It can even mean people with a physical illness cf. Matt ; ; Hence a range of translations for the two terms like:.
There has been quite a bit of debate over this word since John Boswell attempted to problematize it 40 years ago in Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality. Boswell tried two moves. The second move he makes is to question how the etymology is interpreted.
This is surprisingly unclear from simple grammar. This word does not appear before Paul, but scholars assert that it appears in Christian texts from the 2nd century on, so they should help clarify its gender, right?
So none of this helps on a purely grammatical level. When the noun in question is used, some signs of ambiguity appear. Is he trying to dampen some ambiguity or alternative claims? And if the call-girls run parallel, is it because they may serve clients of the same gender, or because they are paid sex workers? Probably not. By the fourth century, it is consistently used of men, although not always of male anal sex. Sometimes it just refers to anal sex in general, whether with a man or a woman this would continue into the s.
So, within about a century, some in the early church deduced that the noun was masculine — even if the evidence is not quite as unanimous as it is sometimes presented. Which means that the reception history also suggests a masculine word. And of course, one has to choose whether to allow the prehistory or reception history to weigh on her interpretation.
