Bible study on homosexuality and the bible

I ran across a wonderful site which mentioned Inclusive Orthodoxy which is the brainstorm of Justin R. Cannon.

In 2002, Justin began his own personal quest for knowledge in what is representative of a growing number of gay Christians seeking to know what the Bible says about homosexuality. What he discovered through in-depth Bible study began his personal journey out of the shadows of self-hate and lies, and resulted in the publication of his own study The Bible, Christianity, & Homosexuality and eventually the founding of Inclusive Orthodoxy (as TruthSetsFree.net) in the Spring of 2005. Justin embraces a very ecumenical perspective that recognizes a deep sense of unity among all Christians that transcends the walls of denominations. Justin has been recognized among OUT Magazine’s Top 100 LGBT achivers of 2006 and was honored as one of Instinct Magazine's twenty-five Leading Men of 2007. He is a graduate of Earlham College in Richmond, IN and is currently attending the Church Divinity School of the Pacific (http://www.cdsp.edu/) as he pursues priesthood within the Episcopal Church.

I was very impressed with his "bible and homosexuality" section, especially his "The Bible, Christianity, & Homosexuality" bible study.

Here's some excerpts:

I would like to share with you a study of the six Bible verses that have often been used in reference to homosexuality, as well as explore homosexuality within the context of Christian tradition.

Regardless of whether or not you are a Bible scholar; whether or not you can read Greek; or if you know everything or nothing about Christian tradition, you will be able to follow this study of:

The Bible, Christianity, and Homosexuality.

The English word homosexual is a compound word made from the Greek word homo, meaning “the same,” and the Latin term sexualis, meaning “sex.” The term homosexual is of modern origin, and it was not until about a hundred years ago that it was first used. There is no word in biblical Greek or Hebrew that is equivalent to the English word homosexual. The 1946 Revised Standard Version (RSV) New Testament was the first translation to use the word homosexual.

There is no word in biblical Greek or Hebrew for “sodomy” or “sodomite.” A Sodomite would have been simply an inhabitant of Sodom, just as a Moabite would have been an inhabitant of Moab, though the word sodomite does not show up in biblical Greek or Hebrew. Any translation of the Bible making use of the words sodomy or sodomite are clear interpretations and not faithful translations.

Passage I: The Sodom Account (Genesis 19:1-9)

The story of Sodom is an appropriate text to begin with, as it has taken a central role in the study of homosexuality. We must understand the context of this account. God, according to this account, sent two angels to warn Abraham’s nephew, Lot, about the approaching destruction of Sodom. If we stop here for a moment we will see that even before sending the angels, God intended to destroy Sodom. Whatever the reason for the city’s destruction it had to do with the sin of Sodom before this event.

First of all, in interpreting this event we must take into account the entire situation. Whatever is happening here it is a form of rape. Nonetheless, if we were to accept that the distinction is gender-based, we could only conclude homosexual rape of angels is worse than heterosexual rape. To use this story to condemn loving and committed homosexual couples is unfounded and truly stretching this story outside of its historical framework.

Important Term : arsenokoitai (arsenokoitai)

This Greek noun is formed from the joining together of the Greek adjectival prefix for male (arseno-) and the Greek word for beds (koitai). Literally then it would mean, “male beds.” It is found in 1 Timothy 1:10 and 1 Corinthians 6:9. This is the first appearance of the word in preserved Greek literature and outside of these two verses this word does not appear at all in the Bible.

The meaning of the word arsenokoitai in both 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 is debated. Because of the obscurity of this word and the lack of outside sources to shed light on its meaning, we must derive its meaning from the text.

Passage II: 1 Timothy 1:8-10

Some commonly read Bible translations include the King James Version (KJV), New International Version (NIV), New King James (NKJ), Revised Standard Version (RSV), and New English Bible (NEB). These words were, respectively, translated in the following manner:

As we see there is no clear-cut agreement as to what these words mean, though the above translations agree on the general sense of such words. To determine the precise meanings, we will use a lexicon. A lexicon is a scholarly dictionary used to determine the meaning of biblical words. A search through the online Greek lexicon available at searchgodsword.org gives the following information on the Greek term pornos, which is the stem of the word pornoi, the first of the three words:

Pornos derives from the verb pernemi meaning “to sell” and the following three definitions are given:
1. a male who prostitutes his body to another’s lust for hire
2. a male prostitute
3. a male who indulges in unlawful sexual intercourse, a fornicator

Andrapodistes, the stem of the word Andrapodistai, the third word, returns the following definitions:
1. slave-dealer, kidnapper, man-stealer
a. of one who unjustly reduces free males to slavery
b. of one who steals the slaves of others and sells them.

Arsenokoitai, as previously indicated, is made up of the Greek words for male (arseno-) and beds (koitai). In Greek, the word koitai, literally meaning beds, is commonly used as a euphemism for one who has sex. Arseno- is an adjectival prefix, thus literally we could translate this as “a man who has sex” or “male bedder.”

It was a common practice in that men of Paul’s time would have slave “pet” boys whom they sexually exploited. Dr. Ralph Blair explains, “The desired boys were prepubescent or at least without beards so that they seemed like females.”3 Today, this practice is referred to as pederasty. Regardless, we know the pornos is a prostitute.

Keeping this in mind, let’s look back at what we have so far: the enslaved male prostitute, the “male-bedder” (arsenokoitai), and the slave dealer. This contextual dynamic leads one to understand arsenokoitai as being the one who sleeps with the prostitute—the man who literally lies on the bed with him. It is as if Paul were saying,
“male prostitutes, males who lie [with them], and slave dealers [who procure them].”2 Not only does the syntactical and historical context point to this understanding, but also the very literal sense of the word arsenokoitai itself: male bed.

View the full Bible study here