New Book/Documentary Details How ONE Bible Translation Error Turned Society Against the Gays

December 21, 2022
TOMMY

Photo: Matt Chase

Listen, I'm a literal card-carrying member of the American Atheists. That being said, I'm still fascinated by the impact these mythology texts hold over the world, so to learn that the homophobic parts are legit errors is decidedly something that interests me. And that's exactly the claim of Ed Oxford and Kathy Baldock.

The two met years ago and and began to collaborate on their shared love of deconstructing the Bible. The result of their work was their book Forging a Sacred Weapon: How the Bible Became Anti-Gay. That book and their work also became the fuel for their documentary, 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture. The title for this comes from the fact that, in their research, they discovered that the actual word “homosexual” does not appear in a translation of the Christian mythology tests for the first time until February 11, 1946 in the "Revised Standard Version" (RSV). In it, the RSV translates 1 Corinthians 6:9 by substituting the word “homosexual” for the the Greek words “malakoi” and “arsenokoitai.”

What does this mean? Well, as Oxford puts it, “…we went to Leviticus 18:22 and [the translator is] translating it for me word for word. 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.’” In other words: this nefarious re-working of the bible was the literal moment that society started incorrectly associating gays with pedophilia.

Not sure what he saw was correct and not just an errant one-off, Oxford then grabbed his facsimile copy of Martin Luther's original 1534 German translation. "My friend is reading through it for me and he says, “Ed, this says the same thing!” They use the word knabenschander. Knaben is boy, schander is molester. This word ‘boy molesters’ for the most part carried through the next several centuries of German Bible translations. Knabenschander is also in 1 Timothy 1:10. So the interesting thing is, I asked if they ever changed the word arsenokoitai to homosexual in modern translations. So my friend found it and told me, ‘The first time homosexual appears in a German translation is 1983.’”

Apparently, in 1971, this mistake was corrected from “homosexual” to “sexual perverts” in the Revised Standard Version, but it was too late; the damage was done. The word “homosexual” now appeared in almost every translation of the Bible.

The documentary premieres at the Palm Springs International Film Festival on January 9th. So if you're in the SoCal area, make sure to go! You can get tickets here. Take a look at the trailer for the documentary below!