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WHO IS THE SODOMITE??? by Rev. Marj Creech
This is tricky, so I want to give you some background info on the word Sodomite, as used in the King James Version of the Bible. This applies to the original KJV; I don't have a New KJV handy to see if it is also true there. The King James translators don't use the word Sodomite to refer to people who live/lived in Sodom! Instead they use the word Sodomite later on in the Bible, in several places, to translate the Hebrew word "Kadesh," which means "male temple prostitute" or "shrine prostitute" (plural Kedeshim). They don't use Sodomite to translate the word for the female temple prostitute, Kadesha, (plural Kedeshoth). (Sometimes the Hebrew letters are transliterated with a Q instead of a K.)
More modern translations like the NIV translate the Hebrew as male or female shrine (temple) prostitutes. That's why, if you look up Sodomite in a Lexicon or Concordance, like Strong's, you will see the definition "male temple prostitute." The word Sodomite in the KJV has nothing to do with Sodom! The connection was in the minds of the translators! There is no connection--either in language or in reference--in the original Hebrew between Sodom and male temple prostitutes!
How did they make such a translation error? Here's my best guess: I suspect there weren't any generally accepted words for homosexuals in the1600's.except for derogatory slang words. Remember orientation was not a concept; there was just the sex act. The word "homosexual" was coined by a psychiatrist in the early 1900's. He was trying to create a neutral clinical word. Other words before that were "invert" and "pervert"...and I suspect "Sodomite" was created around the time the KJV was translated to describe the "despicable" act of male/male sex. The translators' bias was that the sin of Sodom was attempted male/male sex (it didn't matter if they were all straight!) The Hebrew word Kadesh later in the Bible was hard to translate, but seemed to include male/male sex. Research had not yet uncovered the practice of cult sex. Why not just coin a word that would cover both? It was such a popular word that it got into the law books and evolved over the years to mean anything from anal intercourse with either gender, to sex with animals. The connection with animal sex undoubtedly comes from bestiality being mentioned close to men lying with males in Leviticus!
And the original Living Bible, a paraphrase by one man, in Kings 14:24, came up with the ridiculous and false --and very harmful--phrase, "There was homosexuality in the land..." for the Hebrew meaning, "There was male cult prostitution in the land"; that, of course, the people of God found abhorrent because it was intregally linked with worshipping idols. What does your translation of the Bible say? In some US states today sodomy also is defined to include oral sex with either gender--humans I mean, even a man with his wife!
It is good to keep in mind that translators, even if trying to be unbiased, are going to translate a word they can't figure out by a more general word, rather than a specific one. We're going to see this problem come up in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and I Timothy 1:10, when some translators translate the Greek words "arsenokoitai" and "malakoi" as some variation of male homosexuals, because they believe the words have SOMETHING to do with male/male sex. They really can't tell the exact meaning from either the way the words are used in the Bible or in any other literature of the time. The words probably mean some type of male/male sex , such as pederasty, general prostitution, unfaithfulness, cult prostitution, or some other act most of us, gay or straight, find abhorrent, not just homosexuality in general. (Just because an adult male having sex with a young girl is immoral, does this mean all heterosexuality is wrong?)
To further complicate the matter, the RSV (another translation published in 1947, but worked on much earlier) also uses "Sodomites" to translate the Greek word "arsenokoitai" found in 1 Timothy 1:10. The same word, "arsenokoitai" is combined with another Greek word, "malakoi" and both words are combined in the minds of the translators (in the same RSV translation!) and translated as "homosexuals" in 1 Corinthians 6:9. (What does your translation say?) At first this seems very strange. They obviously didn't know what to make of this arsenokoitai word (we're still not sure; did Paul coin it? It literally means "male-beds." "Sodomites" was the current catch-all word that had something to do with male-male sex and so it was the word used to translate these two ambiguous Greek words. Or did the RSV translators mean that the two Greek words were somehow connected to male temple proatitution? Another unspoken rule of translation is used: if you can't figure out what a word in Greek or Hebrew means, go for the more general word in English, rather than guess wrong with a specific word. That is, use "Sodomites" or "homosexuals" as general words, rather than "male temple prostitutes" or "male-worshipper-at-pagan-shrines-who-had-sex-with-male-or-female-priests-representing-pagan-gods." Translators do the best they can but are inevitably influenced by the cultural bias and word usage of their times, not to mention the current quality of language study of the ancient texts, ie, what did the words mean way back then? Study of ancient Bible texts continues !
The recently published and highly respected New Oxford Annotated THIRD Edition of the NRSV includes many of the gay positive footnotes and translations that our GLBT people have been saying are more correct for years!!! God is trying to free us from homophobic and biased translations of the text!! Or, at least, translators are trying to be less biased! The Message, a modern paraphrase of the Bible respected by many Evangelical Christians, also has less homophobic understandings.
By the way, if you see one of those lovely signs saying, "Sodomites in hell" or some such hate-mongering, take "heart" in knowing they are prophesying their own destruction: if you actually read the story of Sodom in Genesis 19 (read the similar story in Judges 19), it's pretty clear that IF the gay-bashers mean the word Sodomite to refer to the people of Sodom who were destroyed (which is not a correct translation of the word they translate as Sodomite), but IF you allow that mistake, then the Sodomites (inhabitants of Sodom) are guilty of gross non-acceptance of strangers. They tried to rape angelic visitors, and tried to go after Lot also because he was a stranger, too. Jesus catches this interpretation in Luke 10:5-12, and Jude, v 6-10, talks about the men of Sodom going after "strange flesh," "HETEROSarx" in the original Greek. So those who are so mean to strangers are the real "Sodomites." GLBT folks are more like the visitors (the angels) in a non-accepting town, or like Lot who gave hospitality to strangers. Undoubtedly the most powerful thing we can do for gay-bashers is to pray for them before they bring down upon themselves their own destruction.