To J, JohnQ, AI: On the Centurion and Malakos

Boy, I miss all the interesting threads. I agree with you guys that there is no certainty on the meaning of pais, malakos, or arsenokoites in the passages mentioned. So these are just some added thoughts on that topic. Tentative thoughts; I wouldn't dare to throw anything more in the direction of you scholarship-mongers. :) On pais: As JohnQ mentioned, "servant/slave" is in fact one of the definitions of pais; it is used that way in Aeschylus' "Libation Bearers" and Aristophanes' "Archarnians". Its primary definition is, of course, boy; pais/paidos is the word from which pederasty and pedophilia are descended. I think that the case for the centurion passage referring to pederasty lies not on linguistic grounds but on cultural ones: the question is whether a first-century reader, hearing a pagan Roman refer to a pais as dear, would translate this into a belief that the Roman was having a pederastic relationship with the pais. I think a good case can be made that the implication would have at least lain under the surface, given the long polemical history of the Jews condemning other faiths for their sexual practices and given that the Jews associated pederasty with the Romans. I doubt it can be proved that the passage *had* to have that meaning for a first-century reader. Rather, I think the passage is like one of those poems where "sleep" has the additional meaning of "death" - on the surface, the poem is about sleep regardless as to whether any metaphor is recognized by the reader, but the discerning reader is likely to think of death, if not consciously, then unconsciously. A.I. Watcher wrote: "First, the Greeks certainly practiced man/boy sex and did so unapologetically. But the Romans' behavior was far more nuanced." I agree about the Romans, which is why I question your later statement that homosexuality was looked down upon in the time of Augustus. Are you by any chance referring to the Roman condemnation of homosexuality among free males? I haven't run across any references whatsoever to the condemnation of sex with slaves (homosexual or otherwise) and would be fascinated to hear more about the records you refer to in Caesar and of legion executions. I'm working on an essay at the moment about homosexuality before the eighteenth century - with Roman homosexuality being a particularly difficult topic to tackle - and any resources you or anyone else could throw my way would be of great help. On malakos: Thank you to A.I. for his contribution on the Latin aspect of this word. The theory that malakos/askenokoites referred to pederasts and the boys they had sex with was first advanced by the New Testament scholar Robin Scroggs. He said explicitly in his book "The New Testament and Homosexuality" that, if the words referred to pederasty, they *only* referred to the pederastic prostitution that was condemned even by pro-pederasty people in classical times. However, throughout his book Scroggs fudged his language about this a lot, and his theory became popularized by the gay Christian community to mean that all pederasty was condemned by Paul. http://www.philianews.org/ul/nt/scroggs.htm I haven't encountered many scholars who are impressed by Scroggs' theory (though his scholarly treatment of classical views on pederasty is much respected). A more prevelant theory is that Paul was condemning the "active" and "passive" partners in homosexuality - that is to say, the person who took the leading role and the person who took the subordinate role. (Yes, I know that in practice it probably didn't work that way much of the time, but that was the prevailing model in ancient times, just as egalitarianism is the model for sexual relationships today.) Under this theory, Paul was condemning men and youths who had sex together, but he was also condemning two men or two youths who had sex together. There's some support of this on linguistic grounds; see Christopher T. Lee's lengthy essay on the history of malakos: http://www.princeton.edu/~clee/malakos.html http://www.princeton.edu/~clee/paper.html#early http://www.princeton.edu/~clee/paul.html Arsenokoites seems to have been coined by Paul; here are the early references to it in classical literature (take into account, of course, that the English translations of these passages are in accordance with the translator's theories about the meanings of the word): http://www.jeramyt.org/gay/arsenok.htm There are some competing theories about these words that seem to me to be just as strong. One is that malakos and arsenokoites refer to the practitioners of the goddess religions, whom the early Christians were obsessed with condemning, much as the earlier Jews had been obsessed with condemning worshippers of Baal and the like. The priests and priestesses of this religion engaged in gender-variant behavior - and possibly sexual-variant behavior - that disturbed the Christians greatly, because in certain respects the religions were quite similar to Christianity (the Attis religion, for example, had a resurrected god). Here's an essay on that theory: http://www.jeramyt.org/papers/paulcybl.html My best guess is that gender variation was indeed on Paul's mind in these passages, but that he wouldn't have made any distinction between gender variation, sexual variation, and paganism. If you look at the passages on homosexuality by Philo (a Jewish philosopher contemporary with Paul) you can see that one of the primary arguments being made by Jewish writers at that time against homosexuality - and for that matter, by pagan writers against homosexuality - was that it encouraged gender variance, and that this in turn was a "turning away" from God's laws. (Yes, some of the pagans said this too.) So I think what we have here is something similar to the Centurion passage - passages that evoke paganism as godlessness, but do so by bringing forth images of (to put it from the author's perspective) sexual and gender corruption, because the author and his readers see these three factors as inextricably linked. Whether one accepts Paul's view on homosexuality therefore depends heavily on whether one accepts his view that all non-Christians are headed straight for hell and that women's and men's roles are inflexibly determined by God. If one believes this, then one may be able to accept his argument that sexual variance is as sinful as gender variance and paganism. I link to a bunch of essays on this topic at Pederasty in the Bible: http://www.philianews.org/ul/nt To bring this topic into relation with boylove: 1) I was grateful that no one in the thread about the centurion passage made the simplistic remark, "Jesus healed the centurion's son, so that shows he was in favor of pederasty." This simplistic remark has, alas, been made by scholars. I don't think there's any way to tell from that passage what Jesus thought of pederasty, though we can certainly tell from that passage that, if he thought the centurion was a sexual sinner, he believed that such a man could become one of his leading followers. 2) I have some difficulty with using the word "boylove" as a synonym for "pederasty," simply because the cultural conditions of adult-youth sex in classical times were so different from the cultural conditions now. To give an example: The early Christian church believed that it was acceptable for a man to marry a twelve-year-old woman. Regardless as to whether the Church was right or wrong about this, I don't think that any twelve-year-old female in our society could be called a woman. Similarly, I think it would be a mistake to try to make simple equations between fourteen-year-old men in classical society and fourteen-year-old boys today. 3) I also have some difficulty with the discriminate use of "loved boy" in these posts to refer to "youth who has sex with a man." Surely the phrase "loved boy" is used more narrowly in the boylove community than that? I think we should be very careful not to assume that classical passages on adult-youth sex refer only to adult-youth relationships that follow boylove ethics. Deliberate exploitation of sexual partners was even more common in the classical world than it is today. I know that everyone here (including myself) bemoans how the modern indiscriminate use of the words "exploitation" and "abuse" have not taken into account nuances in relationships; but on the other hand, we do at least live in a world where concern over such issues in paramount. That wasn't the case in classical times: compared to today, there was little discussion of whether sexual partners were being exploited (though a certain amount of this discussion occurred). Even in cases where exploitation was not intended, mutuality of pleasure (i.e. both partners receiving the same type of pleasure) was probably not expected. So when you read a passage in which a classical writer waxes lyrical over the sexual pleasure he's receiving from the relationship, you do need to take into account that he may not care to any great degree as to whether his partner is receiving sexual pleasure - and he would not be condemned by honorable men at that time for his lack of interest in this topic. And likewise (this is an even bigger leap for modern readers to make) if a classical writer condemns pederasty, he's just as likely to condemn the younger partner as he is to condemn the older partner. So we have to take care not to project modern ideals and sentiments back onto the past. Whereas the modern world values mutuality in sexual relationships, the ancient world (where it valued any sort of exchange at all) valued a fair trade of differing gifts. It would be fair enough to call the younger partner in such an exchange a "loved boy," provided that we don't assume that he's being given the same sort of love that a modern loved boy might be given. Heather [E-mail]   [Home Page] Previous thread