Edward Dalcour

My response to Edward Dalcour in the comments section:

Dalcour would be hard-pressed to make his points if you took his lexicons away, the base of his arguments. Someone makes an excellent point that's worth repeating:

"For the most part, your (Dalcour's) argument consists of summaries of three lexica entries: Thayer, Louw & Nida, and BDAG. These are the best available lexica of the New Testament, and I refer to them regularly. However, it must be remembered that a lexicon gives the judgment of either a single scholar or a committee on the meaning of any word. The best lexica gives a list of the ways that any lexeme is used in the known literature so that the reader can form an educated judgment, and even be critical of the lexicon’s own conclusion.  The lexicon may also put forward suggested meanings which would account for all the usages, but ultimately the meaning is determined by the usages, not the authority of the lexicon."

Dalcour's only response to this statement is more or less; "Give me more lexicons!"

He states (to the blog author who started this whole discussion) that it's irrelevant; "... that the term “homosexual” was a “fairly new word, and was not even invented until 1892.”
The fact is it is a very relevant point because the majority of lay Christians go along with the reading of this word (homosexual) in 1 Corinthians that also could be construed to include lesbians in the text, it doesn't and it never did.

Translators who would use the term "Sodomite" in anything other than referring to the inhabitants of Sodom shows the error with what was THOUGHT to be the late historical sin of Sodom, homosexuality. Unlike what Dacour would like to believe, they are no Semitic equivalences to the Greek text in translations.

When talking about 1 Cor. 6:9 and 1 Tim. 1:10, Dacour's true, nasty, colors come out with his statements of the blog author's "(gay) lifestyle," whatever that means, and his Biblical interpretations coming from a; "Concordance you got at the local WalMart." I notice anti-gay proponents of the Bible love to pepper these little personal jabs in debates, it's like they can't help themselves (when James White debated GCN founder Justin Lee he mentioned Lee's "flailing hands" just to take a jab with what many believe is a gay male trait with exaggerated talking with the hands).


I covered arsenokoite enough on this blog to refute what he's saying.


Dalcour pulls a camel through a needle eye with trying to make malakoi an effeminate gay man in 1 Corinthians, but a simple look at the first 4 Bible translations of the word show's he's wrong with what isn't even a hint at homosexuality in this order:

Koine Greek = Malakoi.

Vulgate = Molles, plural of mollis (soft, flexible, pliant, a slew of meanings).

Wycliffe = puts molles as; "lechourious ayen kynde."

Tyndale = "weakling"  The word is carried over to Coverdale and the Bishops Bible.

Geneva = "wantons."

It wasn't until the 16th century when all of a sudden we find "effeminate" in the Douay-Rheims translation and even then the term had many connotations ranging from being a spineless coward to loving women TOO much.


The irony is Dacour quotes James White (I think he's also a buddy) who sees the homosexuality of Romans in idolatry.


A challenge was given of naming Bible scholars who don't see the anti-gay reading Dacour clings to for dear life (he makes it sound like it's only Boswell and Barr), well I'm happy to meet that challenge:

http://rottenqueerchristian.blogspot.com/2014/05/american-theologians-and-bible-scholars.html

How Softie Got Lost in Translation

The Aramaic word m'khab-le was translated as ma-la-koi in the Greek NT. Ma-la-koi (plural) is translated as effeminate in the (KJV) and as homosexuals in the (Gideons Bible). Elsewhere in the New Testament, malakos (singular) is translated as “soft” (Mt. 11:8 [2x] & Lk. 7:25 [1x]), as in “soft” clothing. Most likely, the Greek translator meant for the word malakoi to mean people that are “licentious,” “loose,” “wanting in self-control,” “unrestrained,” and / or effeminate.  Those meanings would match how that word was translated in the Latin Vulgate as molles (plural). The Hebrew New Testament translated by The Bible Society in Israel (copyright 1991) agreed more with the prior meanings, and interpreted malakoi to mean “workers of desire.” Malakos (singular) also means: “delicate,” “gentle,” “weak,” and “cowardly.” 

Apparently the Greek language doesn’t have a word that means “corrupt ones.” Though it does have the verb phtheiro “to corrupt” or its composite spelling diaphtheiro “to corrupt thoroughly.” The above verb spellings were conjugated and used in the Greek Old Testament when the Hebrew text has the word “corrupt” in the text.  It would have been better for the Greek translator to have made up a new Greek word meaning “corrupt ones” from either of those verb roots. Otherwise to have translated the Aramaic word m’khab-le as anomon “lawless ones.” The root word anomos “lawless” also being one of the translations for the word “corrupt” in the Hebrew Bible. At Isaiah 1:4, the Hebrew text calls Israel “corrupt children,” while the Greek translation of that verse calls Israel “lawless children.” 

  

Defining malakoi to mean people who are “lacking in self control” or “unrestrained” doesn’t match the Aramaic word, meaning “the corrupt ones.” Someone doesn’t need to be corrupt to be “voluptuous” or “indulgent.” I understand “corrupt ones” to mean “those tainted with evil,” or “perverted ones.” Additionally, malakoi can also mean “effeminate ones.”   

This Greek translator shouldn’t have translated this Aramaic word by using a misleading Greek word. His interpretation was so misleading that Christian believers have interpreted malakoi to mean “effeminate ones” (i.e. the passive partners in homosexual intercourse), while the following word, arsenokoitai, has been interpreted as “homosexuals who take the active role.” Thus I believe the translator was deceptive in his translation. He found a context that talked about certain people who wouldn’t enter God’s Kingdom; so he decided to not translate the correct meaning for the Aramaic word. He wanted to make sure his bias and hatred for gay people were put into the Bible to deceive others and give them justification to discriminate against them. This same thing happened when the Hebrew word Qede-shim was translated as “effeminate” (Latin) or sodomites (KJV). Qedeshim means “pagan ministers and/or male prostitutes.” Qedeshim was a good candidate for the Church to translate biasly as “effeminates or sodomites” because then they could use those scriptures to discriminate against gay people.

-From http://www.homosexualeunuchsandthebible.com/