72 Thomas Hobson In this sense pudicitia represents no vague notion of chastity or purity but rather the specific ideal of masculine bodily integrity understood as impenetrability. In other words, a claim that a man was impudicus usually functioned as a coded way of signifying that his masculine inviolability had been compromised, and ancient discussions of a man’s pudicitia can almost always be reduced to this question: Has he been penetrated or not?”17. Seneca (Ep. 99.13) condemns “men who cater to the passions of them- selves and others in mutual lust (mutuo inpudici)”. Suetonius, writing about Julius Caesar (Jul. 52.3), says, “Lest there be any doubt in anyone’s mind that he was notorious indeed both for his impudicitia and his adul- teries, the elder Curio called him in one of his speeches ‘every woman’s man and every man’s woman’”. It is this sense of impudicitia that is arguably the meaning behind Mark’s use of ἀσέλγεια in transmitting the words of Jesus in Mark 7,22. In its other six NT occurrences, ἀσέλγεια is translated as luxuria. OLD’s second meaning of luxuria seems to fit here: “Unruly or willful behavior (of persons or animals). b. disregard for moral restraints, licen- tiousness”. The Roman comic poet Martial uses it this way: “(N)othing is more chaste than you of all men; but no page of mine is without wan- tonness (luxuria)” (Ep. 3.69.4). Luxuria is used similarly by Tertullian in connection with adulteria, stupra, and incestum (Ad Nat. 1.16.7-12). What could Jesus have meant by the use of this root? The Syriac translation confirms that there was a Semitic equivalent to the translated term Mark uses. The Syriac term narrows the options on the meaning of ἀσέλγεια, and confirms that some form of sexual immorality was on Jesus’ mind. The Aramaic cognate of the Syriac term (if Jesus employed a word from this root) suggests that the sin in question was a sin that was a particular stench or source of revulsion. The Old Latin translation strengthens the sense that ἀσέλγεια is used here to refer to homosexual and/or other shocking behavior of a sexual nature. Perhaps further re- search may connect the original term used by Jesus with specific sins in the intertestamental rabbinic writings. Exactly what did Jesus consider to be “utter shamelessness”? What did he consider too far “over the line”? The danger is to impose twenty- first century AD politically correct ideas on Jesus. It is unlikely that Jesus used the word to describe the scandals of poverty and injustice. It is unlikely that he was speaking of mere affronts to “common decency” (whatever that means). In context, it is far more likely that Jesus had in mind what his fellow Jews (like the author of 2 Peter) meant when they Williams, Roman Homosexuality 173. 17