Leviticus

I'm not going to be so presumptuous by thinking I know more about what Jews believe on their passages than they do.

They have lived in their G-d uttered Holy Words for thousands of years with commentary stacked on commentary on those words for almost as long. They should only be the ones to speak on them and not the new "Assembly" living in a New Covenant.

I have also never given the passages much attention in a study like I have on the NT passages because I see their passages as not binding to Believers, so why would I care about them when I have a bright and glorious walk of faith to walk? I am not an ancient Israelite entering the land of Canaan, so why would I think these verses are for me? Laws Paul said are dead to me in the New Birth?

So take what you will with what I give here. And Brethren? Leave their own words to them and only go to the words given you. We don't have a lot of time here to be making their business ours.

Mad*esh Kad*esh

I touched on the Qedesh. The Priesthood from Deuteronomy in this post. Granted, the Leviticus verses don't state directly; "It's the Kadesh cult practices being talked about in Leviticus and not a prohibition of homosexuality as a general rule," but two points, if true, will leave the connection with the Qedeshim to Leviticus without question for the naysayers.

1. That homosexual CULT IDOLATRY already existed in Canaan before the time the Israelites entered the land and THAT is what is being prohibited in the Leviticus passages.

2. That the Canaanites frowned on homosexuality outside of cult worship settings and that the prohibition in Leviticus 18:22 can't be anything but homosexuality in the context of ONLY cult idolatry.


The first point is easily proven by the Bible Itself:

Leviticus 20:5: "...  then I will set my face against that man and against his clan and will cut him off from among their people, him and all who follow him in whoring after Moloch."

(The whoring mentioned in this verse is very relevant since there is debate if these priests where in actuality male prostitutes)

Now go to 1 Kings 14:24 and 22:46:

"There were even male shrine prostitutes Kadesh (qā·ḏêš) in the land... "

"He rid the land of the rest of the male shrine prostitutes (haq·qā·ḏêš)... "

This is also backed by the historical record.*


The second point clinches it because Leviticus 18;3 states the Israelites were not to do the practices of the Canaanites:

"You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices."

Now if it can be shown that the Canaanites did not practice homosexuality as a norm outside of their cult ceremonies or even prohibited homosexual practice, that means homosexuality was not one of the Canaanite "practices" God is forbidding to the Israelites and Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 falls ONLY in the 'cult male prostitution' category the Canaanites DID practice.

Records from the Canaanite civilization are silent on homosexuality either way, but In his book "The Hebrew Bible: New Insights and Scholarship," Frederick Greenspahn states the Canaanite law codes where directly copied from Mesopotamian Law Codes and what do we find in MALC (Mesopotamian Law Code), Tablet A: 19, 20? A rumor of homosexuality being slanderous and a general prohibition of homosexuality outside of idolatry. We can now say homosexuality was not only not a "practice," but it was also prohibited by the Canaanites if they indeed copied Mesopotamian Law.

(note; there was no variance in views within the Mesopotamian Nations on homosexuality. What you read here is all there is on it.)

The Hittites would also have copied the Mesopotamian Law Codes on homosexuality because they lived in the same era and were close neighbors to the Canaanites and that's what ancient neighbors did, but nothing is stated outright about homosexuality either way with the Hittites. What we do have though are several Hittite historical documents that hint at how homosexuality was held by these people. One is the; "Siege of Ursu" text that had a Hittite army commander criticizing his men for acting as "Kulessar," what historians believe is acting like a passive homosexual. The other is an exorcism text called the "Ritual of Anniwiyani" whose purpose was to exorcise an "effeminate" demon.**

As for Egypt? The land the Israelites left to go to Canaan whose "practices" they were ALSO forbidden to follow by God? Even homosexual desire was condemned according to the "Egyptian Book of the Dead" and Derrick Sherwin Bailey states the ancient Egyptians regarded homosexual practices as; "... morally objectionable and personally degrading."

So there you have it. Homosexuality was rejected by the Egyptians, whom the children of Israel left, and from the evidence shown, also forbidden by the Canaanites whose land the children of Israel were entering. This would make "homosexuality" not one of the practices God forbids in Leviticus with the two lands and that would make homosexuality ONLY in the context of Canaanite idolatry the Canaanites probably abhorred as a people outside of idolatry.


This is an angle no researcher has gone into as far as I know.

“Homosexual cult prostitution appears to have been the primary form in which homosexual intercourse was practiced in Israel.” 

 - Robert Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics; p.130.





*Two more resources on the Kadesh backing my claim:

"The Legacy of Canaan: The Ras Shamra Texts and Their Relevance to the Old Testament" by John Grey.

“The End of the Male Cult Prostitute: A Literary-Histoical and Sociological Analysis of Hebrew qadesh-qedeshim” by Phyllis Bird.

**To the ancients, a passive male, willingly, was what they would have the closest definition of a "homosexual," at least in their minds. A male who was penetrative in a homosexual act, either to humiliate the defeated in battle, as a sexual outlet, or in worship practices, were never considered males only desiring males.
How much the ancients knew about a 'gay orientation' as we understand it today is for another discussion.

Baby Got Baby Back Ribs

No decent exegete still sees the Sodom story as anything but a story about a debased 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 a modern-day understanding of what hospitality is.


Even with the Roman 1 verses, anti-gay scholars can't really take homosexuality outside of its idolatry context. Hence, they just meld the two together, what the text doesn't do.

I now 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") and sticking it in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 with what 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 Leviticus tells you how He felt about homosexuality already.

There is no question that the Leviticus verses were written in the context of the idolatry practices of the Canaanites. Leviticus 20:2,3 gives you that context with that same context then being carried over to Deuteronomy in discussing the "Quedesh" priesthood that isn't named in the Leviticus verses, but are the men Leviticus is referencing, and that if Paul referenced them, he was referencing homosexuality in the context of only their idolatry practices.

Now I will approach the Leviticus verse 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 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 woman" Translators inserted "as with" instead of "the lyings of a woman" because "lyings of a woman" was not a term they understood clearly 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, 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' are 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 further explains 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 I showed in the footnotes of this post.


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; 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 points out the errors that can occur in compounding ancient words and expecting them to have the same meaning in future eras.

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 with the Rabbinical. 

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 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 with uncleanliness (semen with feces). Israeli men would put one hand on their penis to swear a promise, similarly like a hand is placed on a Bible in a court of law swearing to tell the truth. 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 cult castration.

Jewish Exegesis Methodology and Leviticus

On the basis of the exegesis of Baraitha d'Rabbi Ishmael in the Sifra, on Leviticus, written in the mid-second century of the Common Era, Rabbi Ishmael says:

"The Torah is interpreted by means of thirteen rules.... When a generalization is followed by a specification, only what specifies applies (Miklal u'frat)."

In our texts of Leviticus, the generalization is the text; "A man shall not lay with a man," ואת זכר לא תשכב and the specification is the text; "as you would lay with a woman" משכבי אשה.

Based upon Rabbi Ishmael's method of Jewish Torah exegesis, we can clearly see that the biblical passages in Leviticus 18: 22 and also in Leviticus 20: 13 can not refer to true homosexual activity at all, as at least one of the males is a heterosexual or perhaps a bisexual male. Otherwise, the text need not supply the words, "as (you would) lay with a woman."

To translate that prohibition, therefore, as applying to any homosexual relationship is to exit the realm of divine ordination and enter instead the realm of subjective, mortal homophobia.

The ancient rabbis must have had some sense of this problem when they ruled two thousand years ago that any homosexual sexual activity short of anal intercourse is not included in the biblical prohibition (Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 54a-56a; Sotah 26b; Niddah 13a; Maimonides, Perush L'Mishnayot on Sanhedrin 54a).

Why did they bother to offer that qualification if it was so clear to them that homosexuality was forbidden?

Also, lesbianism, according to Jewish law, was never prohibited; Maimonides, who personally abhorred such behavior, ruled that; it is neither a biblical nor a rabbinic prohibition. (Perush L'Mishnayot on Sanhedrin 54a.)

In fact, the rabbis in the Gemara (BT, Tractate Yevamot) specifically say that the passages in Leviticus refer to an androgynous being and not to male-male sex.

Since the rabbis' interpretations are the basis of Halakhah, anyone claiming that Judaism is against homosexual orientation based on that passage is simply incorrect.

Torah Up Inside

A recurring claim says Jesus would not have seen homosexuality as permissible during the time he lived because homosexuality was so prohibited by Judaism, homosexuality was almost never practiced or talked about. Two books bring to light homosexuality was prevalent in the Jewish tradition.

"Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition" By Steven Greenberg.

"Jacob's Wound: Homoerotic Narrative in the Literature of Ancient Israel" By Theodore W. Jennings Jr.

                                       

Don't you find it interesting that out of the 4 branches of Judaism, there is some acceptance of homosexuality at some level when they have the most damning of Scripture on homosexuality? Yet Christians are the least accepting with those same Jewish Scriptures?

Leviticus Loves Deuteronomy

One poor argument I hear for carrying over the Leviticus passage to the present day is this:

"If the practices in Leviticus 18 and 20 are condemned only because of their association with idolatry, then it logically follows they would be permissible if they were committed apart from idolatry. That would mean incest, adultery, bestiality and child sacrifice (all of which are listed in these chapters) are only condemned when associated with idolatry; otherwise, they are allowable."

Every prohibition in Leviticus that involved the death penalty (incest, adultery, bestiality, child sacrifice, etc) are re-stated, in Deuteronomy (a man prohibited from having sex with his daughter-in-law in Lev. 20:12? Found in Deut. 27:23, a man or woman having sex with animals found in Lev. 20:15 and 16? Found in Deut. 27:21 and so on with the other prohibitions or elsewhere in the Bible). Guess which one is nowhere to be found, unlike all the others? That's right; "Man shall not lie with a male" you only find in Leviticus. 

So now we know the Leviticus verse is talking about a man laying with a male in the context of idolatry, the religious prostitution services involved in the "Moloch" idolatry of the Canaanites, the setting Leviticus was written in. Let me say it again. ALL prohibitions are re-stated in Deuteronomy or elsewhere in the Bible outside of the idolatry of Leviticus as a general prohibition but only one is absent; "Man laying with a male..." because it was never meant as a general prohibition with the proof you can't find "Man lying with a male" or any variation of it anywhere else in the Bible.

Remember, the context of the Leviticus passage starts with the mention of "Moloch" and child sacrifice to him (Leviticus 20:2) and then mentions the prostituting of Canaanite males in the priestly service to Moloch (Leviticus 20:5) that book marks the "Man with male... " verse in idolatry.

Deuteronomy DOES give a replacement for the "Man shall not lie with male" Leviticus verses where it SPECIFIES BY NAME who Leviticus IS talking about, the Canaanite priests called the "Qa-desh or Kadesh" (קָדֵשׁ) found in Deuteronomy 23:17 (mistakenly translated as "Sodomite" in most later Bible translations). The same Hebrew word קָדֵשׁ is also mentioned several times in 1 and 2 Kings (also mistakenly translated as "Sodomite"). It's only when we get to Job 36:14 where we get the correct translation; "And their life perishes among the cult prostitutes (קָדֵשׁ)."

Now knowing all of this, look at Leviticus again? "If a man (Hebrew for man here is "ish") lies with a male (Hebrew for male here is "zakhar")... " A "Zakhar" is almost always a male in a religious role (the other is a male child without a religious distinction). Many other times the word Zakhar is used in the Bible denotes a male in some type of religious function including even male animals about to be sacrificed in a religious ceremony.


I posted a later argument for the Kadesh in Leviticus.

A question was asked in the comments section here on the incest verses and I go further on the incest topic in my "Late Nite Tapas" thread.

My Justice, Your Job

"For the last 1,900 years, Christianity had been assuming that ancient Jewish law was divided into two categories: ritual and morality. 

The historical record documents that this simply wasn’t so. Christianity had been interpreting Jesus’ teachings based on an erroneous assumption.

To be sure, the Jewish nation did divide their commandments into two groups. However, the historical record shows that the dividing line was nothing other than the precept, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Every commandment summarized by this precept was a Justice. Every remaining commandment was a Job.

 
Jesus, Paul, and James all used the precept, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Now we know that they used this precept to reference a well-established group of commandments—the Justices. This historical discovery completely changes our understanding of the New Testament. Each, in his own particular way, used the precept to explain that the Justices alone are the Christian law.

The English terms "Justices" and "Jobs" are in consonance with Paul’s terms for the two great divisions of the Torah. "Justices" translates Greek dikaiomata; while "Jobs" translates Greek erga, literally "works." "Justices of the Torah" (dikaiomata tou nomou) is used by Paul in Romans 2:26; "Jobs of the Torah" (erga tou nomou) is used by Paul in Romans 3:20. (See "Dr. Berg on the Justices of the Torah" for documentation on the translation of dikaiomata tou nomou).

The Jewish nation divided their commandments into two groups: commandments between man and God (mitzvot bein adam lamakom) and commandments between man and man (mitzvot bein adam lachaveiro). (mishna Yoma 8:9) Philo documents that the commandments between man and God included all the piety and purity regulations; whereas the commandments between man and man included ethics and justice (Special Laws 2.63). Philo further explained that the commands between man and God are encapsulated by love of God and the commands between man and man are encapsulated in love of neighbor (Decalogue 108-110). Philo presents this dual division of the law based on the two love commandments "as though obvious or well-known." (Resurrecting Jesus: the earliest Christian Tradition and its Interpreters by Dale C. Allison, p. 154, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005).

The notion that the two love commands (love God and love neighbor ) encompass all of God’s commandments is presumed throughout the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs (t. Issachar 5:2, 7:6-7; t. Dan 5:1-3; t. Gad 4:1-2; t. Jos 11:1; t. Benj. 3:-1-3; t. Reub. 6:8-9). Of particular note is t. Dan 5:1-3, "Observe, therefore, my children, the commandments of the Lord, and keep His law… Love the Lord through all your life, and one another with a true heart." The New Testament further documents that the ancient Jewish nation considered the two love commands (love God and love neighbor ) to encompass all of God’s commandments. Luke 10:26-27, "And Jesus asked the expert in the law, ‘What is written in the law? How do you read it?’ And the legal expert answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."

That the commands based on Leviticus 19:18 ("Love your neighbor as yourself") were an independent group of commands is further documented in multiple sources. For example, Hillel, the head of one of the greatest Pharisaic schools, stated that the Golden Rule (which was interchangeable with Leviticus 19:18 during his day) contained within it all the commands that a Gentile convert must follow (t. Shabbos 31a). Jesus referenced the commands based on Leviticus 19:18 as an independent group (Matthew 19:16-20). Paul referenced the commands based on Leviticus 19:18 as an independent group (Romans 13:9). James declared Leviticus 19:18 to be the Messianic King’s Law and then proceeded to give examples of Old Testament commandments based upon it; commands such as "Do not murder," "Do not commit adultery," and "Don’t show favoritism" (James 2:8-10). Murder and adultery were forbidden in the Decalogue and showing favoritism was forbidden in Leviticus 19:15. James’ entire letter deals exclusively with Old Testament commands based on Leviticus 19:18 and is structured around this concept.

The implications of this revolutionary historical discovery couldn’t be more profound, especially when it comes to the hot button issue of homosexuality. Surprisingly, the prohibition on homosexuality was a Job (not a Justice). In other words, it turns out that the prohibition on homosexuality wasn’t originally part of Christian law. But then, in the second century, when Gentiles dominated the Faith, they introduced the erroneous assumption regarding the dividing line (ritual/moral) which caused Christianity to err on this very important matter.

- Michael Woods; "Jesus on Homosexuality." (April 25, 2012)