1946: The Movie Being Crafted to Shift — and Mislead

1946 is a soon-to-be-released documentary that claims a mistranslation of a verse in the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament ignited an anti-gay movement in the American church and in the larger American culture. Nineteen-forty-six was the year the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament was first published. In it, in 1 Corinthians 6:9, the word homosexuals appeared for the first time in an English Bible. First Corinthians 6:9-11 was translated this way:

Ed Oxford and Kathy Baldock, researchers for *1946* / 1946 trailer

⁹ Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, ¹⁰ nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God. ¹¹ And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

The movie will promote the narrative that homosexuals was a mistranslation — that the choice of this word in 1 Corinthians 6:9 “shifted a culture.” But did it really? And is homosexuals a mistranslation, as the film will claim, and as the members of the creative team behind it believe? Also, what English word or words do the film’s creators and researchers believe the translators of the RSV should have used in translating 1 Corinthians 6:9?

We explore these and other questions in this important Word Foundations series:

1946: The Movie Being Crafted to Shift — and Mislead — a Culture

- 1946: The Movie Being Crafted to Shift — and Mislead — a Culture, Part 1
  Article 423 — September 22, 2022
- 1946: The Movie Being Crafted to Shift — and Mislead — a Culture, Part 2
  Article 424 — September 29, 2022
- What Does God’s Word Say About Homosexuality? ~ 1946: The Movie Being Crafted to Shift — and Mislead — a Culture, Part 3
  Article 425 — October 6, 2022

With the title of this series, we are not necessarily saying that the people working to produce 1946 are intentionally trying to mislead people; it could be that they are deceived themselves.