What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality?

by Kevin DeYoung

You don’t have to be an expert in Greek to see how Paul got the word arsenokoitai from Leviticus. Here’s what the relevant texts look like in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament used by Jews in the first century): Leviticus 18:22 meta arsenos ou koimēthēsē koitēn gynaikos (“you shall not lie with a male as with a woman”) Leviticus 20:13 hos an koimēthē meta arsenos koitēn gynaikos (“whoever shall lie with a male as with a woman”) You can see from the second text in particular how Paul’s use of arsenokoitai is almost certainly taken from the Holiness Code of Leviticus. It’s clear from 1 Timothy 1:9–10 that Paul, in speaking of arsenokoitai, was thinking broadly about the sins forbidden by the Decalogue: “those who strike their fathers and mothers” (fifth commandment), “murderers” (sixth commandment), “the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality” (seventh commandment), “enslavers” (eighth commandment), “liars, perjurers” (ninth commandment). No Jew thought the Ten Commandments allowed for same-sex sexual intimacy, so no one would have been surprised to see homosexual behavior—or adultery or fornication or prostitution or incest or bestiality or any other sexual activity outside of marriage—thrown into a vice list by the Apostle Paul.