Marg Mowczko

When I first heard that the word “authentein” may have had sexual connotations I thought that egals were going too far. However the more I read early church Greek writings, the more I see that sexual promiscuity was a HUGE problem in the church. Especially in the churches that were surrounded by a culture where cultic prostitution was a normal part of life.

“Licentious doctrines continued to vex the church for several centuries, to the dismay of the church fathers. Clement of Alexandria wrote a detailed refutation of the various groups who endorsed fornication as accepted Christian behavior. He complained of those who had turned love-feasts into sex orgies, of those who taught women to ‘give to every man that asketh of thee’, and of those who found in physical intercourse a ‘mystical communion’. He branded one such lewd group authentai (the plural of authentes).” (Kroeger 1979)

Also, the conjunction “oude” invariably links words conveying a similar idea to form a single concept. This is very plain when reading the NT.