One Little Word, One Big Misunderstanding
Arsenokoitai (ἀρσενοκοῖται)
It’s a word that appears only twice in the entire Bible, yet it has become one of the most debated terms in theological history and central to one of the most divisive issues in modern Christianity: homosexuality.
- “Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, the malakoi, the arsenokoitai (ἀρσενοκοῖται), thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers, none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.” 1 Corinthians 6:9
- “The law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient… the sexually immoral, the arsenokoitai (ἀρσενοκοῖται), enslavers, liars, perjurers.” 1 Timothy 1:9-10
The term appears in a list of sins or immoral behaviors. But what did this word actually mean to Paul, and who exactly was he calling out?
A Combined Word
A term not seen before, Paul likely coined arsenokoitai by combining two other words:
- arsēn (ἄρσην) = male (could be either an adult or minor). Paul did not use the common word for adult man, which was ἀνήρ (anēr).
- koitē (κοίτη) = one of the terms used for “bed”, usually in situations of rape/ sexual abuse in ancient greek literature (Euripides, Ion, lines 890-895).
Put together, the word sounds like “male-bedders” (men who have sex), so to find who these male-bedders are, we must determine what kind of behavior Paul was referring to.
A Debated Word
Most Bible scholars agree that this is one of the most debated words in all of Scripture:
“Arsenokoitai is obscure and we simply don’t know what it meant in the first century. We cannot know for certain what arsenokoitai meant to Paul or his audience.” Dale B. Martin, Yale New Testament scholar
“Arsenokoitai is rare and enigmatic, the precise meaning of arsenokoitai has been the subject of considerable debate.” David F. Wright, English theologian and historian, University of Edinburgh’s New College
“The meaning [of Arsenokoitai] is not clear… and not found in Greek literature prior to Paul.” BDAG (Bauer-Danker-Arndt-Gingrich), the most authoritative Greek-English lexicon.
“The meaning of arsenokoitai is obscure and debated. It does not clearly refer to a committed homosexual relationship.” Dan Via and Robert Gagnon (non affirming theologians), Homosexuality and the Bible
“No one knows for sure what the word means… the best evidence shows that arsenokoitai referred to economic exploitation or abuse, not to homosexual orientation or relationships.” Dale B. Martin, Bible Odyssey (Society of Biblical Literature)
“Paul’s term [Arsenokoitai] is irrelevant to today’s heated debate, precisely because its ancient meaning is so uncertain.” Robin Scroggs, Edward Robinson Professor of Biblical Theology at Union Theological Seminary
The Eyes We Read With
The first step in approaching a study like this is to acknowledge the preconceived notions we bring with us.
We all read Scripture through a lens that has been shaped by our upbringing, traditions, church teachings, personal experiences, trauma, fears, media exposure, and unspoken cultural assumptions. These influences influence not only how we see the world, but how we interpret the Bible. And unless we pause to recognize it, we risk reading our own reflection into the text, instead of discovering what it truly says.
My husband and I recently returned from a transatlantic cruise. We noticed upside-down pineapples on several cabin doors and learned that this is a discreet symbol in swinger communities, signaling openness to partner-swapping. We witnessed married couples exchanging partners, and even posting requests for encounters in the cruise Facebook group. Single men also treated sex like a challenge, seeing how many women could they sleep with before the trip ended, knowing there would be no commitment afterward.
Now imagine telling this story to an audience already familiar with cruise culture. You could simply say:
“It was heartbreaking to see men going and having sex with women.”
Most would understand immediately: you’re not condemning heterosexuality. You’re pointing to infidelity, casual sex, and the breakdown of trust and commitment. You’re describing a kind of sex, not all male-female intimacy.
But imagine that sentence without context. Someone unfamiliar might misunderstand and assume you’re saying heterosexual sex is sinful.
Or consider another example: a tragic news story involving sex trafficking. If someone simply said, “The sin of men having sex with girls”, and you missed the details, would you assume they were condemning all heterosexual sex? Of course not. We instinctively understand that the moral issue is not gender—it’s exploitation, coercion, and the abuse of the vulnerable.
These examples may seem obvious, but they illustrate something essential: context matters deeply when interpreting stories about sex and sin.
So when we approach an ancient, debated text like Scripture—especially one centered on a single, rare Greek word—our first responsibility is to step back and ask ourselves: what lens am I reading with? If we don’t, we risk confusing our assumptions with God’s intention.
The Words Paul did Not Use
Before we study what the word “Arsenokoitai” means, it is important to acknowledge words Paul did NOT use:
- eρασταί: two men in love
- εραστης: an individual man in love with another man
- ἀνδροβάτης: men having sex with men or man who mounts men
- αρρενομανής & ἀρρενομιξία: men having sex with males
- κολομπαράδες: the active sexual man on top (the penetrator)
- κῐ́ναιδος: the sexual man on the bottom (the man being penetrated)
- ἑταιρίστριαι: female lovers
Paul did not use all the words available to him that would have spoken about two men in love and in a relationship.
Paul’s Vocabulary In Context
Instead, Paul coined a new word—arsenokoitai—which had no clear, established meaning at the time. The term likely comes from the following two words:
- arsēn (ἄρσην) = male (could be either an adult or minor)
- koitē (κοίτη) = one of the terms used for “bed”, usually in situations of rape/ sexual abuse in ancient greek literature (Euripides, Ion, lines 890-895).
What was Paul’s context and can that help us understand what he could be reffering to? Could he be referencing common practices of his day?
- Was he referring to Paiderastia? Adult men using boys or male slaves for sex. Socially accepted as long as the man remained the penetrator and the partner was of lower status. This was about social status, power, and dominance.
- Was he referring to temple sex rituals? Pagan cults (e.g., Inanna/Ishtar/Aphrodite) involved ritual sex acts, offering using with young male prostitutes or effeminate priests.
- Was he referring to the Leviticus law? Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 prohibit a man lying with a male, which the Greek Septuagint (which Paul read) translated to arsēn (ἄρσην, “male”) and koitē (κοίτη, “bed”), the same two words Paul appears to combine into the compound term arseno-koitai. These verses refer to idolatrous or pagan sexual practices of the surrounding nations. This would give additional weight to the view that arsenokoitai may have referenced exploitative or idolatrous systems. For more on this see my article on Leviticus.
- Was he referring to mutual, equal-status same-sex relationships? These did exist (as evidenced in poetry and inscriptions), but they were very discreet and extremely hidden. If Paul was referring to male-male sexual sin (without mentioning women, relationships, or love), he was likely referencing the dominant, visible practices of exploitation.
What Did Jewish Authors Think It Meant?
Jewish Authors gathered together a collection of prophetic poems, written in Greek, and called them the Sibylline Oracles (150 BCE to 600 CE).
The word Arsenokoitai appears the Sibylline Oracles Book 2 (written 50 to 150 years after Paul, the first to coin the word).
It appears in a section that has two main vice lists.
- The Economic or Social Sins, which included misuse of money, abuse of power, exploitation, injustice, oppression, and corruption in society.
- The Sexual or Moral Sins, which focus on personal immorality, including sexual behavior and violence:
Can you guess which list Arsenokoitai (men-bedder) appears on? The word appears on the Economic and Social Sin list (Book 2, line 73), which included misuse of money, abuse of power, exploitation, injustice, oppression, and corruption in society. It does not appear in the section of sexual sins. Even though it is a sexual sin, the authors put it in the category of abuse of power, exploitation, and oppression.
How did Bible Translators Handle it?
The following are the English translations that have been used for the word “Arsenokoitai” over the years:
“Abusers of themselves with mankind”
A euphemism in the 1500’s that was referred to sexual misconduct; the translators said that the Greek term likely referred to some kind of exploitative male sexual misconduct.
The Bibles that used this term were:
- 1535 Coverdale Bible
- 1537 Matthew’s Bible
- 1539 Great Bible
- 1557 Geneva Bible:
- 1568 Bishops’ Bible:
- 1611 King James Version
- 1901 American Standard Version
“Sodomites”
The word “sodomite” was commonly used in English Bibles (KJV, Geneva) to mean male cult prostitute. Many 19th-century translators, followed tradition in using “sodomite” as a translation for qadesh.
The Bibles that used this term were:
- 1890 Darby Bible: Sodomites
- 1970 New American Catholic Bible
- 1982 New King James Version
- 1989 New Revised Standard Version
- 2020 Literal Standard Version: Sodomites
“Sexual Perverts”
- 1960 J. B. Phillips New Testament
- 1971 Revised Standard Version
- 2022 Berean Standard Bible
“Homosexuals”
Used for the first time in a Bible Translation in 1946, this term meant “a male boy molester”. It did not mean what it means today.
The first Bible to choose this word was the RSV in 1946. They changed it right away due to realizing that the word could be misused according to culture and context, but (according to the official Bible Translating team meeting notes you can find at Yale, by that time the NIV and the Living Bible had automatically continued using that word without double checking. Even German Bibles changed their word to homosexual after this year (for more on this, watch a great documentary on this on Amazon Prime: 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture).
The Bibles that continued to use it are:
- 1966 Good News Translation
- 1969 The New Berkeley Version in Modern English
- 1971: The Living Bible
- 1966 Good News Translation
- 1971: The Living Bible
- 1977 New American Standard Bible
- 1995 New American Standard Bible
- 1996 New Living Translation
- 2000 World English Bible
- 2001 English Standard Version
- 2005 New English Translation
- 2012 Lexham English Bible
- 2014 Modern English Version
“Men who have sex with men”
- 2011 New International Version
- 2011 Common English Bible (Men who are aggressive in same-sex relations)
- 2017 Christian Standard Bible
Note: You can also double check all of these Bible references with images of each page at archive.org.
What Did The Early Church Think?
There is no evidence anywhere that any of the early Christians understood arsenokoitai (ἀρσενοκοῖται) as referring to two gay men or two gay women in a loving relationship.
The two original Greek words were never used in any documents or known references to refer to acts between two adult consensual men of equal social standing.
The early church always used the word in contexts of abuse and/or prostitution.
What Did Paul Mean?
We will never know what Paul was referring to exactly.
- Was he referring to the paiderastia practice of his day (where older men took younger boys as sexual companions, slaves, and abusive arrangements)?
- Was he talking about the temple prostitution and sexualized idolatry his readers would have known about? These pagan rituals would often include sexual commerce with young males, serving as passive sexual partners, sometimes adorned in feminine clothing.
- Was he talking about the hidden male-male or female-female relationships that were unknown about unless it was in your family or you were involved? He didn’t reference females.
When Paul condemned arsenokoitai, was he speaking about committed, consensual same-sex relationships, or was he addressing systems of exploitation, temple prostitution, and power abuse that were common in the Greco-Roman world?
Interpreting Scripture faithfully requires more than quoting verses; it means asking hard questions, understanding context, and refusing to let fear dictate theology.
The Power of a Word
It’s just one word. A word that is obscure, rare, and debated.
Yet, its impact has been massive.
Arsenokoitai appears only twice in the entire Bible, but this single, poorly understood term has helped shape centuries of condemnation, exclusion, and theological division.
Despite scholars on all sides agreeing that its meaning is unclear, it has been used to justify the rejection of millions of LGBTQ people from churches, families, and communities. It has been used to cancel marriages, cause pain, wave signs that condemn and hate.
It’s a sobering reminder that words carry enormous power. And when we get a word wrong, the consequences aren’t abstract. They are deeply personal, shaping lives, faith, and futures.
Paul was writing into a world very different from ours, one filled with sexual exploitation, temple rituals, and deeply entrenched power imbalances.
Whatever arsenokoitai meant, it was likely tied to those realities—not to the lives of people seeking love, commitment, and faithfulness today.
Whatever it meant, may we allow Jesus to show us the way through this mess, rather than tradition and fear.
Truth doesn’t shrink when examined.
It shines.
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