"Retard?" As a retard I take offence at the use of that term. We prefer the term "mindless blobs of flesh," to be politically correct.
"Nor men kept for unnatural purposes..."
by PopeOfEruke 50 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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JCanon
Narkissos:
As ever this topic is fraught with cultural misunderstandings.
The "catamite" is not necessarily a victim; the love/sex relationship is usually a social promotion to the younger partner; think of David (the beloved) accessing Saul's court on account of his beauty. In Greece the concept of education (paideia) is closely connected to the relationship: many Athenian boys dreamt of becoming Socrates' lover.
Thanks for the "paideia" reference. I can see the connection between education and a youth. Just for your consideration though, please note that the lover of Socrates, for the record was "Phaedo" who had a parallel life with Aristotle. When the Greek chronology is corrected by the eclipse of 402 replacing the eclipse of 431 BCE, then Socrates dies in 366 BC when Phaedo would have been 18 years of age. That is precisely the age of Aristotle that year. Thus since we know Socrates and Aristotle would have known each other in reality, but not in the revision, it becomes rather suspicious that the famous boy-lover of Socrates was, indeed, none other than Aristotle. But that's another topic.
Thanks for the reference. Here's mine:
http://aristotle.thefreelibrary.com/
http://img.tfd.com/authors/aristotle.jpg
Aristotle was born in 384 B.C.E. in Stagirus, Macedonia, Greece, the son of Nicomachus, a medical doctor, and Phaestis. Little is known about Aristotle's early years, though he was almost certainly meant to become a doctor like his father, who died when Aristotle was ten years old. As his mother had died some years earlier, Aristotle was brought up by Proxenus of Atarneus, possibly a family friend or uncle. Proxenus taught Aristotle poetry, Greek, and public speaking; Aristotle had already learned science as a part of his early medical training by his father. At seventeen, Proxenus sent Aristotle to Athens to continue his education under Plato.
PHAEDO
Phaedo, himself, is much younger than
Athens as a slave, he was eventually set free and became one of Athens on the Peloponnesian Peninsula. There he composed his own dialogues, focusing on the field of ethics.
According to one interpretation,
Athens , as well as other Greek cities, sex between adult men and young males who had reached puberty was culturally acceptable. It was often part of a mentoring program intended to educate the male youth by exposing them to the activities in which they were expected to participate. These activities included politics, economics, training for war, and sex. Thus, what would be sexual abuse by contemporary standards in Western culture, was an expected part of growing up for the affluent youth of ancient Greece. Such a "practicum" in same sex love-making would make national news today, especially in the supermarket tabloids!
The coincidence of both Phaedo and Aristotle being orphaned between ages 10 and 17 and then both becoming students of Plato is a bit coincidental. Too coincidental once we realize that Socrates and Plato would have known each other.
JCanon
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JCanon
On: malakoi (lit. "soft ones").
I believe I did some research on this earlier and there was a conflict for this term where Plato or Aristotle was speaking of "soft ones" in a condemnatory manner. This is inconsistent with a reference to homosexuals or effeminates because in that culture we know that older men and younger men were like teacher and student. In fact, Socrates himself had a lover, Phaedo, who turns out to be a ghost personality substitute for Aristotle who was actually the boy-lover of Socrates until he died. So it doesn't follow this is a reference to an "effeminate" and thus an effeminate homosexual.
To the contrary, in the context in which Plato or Aristotle was using the term it was in reference to persons of "weak" or "soft" resolve as far as resisting wrongdoing. People who wantonly engaged in whatever their flesh allowed them to instead of having a "hard" or firm resolve against that. Thus a "soft person" is one with loose morals, generally, not a reference to a homosexual.
This means, indeed, the WTS, though following many translators, is not correct in translating malakoi as "men kept for unnatural purposes, a polite way of references young boys who were lovers to older men. In fact, I'm not so sure that was the common practice any more during this time; I suppose I can check it out.
WOW! Here's a reference that talks about this, but here's my reference:
Aristotle, 384-322 BC, in Nicomachean Ethics, used malakos to describe lack of restraint and excessive enjoyment of bodily pleasures.
Aristotle wrote: He “who pursues the excesses of things pleasant, and shuns those of things painful, of hunger and thirst and heat and cold and all the objects of touch and taste... that men are called 'soft' [malakos] with regard to these pleasures...
Now of appetites and pleasures... with reference to all objects whether of this or of the intermediate kind men are not blamed for being affected by them, for desiring and loving them, but for doing so in a certain way, i.e. for going to excess.” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 7.4.4. )
Check out the entire discussion on the term here: http://www.gaychristian101.com/Malakoi.html
Again, my position would be that malaka is a negative reference to moral weakness or moral softness in general and not specifically to anything related to homosexuality. In the verse at 1 Cor. 6:9, 10, therefore, it follows "adultery" and "idolary", general sins not specific to homosexuality. So "men kept for unnatural purposes" is a misguided interpretation for the actual use and meaning of the word.
Another reason why "effeminate" in terms of a homosexual euphemism is also inappropriate is because effeminate men were often "eunuchs" and these were considered born naturally that way from their mother's wombs and it was considered to be a "gift" for singleness. That is, without the usual attraction to beautiful women, here was less incentive to marry, and one could remain single and pursue a career or the ministry full-time without distraction.
In Jewish culture it is suggested that men who were eunuchs, often effeminate bonded with other men in a close but non-sexual relationship, such as Jesus and his cousin John. So that seems an awkward, out of the way reference.
In addition, there is nothing to suggest this is a reference to YOUTH. "Men kept for unnatural purposes" does suggest a youth though, and indeed, one questions whether there was responsibility or accountability of a youth in a relationship and culture such as this. Why is a youth being condemned along with adulters and idolators? Thus that poor translation draws attention to itself as being wrong from that aspect as well.
So all considered a "soft man" is likely the Aristotle definition of someone with a soft moral character who gives way to excesses including likely sexual ones, and not necessarily and effeminate man. This understanding is very much in line with all the other sins mentioned. In addition, being a eunuch or being "gay" was culturally accepted and two men in relationships was acceptable as well. Only the "abuse" of a gay companion sexually was condemned. Think of two eunuchs who fall in love with each other as agreeing to be "play brothers" or "cousins" or something. Soul mates, like Jonathan and David, who exchanged embraces and kisses (with David doing most of the kissing!), two men who had a love pact with each other. So in that culture there were no emotional or psychological bounds for a close relationship between two males. Just physical limitations when it came to overt sexual expression.
'SOFT MEN": Also I'm wondering if this reference would extend to someone with little resolve for anything. Jesus spoke of men who were "lukewarm", neither hot nor cold, and those he would vomit out of his mouth. Interestingly another Greek reference relates to over intellectualism, perhaps a person without a definitive moral compass? Intellectuals who perhaps believe that "anything goes"and it's "all natural" no matter what, maybe? It's easy to see a very "cultured" and educated person focussing on the excessives of the world in regards to the "soft life", perhaps. Maybe it reached a refined degree in that culture. Somehow this individual at some point became self-condemned by his lack of moral conviction or the intellectual excuses he came up with for those excesses. Thus the malakoi might have clearly referred to a very recognizable movement or sub-group in the society that those back there would understand the reference for.
Interesting discussion.
JCanon
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oompa
I dont see what all the fuss is about. Although, I may be guilty of this. I took home a poor homless man with two artificial legs and a stoved up rigid arm. The way his hand stuck up there, and how he really couldn't move it, I put him to use as a candle holder by the dining room table.
just tryin to help out...oompa
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Elsewhere
"Nor men kept for unnatural purposes..."
Sounds like men who work in climate controlled buildings toiling away in front of computer monitors inside tiny cubicles.
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Ténébreux
I believe it refers to the unnatural act of dressing in a suit in the middle of summer and bothering people on a Saturday morning.
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MsMcDucket
This video shows men kept for unnatural purposes. It's sung in Russian, so you don't know what they are talking about.
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MsMcDucket
Men kept for vivisections???
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Narkissos
JCanon
Good points. You might like to check up the other NT occurrences of malakos, Matthew 11:8 // Luke 7:25 (luxury in clothing).
In 1 Corinthians 6 the immediate context is sexual (if not homosexual) but I agree this is not absolutely compelling (the eidôlolatrai are sandwiched in between the pornoi and the moikhoi, for instance).
As to the practice of older/younger male relationship in educated and philo-hellenist circles, cf. Hadrian and Antinous in the 2nd century AD.
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Leolaia
Narkissos....It is worth however comparing the vice catalog in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 with the shorter lists in 5:10 and 5:11. There it is plain that malakoi, arsenokoitai, and kleptai are inserted as a block into the list, with pleonektai moved from second position in the list to after kleptai -- as it shares a thematic link with kleptai, methusoi, and harpages. This leaves eidólolatrai in second position, intervening between the inserted block and pornoi/pornos which heads the list in all three examples. This pattern suggests that malakoi and arsenokoitai share a closer link in common (as they are inserted together) than with the pre-existing vices in the list. But this is problematic in the sense that neither are really related to kleptai, unless one would posit that kleptai was inserted to connect this group with the latter one. Or it is possible that the three inserted vices have no inherent relation with each other.
Also interesting is the fact that arsenokoitais recurs in the deutero-Pauline 1 Timothy 1:10, sandwiched between pornois and andrapodistais, and especially the use of 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 in Polycarp, Philippians 5:3, which reduces the tenfold list down to the triad of pornoi, malakoi, and arsenokoitai, and which discusses these three as "those doing perverse/out-of-place things" (hoi poiountes ta atopa), as involving epithumión "desires", and as especially relevant to the neóteroi "younger men". This suggests that Polycarp understood malakoi in a sexual sense, but then again Polycarp was not Paul.
Noteworthy also is the following comment by Philo of Alexandria, who used a form of malakos to describe the passive (effeminate) partner in same-sex relationships: "Men mounted males without respect for the sexual nature (phusin) which the active partner shares with the passive. And so when they tried to beget children they were discovered to be incapable of any but a sterile seed....Then as little by little they accustomed those who were by nature men to submit to play the part of women, they saddled them with the formidable curse of a female disease. For not only did they emasculate (malakoteti) their bodies by luxury and voluptousness but they worked a further degeneration of their souls" (De Abrahami, 135-36). He seems here to be concerned more with gender roles than same-sex intercourse itself.
