Expert: Brenda Martin - 11/16/2010

Question
QUESTION: Where did you get your definition of the Greek "porneia"?

ANSWER: The Greek term is drawn from a word having the basic meaning of “to sell” or to “surrender or give oneself up to,” and so porneia has the sense of “a selling or a giving of oneself up to lust or lewdness.” The verb form (porneuo) includes among its meanings that of “to debauch.” (Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon)


Fornication has a much broader meaning; The word for “fornication” that is used when recording the statements of Jesus and his disciples is the Greek word por·nei′a. It is drawn from the same root word as the modern term “pornography.” Por·nei′a was used in Bible times to describe all forms of unlawful sexual intercourse. (The Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament, by Moulton and Milligan) It includes not only ordinary sexual relations between persons who are not married to each other, but also perverted sexual relations between such persons. Thus another reference work states that por·nei′a “can also be ‘unnatural vice,’ . . . sodomy.”

por·nei′a embraces not only sexual immorality but impurity of any kind, in speech, action or spiritual relationship. (Compare 1 Thessalonians 2:3; 1 Corinthians 7:14; 2 Corinthians 6:17.)






---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Okay.  So, specifically, what are these "unnatural vices" and "impurities"?  You gave some examples of sexual immorality in another post to a girl named Alisha--"adultery, prostitution, sex relations, oral and anal sex, and manipulation of the genitals".  Where does this definition come from, either from an academic or a biblical standpoint?  (Preferably biblical.)

Answer
"Where does this definition come from, either from an academic or a biblical standpoint?"

Jesus spoke about “fornication” & used the Greek word PORNEIA--

Regarding the meanings of por·nei′a, B. F. Westcott in his book Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians (1906, p. 76) says: “This is a general term for all unlawful intercourse, (I) adultery: Hos. ii. 2, 4 (LXX.); Matt. v. 32; xix. 9; (2) unlawful marriage, I Cor. v. I; (3) fornication, the common sense as here [Eph 5:3].

Bauer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (revised by F. W. Gingrich and F. Danker, 1979, p. 693) defines por·nei′a as “prostitution, unchastity, fornication, of every kind of unlawful sexual intercourse.”

Porneia is understood to involve the grossly immoral use of the genital organ(s) of at least one human; also there must have been two or more parties (including another consenting human or a beast), whether of the same sex or the opposite sex. (Jude 7)

While the Bible’s use of this term can include sexual intercourse on the part of unmarried persons as well as adultery, it often has a much wider meaning. The word for “fornication” that was used when recording the statements of Jesus and his disciples is the Greek word por·nei′a. It is drawn from the same root as the modern term “pornography.” In Bible times por·nei′a was used in referring to a broad range of unlawful sexual relations outside of marriage. Por·nei′a involves the grossly immoral use of the genital organ(s) of at least one human (whether in a natural or a perverted way). Also, there must have been another party to the immorality—a human of either sex or a beast.

Various authorities recognize that por·nei′a means “unchastity, harlotry, prostitution, fornication,” and as at Matthew 19:9 “it stands for, or includes, adultery.”