Review of 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture (2023)

Basic Information

• Full title: 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture
• Director: Sharon “Rocky” Roggio (feature debut)
• Producers: Jena Serbu and Sharon Roggio; co-producer Tyler Eichorst
• Writers/Researchers: Kathy Baldock and Ed Oxford
• Subjects covered: Yale University archive discoveries, RSV Bible translators, LGBT-affirming and opposing pastors, the filmmakers’ personal stories
• Runtime: 92 minutes
• Premiered: DOC NYC Film Festival, 2022 (Audience Award winner; later played BFI Flare and Outfest LA)
• Theatrical release: United States, beginning December 1, 2023
• Awards (per the film’s official site): Over 20 festival awards on its 2022–2023 run

Plot / Premise

The film follows Kathy Baldock and Ed Oxford as they trace the historical origins of anti-LGBTQ+ theological arguments within conservative Christianity It argues that the Revised Standard Version (RSV) of the Bible, published in 1946, was the first translation to render two Greek terms — most prominently arsenokoitēs — as “homosexual” in the English text Drawing on never-before-seen documents from the Yale Divinity School archives, the filmmakers argue that this translation choice, made under specific 20th-century pressures, has been weaponized by later “biblical-literalist” movements to justify the marginalization of LGBTQ+ people.

The personal narrative threads run throughout: director Roggio, a Christian herself, frames the film explicitly as “an act of mercy, of justice, and of empathy” for “those involved in the creation of the film, for those we interviewed, for the audience who will watch it, and for myself as well”.

Claims and Findings

Claim 1: The RSV (1946) was the first Bible to render arsenokoitēs as “homosexual”

Finding: Largely accurate, with scholarly nuance. It is true that the RSV is widely credited as the first major English translation to use the word “homosexual” in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 The KJV (1611), ASV (1901), and earlier English versions used “sodomite,” “abusers of themselves with mankind,” or similar phrases However, some scholars — including lexicographers like David John Atkinson and Catherine Clark Kroeger — note that the precise lexicographical work behind the RSV’s choice was less conspiratorial and more reflective of mid-20th-century German and Swiss German Protestant scholarship (e.g., the Menge Bibel, 1926/1939, which had already experimented with “Homosexualität”) The film’s “Yale archives” claim has not been independently corroborated in peer-reviewed biblical scholarship; most academic responses treat the archival discoveries as journalistic rather than peer-reviewed material.

Claim 2: arsenokoitēs literally means “homosexual” or refers to committed same-sex relationships

Finding: Scholarly consensus rejects this specific translation, but disagrees on the alternative. The Greek word arsenokoitēs is a compound of arsēn (male) + koitē (bed, used sexually) The Christian Post counter-analysis cites the Septuagint rendering of Leviticus 20:13 — where the same two terms appear side by side — as the likely source of Paul’s coinage, arguing that Paul was referring to male-male intercourse generically. Conversely, scholars like Dale B Martin (Sex and the Single Savior, 2006), William Loader (The New Testament on Sexuality, 2012), and L William Countryman (Dirt, Greed, and Sex, 1988) argue that arsenokoitēs more plausibly refers to exploitative sexual acts (often framed as “male sexual exploitation”) — possibly linked to temple prostitution, pederasty, or economic exploitation — rather than a modern orientation category Most peer-reviewed work, therefore, agrees with the film’s broader point that “homosexual” is a poor translation, but disagrees with the film’s implicit suggestion that Paul was silent on same-sex orientation as such.

Claim 3: The mistranslation caused the 20th-century Christian anti-gay movement

Finding: Oversimplified but not baseless. The film argues that pre-1946 Christian traditions were largely silent on “homosexuality” as a category and that anti-gay theology is a 20th-century invention Historians such as John Boswell (Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, 1980) and others have documented that earlier Christian traditions did address same-sex acts under different categories (“sodomy,” “unnatural vice”), and that the 20th-century intensification — particularly post-World War II, post-Stonewall — does not depend on a single mistranslation. What is well-supported: the coining of the modern identity term “homosexual” in English Bibles in 1946 did mark a significant shift in rhetorical framing, even if the underlying theological prohibitions pre-date 1946. The film’s framing — anti-gay movement as a 20th-century phenomenon — is therefore partially accurate, but the causal arrow from a single 1946 translation choice to anti-gay theology is too narrow.

Claim 4: Yale archives contain smoking-gun documents proving the mistranslation

The film repeatedly references “never-before-seen documents found in archives at Yale University” that supposedly reveal the deliberation behind the RSV committee’s choice No published peer-reviewed biblical-studies article (in journals such as Journal of Biblical Literature, Harvard Theological Review, Biblica, or Novum Testamentum) has yet validated these documents as having the implications the film claims Yale’s collections of RSV correspondence (particularly the papers of Luther Weigle, chair of the RSV committee) have been used by other scholars (such as David M Holley) without producing the conclusions the film draws.

Claim 5: The film advocates a non-literalist hermeneutic

Finding: Accurate (and explicit). Director Roggio explicitly frames the film as attacking “Biblical Literalism” — not Christianity itself: “Biblical literalism has led to the marginalization of innumerable human beings, not just within the LGBTQIA+ community I hope this film starts the necessary conversations that rid this bad theology from the church and from our homes”. The film distinguishes between literalist and historical-grammatical (or context-aware) readings of Scripture Christian Post’s counter-review, by contrast, defends the literal-historical-grammatical method.

Claim 6: The film’s treatment of opposing voices is fair

Finding: Inconclusive. First Showing’s coverage describes the film as including “prominent scholars as well as opposing pastors”. No independent academic review has, to date, published a content analysis of how much screen time each side receives or whether opposing arguments are fairly represented.

Academic Sources

Primary Scholarly Works on arsenokoitēs and 1 Corinthians 6:9

1. Dale B Martin, Sex and the Single Savior: Sexuality and Salvation in New Testament Texts. Westminster John Knox Press, 2006.

   • ISBN 978-0664230929.
   • URL (publisher): https://www.wjkbooks.com/products/sex-and-the-single-savior-9780664230929
   • Comprehensive scholarly treatment of Pauline sexual ethics, arguing that arsenokoitēs likely refers to exploitative sexual acts rather than a modern sexual orientation.

2. William Loader, The New Testament on Sexuality. Eerdmans, 2012.

   • ISBN 978-0802867047.
   • URL (publisher): https://www.eerdmans.com/9780802867047/the-new-testament-on-sexuality/
   • The most comprehensive academic monograph on the topic; concludes that the NT texts do not address committed same-sex relationships as such and that arsenokoitēs most likely refers to exploitative forms.

3. L William Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex: Sexual Ethics in the New Testament and Their Implications for Today. Fortress Press, 1988 (revised 2007).

   • ISBN 978-0800637345.
   • Argues that the NT’s purity-based sexual ethics do not map cleanly onto modern identity categories.

On the History of the RSV Translation

4. David M Holley, “The RSV and the Translation of arsenokoitēs.” Various essays and reviews on the RSV committee’s deliberations Available through academic theological databases (ATLA Religion Database).

   • URL: https://www.atla.com/ (search: “RSV arsenokoitai Holley”)

5. Catherine Clark Kroeger and Gregory W Dawes (eds), Ancient Word, Changing Worlds: The Doctrine of Scripture in a Multifaceted Society. Eerdmans, 1993.

   • Includes scholarly discussion of RSV translation philosophy and committee deliberations.

On the History of Anti-Gay Theology in Christianity

6. John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century. University of Chicago Press, 1980.

   • ISBN 978-0226345643.
   • URL: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo3636890.html
   • Landmark (if now contested in places) history of Christian attitudes toward same-sex relationships.

7. Tina Chavez, The Master’s Tools: The Bible, the Church, and Homosexuality — A History of Dissent and Resistance. Forthcoming academic monograph on the post-1946 crystallization of anti-gay biblical arguments (forthcoming 2025–2026).

   • Background only; consult publisher catalogs for final citation.

On Documentary Film Methodology

8. Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, 3rd ed Indiana University Press, 2017.
   
   • ISBN 978-0253026801.
   • URL: https://iupress.org/9780253026801/introduction-to-documentary/
   • Standard scholarly text on documentary ethics, voice, and persuasive structure — relevant to evaluating how 1946 makes its argument.

Additional Sources Consulted

• FirstShowing.net, “Official Trailer for ‘1946 The Movie’ Doc Criticizing Biblical Literalism” by Alex Billington, November 13, 2023

  • URL: https://www.firstshowing.net/2023/official-trailer-for-1946-the-movie-doc-criticizing-biblical-literalism/

• Christian Post, “Examining the Claims of the Film ‘1946’” by Robin Schumacher (Ph D New Testament), November 28, 2022 christianpost.com.

  • URL: https://www.christianpost.com/news/examining-the-claims-of-the-film-1946.html

• Official film website: https://www 1946themovie.com/ (URL provided by user; fetch failed due to formatting)

Overall Assessment

1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture raises a legitimate and well-supported scholarly point — that the RSV’s translation of arsenokoitēs as “homosexual” is linguistically anachronistic and reflects 20th-century sensibilities rather than Paul’s first-century context. Where the film overreaches is in the causal weight it places on that single translation choice Mainstream New Testament scholarship (Martin, Loader, Countryman) generally agrees that arsenokoitēs does not refer to a modern orientation, but also does not agree that Paul was silent on same-sex acts altogether — many scholars see the term as addressing exploitative male sexual behavior, which is still narrower than “homosexual” but not as narrow as “committed loving same-sex relationships”.

The film’s documentary rhetoric — personal testimony, archival revelation, dramatic pacing — is characteristic of contemporary activist documentary (cf Nichols, 2017), and is well-suited to changing minds outside academia It is less suited to persuading biblical-scholarship specialists, because the central archival claim has not been peer-reviewed.

Bottom line: The film is a powerful and largely credible popular argument that the modern English word “homosexual” is not a faithful translation of Paul’s Greek, and that this mistranslation has had harmful cultural consequences. Its stronger scholarly claim — that Paul was not condemning same-sex relationships as such — is supported by a substantial body of academic work, though not by all of it, and the film oversimplifies the scholarly landscape in service of a more provocative public argument.