate
effeminate with homosexuality.
Some of the mightiest warriors in ancient times were homosexuals yet they were not called malakoi. Our ancestors used the malakos word group in a way similar to a high school baseball coach who chides a lazy jock by saying,
“You throw like a girl”
or a drill instructor barking at his male, boot camp recruits,
“Okay ladies, drop
and give me 50”
The truth is, the word malakoi, in antiquity, was rarely, if ever, used to indicate homosexuals.
How Was Malakoi Used
In Ancient Times?
 |
Pericles, 495-429 BC, in his funeral oration, lauded the Greeks because they cultivated knowledge without malakia, meaning softness or effeminacy.
Here malakia referred to intellect, not homosexuality.
-Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, 431 BC, Book Two, Chapter VI.
 |
Plato, 427-347 BC, in The Republic, has Socrates opine that too much music effeminates a warrior, causing him to be malakoteroi, soft, feeble, sensitive.
Plato expressed an ancient Greek concept, that too much music made a man soft, not homosexual. -Plato, The Republic, 360 BC, Book III.
 |
Aristotle, 384-322 BC, in Nicomachean Ethics, used malakos to describe lack of restraint and excessive enjoyment of bodily pleasures.
Aristotle wrote: He “who pursues the excesses of things pleasant, and shuns those of things painful, of hunger and thirst and heat and cold and all the objects of touch and taste... that men are called 'soft' [malakos] with regard to these pleasures...Now of appetites and pleasures... with reference to all objects whether of this or of the intermediate kind men are not blamed for being affected by them, for desiring and loving them, but for doing so in a certain way, i.e. for going to excess.” -Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 7.4.4.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 60-7 BC, in Roman Antiquities, explains how Aristodemus Malacus, 504 BC, tyrant of Cumae [situated northwest of Naples, the first Greek colony on the Italian mainland], made the male children of Cumae effeminate (meaning soft or womanly, not homosexual), so they would not rise up against him.
 |
In ancient Greek society, the education of young men involved separation from effeminizing, womanly influence.
Young men were educated by older male friends of the family, who taught sports, ethics, fighting and philosophy in the gymnasium.
Aristodemus suppressed the all-male gymnasiums and limited male influence by giving male children into the care of female governesses.
“3 These children, accordingly, forsaking the houses of their fathers, were brought up in the country like slaves, serving the murderers of their fathers. And to the end that no noble or manly spirit might spring up in any of the rest of the citizens, he resolved to make effeminate by means of their upbringing all the youths who were being reared in the city, and with that view he suppressed the gymnasiums and the practice of arms and changed the manner of life previously followed by the children.4 For he ordered the boys to wear their hair long like the girls, adorn it with flowers, to keep it curled and to bind up the tresses with hair-nets, to wear embroidered robes that reached down to their feet, and, over these, thin and soft mantles, and to pass their lives in the shade.
And when they went to the schools kept by dancing-masters, flute-players and others who, like these, pay court to the Muses, their governesses attended them, taking along parasols and fans; and these women bathed them, carrying into the baths combs, alabaster pots filled with perfumes, and looking-glasses.
5 By such training he continued to enervate the youth till they had completed their twentieth year, and from that time permitted them to be considered as men.”
-Dionysius, Roman Antiquities, Book VII.9.3, p. 172.
 |
Josephus, AD 37-100, used malakos to describe men who appeared soft or weak through lack of courage in battle or who were reluctant to commit suicide in defeat or who enjoyed too much luxury.
This usage does not indicate homosexuality. -Wars of The Jews, 7.338; Antiquities of The Jews, 5.246; 10.194.
 |
This usage does not indicate homosexuality. -Epictetus, Discourse 3:9.
Dio Chrysostom, AD 40-120, used malakos to refer to those made soft by too much learning.
This usage does not indicate homosexuality. -Dio Chrysostom 49:25.
John The Faster, around AD 575. For centuries, malakia was said to mean masturbation. Use of malakia, with the meaning of masturbation, is attributed to John the Faster around AD 575. The Catholic Church has long interpreted malakia to mean masturbation. -John The Faster, Penitential. Does not indicate homosexuality.
Our honest, factual
conclusion about malakoi
Christian honesty requires nongay Christians to come clean on this issue. Nongay Christians must stop using I Corinthians 6:9 to assault gay and lesbian Christians.
Helpful Links
to make you think
There are four popular analogies which are used to validate Gay Relationships as blessed by God. .
Here is a real-life example of a prominent gay partnership in scripture - the amazing true love story of Jonathan and David. is the greatest human love story in the Bible.
Jesus identified the sin of Sodom and it was not homosexuality.
I am saying that the Holiness Code was aimed at Israel,in a specific place, the land of Israel, in a specific time period, while Israel was in the land, living under the Law. And what some Christians wrongly interpret as a universal prohibition of all gay relationships is, in reality, a prohibition of shrine prostitution in worship of the Canaanite fertility goddess.
What was a sodomite in the Bible? Were sodomites homosexuals, as many conservative preachers insist or was a sodomite in the Bible always a shrine prostitute who worshipped the Canaanite fertility goddess?
Those who believe that the Centurion’s pais was only a servant and not the same sex partner of the gay Centurion cite Greek lexicons to prove their case.
Family Values in the Bible are so different from Traditional family values as taught by Focus On The Family that modern Christians would totally reject the "family values" practiced by Abraham and Sarah, Ruth and Boaz and many of the heroes of faith in the Old Testament.
