In this article, I would like to respond to the argument that the Bible doesn’t actually talk about homosexuality (but that its mention of homosexuality is based on a mistranslation). Here’s how the argument goes:
Argument: The first time the word “homosexual” appeared in any Bible was in 1946 with the publication of the Revised Standard Version. In the translation of 1 Corinthians 6:9, the word “homosexual” was used to render the Greek words malakoi and arsenokoitai. Years later, the head of the RSV translation committee admitted this translation was a mistake. Subsequent revisions of the RSV, however, didn’t replace “homosexual” with “sexual perverts” until 1971, twenty-five years after the mistranslation occurred. By then, many other translations of the Bible had followed suit with the word “homosexual” in biblical texts. The damage had been done. Also, the terms Paul uses are so narrow that they leave no space for people’s sexual orientation.
It is true that when the Bible describes homosexuality, the authors of Scripture didn’t have in mind a “homosexual” as an identity based on a person’s sexual orientation. What did the writers have in mind for passages such as 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10?
What did the writers have in mind for passages such as 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10?
The Greek term arsenokoitai was the word Paul used in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 to describe men who have sex with men. Arsenokoitai is a combination of two Greek terms found elsewhere in the New Testament: arsēn (meaning “male”) and koitē (meaning “couch” or “bed” with a sexual connotation). For example, Paul used koitē in Romans 13:13 when he warned against fornication by saying, “Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality (koitē) and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy.” The author of Hebrews used the term in a similar though more positive way when he wrote, “Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed (koitē) undefiled” (Hebrews 13:4a, NKJV).
Paul’s meaning, therefore, is evident when he uses the word arsenokoitai. Moreover, the likely context for Paul bringing arsēn and koite together is how the Septuagint (ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament) translates Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. Both verses refer to the act of homosexual sex, both call it an abomination, and in the Septuagint translation (which Paul would have used in his day), both verses use the words arsēn and koitē. In bringing them together to form the word arsenokoitai, Paul is not being ambiguous about what he’s referencing. 
Regarding the Bible addressing sexual orientation, the biblical approach is more about the action itself than slapping a label on the person who does it. The Bible doesn’t even use nouns for homosexual people; it uses descriptions of behavior, which is why it makes sense that the term “homosexual” would not be found in the Bible.
No such thing as a speeder
Behaviors are often prohibited in the Bible without labels being slapped on those who commit the behavior. More simply, in North America, no law on the books says it is illegal to be a speeder. What the law does say is that going over seventy miles an hour on the freeway is illegal. No word has been created for those who go over the speed limit, but the behavior is condemned. I couldn’t stand before a judge and say, “Your Honor, there is nowhere in the law that says I can’t be a speeder.” The judge would immediately respond, “Well, Mr. Hammond, there is something in the law that says you cannot go over seventy miles an hour; therefore, you are guilty.”
Is it good logic to say that the behavior of homosexuality is permitted because an identity label for the behavior does not appear in the Bible? No, arguing for the ability to do homosexual acts because Paul wasn’t describing a homosexual identity is a misguided attempt to ignore what the Bible uniformly says about homosexual behavior.
“Behaviors are often prohibited in the Bible without labels being slapped on those who commit the behavior.”
What “woke” means
The truth is the meaning of arsenokoitai has remained clear throughout the years, whether it’s been translated as “homosexual” or something else. Before the word “homosexual” was used in the Bible, the KJV Bible translated the behavior of homosexuality as “abusers of themselves with mankind.” Other translations used the word “effeminate.”
In Romans 1, we have the closest thing to the Bible discussing orientation when the apostle Paul talks about men being “inflamed with lust for one another” (Romans 1:27a). But a part of the focus is on the act itself—they “committed shameful acts with other men” (Romans 1:27b). It’s worth noting that this verse negatively describes both the lustful desires and the acts themselves. If the acts themselves are shameful, then they are just as wrong whether one is a homosexual in their orientation or a straight person experimenting, to whom homosexual behavior does not come naturally. Add to this the other biblical passages that address homosexual behavior, and we find no contingency in Scripture for homosexual sex under any circumstance.
“If the acts themselves are shameful, then they are just as wrong whether one is a homosexual in their orientation or a straight person experimenting.”
Besides that, languages evolve and change. The word “homosexual” came into the English language in the late 1800s. But that hardly means there was no such thing as homosexuality before the 1890s! Men having sex with men or women having sex with women—phrases, not single words—still connote what is meant by the modern phrase “homosexuality,” even if there is no exact biblical equivalent of the English word as used today.
If I told you I was woke, that would mean one thing today. Yet only five years ago, it would mean I had just gotten out of bed. Languages evolve.
Translators are only human and make mistakes—especially when pressured to agree with others or face public academic shaming. As far as the RSV goes—which is usually an excellent translation—the mistake seems to have been made not in 1946 but in 1971, when “homosexual” was made into the more malleable term “sexual pervert.”
