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Brill, Leiden
Translating
(1 Cor. 6:9; 1 Tim. 1:10)
tion, which it certainly is not) This may be a slip on his part, for on his
premisses heterosexuals cannot engage in 'homosexual' acts To put it another
way it makes linguistic nonsense to confine the noun 'homosexual' to persons
of same-sex orientation, but to allow the adjective 'homosexual' of same-sex ac
tivity when that orientation is indisputably lacking, as in Petersen's statement
about heterosexuals
On his premisses, it should be equally unacceptable to apply any of the forms
of the 'homosexual' word-group to persons or behaviour in antiquity, when it
is agreed that no category of individuals defined by same-sex preference
('homosexuals') was known to exist Sir Kenneth Dover should not have entitled
his fundamental work Greek Homosexuality (London, 1978), nor S Lilja his
more recent study Homosexuality in Republican and Augustan Rome (Helsinki,
1983) Indeed, Petersen will probably have to find fault with virtually every
scholar careless enough to use 'homosexual' etc with reference to the ancient
worldor any world prior to the last hundred years or so Scholarly discourse
cannot tolerate such a straitjacket, and Petersen will simply have to adjust to
this larger, if for him more uncomfortable, linguistic freedom
He is aware, of course, that modern English dictionaries have begun to record
the changing meaning of 'homosexual' as a noun (190 9) 5 But even if it is
grudgingly allowed that 'homosexuals' are 'those who engage in same-sex sexual
behaviour', nothing would be gained in Petersen's book, for this latter category
'did not exist in antiquity' This statement can only mean that no-one in anti
quity lumped all such people together (It can scarcely mean that no modern stu
dent can construct such a category in talking about antiquity ) Unless Petersen
is playing the male/female card again ( e , ignoring that the whole of my article
concerns the precise import of a Greek word which everybody agrees denotes
males), his assertion is overturned by the unqualified condemnation in
Hellenistic Judaism and primitive Christianity of all 'those (males) who engage
in same-sex sexual behaviour' At the very least the issue is subjudice, for exam
ple in the interpretation of Romans 1 26-27 (where it should also be noted that
Paul is almost unprecedented in condemning male and female homosexual con
duct alike), to say nothing of itself (Why did Paul not choose one
of the common current words or phrases denoting pederasty, but a novel term
reflecting the less restricted Levitical ban 9 )
One other criticism by Petersen deserves a comment, because it relates to a
point basic to my argument When I assert that John Boswell 'failed to demon
strate any use of etc in which it patently does not denote male
homosexual activity', Petersen finds me guilty of 'self-evident tautology', on the
grounds that 'active male prostitution' (Boswell's meaning of the term) is 'male
homosexual activity' (191 n 12) Two responses are demanded () Petersen has
forgotten or misread Boswell, who construes the compound in such a way that
it says nothing about the sex of those whom the male prostitutes serve The
were the Greek equivalent of the Latin drauci or exoleti, e , 'male
prostitutes capable of the active role with either men or women', Eusebius's
usage shows that 'the did not necessarily engage in any homosexual
activities', the word 'had only a tangential relation, if any, to homosexuality' 6
(n) My statement is strictly accurate as it stands I claim that denotes
398 D F WRIGHT
NOTES
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