Dag Hammarskjöld and the RSV 4.

The dear librarians had found the book – and it was one book, not two as in the catalogue…

It took only 4 minutes to check 1 Cor 6:9 up in Specialläsesalen; the Particular Reading Room, one floor up by a spiral stair. It was in mint condition – didn’t seem to have been used, even. No scribbles! (which I had actually hoped for, a little ;=)

The cover was indeed red, with the words THE HOLY BIBLE in gold. It’s funny, that editors – proud of their work that they must be – are so unwilling (or coy) when it comes to stating that a particular translation (in this case the RSV) with an Agenda, is precisely that…

In the 1952 1 Cor 6:9 reads exactly as expected, but with a footnote: “Two Greek words are translated by this expression”. Rather strange, actually. More honest than Bible editions usually are, but too imprecise to actually say what is happening:

Two Greek words are NOT translated by this expression!!!

On the contrary! Three Greek words are falsely (and intentionally) rendered as one different word, one Modern Concept. One that didn’t exist before 1869 (when the newly minted Homosexual was a medical diagnosis for an exaggerated sexual lust for persons of the same gender) and has changed its meaning first in 1890 (when, in the English translation of Dr von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis it was made into symmetric twin Concepts: homo- and hetero-), and was later to change its meaning once more in late modern Times (Pater Zerwick 1966 “Sexual Orientation” as identity ;=)

In fact, it is the 1972 which is changed, made to conform to the spirit of the anti gay 1966 English language Jerusalem Bible saying "sexual perverts” for malakoì oúte arsenokoîtai – as do the versions found on the Internet (the Jerusalem Bible actually says (catamites and sodomites, following Pater Zerwick's symmetrical Concept of "passive" gay man vs. "active" gay man ;=)

This differs, however, from the French original which is not overtly "homo"-sexualised in this place, only saying – vaguely – “ni depravés, ni gens de moeurs infames.”

It would, of course, have been thrilling, in its way, if the change from malakoì oúte arsenokoîtai to the ghastly “Homosexuals” could have been nailed down more exactly than to around 1950... but it doesn’t really matter.

What is important is the change, the forgery, not the dating.

Remains that the change is Socio-Political, anti Modern. And that this change probably has a lot more to do with the refused drafting of applicants to the USA Navy during WW2 – which made San Francisco into what it is today - than with the Holy Scriptures of the Bible, where no such thing as a Political ban on GLBTI is ever imagined, be it in the late modern form of “don’t ask, don’t tell”, or the actual Modern Blue Discharge from the US Navy.