Fornication or immorality - Sodomites or something else?
Something very serious is taking place in the modern translations of the Bible, and most people are either unaware or unconcerned about it. The unchanging standards of God’s holy words are subtly and purposely being altered to fit the modern lifestyle. No longer are certain sins clearly condemned in God’s holy Book, and we can see the absence of absolutes both in society and in the church.
Some words are powerful and very descriptive. Others are mushy and vague, and have little impact on our conscience. Take the word fornication. Webster’s 1999 defines this word as “voluntary sexual intercourse between two unmarried persons, or two persons not married to each other.”
It is not an archaic word, and though many may not know its meaning, you still see and hear the term in newspapers and movies. The world will not name this as a sin, because they do not consider it to be a sin.
Only the Bible teaches that fornication is a sin. The word “fornication” is found in the King James Bible 44 times. The same passages read "fornication" in the Geneva Bible 1599 and the Bishops's Bible 1568. The American Standard Version of 1901 has 31 instances of the word fornication. Even the RSV has 11 and the NRSV has the word fornication in it 21 times. In the NKJV, the number is down to 21 times, the NASB has it only 8 times, but in the NIV, ESV and the Holman Standard the word is not found at all. (0 times).
I have gone out into the streets and talked to teenagers and asked them to give me some examples of what sin is. Usually they say things like stealing, beating up on girls, and murder. I then ask them if having sex before marriage is a sin. Invariably, I have been told, “No”, or “Not as long as no one gets hurt.” This is the world’s standard. It is the morality of the natural man.
The word “morality” comes from the Latin meaning “usage or custom”. Morals are relative, very flexible; they vary from one person or nation to the next. Morals are not absolute and unchanging. The word fornication, on the other hand has a definite meaning describing a particular act, and this act is forbidden by God and called a sin.
The NKJV, NASb, ESV, Holman Standard, and NIV have substituted the word “immorality” for the word fornication. I ask you, What is immorality? You will get many different definitions and your morality may not be the same as mine. See, what I mean? The absolute standard has disappeared.
Let’s look at some examples. 1 Corinthians 5:1, 9-11, mention “It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife. . . I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators: Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world...not to keep company if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator. . .”
The older English Bibles like Tyndale, Bishop's Bible, Geneva, Darby, Revised Version, and the ASV all had “fornicators”, but the NAS, Holman, NIV, ESV and NKJV have either, “immoral person” or “sexually immoral”. Again, what exactly is immoral? Those children who are being brought up using the NIV, NASB, ESV as their bible, can say to their parents, “Bobby and I aren’t doing anything immoral Mom, we love each other. The bible doesn’t teach that sex outside of marriage is wrong, only if it is immoral. That is just your old fashioned standard, it is not mine.”
Does this seem far fetched to you? Let’s look at some actual quotes from some of the Christian leaders of today. In Anglican Bishop John A. T. Robinson’s book called, “Honest”, he states on page 118, “nothing can of itself always be labeled as ‘wrong’. One cannot, for instance, start from the position sex relations before marriage or divorce are wrong or sinful in themselves. They may be 99 cases or even in 100 cases out of 100, but they are not intrinsically so, for the only intrinsic evil is lack of love.”
Or let's take the book, “Called to Responsible Freedom”, published by the Natonal Council of Churches. On page 11, young people are told, “In the personal individual sense, then, what justifies and sanctifies sexuality is not the external marital status of the people before the law but rather what they feel toward each other in their hearts. Measured in such a way, holding hands can be very wrong indeed, while intimate sex play can be right and good.”
I believe these organizations use the NIV, NASB, ESV bogus bible versions because they do not contradict their beliefs about what constitutes morality. If we can make a Bible version that has wider appeal to apostate churches, we can sell more bibles.
There used to be only one verse in the Bible that said it was not good to even touch a woman, who is not your own wife, in a sexual manner. I’ve heard of Christian fathers quoting the verse to young men who came to the door to pick up their dates for the evening. The verse is found in I Cor. 7:1, “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” The word is “to touch”, and in the context, it means to touch in an inappropriate sexual way. But the NIV has changed this to: “It is good for a man not to marry.” There is no possible way the Greek can be translated this way; it teaches an error that contradicts other Scriptures, and the admonition about not improperly touching a woman is removed is one smooth stroke.
Another sin that has been grealty toned down, or else eliminated entirely from many modern versions, is the sin of sodomy. According to Webster’s 1999 dictionary, sodomy is “anal or oral copulation with a member of the same sex”. The word “sodomite” is found 5 times in the King James Bible. Deut. 23:17 - “There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel.” The word is also in 1 Kings 14:24; 15:12; 22:46, and 2 Kings 23:7.
It is very interesting to see how modern bible translators gradually change the meaning of certain words. It often is done subtly and gradually. They say modern scholarship has shown this word to really mean something else, and all those older Bibles were wrong.
This word was translated all 5 times as sodomite by the Jewish translations into English of 1917 and 1936 put out by the Jewish Publication Society and the Hebrew Publishing Company of America, and by the modern Hebrew Names Version. We also have the Jewish translations like the 2001 Sacred Scriptures Family of Yah 2001 and the Word of Yah 1993 translations that also read "sodomites".
It is a pretty good guess that these native Hebrew speakers might be a little more familiar with their own language than many modern bible translators here in the United States, don’t you think?
The word is also rendered as sodomites by the Geneva Bible 1599, Darby’s 1870, Webster’s 1833, Third Millenium Bible 1998, KJV 21st Century 1994, the Spanish Reina Valera 1909, 1960, 1995 (sodomitas), Lamsa's 1933 translation of the Syriac Peshitta, the Revised Version of 1881 and the ASV of 1901. The Modern Greek Bible translation of the Old Testament also reads sodomites (kinaidos) - or homosexuals, as do the Portuguese Almeida Actualizada and the O Livro, La Biblia de Las Américas 1997, the Amplified Bible 1982, the Lesser Bible 1853, the Bible in Basic English 1960, the 2008 World English Bible, and Green’s interlinear of 2000.
The Modern KJV 1998, the Third Millenium Bible 1994, as well as the Living Bible and the 2003 Updated Bible Version render this word as homosexual, and not as "shrine prostitute". The ESV has "cult prostitute". Just to keep you on your toes and guessing, some versions translate it as "adulterers", others "a male devotee", while Young's says "whoremongers" and The Message has "priest-pimp".
The first major version to change this to "male cult prostitutes" was the liberal RSV of 1952. Then in 1972, the NASB translated this word as sodomite in 1 Kings 22:46, but the other four times changed it to “shrine prostitutes”. The 1995 NASB update still has Sodomite this one time. The NIV, ESV, and Holman Standard have "shrine (or cult) prostitutes" in all five verses.
Mrs. Ripplinger, who wrote New Age Bible Versions, remarks that while a teacher and counsellor at one of America’s largest universities, she had often seen sodomites on campus but never a shrine prostitute.
A sodomite may think his sin is not condemned by Scripture, because he is no shrine prostitute. The NKJV has translated all five instances as “perverted person”. What exactly is a perverted person? Is that someone who eats ketchup sandwiches? What might be one man’s perversion is another’s proper behaviour. You see, how vague and undefined the term "perverted person" is?
The last Scripture I want to look at is 1 Corinthians 6:9, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind. . .shall inherit the kingdom of God.” To “abuse” is to use in an unnatural or harmful way.
“Mankind” is the kind or type that is a man, being used by another man. These are terms for the general two classes of sodomites. The NASB begins to tone it down by saying, “effeminate nor homosexuals”. Homosexual is a neutral word. There is no sense of wrong doing with the strict definition of a homosexual. But "abusers of themselves with mankind" shows that this is an unnatural and destructive activity.
The NKJV has “homosexuals (with a footnote saying, That is, catamites). Do you know what a catamite is? Then the NKJV continues with sodomites. The NIV has, “Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexual OFFENDERS”. Now, a sodomite can think to himself, "Well I’m not in this list because I’m not a prostitute, and a homosexual offender is someone who rapes little kids or forces himself on someone, and I don’t do those things".
I was once talking to a radio talk show host and pointed out this verse in the NIV. He said, You know, you can even look at the NIV as meaning “those who offend homosexuals”.
There are many homosexual churches springing up around our country, some with 2 or 3 thousand members. Guess which version of the bible they use. That’s right, the ever popular NIV. If we can make the word of God more vague, less defined, and less condemning, then we can appeal to a wider audience and sell more bibles.
I hope you will prayerfully consider these examples and see how God’s holy words are being changed by the modern versions, and go back to the old King James Bible, where you will find rest for your souls and the pure words of God’s absolute truth. Thank you and God bless you.