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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with me. If you're feeling a little overwhelmed because the holidays are upon us, we got you. Coming up tomorrow, we'll speak with Food Writer Jake Cohen who will help us get our Hanukkah celebrations together. On Monday, Strategist Editor Maxine Builder joins us to brainstorm last-minute gifts, and on Thursday we'll speak with Lauren Iannotti, the editor of Real Simple, about how to be a great holiday host.

We are going to have a lot of fun celebrating the holidays, and in those conversations, we want to include your calls and questions. That's in the future, but let's get this hour started with something very serious and important, a conversation about language, the Bible, and homophobia.

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Alison Stewart: The documentary 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture, made waves on the festival circuit last year. It stirred up controversy among some conservative Christian groups. Now you can finally see it in theaters. The film claims that the Bible's inclusion of the word homosexual was a consequential translation mistake. The film is by Sharon "Rocky" Roggio, herself, a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, with her own complex relationship with Christianity. Her father is a pastor who still preaches that being gay is sinful.

In her search for a way to reconcile being queer and Christian, Rocky encountered the exciting work of Kathy Baldock and Ed Oxford, both deeply religious people. Kathy and Ed taught Rocky that the first time the word homosexual ever appeared in the Bible was in 1946 as a result of a decision by a revised standard version translation committee working on a new translation of the Bible. Just a bunch of guys around a table in 1940s. There's even a picture of them at work.

Kathy and Ed turned to the archives at Yale University to find out how the decision was made and cast out on the validity of the initial translation. A translation the committee itself ended up revising in the 1970s. The full title of film is 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture. It is in theaters now. Rocky Roggio, welcome to All Of It.

Sharon "Rocky" Roggio: Thank you, Alison, for having me.

Alison Stewart: Rocky, your father is a pastor and you do start this film with your personal story. If you don't mind sharing, what messages did you get in your household about growing up, about queerness?

Sharon "Rocky" Roggio: Well, growing up in my household, we never really heard directly from my father's mouth or even on the pulpit about, example, using the verses against a queer person or really heavy rhetoric against queer people. It just was in the air and it's always been in the air. Some of the things that really I didn't even understand as a child, I maybe would pick up conversations from adults or at least the understanding that homosexual was bad, dirty, wrong, disgusting, definitely not welcome.

Later on, once my father had discovered that I was one of those boogeymans that everybody talks about, that's when he really started to use his platform to, in his mind, help. He really wanted to help me because he was fearful for my eternal soul. He really believed that homosexuals or queer people, LGBTQIA+, as we say, do not inherit the kingdom of God. He's grown since then where he might say, "You can be same-sex attracted, but you still can't act on it," and that's a whole nother story.

The rhetoric has changed as the experience has changed. Again, it's just always been in the air. Anybody who grew up in the '80s and '90s knows this. That's when it became politicized as we see in the film and that's when we see malice within these translations and the Bible being turned as a weapon against the queer community and being politicized with the moral majority.

Alison Stewart: Rocky, I think I added an extra syllable to your last name. Would you say it for me? [laughs]

Sharon "Rocky" Roggio: Yes. It's Roggio-

Alison Stewart: Roggio. Thank you.

Sharon "Rocky" Roggio: -like [unintelligible 00:04:19]. No worries. Thank you for asking. I know we usually do that ahead of time, but it's so awesome to even be talking with y'all.

Alison Stewart: Rocky Roggio is the director of 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture. Rocky, would you read for us the passage that really is at the heart of this, the one that includes the word homosexual? It's Corinthians 6:9-10.

Sharon "Rocky" Roggio: Sure. The verse in the revised standard version would be homosexuals would not inherit the kingdom of God. What it does is it's basically going through a vice list of all of these different types of people that will not inherit the kingdom of God. When the word homosexual was put in, what the translation committee was trying to do was modernize the King James Version, which was the most popular version at the time, and hadn't been updated since 1611. They really were just trying to find some new language to use to describe these people groups that St. Paul was referencing that would not inherit the Kingdom of God.

There's a whole history around this verse of what-- they've been translated for over 2,000 years. We can see the history of abuse, exploitation, of pederasty, of prostitution, sex for money, and always mostly the power over people. These connotations are very heavy in that verse. We don't just look at the First Corinthians 6:9-10, we do do an apologetic on all of the clobber passages that then the word homosexual spread from that first mistranslation to then the verses in the '70s where we see it in six different passages where it just doesn't belong. We felt it was important to lay out that history as well and examine those verses for their historical and cultural context to help lay out some understanding.

Alison Stewart: When the word homosexual became a translation of two words from the Greek that were combined into one, what were those words, and after speaking with experts about them, how can we mostly closely translate those words?

Sharon "Rocky" Roggio: The Greek words are malakoi and arsenokoitai. The malakoi would be the passive participant in the sex act. There is a sex act going on here. The arsenokoitai would be the active participant in that sex act. What we need to ask ourselves is what is going on here and what is Paul really condemning? When we lay out the history, we look at the malakoi. The malakoi is the person that's being feminized, they're being penetrated. That's just the language. That person, it's usually sex with a slave, it's sex with a child, it's sex for money, or it's just, again, this power over someone.

The malakoi is also really just translated as soft. We can see that actual meaning used throughout scripture and in other documents so we can say that that means soft or really a coward. When you feminize a a woman, it's the worst thing that you could be as the man. This is all patriarchy, misogyny as a woman. We still do this today on the schoolyard. "You're a sissy. You're a pansy," and all of these other things that we do to call people like a woman. That would be more of an understanding of what the malakoi is.

Then the arsenokoitai is derived from arsen and the koitai from the Levitical passages. We do go back to the Levitical passages in the Septuagint, which is the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew Bible translated into Greek, which is what Paul would have used. We believe that Paul combined that word, arsen, which is male, and koitai, which means bed, so man bed or male bed is probably the definition of the word.

Again, if anybody says they know exactly what the word means, as Kathy says in the film, they don't, because it's never defined. It's not as easily definable as the malakoi. We only see it used in very little literature outside of St. Paul's letter in Corinthians and then again we see it in 1st Timothy, and it's always listed as a vice list. It's almost like it's been copy and pasted from First Corinthians and put into the Acts of John and the Sibylline Oracles and other ancient documents that we see it in, which is very few.

As we look at the history of it, we think that it was, again, slang. It was something that was familiar. Even if St. Paul made it up, it was something that was familiar with what was going on with the sex acts that were abusive, that were causing harm to other people, and that were not loving, consensual, and all of the things that we understand to be of same-sex attracted people, homosexual, pure people, anybody that falls outside of the binary, a sexual minority. He wasn't talking about those things. The film tries to explain that in its easiest form. There's a lot of heavy stuff here, as you can imagine.

We had a very difficult time. Jill Woodward is our editor. She's a New Yorker. She's amazing. If anybody is listening, look at her work. Hire her. We had a very-- and Jena Serbu, our writer, our producer, the three of us, had the task of taking-- whittling down. What's the most important information around this mistranslation to lay out a conversation and get us to really start to break down this mistranslation and delve further and get everyone to watch, all the different audiences?

Alison Stewart: The name of the film is 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture. My guest is its Director Rocky Roggio. I do want to read that passage in full and then ask you a follow-up question. The passage is, "Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanders, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God." Who was this committee that worked on the translation in 1946? What was truly the goal?

Sharon "Rocky" Roggio: The goal was to modernize the old English and make it accessible for people. What makes Kathy a really good researcher is she's able to look at the data and present the information. She went in assuming that these men were out to get the dirty, filthy homosexuals, and they're sure-- most of us assumed there was malice initially behind this mistranslation. There's also assumptions around the World War II and all of these other things that were going out as homosexuals were starting to come out of the closet and being more seen. All of these assumptions were made.

When she and Ed searched through the archives, they didn't see that. They saw 22 men who did the best that they could, maybe one or two of them had some malice in them, but we don't know. We can only assume. The data shows that there wasn't any discussion around it at all. We don't really know what made them turn to that except for looking into the culture if they're trying to modernize the word.

At the time of the culture, homosexuals were associated with having a mental disorder, being delinquent, or being all of these deviant type things and they were also associated with pedophilia unfortunately, and rape and just different things that were not true. Looking into the culture of the homosexual took on that malakoi and arsenokoitai and just combined it. Then later on, when they were challenged by David in the letter, which was a very well-written letter with an appendix stating, "Hey, you made a mistake and this is why," they had the whereabouts to say, "You know what, we're going to look at this and we see what you're saying."

Then in '71, when they were able to update their translation-- they had to wait 10 years because of a contract. They went back to those letters and they voted seven to three to change it to sexual pervert. Which is still a problematic translation. They have since the new revised standard version, updated edition 2022, which just came out last year now says, "Elicit sex amongst men." Which forces the reader to say, "Okay, well, what's elicit and with whom?" Gets us to really think about these themes and these tones and not just a blanket statement of homosexual, which is a group of people and not an act. You could be a homosexual and have never done anything. It's just about doing abuses against someone.

Yes, we don't see malice. We see an intention for making-- to that end, actually, they got hit for doing things like making-- marry a young woman, which was more original to the Greek. They were actually a very academic, well-put-together committee and with integrity. They got slammed for that because, I guess, you can't be a virgin and a young woman at the same time. They did some other things like took the divinity of Christ away because they said, "Surely, this is a son of a God instead of the Son of the God." That's why other translation committees in the '70s made their version, their modern version of the English Bible to pull away from what the RSV was labeled, a Communist Bible, don't read it.

New translations wanted to come in and put together their version of the Bible so that Mary can now be a young woman and all of these different things. It is important to look at the committees to see who is putting together the translations that you are reading. What schools do they go to? What are their intentions? Are they working with integrity or are they working to uplift their identity politics and marginalize other ideas? Because we can see that in modern translations and translations in general. We can see malice for sure.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about the film 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture. It's in theaters now. After the break, we'll talk about the two intrepid researchers at the center of the film. We'll talk a little bit about some of the backlash as well as some of the issues around translation that Rocky just brought up. Stay with us. This is All Of It.

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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Allison Stewart. My guest is Sharon "Rocky" Roggio, the director of the film 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture. The film is about the moment, the backstory, the who, how, where, and why the word homosexual was added to the Bible in 1946. Our two intrepid researchers that you follow in the film are Kathy and Ed. They are both deeply faithful people. They're not academics, they're not employed by a research institution, they're not historians, they're not linguists. How do they get involved with looking at this addition of homosexual to the Bible?

Sharon "Rocky" Roggio: Isn't that pretty amazing? Two lay people were the ones to open those archives at Yale University for the first time since they had been sealed. All of these people who are writing anti-queer theology books and all of these things against the LGBTQ community never asked the question, "Who made the decision to put the word homosexual in the Bible and why?" Their stories are fascinating, which was one of the reasons why I was like, "I have to tell this story besides Reverend David," which I'm sure we'll get into in a little bit.

Kathy's story was just through relationship, meeting a lesbian woman, and instead of her trying to evangelize her, she just did relationship and they became friends. She's like, "I just don't understand why God couldn't love my gay friend. I love my gay friend." It started her to really examine these things. Kathy's work is phenomenal. You can follow her at canyonwalkerconnections.com. She has a first book called Repairing the Breach between the LGBTQ Community and the Church. Her second book is going to be about this film, Forging a Sacred Weapon: How the Bible Became Anti-Gay.

She's an engineer by trade and it has an amazing ability to break down history and lay out the pieces for us. Her work lays out 2,000 years of human sexuality seen through multiple lenses, what's going on in politics, in religion, in science, in psychology. As we know more, how are we changing and doing better? I encourage you to take a look at Kathy.

Then while Kathy was doing her seminars and teaching about this 1946: Mistranslation, Ed was in one of her seminars in 2016. He found it very hard to believe that the word homosexual was just added in the Bible in 1946. As a queer Christian, someone who struggled his whole life with suicidal ideation and intimacy and fitting in in a Christian world which he didn't fit in because he was queer, and the queer world that he didn't fit in because he was Christian, he felt compelled to do the work himself. He started buying old Bibles, lexicons, dictionaries. His book collection is very impressive.

He [unintelligible 00:18:13] Kathy to come over to his house and do some work together. From there, he was the one that discovered that the archives were at Yale University. He makes a phone call, they go to Yale. That's 2017. They find the letter. It's just an amazing story of two people really wanting to get to the truth for their own personal, but also once they knew this information, just like me, I felt compelled I have to share it with the world. Which is why I made this movie.

Alison Stewart: When they dig into the archives at Yale, Ed and Kathy encountered this letter that was sent to the committee that was doing the revisions. They received it in 1959. It was from a young man about the translation. Here's a bit from the moment that they found the letter in the archives. This is from 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture.

Kathy Baldock: I was going through a roll and at the top I saw the word homosexual and First Corinthians 6:9-10 and I stopped. I said, "Ed, I think I found something." It was a letter and it was written October 22nd, 1959 from a little town in Canada, in Quebec. Okay. I'm reading this for the first time. After much study in this matter, I have come to the conclusion that homosexual is not only an inadequate translation of these two Greek words--

Ed Oxford: Oh, and this is exactly what we are looking for.

Kathy: This is it.

Alison Stewart: How did the committee respond to this letter from this young religious man saying, "Hey, I think this translation's wrong."

Sharon "Rocky" Roggio: Yes, so they wrote him back within three weeks, which is pretty amazing. Dr. Weigle was very good at writing everyone back. There was a well-kept trace of letters. Again, the committee just was really concerned with the general public and people in general and what they were doing. They said, "We see your point." Then he offered a suggestion, how amazing. He said, "How about those who participate in homosexual acts?"

See, he's starting to get it. You could be queer and have never done anything. This is about acting and abuse against other people. He said, "We are not able to update this for 10 years. We'll look at it when we reconvene," it was a very short letter, but then David wrote back and said, "No, you're still not getting it. It's not homosexual acts, it's homosexual vices," which is very different. It has, again, this abuse connotation to it. That's why we think they went with sexual perverts in the '70s, which is still not a great translation but have since made it as accurate as they can with what we know of what we can only assume the ancient writers were applying.

Alison Stewart: Kathy ended up being able to track down this young man who wrote the letter, his name's David, who ended up becoming a reverend, who is also gay. Now, of course, he's older. Let's hear a bit of him talking about how he views this movement to address the translation as part of his second calling. This is from the film 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture.

David: Everything just fell into place. I could see the whole pattern all the way being in town at the university, with the theological background that provided me with knowledge of New Testament Greek, that allowed me to write to Dr. Weigle, who was a sympathetic kind of person who accepted what I had to say. The church I was in ruled by the general counsel that sexual orientation should not be a barrier either for membership or for ministry in the church.

Then receiving a phone call from Kathy Baldock, the director of CanyonWalker Connections. She is the means of my true feeling of a second calling. I used to think I was called to pastoral ministry in spite of being gay. I decided after your phone call that I was called to ministry because I was gay. [applause]

Alison Stewart: Rocky, what did David tell you about how he reconciled his sexual identity with his faith, especially in the '50s and '60s?

Sharon "Rocky" Roggio: Yes, first off, that's my favorite scene in the movie there, where--

Alison Stewart: Standing ovation. [chuckles]

Sharon "Rocky" Roggio: Oh, yes. Mary Lambert did our original music. All the music was made by Mary and then she just hits the keys and Kathy turns to the camera and she has this smile, and it's just a powerful moment. That was one of the first scenes that we cut. Reverend David has been very open since coming out in his 80s about his experience growing up. As you can imagine in the '40s and '50s, this is something you definitely don't talk about.

There was no example. Just some-- he tells about a story of finding a book at a newsstand high up on the shelf that talked about homosexual love, and he hid it in a newspaper to buy it without the salesperson seeing it because when he was 12 years old, up until even then, this was probably 16 when he sees this book, he thought he was the only queer person in the world. He didn't know what was going on with him. He didn't understand like, "What is this?" Then he found that book and then realized that there were more people like him.

That's why media is so important and representation is so important. It's just a darling story. It's wonderful though to see the progression in our culture where now we do have more representation. We do a nice job in the film of laying out that timeline of him and then his experience of his call to ministry and answering the call, even though he knew he was same-sex attracted and had an honest conversation with God about it and never hid himself from God. He was just, "This is just who I am," and was able to answer the call. It's just a beautiful story. Once I learned that this man who wrote this letter in 1959, a 21-year-old seminary student who wrote this beautiful letter is alive, I'm like, "I have to interview this man."

We've been to Vancouver Island where he lives. Reverend David did die though in January 2023 after the movie premiered at DOC NYC, and he got to see the film and be a part of it. Everything he says at the end of the film, feeling that this is his second calling is amazing, that he is now a piece of his history. We have this letter to be able to, I'll end with this, lead with, this is an indisputable fact. The Bible was mistranslated. We have the evidence. We made a film that empathetically and graciously goes through the motions to, again, engage in a conversation whether you're atheist, Christian, hurt by the church, LGBTQ conservative, to get to the bottom of this so we can all recognize that we're all equal participants in this thing called life.

We need to do better with how we use the Bible against people. I hope y'all go and see the film and see Reverend David's story and Kathy and Ed and everyone in the movie.

Alison Stewart: The film has been getting a lot of coverage and some blowback from Christian outlets. The Christian Post wrote, "The bottom line is that when the literal historical-grammatical method is used to interpret the writings of Paul on this topic, we find the impossible can't be used to validate homosexual behavior." A post on the Krishna's website, Stand to Reason reads, "The good news is that it's easy to spot the fallacies in this film. The bad news is that many people won't before admitting that the film has not been released. I've watched trailers, read the film's website, and have closely followed the news of its development." What has been challenging in dealing with blowback from Christian groups and what has been the response from the LGBTQ community? Some of it anyway.

Sharon "Rocky" Roggio: It's more frustrating to get the pushback from all of the conservatives. It would be one thing if they watched the movie and then gave their critiques, and then we can have a conversation. We've had hundreds, if not thousands of-- and we even had a book written about us on why our movie is wrong. It's just old bibliography, copy and paste. Just watch the movie would be my thing. It's really frustrating, but it's also encouraging. They're reposting things and then people who need to hear this information will see it. They're linking our website and our trailer. I encourage people to take a look, even if you disagree.

For the LGBTQ community, it's been mixed. The first time I got some real hate from some members in the community that I'm a part of, I completely understand. I understand why people wouldn't want me to be working in this space. The church has done so much damage. To anyone that feels that pain, we hear you and we are with you. We hope that you can see the value in the work that we're doing, knowing that the church isn't going anywhere, and we can see how it's now seeping more into our culture with our politics and the separation of church and state is no more. We need to really examine how we use the text in laws and be very mindful of that.

We really just want to have an honest conversation with everyone around this and we understand the hurt. From someone who still holds onto their queer faith, it's been very transformative to hear the stories. I met a man who was on this journey and doing so much research for months, and he showed me his journal. Yesterday I was at the theater. I'm in Los Angeles and we're playing in North Hollywood this week along with the Angelika in New York City. He's like, "I was just doing so much work, and then last night I found that your movie was playing in North Hollywood." He took the day off, drove up from Orange County, happened to be there in the theater. He's like, "Your story is my story. I feel heard. Now I feel--"

He can live confidently as a queer Christian. Other people will DM me, send me a direct message and say, "I'm in a queer relationship and I-- okay with it. I've put away the shame. Now after seeing your film, I realize that it's not a sin. I never once thought that being gay wasn't a sin." That's really encouraging to know that people are starting to recognize this and move away from that shame. Now also, for someone who is a heterosexual person who may have been an oppressor or believes that homosexuality is a sin, we've also heard from them saying that we need to do better on this. We see what you're saying. They feel guilty then for some of the shame they had put maybe on one of their loved ones or the queer community.

It's wonderful to see. I love meeting people in the theaters. We're going to be in Los Angeles tonight with Q&As all day. Actually, we have four screenings today in North Hollywood. I'll be there all day. Then today's our last day at the Angelika. If you're in New York City, Village East, please come see our film, three screenings today. If not, we're hopefully doing streaming soon. We're still working on that.

Alison Stewart: The name of the film is 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture. I've been speaking with its director, Sharon "Rocky" Roggio. Thank you for being with us and sharing your reporting.

Sharon "Rocky" Roggio: Amazing. Thank you, Alison.

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