Well, they didn’t operate out of a vacuum when they translated something.

So then I started thinking that of 4 of the 6 clobber passages, all these nations and translations were referring to pederasty, and not what we would call homosexuality today. So for most of history, most translations thought these verses were obviously referring the pederasty, not homosexuality! Ancient Greek documents show us how even parents utilized this abusive system to help their sons advance in society. So she’s going through it carefully, and then her face comes up, “Do you know what this says?!” and I said, “No! That’s why you are here!” She said, “It says boy abusers, boy molesters.” It turns out that the ancient world condoned and encouraged a system whereby young boys (8-12 years old) were coupled by older men. The letters are a little bit funky, the spelling is a little bit different. (She didn’t really know why I was asking.) Just like reading an old English Bible, it’s not easy to read. So we met at a coffee shop in Pasadena with my old Bibles. I asked one of my friends, who was attending Fuller seminary and is fluent in both Swedish and Norwegian, to look at these verses for me. I also have a 1674 Swedish translation and an 1830 Norwegian translation of the Bible. So, I say, I think there is a “gay agenda” after all! So an American company paid for it and influenced the decision, resulting in the word homosexual entering the German Bible for the first time in history. Thus it was Americans who paid for it! In 1983 Germany didn’t have enough of a Christian population to warrant the cost of a new Bible translation, because it’s not cheap. If anyone was going to put the word homosexual in the Bible, the Germans should have been the first to do it!Ī German translation of the Bible showing the word 'knabenschander' meaning 'molester of boys.' (The Forge Online Photo used by permission).Īs I was talking with my friend I said, “I wonder why not until 1983? Was their influence from America?” So we had our German connection look into it again and it turns out that the company, Biblica, who owns the NIV version, paid for this 1983 German version. Also because the Germans were the ones who created the word homosexual in 1862, they had all the history, research, and understanding to change it if they saw fit however, they did not change it until 1983. So my friend found it and told me, “The first time homosexual appears in a German translation is 1983.” To me that was a little suspect because of what was happening in culture in the 1970s. So the interesting thing is, I asked if they ever changed the word arsenokoitai to homosexual in modern translations. Knabenschander is also in 1 Timothy 1:10. This word “boy molesters” for the most part carried through the next several centuries of German Bible translations. My friend is reading through it for me and he says, “Ed, this says the same thing!” They use the word knabenschander. I then grabbed my facsimile copy of Martin Luther’s original German translation from 1534. In the English where it says “Man shall not lie with man, for it is an abomination,” the German version says “Man shall not lie with young boys as he does with a woman, for it is an abomination.” I said, “What?! Are you sure?” He said, “Yes!” Then we went to Leviticus 20:13- same thing, “Young boys.” So we went to 1 Corinthians to see how they translated arsenokoitai (original Greek word) and instead of homosexuals it said, “Boy molesters will not inherit the kingdom of God.” So we went to Leviticus 18:22 and he’s translating it for me word for word. Now I’ve got most European major languages that I’ve collected over time. Anyway, I had a German friend come back to town and I asked if he could help me with some passages in one of my German Bibles from the 1800s.

So I started collecting old Bibles in French, German, Irish, Gaelic, Czechoslovakian, Polish… you name it. So before figuring out why they decided to use that word in the RSV translation (which is outlined in my upcoming book with Kathy Baldock, Forging a Sacred Weapon: How the Bible Became Anti-Gay) I wanted to see how other cultures and translations treated the same verses when they were translated during the Reformation 500 years ago. It first showed up in the RSV translation. You have been part of a research team that is seeking to understand how the decision was made to put the word homosexual in the bible. We got to sit down with Ed Oxford at his home in Long Beach, California and talk about this question.

The word “arsenokoitai” shows up in two different verses in the bible, but it was not translated to mean “homosexual” until 1946. Reprinted with permission from The Forge Online (The Forge Online Photo reprinted with permission) Some of scholar Ed Oxford's early Bible translations.

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