-- PORNEIA --

Ok, lets take a closer look now at that Greek term porneia (πορνεία) (or its variants) that often gets translated as sexual immorality in our New Testament. 

In the original Greek version of the New Testament, the Greek term porneia (πορνεία) (or its variants) is used 25 times. In the late 4th century, the Latin Vulgate, a Latin translation of the Greek texts, translated the term as fornicati, fornicatus, fornicata, and fornicatae. In 1611 This term got translated into fornication in the King James version. Other modern translations now used terms such as whoredom, sexual immorality, or simply immorality.

The first occurrence in our New Testament is Matthew 5:32 (NIV) “But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality(porneias), makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”   Do we think Jesus was referring to some common understanding of some list of wrong sexual acts or thoughts? 

The next occurrence may help.  Matthew 15:19-20 (NIV) “For out of the heart come evil ideas, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are the things that defile a person; it is not eating with unwashed hands that defiles a person.”

Nope, that doesn’t help with our list making hopes. Here Jesus lists adultery as a separate item from sexual immorality (porneia).  It would seem Jesus thought adultery and this term porneia were two separate things.  So do we cross adultery off the list of what Jesus meant when he used that term?  Mark 7:22 has a similar list but also has covetous desires and sensuality as separate items from sexual immorality (porneia).  Our list would keep getting shorter.

It turns out the term Πορνεία  in modern Greek translates simply as prostitution. You can paste this term into google translate to confirm, or find any non-religious greek dictionary.  Unfortunately, religious based greek dictionaries seem to have based their translation more on what they think the term fornication should mean.


Following is a Greek Wikipedia page about this term:



(page google translated)
Prostitution is called the body offer to intercourse against financial remuneration. The individual mass and systematically provide sexual services in this way is called "issued" - and particularly the woman "prostitute" or commonly "whore". Prostitution is often also described as "vulgar sex " or "vulgar sex" and sometimes referred to as "the oldest profession in the world." Detailed laws for prostitution have been enacted by Solon in ancient Athens .
Prostitution in Greece

Under Greek law prostitution as a profession , that the massive and systematic supply of gambling body to intercourse, if exercised in accordance with the current legislation is not an offense . But required prior permission of the local authority (police or port) to prostitute installation in any building and characterization of this as a " brothel ". At the same time, it and the health monitoring of the prostitute from public doctors.




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