Reconstructing Christian Sexual Ethics 02: A Survey of Porn(eia) in the Bible

The standard conservative Christian sexual ethic is simple: only have sex with your spouse. There are a few complicating issues, including divorce, sexual orientation, and what actually qualifies as sex, but we'll save those for other times. "Sex only within marriage" is the basic paradigm.

Now here's my question: where does this come from in scripture? Because I've been told it's there all my life, and yet I'm not sure I can find it.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I reviewed a lot of the "sin lists" of the New Testament. The word porneia shows up in basically all of them, which is a Greek word that's historically been translated as  fornication. So the argument goes that fornication is listed as a sin pretty much everywhere anything is listed as a sin, and fornication means "sex outside of marriage." QED.

Except that we are placing a lot of faith in our understanding of the word fornication and its correctness as a translational choice. Every scholarly source I find translates porneia as "sexual immorality," which is also the wording used in most modern Bible translations. Porneia a very broad term, and basically means "whatever sex the writer disapproves of."

So with this understanding, we're left with a new question: what sexual actions are immoral? There are a few obvious things, like adultery, or sex as part of pagan worship. But what about other things, like sex outside of marriage, or a variety of non-intercourse sexual acts? There's not exactly an exhaustive list anywhere in the New Testament, which should surprise nobody, because that would be legalism. But if we're living in a virtue framework, we need to have some understanding of this word. Porneia, whatever it means, has to contradict our virtue framework, or our framework is incomplete. 

I decided to review every instance of porneia in the New Testament and the Septuagint, including all the roots and variations I could identify.

• Porneia, sexual immorality, or metaphorically, worship of idols
  
• Porneuo, to commit porneia
• Porne/pornos, a person who commits porneia

(Interestingly, all these are derived from the root pirprasko, meaning "to sell into slavery." Make of that what you will.)

It's not really practical to explore every Old Testament use and variant of the word here, but it's easy to summarize. The word shows up dozens of times, and in the majority of cases it's a clear and obvious metaphor for faithlessness to God. In all the cases where it's used to describe actual people, it seems to be about a woman exchanging sex for money (or being treated like such), with adultery being rolled into that concept. And of course, we have Hosea, whose marriage revolved around both the literal and the metaphorical versions of this. Here are some notable references with a few comments:

• Dinah
  
• Tamar
• Leviticus 21
  
• Deuteronomy 22
• Note that there's no command anywhere to kill prostitutes, or even to punish them in any way. The trigger for punishment here is not sex outside of marriage, it's deception and financial damage.
• Also, side note about this passage, which, yes, is the one where it's okay to murder your wife if you find she's not a virgin. This gets a lot of play as one of the worst parts of the Law. But look at this from an implementation standpoint. Here's the scenario: a man marries a woman, then decides to accuse her of not being a virgin, true or false, in order to get rid of her. There's this assumption that her parents have kept the sheets from the wedding night, and that a virgin's sheets will have blood on them, while a non-virgin's sheets will not. (This is, of course, not how anything actually works.) But consider the chain of custody on that evidence: the parents are the ones holding the sheets! If there's no blood, they can fake it, save their daughter's life, and get a pile of cash! And everyone involved has to know this! In practical reality, this rule amounts to "Don't try to get rid of a wife by making false accusations against her. It'll just cost you a lot of money."
  
• Deuteronomy 23
• 23:2, no child of a prostitute shall enter the assembly of the LORD.
• This is in context with eunuchs and foreigners. This could be about children of religious unfaithfulness, rather than prostitution.
• Especially note that Judges 11:1 references Jephthah being the son of a prostitute.
  
• 23:17, there cannot be sacred cult prostitutes.
  
• Rahab
  
• Judges 16:1
  
• 1 Kings 3:16
• Notably, two prostitutes go to the king with a dispute, meaning they know Solomon isn't going to punish them for prostitution.
• This also implies that Solomon isn't exactly running a huge and complex bureaucracy with judges that would handle minor disputes like this.
  
• Proverbs 6:26
  
• Proverbs 29:3
  
• Amos 7:17
  

So we've seen that the porn words in the Septuagint are about adultery/prostitution, not about extra-marital sex in general. The Septuagint was the scripture that most Jews would have been familiar with when the New Testament was being written, so this is an important data point in understanding the use of the word by the New Testament authors.

How about the New Testament? There are a lot of uses with little context, where it just shows up in a list of other sins and no explanation. There are also a number of references where it clearly means prostitution, either literal or metaphorical. Here's a list of those, with minimal commentary by me:

• Matthew 15:19
• Matthew 21:31-32
• Literal prostitutes
  
• Mark 7:21
• Luke 15:30
• Literal prostitutes
  
• John 8:41
• This may be related to verse 48, when Jesus' opponents imply they think he's a Samaritan. The Judeans of the day would have considered Samaritans to be apostates, whose deformed version of Judaism was born out of mixing real Judaism with pagan religions, while the "real" Jews were busy being exiled to Babylon. Either way, it's about prostitution.
• Alternately, this may just be a dig at Jesus and his parentage. ("Yeah, well, your mother's a whore.")
• 1 Corinthians 5:9-11
• 1 Corinthians 10:8 
• Clear reference to prostitution as a metaphor for apostasy
  
• 2 Corinthians 12:21
• Galatians 5:19
• Ephesians 5:3-5
• Colossians 3:5
• 1 Timothy 1:10
  
• Hebrews 11:31, James 2:25
• References to Rahab, a literal prostitute
• Hebrews 12:16
• And see to it that no one becomes a pornos or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal.
  
• This could be translated that Esau was a pornos because he sold his birthright for a bowl of stew. ("Esau was a total stew-whore.") If that's the translation, the sexual reference has to be a metaphor, unless Esau had a very strange relationship with stew. Alternately, since the Greek here lacks punctuation, this could be just a sin-list reference with no context.
  
• Numerous uses in Revelation, all clearly the prostitution/apostasy metaphor, except Revelation 22:15, which is a sin list.
  

So suppose we're trying to make the traditionalist argument, that porneia in the New Testament means "any sex outside of marriage." We have to argue that the New Testament authors meant that. We've already seen that the word porneia meant literal or metaphorical adultery/prostitution in the scriptures the New Testament authors would have been referencing. And the references above are no help in making an argument for a changed understanding of the word. There's only a few references left! I'll start with the easy ones.

• Matthew 5:32/Matthew 19:9
• Whoever divorces his wife, except for porneia, makes her commit adultery. Whoever divorces his wife, except for porneia, and marries another commits adultery.
  
• Jesus could mean literal adultery/prostitution, or perhaps religious apostasy. The Old Testament understanding of porneia as adultery/prostitution remains a reasonable interpretation.
  
• Acts 15:20, Acts 15:29, Acts 21:25
  
• The Jerusalem Council tells Gentile Christians that they don't need to keep the Jewish law, but only need to avoid four things:
• Food polluted by idols
• Things strangled
• Blood
• Porneia
• The first three are pretty clearly references to pagan worship practices. It's reasonable to suppose the fourth is as well. The Old Testament understanding of porneia as adultery/prostitution remains a reasonable interpretation, either as in "don't go whoring after other gods" or as in "don't have sex during pagan worship rites."
• It's also notable that the leaders in Jerusalem don't (as far as we're told) provide a list of what is and is not porneia. They seem to expect their audience to understand without further explanation.
• 1 Corinthians 5:1
• It is actually reported that porneia exists among you, the kind of immorality that is not permitted even among the Gentiles, so that someone is cohabiting with his father’s wife.
  
• A man with his father's wife is a specific type of porneia that Paul finds particularly bothersome. If the man or his lover are still married, the Old Testament porneia as literal/metaphorical adultery/prostitution remains reasonable.
  
•  Hebrews 13:4
• Marriage must be honored among all and the marriage bed kept undefiled, for God will judge pornos and adulterers.
• The Old Testament porneia as literal/metaphorical adultery/prostitution remains reasonable.

We are now left with exactly three passages from which one can make the traditionalist argument about the meaning of porneia. Here they are:

• 1 Corinthians 7:1-5
• Now with regard to the issues you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.”  But because of porneiav, each man should have relations with his own wife and each woman with her own husband. A husband should give to his wife her sexual rights, and likewise a wife to her husband. It is not the wife who has the rights to her own body, but the husband. In the same way, it is not the husband who has the rights to his own body, but the wife. Do not deprive each other, except by mutual agreement for a specified time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then resume your relationship, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 

This is a case where older translations handle the ambiguities of Greek differently. The NET inserts quotation marks (with justification in the extensive footnotes), and things make much more sense. So Paul says that, rather than abstaining from sex entirely as the Corinthians suggested, and to avoid engaging in porneia due to lack of self-control, married couples should have sex. The Old Testament porneia as literal/metaphorical adultery/prostitution remains reasonable.

• 1 Corinthians 6:12-20
• “All things are lawful for me” – but not everything is beneficial. “All things are lawful for me” – but I will not be controlled by anything. “Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both.” The body is not for porneia, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. Now God indeed raised the Lord and he will raise us by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I take the members of Christ and make them members of a pornhv? Never! Or do you not know that anyone who is united with a pornh is one body with her? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But the one united with the Lord is one spirit with him. Flee porneia! “Every sin a person commits is outside of the body” – but the porneuwn sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God with your body. 

This is often pointed to as the scripture about sex outside of marriage, with those two porneias translated as fornication. But the entire passage is much more coherent if we translate that as prostitution as it was in the Old Testament. It becomes a passage with a single subject, instead of jumping back and forth between prostitution and pre-marital sex as if the two are equivalent.

More on this later.

We are left with one passage, possibly the most interesting one of all. I've inserted some gender-neutral language into my usual NET, since the translational consensus seems to be that such carries the intent better.

• 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8
• Finally then, brothers and sisters,  we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received instruction from us about how  you must live and please God (as you are in fact living)  that you do so more and more. For you know what commands we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is God’s will: that you become holy, that you keep away from porneia, that each of you know how to possess his own body in holiness and honor, not in lustful passion like the Gentiles who do not know God. In this matter no one should violate the rights of [a fellow Christian] or take advantage of him[/her], because the Lord is the avenger in all these cases, as we also told you earlier and warned you solemnly. For God did not call us to impurity but in holiness. Consequently the one who rejects this is not rejecting human authority but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you. 

Consider the context of this writing. First Thessalonians is very possibly Paul's first letter, to his first Church. It's five chapters long. Chapters 1-3 are Paul recounting his history with them, and what's happened since he left them, and how proud he is of them. Chapter 4 is this bit about porneia, an exortation to even more brotherly love than they already have for each other, and then some words about the coming Resurrection to comfort them about their comrades who have died, and remind them of how it will come by surprise. Then he gives them some short exhortations towards good behavior, and says goodbye.

This is not Paul's typical letter. He's not replying to their correspondence, he doesn't tell them what they're doing wrong, he doesn't go into any deep theology. He just writes a nice letter to his friends that he misses, to encourage them. And in the middle of that, he has this bit to remind them what he told them about porneia. Unlike 1 Corinthians, where Paul is replying to concerns they have and ideas they have expressed, this is Paul focusing on what he thinks most important! That's consistent with Paul's inclusion of porneia in most or all of his sin lists in other letters, when no other sin gets referenced nearly as often.

Paul tells them a few things:

• Keep away from porneia. Since the Greek lacks punctuation, the other points could be separate, in which case this is just a sin list and doesn't help us understand porneia at all. But the other points could also be a modifier to explain what avoiding porneia looks like to Paul.
  
• Possess your body in holiness and honor. Exercise self-control, a common Christian virtue.
  
• Do not engage in lustful passions like pagans.
  
• Do not violate the rights of your fellow believer in the above, or God will avenge.
  

The cult of Dionysis was a big thing in Thessaloniki during this period. It was a mystery religion, so kind of by definition they didn't write much down. But it seems that their practices involved getting drunk, letting their god take control of their bodies, and behaving in an animalistic fashion, which may have involved violent orgies. It was also run by women, female cult prostitutes. In that context, the above makes perfect sense. Paul, referencing both literal and metaphorical prostitution, is telling his flock to stay away from the dominant pagan religion in their area.

 

This helps make more sense of the 1 Corinthians passage. The quote marks in the New English Translation help us see that the Corinthians are saying "Oh, because we're not legalists I can have sex with a cult prostitute from another religion and it's just fine! Our bodies don't actually matter, so have fun with them!" And Paul is replying, "No, there are still limits." If we read those limits to be something other than what Paul says they are, that's on us, not on scripture.

  

Porneia is sinful and important to avoid, but is all sex outside of marriage porneia? I have no scriptural reason to think so. There's no clear statement that any New Testament author is opposed to sex outside of marriage, in and of itself. There's not even a clear statement to this effect in the Old Testament, where we usually find such rules! This is a teaching of man that has been elevated to the level of scripture.

So have I just thrown all sexual ethics out the window? By no means! By near-exclusively preaching this man-made doctrine of premarital chastity, I think much of the Church has been missing a deep moral lesson for a very long time. More on that later.

EDIT 2022.03.24: since posting this, I've spent a little time reading through the apocryphal books. The online search tools for them aren't nearly as sophisticated as for the protestant canon, sadly. I'm not done, but I've found two instances of porneia, which are consistent with my above work.

Tobit 4:12, Tobit tells his son to avoid porneia by marrying a relative rather than a foreigner. This is consistent with a primary meaning of apostasy, rather than a sexual meaning.

Wisdom 4:12, in the middle of a long passage about the follies of idolatry, the writer says that "the idea of making idols was the beginning of fornication." Again, we see the religious apostasy metaphor, rather than any actual sexual activity.

EDIT 2022.08.22: this article is an excellent discussion of how porenia was used by different groups over time. It's not perfect, I think it misses some pretty critical points of Paul's usage in 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 7. But it's fantastic context for this discussion, especially the way it brings sex slavery into the center of it. Which perhaps explains why the root word for porneia is tied to slavery.

Highlights: Greco-Roman women were largely either honorable (under the protection of a man) or dishonorable (somewhere on the slave/prostitute spectrum). (Dishonorable women were not allowed to wear veils, helping explain 1 Corinthians 11.) Adultery was sex with an honorable woman that didn't belong to you, with or without her consent, and was a crime a man committed against another man. Porneia, on the other hand, included sex with "dishonorable" women, who were often slaves. Their use as prostitutes was rape. It was also considered good and beneficial by the larger culture, because if a man was raping slaves, at least he wasn't running around having sex with women that actually mattered...

So when Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4 uses porneia to describe a sin committed against a fellow Christian, it seems likely this is what he was talking about. The Church would likely have included both sex slaves and men who would previously have been raping those sex slaves. Paul would have none of that. "The one who rejects this is not rejecting human authority but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you."