I want to look more closely at Kyle Harper’s article published in the Journal of Biblical Literature, “Porneia—The Making of a Christian Sexual Norm.”  He cited two sources to support the expansion of the meaning of πορνεία during the intertestamental period: Sirach and Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.

In one sense Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is relatively easy to dismiss as fiction.  It’s not unlike This Present Darkness.  The language of the novel may represent the beliefs of a certain segment of Evangelical Christians at a certain time in history.  It may use some words that are also used in the New Testament but it doesn’t dictate what those words meant to the human authors of the New Testament or what they mean to the Holy Spirit.  (And, yes, the two can be different [John 11:49-53 NET]).  But it is possible that Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs was written in Greek before the New Testament was written.  The human authors of the New Testament may not have been entirely immune to its influence or to the socially constructed reality within which it was written.

Sirach is another matter altogether.  “Perhaps the earliest witness to the more expansive meaning of πορνεία,” Mr. Harper wrote, “is the book of Sirach, composed in the first decades of the second century b.c.e.”^[1]  If I had grown up Catholic, Sirach would be one of the Scriptures I use to understand the meaning of Greek words in the New Testament.  The only way I know to proceed is to examine Mr. Harper’s claims one at a time.  As a baseline “the practical warnings against prostitution (9:6; 19:2), common also to other wisdom literature”^[2] follow:

While I agree that the passage in which Sirach 19:2 occurs reads like Old Testament wisdom literature, the passage surrounding Sirach 9:6 reads more like gezerot (Sirach 9:1-9):

Be not jealous over the wife of thy bosom, and teach her not an evil lesson against thyself.  Give not thy soul unto a woman to set her foot upon thy substance.  Meet not with an harlot (γυναικὶ ἑταιριζομένῃ), lest thou fall into her snares.  Use not much the company of a woman that is a singer, lest thou be taken with her attempts.  Gaze not on a maid, that thou fall not by those things that are precious in her.  Give not thy soul unto harlots, that thou lose not thine inheritance.  Look not round about thee in the streets of the city, neither wander thou in the solitary place thereof.  Turn away thine eye from a beautiful woman, and look not upon another’s beauty; for many have been deceived by the beauty of a woman; for herewith love is kindled as a fire.  Sit not at all with another man’s wife, nor sit down with her in thine arms, and spend not thy money with her at the wine; lest thine heart incline unto her, and so through thy desire thou fall into destruction.

Jesus used πόρναι (another form of πόρνη) in a way that owes nothing to Sirach: I tell you the truth, He said to the chief priests and elders of the people,^[3] tax collectors and prostitutes (πόρναι, another form of πόρνη) will go ahead of you into the kingdom of God! [Table]  For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him.  But the tax collectors and prostitutes (πόρναι, another form of πόρνη) did believe.  Although you saw this, you did not later change your minds and believe him.^[4]

Paul used πόρνης and πόρνῃ for prostitute without any particular reliance on Sirach (1 Corinthians 6:13b-17 NET).

The body is not for sexual immorality (πορνείᾳ), but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.  Now God indeed raised the Lord and he will raise us by his power.  Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?  Should I take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute (πόρνης, another form of πόρνη)?  Never!  Or do you not know that anyone who is united with a prostitute (πόρνῃ) is one body with her?  For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.”  But the one united with the Lord is one spirit with him.

Paul’s understanding was rooted in God’s creation and a direct quote from Genesis 2:24 in Greek.

I have admitted that the desire to be faithful to one woman took me by surprise while I was definitely making other plans.  That desire has been a constant companion, one I was unable to shake when young, and unwilling now that I am old.

Kyle Harper continued:

…Sirach breaks important new ground. “Two sorts of men multiply sins, and a third incurs wrath” (Sir 23:16–18 RSV). In the first two cases, the male sinner is described as an ἄνθρωπος πόρνος. Unfortunately it is not perfectly clear which sins precisely the author has in mind. The first ἄνθρωπος πόρνος sins “in the body of his own flesh.” The second ἄνθρωπος πόρνος is a man “for whom all bread tastes sweet,” and the third sinner is a man who disgraces his marriage bed, thinking himself beyond the sight of God. What is most remarkable is that πόρνος is being used to describe male sexual transgression. In classical Greek, the πόρνος was the male prostitute; here it is used in apposition to ἄνθρωπος (influenced by Hebrew) to mean “the sexually sinning man.”^[6]

Though it was not “perfectly clear which sins precisely the author has in mind” to Mr. Harper, Fr. William Most had this to say:

In vv.16-27: Sirach speaks of three  kinds of sexual sins: he begins by speaking of the man who indulges himself sexually alone, in masturbation.  The fire will not go out, it will consume him. The sense is that this vice is like an addiction, indulging it makes it grow stronger.  Secondly, the one who sins with just any woman, even close relatives (v. 17: “to the fornicator all food tastes sweet”), will not stop until the fire burns him up.

I’m not so sure that ἄρτος (bread, food) stood for women.  The noun is masculine.  Though that in itself is not particularly meaningful, the more common understanding of πόρνῳ (another form of πόρνος) was catamite.  If Sirach had catamites in mind it reveals his moral reasoning vis-à-vis πόρνος ἐν σώματι σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ: The homosexuality of masturbation disturbed him.  Contrast the prophet Nathan’s point that a man should entertain the traveler (e.g., male sexual desire) with that which is his own (2 Samuel 12:1-4 NET).

Mr. Harper continued:

The description of an adulterous wife in Sirach also reveals the range of πορνεία: “Through her fornication she has committed adultery and brought forth children by another man” (23:22–23 NRSV). She will bear illegitimate offspring because ἐν πορνείᾳ ἐμοιχεύθη. Μοιχεία in Greek, when used of women, required the passive voice; it was difficult to emphasize the woman’s agency with μοιχεύω alone. The addition of ἐν πορνείᾳ here emphasizes her dishonorable behavior. Translations such as the NRSV, which make “commit adultery” active, obscure the reason why it was necessary to add ἐν πορνείᾳ as a way of underlining her volition in the dishonorable act.^[7]

 

The passage continues (Sirach 23:24-27):

She shall be brought out into the congregation, and inquisition shall be made of her children.  Her children shall not take root, and her branches shall bring forth no fruit.  She shall leave her memory to be cursed, and her reproach shall not be blotted out.  And they that remain shall know that there is nothing better than the fear of the Lord, and that there is nothing sweeter than to take heed unto the commandments of the Lord.

John, more than two centuries later, described a similar scene of inquisition (ἐπισκοπὴ; or visitation) without using ἐν πορνείᾳ to make his point.  Though the authenticity of this passage is under attack, it remains presently in Scripture.

Mr. Harper continued:

Sirach also attests the use of πορνεία as a broadly conceived sexual vice. In ch. 41, the author gives a list of moral apothegms, some of them deliberately paradoxical. In the first of these, Sirach enjoins the reader to “be ashamed of sexual immorality [περὶ πορνείας] before your father or mother” (41:17 NRSV). The audience is implicitly masculine, and the meaning of πορνεία is clearly sexual. Later in the chapter, Sirach warns against “looking at a prostitute” (γυναικὸς ἑταίρας), against “gazing at another man’s wife,” and against “meddling with his servant-girl” (41:20–22 NRSV). Sirach attests to the ascent of a conjugal sexual morality in late Second Temple Judaism; the injunctions against sex with slaves and prostitutes are a noteworthy development.^[8]

 

In context it is not possible to say that these things were all incidents of πορνείας in Sirach’s mind, especially when I add back the intervening verses:

To “be ashamed of whoredom” (πορνείας) is one of many things to be ashamed of; πορνείας does not stand for all of the other things that bring shame (αἰσχύνεσθε; literally, make ugly, disfigure).  Though Sirach was mentioned first the examples given don’t appear to support the expansion of the meaning of πορνεία as well as Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs does.^[9]

The most intriguing witness to the expansion of πορνεία and its ascent to the position of a chief vice is the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. The value of its testimony is compromised by the uncertainties surrounding the provenance of the work. The extant text is a redaction of the second century c.e. with Christian elements. But there are strong indications that the underlying source is a product of Hellenistic Judaism. Πορνεία is the first vice to appear in the first testament, and the root πορν- appears thirty-two times in the text. The warnings against πορνεία are pervasive, and they are so integral to the extant text that this preoccupation likely belongs to the original Hellenstic-Jewish fabric of the text.

Πορνεία in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs functions, as in Sirach, as a catchall vice for any sexual transgression. “Πορνεία has destroyed many” (T. Reu. 4:7). Wine and beauty lead to πορνεία, and the young are particularly susceptible to its charms (T. Jud. 14:2; T. Reu. 1:6; 4:6). Πορνεία was flexible enough to accommodate a wide range of sexual misdeeds. Reuben was guilty of πορνεία for sleeping with Bilhah, Rachel’s maid, because his father had been in the same bed (T. Reu. 1:6). Judah was conquered by the spirit of fornication, both for taking Tamar when he thought she was a prostitute and for marrying Bathshua (T. Jud. 13:3; 14:2, 3). Levi was encouraged to marry, while he was still young, a chaste Jewish girl, in order to avoid fornication (T. Levi 9:9). Potiphar’s wife tried, but failed, to lead the virtuous Joseph into πορνεία (T. Jos. 3:8). Benjamin predicted that his heirs would “fornicate the fornication of Sodom” (T. Benj. 9:1). Women, too, were especially vulnerable to the power of πορνεία (T. Reu. 5:3). In the Testaments, πορνεία has become an inclusive sexual category denoting illicit sexual activity, including incest, prostitution, exogamy, and unchastity. Issachar ends his testament by claiming, “I am 122 years of age, and I have never known a sin up to my death. Except for my wife, I never knew another woman. I have not committed πορνεία by the uplifting of my eyes” (T. Iss. 7:1–2). For Jews living in a Hellenic culture that tolerated, even encouraged the sexual use of dishonored women, πορνεία was an ever-present temptation, and it became the principal vice, the “mother of all evils” (T. Sim. 5:3). This sharp sensibility toward the danger of πορνεία, nurtured in the world of Hellenistic Judaism, lies behind future Christian developments.