Baby Got Baby Back Ribs

No decent exegete still sees the Sodom story as anything but a story about a people lacking hospitality that was a life-or-death situation in the ancient world. Most people have a hard time wrapping their heads around the Sodom narrative being about hospitality, like I once did, instead of homosexuality because they go by our own current understanding of what hospitality is. We see the lack of hospitality today as not wanting to open the door for a neighbor who wants to borrow a cup of sugar or a weed whacker. The ancient world put the lack of hospitality of such grave importance, that the rest of the Israeli tribes went to war with the tribe of Ruben over it. And yes, there was a homosexual rape aspect to it.

The rarely mentioned Jude verse talking about Sodom I've already discussed (for a little more detail about Sodom and Jude talking about "strange flesh," go to my 'Sodom' tag post below).

Even with the Roman 1 verses, anti-gay scholars can't really take homosexuality outside of its idolatry context, so they just meld the two together to where you can't see where one starts and the other finishes in the hopes you don't see what they're doing.

I want to answer the argument that many sincerely want to be answered. The argument goes that Paul "made up" the Greek word arsenokoite in 1 Corinthians with compounding words 1 in Leviticus 20:13 ("a man shall not lay with a male") into one word and sticking it in 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy, it looks like it's a clear-cut case Paul is condemning homosexuality with cleverly using Leviticus.

Correcting the Leviticus passage has a dual purpose. It shows Paul did not intend to make a general condemnation of homosexuality with the compound word arsenokoite and it destroys the argument Jesus didn't need to say anything about homosexuality because He expected you to understand He followed Levitical laws, so why would He need to say anything when Leviticus tells you how He feels about homosexuality already?

There's no question that Leviticus verses were written in the context of idolatry (Leviticus 20:2,3 tells you that and it's carried over to Deuteronomy with discussing the "quedesh" priesthood that isn't named in the Leviticus verses, but are the Moloch worshippers Leviticus is referencing) and that if Paul referenced it, he was referencing their homosexuality in the context of only their idolatry practices, but I will approach this as if it wasn't in the context of idolatry because that is the only argument that can be made to carry this verse as a general prohibition of homosexuality to the present day)

To start, read what I say as to why Leviticus is only in the context of idolatry and then go to what I say about the word itself (you'll find argument after argument from me on this blog refuting the claim arsenokoite means a homosexual).

Only if we can understand the exact Hebrew wording in Leviticus can we figure out what Paul was trying to convey with his new compound word arsenokoite if that was really what he was doing 2.

The literal Hebrew reads the verse like this:

Weth-zakhar lo tishkav mishkevey ishshah

Translated into literal English it reads; "with a male you shall not lie the lyings of the woman 3."

Now since Leviticus 20:13, like 18:22, is only directed at Israeli males and not women, a clear-cut and simple reading prohibiting all male homosexuality would read; "Weth-zakhar lo tishkav (with a male you shall not lie)," but instead we have mishkevey ishshah (lyings of the woman) put into the verse. English translators of the verse also place in "as with," making the verse, wrongly, read; "with a male you shall not lie as with a women." Translators inserted "as with" instead of "the lyings of a woman" because "lyings of a woman" was not a term they understood because it's found nowhere else in the Bible. Now it can be said that the translators were only trying to fill in the blanks by putting in "as with" so the reading of it flows better, but the author of Leviticus meant it to read as it reads. Besides, there are other places in the Bible where the two words 'as with' is used, it's just not used here.

Now if we figure out what the term "lyings of a woman" is getting at, it will shed light on the actions of the males being discussed that are prohibited.

Like I said, Mishkevey Ishsha (lyings of a woman) is found nowhere else in the Bible, but if you go to Numbers 31:18, we find "mishkav zakhar 4" (lyings of a male) with what's coming from the male perspective of penetrating a woman. So "lyings of a woman" in turn must mean it's coming from the perspective of the one being penetrated.

We next go to the Talmud which gives a further explanation of the saying. There are only two ways a woman can have sex according to the Rabbis (Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 54a), vaginal and anal. They saw "lyings of a woman" as either one or the other. Since obviously, two men cannot have vaginal sex, the only other act it is talking about is anal sex, a prohibition to God's Israeli males to separate them from those pagan (cult anal sex) practices of the Canaanites with the "quedesh" in their land the Jews were entering, what is easily proven by the historical record.


In my first arsenokoite post I show a distinction between the two types of males who are forbidden to be penetrated in Leviticus 20:13 with the word 'zakhar,' a boy (pederasty) or a male cult priest with what would be an act of idolatry. In the CONTEXT it is given in Leviticus (Moloch worship), the prohibition is saying an Israeli man should not lie with cult Canaanite priests.

 
Also, most translators make the word "woman" (ishshah) which is also translated as "wife" in the verse into the incorrect gender word "female" (neqevah) that broadens the verse to make it even more of a general prohibition on "homosexuality" when it shouldn't.

Knowing now the correct Hebrew wordings, we can correctly translate Leviticus 20;13 as; 

 "An Israeli man of age shall not have anal sex with Zakhar (a male of some type of religious or age distinction) in his wife's beds." 

This is the correct literal translation and it's still ambiguous because you don't know if it's condemning idolatry with the "quedesh" or condemning anal sex with an underage male in the marriage bed of a male Israelite and his wife. Either way it narrows down the prohibition from the common belief the verse says;

"A man should not have sex with the a man as with a woman."

Anti-gay scholars with the verse like to dismiss the argument from pro-gay apologists who say homosexual orientation was not known to the writers of Leviticus, but these verses were conveyed by God who DID know of homosexual orientation. The problem is God didn't go above and beyond the restrictive act of anal 5 sex in condemning the love a man has for another man and prohibiting female homosexuality. You won't find it in Leviticus and in turn, you won't find it with Jesus or Paul in his use of arsenokoite.

This is my counterargument to those who take Leviticus out of its proper idolatry context and take it to mean a binding prohibition of homosexuality today.

1. Yale Bible scholar Dale Martin also points out the dangers of compounding ancient words and expecting them to have the same meaning in our present day.

2. I purposely leave out the discussion on Paul's Greek Septuagint translation of Leviticus here because it gives no further depth of what the Hebrew is saying. 

It was 1000 years from the Torah before the Rabbis, an elite, wrote on the Torah and what Leviticus tried to convey. Unlike the writers of the New Testament, the Rabbis in their commentaries never claimed to be inspired men, so if Paul was reaching to Leviticus to come up with arsenokoite, laws he said are dead to us, he was an inspired man quoting uninspired men with how they interpreted the Leviticus passages with what was one of SEVERAL interpretations they were never unanimous in agreeing on then or even today. 

3. I won't discuss the term "abomination" (to'ebah) because no matter the degree, it's still putting a taboo on what action is taking place in the verse.

4. Mishkevey in the singular. This is one of the times zakhar can be translated to just be 'man' when normally ish would be used. Remember when zakhar is used in the Hebrew Bible, 90% of the time it's in reference to a male, human, or animal that serves some type of religious purpose. Because zakhar is so close in proximity to ish in the Levitical verse, zakhar wouldn't mean just 'man' when ish does the job.

5. Various arguments have been put forth as to why only the specific act of anal sex is so strongly prohibited to an Israeli male. Some of these arguments are the prohibiting of "mixing of seed" (semen with feces, semen with menstrual blood), the wasting of semen that would have been detrimental to the procreation of a people, or what would be seen as a disrespect of the sacredness of the penis (Israeli men would put one hand on their penis to swear a promise like we would put our hand on a Bible in court in swearing to tell the truth) with uncleanliness. Paul visits the sacredness of the penis in Romans verse 27 verse as I showed when he talks about the Galli priesthood with their practice of castration.