1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture

Mary Ann and Jim Robinson, along with Pastor Rebecca and Cheri Christakis hosted our church’s table at the presentation of the movie 1946: The Mistranslation that Shifted Culture. The movie, which was shown at People’s Light in collaboration with five other area churches, was about the journey of two people looking for the reasoning for including the word “homosexual” in modern versions of the Bible.

Their research led them to examine the notes from the biblical scholars who created the Revised Standard Version (RSV) translation. (The National Council of Churches brought these scholars together to modernize the Bible for contemporary readers.) The film delves into the translation of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians to try to figure out why the 1946 RSV New Testament translation included the word “homosexual” when previous translations did not. They discovered that the word was translated from two rare and poorly-understood Greek words — arsenokoitai and malakoi, which respectively refer to abusive behaviors and exploitative relationships — and were mistranslated to encompass consenting same-sex relationships.

The RSV became widely adopted across the United States, influencing culture, public policy, and theology, and resulted in many Christian churches using this mistranslation to condemn and exclude our LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters. Although this mistranslation was corrected when the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) was published in 1989, the previous translation had already been adopted by many other popular versions of the Bible, including the Living Bible distributed by the Billy Graham Crusade.

After the film, there was a panel discussion with pastors from three of the local churches that co-sponsored the presentation. It was a congenial event with fellow pastors and congregational leaders exchanging literature and ideas about how to collaborate in the future.