Luke 7:2-3 A centurion there had a slave who was highly regarded, but who was sick and at the point of death. When the centurion heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to him, asking him to come and heal his slave.

There are two elements in this account that have suggested to some that the person healed by Jesus was the centurion’s male lover.  One concerns the word ‘pais‘, which is variously translated ‘servant’, ‘child’, or ‘boy’, and which is understood sometimes to refer to a young boy in a pederastic same-sex relationship with and older male.  I have discussed this topic elsewhere, and won’t pursue it here.

The other element in this account that seems to some to indicated that a same-sex relationship was involved is there description of the ‘slave’ as ‘highly regarded’.  The underlying word is ‘entimos‘.

Jeffrey John (Dean of St Alban’s) claims that this description would have been understood by any first-century Jew to mean that the slave was the centurion’s male lover.

But the evidence points, not towards, but away from, this interpretation.

For one thing, it is not at all clear that sexual relations between a Roman soldier and another adult male would have been countenanced at the time.  The evidence for such relationships between a soldier and a boy (slave) is scarce.  And, in any case, this incident took place in Galilee, not in Judea; not in Roman-occupied territory.  The centurion would have been a Gentile, but not a Roman.

For another thing, it is not reasonable to suppose that the Jews of the time (with whom the centurion was in good standing) would have been willing to ‘turn a blind eye’ to such a relationship, if that is what they understood it to be.

For yet another thing, the word ‘entimos‘ occurs in four other places in the NT (Luke 14.8, Phil 2.29, 1 Peter 2.4, 6), as well as over two dozen places in the LXX.  There is no hint of sexual (let alone homosexual) overtones in any of these passages.

Finally: the sexual behaviour of the centurion is of no interest to the Gospel writers.  Matthew does not even mention the word in question, and both he and Luke bring out something completely different – the centurion’s faith (see esp. Mt 8:10-12).

See this discussion by Ian Paul.