[cont. Dr. James DeYoung; #3]  R. Scroggs       Robin Scroggs has built upon the discussion of his predecessors and suggested a new twist to the word.  Scroggs believes that arsenokoitai is a "Hellenistic Jewish coinage, perhaps influenced by awareness of rabbinic terminology."  The term is derived from Lev 18"22 & 20:13 where the LXX juxtaposes the two words arsenos ("male") and koiten ("bed"), and represents the Hebrew miskab zabar ("lying with a male").   Yet he believes that Paul did not originate the term, but borrowed it from "circles of Hellenistic Jews acquainted with rabbinic discussions" (180 n.14).  It was invented to avoid "contact with the usual Greek terminology" (108).  If this is true, Scroggs observes, it explains why the word does not appear in Greco-Roman discussions of pederasty and why later patristic writers avoided it.  It was meaningless to native-speaking Greeks (108).       Scroggs takes the second part as the active word and the first word as the object of the second part, thus differing from Boswell's "learned discussion" (107).  Yet Scroggs understands the general meaning of "one who lies with a male" to have a very narrow reference.  With the preceding malokoi (I Cor 6:9), which Scroggs interprets as "the effeminate call-boy," arsenokoitai is the active partner "who keeps the malakos of the 'mistress' or who hires him on occasion to satisfy his sexual desires" (108).  Hence arsenokoitai does not refer to homosexuality in general, to female homosexuality, or to the generic model of pederasty.  It certainly cannot refer to the modern gay model, he affirms (109).      This is Scrogg's interpretation of the term in I Tim 1:10 also.  The combination of pornoi ("fornicators"), arsenokoitai and andrapodistai ("slave dealers") refers to "male prostitutes, males who lie [with them], and slave dealers [who procure them]" (120).  It again refers to that  specific form of pederasty "which consisted of the enslaving of boys as youths for sexual purposes, and the use of these boys by adult males" (121).  Even "serious minded pagan authors" condemned this form of pederasty.  He then uses these instances of arsenokoitai in I Cor and I Tim to interpret the apparently general condemnation of both female and male homosexuality in Rom 1.  Consequently Paul "Must have had, could only have had pederasty in mind" (122). We cannot know what Paul would have said about the "contemporary model of adult/adult mutuality in same sex relation ships" (122).       In relating these terms to the context and to contemporary ethical concerns, Scroggs emphasizes the point that the specific items in the list of vices in I Cor 6 have no deliberate, intended meaning in Paul.  The form and function of the catalogue of vices are traditional and stereotyped.  Any relationship between an individual item in the list and the context was usually nonexistent.  He concludes that Paul "does not care about any specific item in the lists" (104).        Both on the basis of the meaning of the terms and of the literary phenomenon of a "catalogue of vices,"  Scroggs argues that the Scriptures are "irrelevant and provide no help in the heated debate today" (129).  The "model in today's Christian homosexual community is so different from the model attacked by the NT" that "Biblical judgments against homosexuality are not relevant to today's debate.  They should no longer be used in denominational discussions about homosexuality, should in no way be a weapon to justify refusal of ordination. . . " (127).        REACTIONS TO THE NEW INTERPRETATIONS OF ARSENOKOITAI  D. Wright       In more recent years the positions of Bailey, Boswell, and Scroggs have come under closer scrutiny.   Perhaps the most critical evaluation of Boswell's view is that by David Wright.  In his thorough article, Wright points out several shortcomings of Boswell's treatment of arsenokoitai.   He faults Boswell for failing to cite, or citing inaccurately, all the references to Lev 18:22 and 20:13 in the church fathers, such as Eusebius, the "Apostolic Constitutions,"  Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian and Origen (127-28).  Boswell has not considered seriously enough the possibility that the term derives either its form or its meaning from the Leviticus passages (129).  This is significant, for if the term is so derived, it clearly refutes Boswell's claim that the first half of the word (arseno-) denotes not the object but the gender of the second half (-koitai).  The LXX must mean "a male who sleeps with a male," making arseno- the object.       Wright also faults Boswell's claims regarding linguistic features of the term, including suggested parallels (129).  Though Boswell claims that compounds with arseno- employ it objectively and those with arreno- employ it as an adjective, Wright believes that the difference between the two is merely one of dialectical diversity: "No semantic import attaches to the difference between the two forms" (131).  Wright believes that in most compounds in which the second half is a verb or has a verbal force, the first half denotes its object and where "the second part is substantival, the first half denotes its gender" (132).        It is with Boswell's treatment of the early church fathers that Wright takes special issue, because the former has failed to cite all the sources.  For example, Aristides' Apology (c. AD 138) probably uses arrenomaneis, androbaten, and arsenokoitias all with the same basic meaning of male homosexuality (133), contrary to Boswell's discussion.  Boswell fails to cite Hippolytus (Refut. Omn. Haer. 5:26:22-23) and improperly cites Eusebius and the Syriac writer Bardensanes.  The latter uses Syriac terms that are identical to the Syriac of I Cor 6:9 and I Tim 1:10 (133-34).        Next Wright shows how the early church fathers use arsenokoitai in parallel with paidophthoria referring to male homosexuality with teenagers, the dominant form of male homosexuality among the Greeks (134).  Sometimes this parallelism occurs in the threefold listings of moicheia ("adultery"), porneia ("fornication"), and paidophthoria, with arsenokoitai replacing paidophthoris (136).  Clement of Alexandria in Protr. 10:108:5 cites the second table of the Ten Commandments as "You shall not kill, ou moicheuseis ("you shall not commit adultery"), ou paidophthoreseis ("you shall not practice homosexuality with boys"), you shall not steal. . ." (150 n. 43).       Another occurrence of arsenokoitein ("commit homosexuality") exists in the Sibylline Oracles 2:71-73.  It may be, Wright observes, that the word was coined by a Jewish pre-Christian writer in a Hellenistic setting represented by Or.Sib., book 2 (137-38).       Wright also discusses uses of arsenokoitai in Rhetorius (6th c.) who drew upon the first century AD writer Teucer, in Macarius (4th-5th c.), and in John the Faster (d. 595) (139-40).  The last in particular bears the idea of homosexual intercourse, contrary to Boswell.       Wright next replies to Boswell's contention that the term would not be absent "from so much literature about homosexuality if that is what it denoted (140-41).  Wright points out that it should not be expected in writers prior to the first century AD since it did not exist before then, that the Greeks used dozens of words and phrases to refer to homosexuality, that some sources (e.g. Didache) show no acquaintance with Paul's letters or deliberately avoid citing Scripture, and that Boswell neglects citing several church fathers (140-41).        Boswell's treatment of Chrysostom in particular draws Wright's attention (141-44).  Boswell conspicuously misrepresents the witness of Chrysostom, omitting references and asserting what is patently untrue.  Chrysostom gives a long uncompromising and clear indictment of homosexuality in his homily on Rom 1:26.  Boswell has exaggerated Chrysostom's infrequent use of the term.  Wright observes that Boswell has "signally failed to demonstrate any us of arsenokoites etc. in which it patently does not denote male homosexual activity" (144).  It is infrequent because of its relatively technical nature and the availability of such a term as paidophthoria that more clearly specified the prevailing form of male homosexuality in the Greco-Roman world.        Wright also surveys the Latin, Syriac, and Coptic translations of I Tim and I Cor.  All three render arsenokoitai with words that reflect the meaning "homosexual" i.e., they understand arseno- as the object of the second half of the word (144-45).  None of these primary versions supports Boswell's limited conclusion based on them.       Wright concludes his discussion with a few observations about the catalogues of vices as a literary form.  He believes that such lists developed in late Judaism as Hellenistic Jews wrote in clear condemnation of homosexuality in the Greek world.  This paralleled the increased concern on the part of moral philosophers over homosexual indulgence.  The term came into being under the influence of the LXX (145) so that writers spoke "generally of male activity with males rather than specifically categorized male sexual engagement with paides" (146).  If arsenokoitai and paidophthoria were interchangeable, it is because the former encompassed the latter (146).       In summary, Wright seeks to show that arsenokoitai is a broad term meaning homosexuality and arises with Judaism.   The views of Boswell, Scroggs, and others who limit the term to "active male prostitutes" or pederasty are without significant support from linguistic and historical studies.