Lev 18:22 does NOT prohibit homosexuality

Leviticus 18:22 does not say homosexuality is an abomination.  This statement seems to be entirely contrary to the text.  It is not. Leviticus 18: 22 is but one component of a pericope that begins with Lev 18:20 and ends with Lev 18:23.  The pericope is an inclusio that opens and closes with stipulations concerning impregnating a woman.  The opening stipulation prohibits impregnating a woman of “your people.”  The closing stipulation prohibits permitting an animal to impregnate a woman.  These two verses define what the text means by "mishkaveh ishah," the phrase in Lev 18:22 that has been used to condemn homosexuality.  If the text does not prohibit homosexuality, how did it acquire that interpretation?  To answer this, we need to examine both the Hebrew and the Greek texts.

            Paired with Lev 18:21, Lev 18:22 appears in the middle of the periscope: they are two verses that illuminate the difficulties of possessing offspring.   In Lev 18:21, we find a prohibition against giving one's offspring to a foreign god. In Lev 18:22 we find the prohibition against sleeping with a man "mishkaveh ishah."  Since the rest of the prohibitions in the pericope deal with impregnating a woman, these two prohibitions seem out of place.  They are not.  In Lev 18:22, the writers of the text identified as a problem the possibility of the impregnation of a male by a male, the subsequent dispute of ownership of the offspring, and the requirement that one of those two males would have to disown his offspring.  

            The pericope Leviticus 18:20-23 says:

            “ve el ishat ametkha lo titen shechavtekha lizroa letameh b;  ve mizarekha lo titen leheavir lemelekh;  velo techalel et shem elohekha. Ani YHVH; ve et zachar lo tishkavehmishkaveh ishah.  To’evah hu.  Uvcol behemah lo titen shecavekha letameh ba.  Ve ishah lo taamodlifne behemah lerivah, tevel hu.”

            "And on a woman of your neighbor [ishat ametkhah] you will not give your sleep to plant seed [sh'kvetekha lezroa].  You will not contaminate [tameh] yourself in this way.  And your seed [zeroa--offpsring] you will not give over to Molech and you will not desecrate the name of your god.  I am G-d.  And you will not lie with a male [zachar] in beds of a woman [mishkave ishah], this is loathsome [to'evah];  and you will not give your sleep [to plant seed] with all animals, you will not contaminate [tameh] yourself with this.  And you will not permit an animal to impregnate a woman.  It is confusion [tevel]."  

            The first thing we notice about the pericope is that all of the verbs are in the second person, masculine atid (future). They are not in the imperative.  This tells us that the “commands” are not, in fact, commands.  Rather, they are declarative statements which form a contract (you will do this to keep your part of the contract;  I will do something to keep my part of the contract).  This also tells us that the contract is addressed to each individual male  in the intended audience.

            The opening prohibition, Lev 18:20, refers to sleeping with a woman "of your neighbor" for the purpose of impregnating her.  At issue is not simply the matter of engaging in sexual intercourse.  At issue is the matter of planting zeroa, seed:  creating offspring.  The phrase ”titen sh'kvehtekha lezroa,” “give your sleep to plant seed,” gives us an idea of the ancient Hebrew understanding of conception. For the purposes of this paper, we will examine only evidence that is contained within the Hebrew canon of TaNaKh, under the presupposition that we cannot say for certain whether Hebrew communities that used the text were acquainted with or accepted the anatomical/medical knowledge possessed by other cultures of the time.  Since we lack any documentary evidence supporting a hypothesis that Hebrew communities did have acquaintance with that knowledge, it is reasonable to base our conclusions solely on the text we do know Hebrew communities made use of:  TaNaKh.

            From this, we can infer that ancient Hebrews believed that impregnation was caused by a male implanting his seed. The obligation to create offspring was placed squarely on the man, rather than on the woman.   In Gen 9:1, God tells Noah and his sons Genesis "Go forth and be many.”  From this, it is inferable that in the view of the ancient Hebrews, woman contributed nothing to the conception and growth of the fetus:  that she was merely the receptacle of the seed.  The male who implanted seed in her was the owner of the seed and of the offspring into which it developed.  

            We see this in the text concerning the daughters of Zelophahad.  Num 27:1-3 has been upheld as the prooftext for permitting women to achieve equal rights, specifically rights of inheritance, yet Num 36:6-9 makes it evident that the notion of male ownership of offspring is not limited to the immediate male parent, but extends back into the male ancestors and forward into future offspring:  "let [the daughters of Zelophahad] marry whom they think best, only it must be into a clan of their father's tribe that they are married, so that no inheritance of the Israelites will be transferred from one tribe toanother;  for all Israelites will retain the inheritance of their ancestral tribes."

            The reference to "a woman of your neighbir" takes us to the heart of the matter:  the pericope is not about sleeping with any member of the general public.  It is about matters that will cause difficulties for the family.  "Ishat ametkhah," “a woman of your neighbor" is an expeditious way of including all possible female relations, including in-laws, who are outside the relationship for which sexual relations are permitted, without having to list each and every prohibited female. 

            The text says that impregnating a woman of your neighbor will result in your making yourself "tameh:" contaminated.  ""Tameh" is usually translated as "contamination," in a sense that means "ritual impurity.  “Ttameh met" is corpse contamination:  the ritual impurity of contact with a dead body.  Planting seed in a woman of “your neighbor,” a woman with whom you did not have a contract that permitted sexual intercourse, would cause contamination by causing confusion over the paternity of the result of that planting and the line that descends from it.

            The next verse, Lev 18:21, contains a prohibition against giving your seed (your offspring) to a foreign god, and desecrating G-d.   The first part of the verse is a direct prohibition.  The second part of the verse seems paradoxical:  you will not desecrate your god.  The text does NOT say "you will not praise Moloch as your god." It says "you will not desecrate your god." The statement that follows those two prohibitions is the assertion:   "I am your God." If the auditor is giving seed [offspring] to another god, thus would constitute disowning that offspring, thus desecrating God.  Hence, this verse could easily (and logically) be translated "do not disown your offspring." The act of giving offspring to Moloch and desecrating God is not designated "tevel" nor is it called "to'evah."  It is simply and directly prohibited by G-d.

Immediately following this prohibition against disowning seed [offspring], we come to Lev 18:22.   This verse prohibits a male from sleeping with a male “mishkaveh ishah.” This text has been translated as "sleeping with a man as with a woman."  However, the text does not say "sleeping with a man as with a woman."  "Mishkaveh ishah" is a smichut that would be better translated as "beds of a woman.”  “Mihkaveh ishah” is a phrase that has many components to it.  It does not mean sleeping with a woman as an expression of love or as a form or of recreation.  

There are two matters of note regarding this phrase:  first, we should note that the phrase is NOT in the singular (bed of a woman), which would be “mishkav ishah.” Second, we find the word
“mishkveh” as a smichut construct appears in only one other place in TaNaKh.  We find it in Gen 49:4.  When Jacob identifies his sons by their natures, he says of Reuben: “Uncontrollable as water, you shall no longer excel.  Because you went up unto your father’s bed; then you defiled [chillalta] it—you went up onto my couch.” (For “chillal,” see also Lev 19:29, Lev 21:9, Lev 21:15:  Chillal is used in the sense of defilement by prostitution.) It is obvious that in this instance, “mishkaveh” is used in the masculine plural smichut construct.  Jacob is not accusing Reuben of having sex with his own father (Jacob).  Nor is he accusing Reuben of having sex with his male ancestors (his “fathers”); it is more likely that he is accusing Reuben of having intercourse with one or more of Jacob’s women, thus causing confusion over the paternity of the offspring.

            If we accept the evidence that the author(s) of Lev 18:22 intended the phrase to use the masculine plural smichut construct, then we have to try to understand the intended meaning of that phrase.  The phrase “beds of a woman” is a loaded one: we noted in the opening verse, that “shekaveh lizeroa” is "sleeping to plant seed."  Thus lying in "mishkaveh ishah" (beds of a woman) suggests that there is that there is the possibility of "shakev l'zroa," “sleeping with to implant seed.” "Mishkaveh ishah" also connotes the bed in which the woman lies to deliver the seed that was implanted., This explains why the smichut is in the plural rather than in the singular: it is not referring only to the bed of conception, but also to the bed of delivery.  If the author(s) had meant the phrase to mean “beddings of a woman,” in the sense of “having intercourse with a woman,”  the singular of “bedding” would be the feminine noun “mishkavah,”  rather than the masculine “mishkav.”  The plural of the feminine noun would be “mishkavot.”  The smichut construct form of the feminine plural would be “mishkavot ishah.” We should note that the word “mishkavah.,” “bedding” in the sense of having intercourse, does not appear in TaNaKh.  The only instance in which we find “mishkavah” in TaNakh is as the singular masculine noun with a third person feminine possessive suffix, “her bed.”  We find this reference in Lev 15:22, as one of the commands regarding the woman who is niddah:  “Anyone who touches her bed will wash his clothes in water and be unclean until evening.”  However, that is not what the text says. “Mishkaveh” is the smichut  masculine plural of “mishkav” [bed].   The text says “mishkaveh ishah:”  “beds of a woman. “  If we understood the phrase “mishkaveh ishah” to mean two men copulating in order to procreate, the notion seems ridiculous: we know how conception occurs.  However, the ancient world lacked our knowledge of biology.  We see in the text that they believed impregnation to be the result of a male implanting seed. 

            The act of sleeping with a man in "woman's beds" is called "to'evah," loathsome, rather than "tameh," "contaminated."  "To'evah" is another difficult word to translate.  In some instances in the text it is translated as "loathsome" or "detestable." In Gen 46:34:  the shepherds of the text are described as "to'evot mitsrayim:”  "loathsome," to the Egyptians. In other instances, “to’evah” is unequivocally translated as "abomination."  Why is there a difference in the translation?  The distinction seems to be to how closely the action is related to the ancient Hebrew community.  If the situation pertained to someone outside the ancient Hebrew community, "to'evah" meant "loathsome."  if the situation pertained to someone within the ancient Hebrew community, "to'evah" meant "abomination."  the difference seems small.  It is not.

            In the final verse of the pericope, Lev 18:23, the auditor is prohibited from sleeping with all animals [to impregnate them].  This is called "tameh:" contamination.  Sleeping with a woman of one's own people for the purpose of impregnating her is on the same level of distaste as sleeping with an animal to impregnate it:  both acts would cause perpetrator to become contaminated.  The contamination would devolve upon the result of the implanting of the seed:  in the came of implanting seed into a woman of your people to whom you are not contracted, you would be creating a problem ownership of the seed, which would, in turn, create a problem for inheritance.  That same principle would apply to the result of implanting seed into an animal: the result of that implanting would create problems for the line of descent.

            The verse also prohibits the auditor from permitting an animal to  impregnate a woman.  That, according to the text, is confusion, "tevel," (rather than "tameh" or "to'evah").  The text does not say that the woman would be “tameh” contaminated.  Rather, permitting the animal to impregnate a woman would be "tevel."  "Tevel" is a difficult word to translate:  some have translated it as "confusion."  In other instances, it has been translated as "incest."  Obviously, in this verse, it would not make sense to translate "tevel" as "incest," so the notion of a woman potentially bearing the offspring of a beast must have presented the community with something that could cause confusion.  Would the result of the implanting belong to the beast that impregnated the woman, or to the human male who owned the beast the implanted the seed? 

            We see that this periscope concerns conception and the ownership of the product of conception. At the heart of the pericope, we find a reference to prohibiting giving one's seed [offspring] over to Moloch and desecrating G-d, followed by the assertion "I am your God."  This verse seems out of place:  it contains no obvious sexual activity.   However, this verse refers to "seed."  "Seed" is the glue that binds the pericope together.   Paired with this verse at the heart of the pericope is that verse which has been used to condemn homosexuality:  the prohibition against a male lying with a male in “woman’s beds.”

            So now we have the beginnings of an answer to our question:  what does Lev 18:22 actually prohibit?  

            It should be pointed out that the ancients had to believe it was unlikely that any male would give his offspring over to a foreign god.  This would represent a conflict of beliefs:  why would a father give his offspring to a foreign god?  That is not a reasonable action.  It would suggest that the parent has disowned the offspring.  It should also be pointed out that those in the ancient world presumably possessed the usual faculties of observation, and presumably were capable of counting the number of orifices present in a woman as opposed to those present in a male.  It should also be pointed out that those in the ancient world were presumably capable of noting from which orifice the offspring emerged when the term of pregnancy ended, and that males do not possess such an orifice.  Putting two injunctions against behavior that had to be understood as unlikely (at best) together in the middle of verses that concern behavior regarding the production of that offspring constitutes a form of building a fence around the law.   

"You will not lie with a male ‘mishkaveh ishah.’" In the opening verse, we noted that “shekaveh lizeroa” is "sleeping to impregnate."  Thus lying in "mishkaveh ishah"(a woman's bed) suggests "shakev l'zroa:" to sleeping with male in order to impregnate him.   From this, we can deduce the "abomination" of Lev 18:  the notion of a male implanting seed into a male with the likelihood that the male.  The male who is the receptacle might then produce offspring the ownership of which could be disputed, because zeroa [seed/ offspring] was owned by the male.  From a legal standpoint, that problem was horrifying: if a male impregnated another male, one of those two males, either the one impregnating or the one impregnated, would have to relinquish rights to the offspring and to the line of descendants that offspring would produce [cf Num 36:6-9].  As we have seen, the text has declared that disowning one's offspring is prohibited by God. 

The text does not prohibit homosexuality. It does not say "God hates gays."  It says the situation that would arise from a male impregnating a male was "to'evah"--a situation that would be outside the parameters of anything the community could accept. because of the situation that could result from that impregnation:  God forbids disowning offspring, Yet if a male impregnated another male, one of those two males would have to disown the resulting offspring.  That was the abomination.

            So how, then, do we arrive at the understanding that the text prohibits homosexuality?  The Hebrew text clearly does not do so.  We find the answer the LXX.  The LXX is a Greek translation of a Hebrew document, which means that the translator(s) rendered the text according to their understanding of what the text said.  The pericope, in Greek reads:  

            20καὶ πρὸς τὴν γυναῖκα τοῦ πλησίον σου οὐ δώσεις κοίτην σπέρματός σου ἐκμιανθῆναι πρὸς αὐτήν 21καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ σπέρματός σου οὐ δώσεις λατρεύειν ἄρχοντι καὶ οὐ βεβηλώσεις τὸ ὄνομα τὸ ἅγιον ἐγὼ κύριος 22καὶ μετὰ ἄρσενος οὐ κοιμηθήσῃ κοίτην γυναικός βδέλυγμα γάρ ἐστιν 23καὶ πρὸς πᾶν τετράπουν οὐ δώσεις τὴν κοίτην σου εἰς σπερματισμὸν ἐκμιανθῆναι πρὸς αὐτό καὶ γυνὴ οὐ στήσεται πρὸς πᾶν τετράπουν βιβασθῆναι μυσερὸν γάρ ἐστιν

(and with the wife of your neighbor you will not give a [marriage] bed of your seed you will not defile yourself with her.  And of your seed you will not give to serve a ruler;  and you will not profane the holy name;  I am the Lord.  And with a male you will not sleep [marriage] bed of a female for it is an abomination.  And with any quadruped you will not give your [marriage] bed in seed, to be polluted with it, a woman will not present herself before any quadruped to have connection with it;  for it is an abomination.)

            The LXX offers us a clue:  the text is a nearly verbatim translation of Hebrew into Greek. However. There are some differences in the text.  In 18:20, we notice that the LXX text is an accurate translation of the verse “ametkha” (your people) is rendered “plesion sou”:  (your neighbor).   This would lead us to believe the rest of the pericope will be similarly faithful to the Hebrew text.  That is not the case.

            In the second verse of the pericope, we find “mem lamed kaf” translated as “ruler” (archon), rather than as “king” (basileus), which would have been a more reasonable, more literal translation.  It is arguable that this translational choice was made because at the time of the translation (under Ptolemy Philadelphus, according the Letter to Aristeas), the Judeans did not have a king—so to translate “mem lamed kaf” as “basileus” could make confusion to a Greek-speaking audience whose acquaintance with Hebrew-speaking people included the knowledge that those Hebrew-speaking people lacked a king.  However, we also find that translational choice aside the import of the verse has not been reduced:  the goal of the command is directed at cautioning against giving one’s seed to serve another leader, and a caution against profaning G-d, and concludes with the statement, “I am Lord (Kurios)”  The translational choice of “Lord” for the Tetragrammaton is an interesting one, indicating that the translator(s) recognized that the Tetragrammaton was used as a representation of the Name, but also recognized that the nikud used with the Tetragrammaton were those for “Adonay.”  Between the choice of “archon” for “mem lamed kaf,” and “Kurios” for the Tetragrammaton, we see that the translator(s) had an intimate understanding of Hebrew traditioning, but not necessarily an understanding of how to best present it to a non-Hebrew-literate audience.

            In the third verse, we come to a problematic translation.  The translation is problematic because Greek has no equivalent of the Hebrew smichut construction.  The Greek translation is “And with a male you will not sleep [marriage] bed of a female for it is an abomination.”  The Greek text preserves the noun “arsen” for zachar, and uses “gunaikos” (genitive, singular feminine)  as an attempt to create the smichut construction.  The problem with the Greek translation is that it is inaccurate.  Greek has no equivalent for masculine/feminine nouns which convey different ideas similar to “mishkav/mishkevah.”  Presumably because of this, the translator(s) chose to use a simpler Greek translation, making the noun “mishkav” singular and using the genitive case as an equivalent for the smichut construct.  In using the Greek word κοίτην, the complexity of the verse has been removed.   Rather than translating the verse as “the beds of a woman,” the translator(s), opted to make a plural noun singular thus changing the reading of the text.

            It would seem then, that the matter of the negative interpretation of the text derives from the Greek content, rather than from the Hebrew.  It would seem that in an attempt to reconcile different ideas represented in the Greek and Hebrew texts, commentators and exegetes opted to use the simpler, Greek version, and to redact that into the more complex Hebrew text.  The Hebrew text is quite clear:  the text does not prohibit homosexuality.  It does prohibit disowning offspring.

            It would not be the first, or the only, time that such a misunderstanding occurred in a situation where two different Judaic cultures misunderstood one another, because it is reasonable to presume that the Greek text was understood by a Greek-literate and encultured audience, while the Hebrew text was understood by a Hebrew-literate and encultured audience.  It is possible that the Hebrew-literate audience, was aware of the substitution of the feminine singular Greek word and presumed that if the Greek text used this, there had to have been a “lost” feminine-noun interpretation of “mishkaveh.”  It would not be the first time this type of inter-and intracultural misunderstanding has occurred.  Ashkenazim pronounce “tav” as an “s,”  under the mistaken impression that Sephardim pronounce the letter “tav” as an “s.”  Sephardim, however do not pronounce “tav” as an “s.”  Sephardim pronounce “tav” as a hard “t” similar to the phoneme used for “c” and “z” in the Castillian lisp..  When Sephardim transliterated Hebrew words into Spanish, rather than translating “tav” as a “t,” or even as a “th,” they translated “tav as a “z” which they pronounced as “th” according to the Castilian rules of the phoneme.  Thus “tallit” was transliterated as “talliz,” but pronounced as “tallith.”  Ashkenazim, reading Sephardic texts and lacking knowledge of Castilian phonetics, read “talliz” and decided that Sephardim pronounced “tav” as an “s.”  It is very probable that a similar misunderstanding occurred with the use of the feminine singular noun in the Greek text as a replacement for the masculine plural in the Hebrew text:  Hebrew-encultured Judeans knew there was an alternate usage in the Greek text, but lacking any understanding of why the  texts differed, redacted their interpretation to include an otherwise non-existent interpretation of the word “mishakveh” to reconcile the Hebrew and Greek texts.

Contemporary scholarship opines that the text referred to an ancient Judean distaste for the Greek practice of pederasty.  This is an interesting argument, which the text, unfortunately, does not support.  The contention is that the use of “zachar” (a word that is not age-specific) was meant to warn older men from intercourse with younger men, and vice versa.   However, the word “zachar” is also not species-specific, and there is no indication that the ancient Greeks had a practice of encouraging men to engage in intercourse with animals.  There is, however, a verse that prohibits women from such intercourse, and there are Greek and Roman myths that feature such interactions. 

Greco-Roman mythology that features a hero as a product of divine-but-disguised-as-animal males impregnating a human females seems to be an explanation of how certain humans acquire what seemed to be superhuman abilities—the paternity of the hero was, obviously, divine and the divine father impregnated the mother while in the form of another species.  The verse enjoining women from intercourse with animals would seem to be an effort to discourage ancient Judean women from behaving as their ancient Greek and Roman counterparts.   This seems to support the notion that the prohibition against male/male intercourse was a reaction to Greco-Roman pederastic practices.  However, the significant feature of the Greco-Roman disguised-divine paternity was not a matter of inter-species intercourse, but a matter of paternity:  the narratives explained, not that the hero was superhumanly gifted because his father was a swan, but that his father was a god who had the power to disguise his true nature and present himself as a swan.  Therefore, at issue was not a matter of distaste for interspecies intercourse, but a concern for protecting paternal rights:  the presumed disguised-divine entity who impregnated the woman was the “real” father,  not the human male to whom she was contracted.  The injunction against female-beast intercourse seems more likely to have been aimed at preventing just such an eventuality.

If this is the case, the male-male verse may not then have anything to do with reacting against Greco-Roman practice, and may, in fact, be  an attempt at avoiding a matter of dispute that even Solomon would be unable to resolve:  two males both of whom have legitimate claims to a single infant, one by reason of impregnating, the other by reason of being impregnated.   The notion of a male producing offspring also appears in Greco-Roman literature, in the form of Athena/Minerva springing fully formed from the head of Zeus/Jupiter.  The fact that the Greco-Roman narrative presents Athena/Minerva as emerging from the head of Zeus/Jupiter, rather than another part of his anatomy, seems to indicate that Greco-Romans were acquainted with basic reproductive structures, and were attempting to create a narrative whereby a woman of intelligence was produced by a man without the assistance of a female receptacle.  However, the Greco-Roman narrative was implicitly aware of the fact that the seed from which Athena/Diana grew had to be solely the property of Zeus/Jupiter, hence her emergence from his head (an anatomical structure that is not usually associated with producing infants).  If we were seeking a model defending a male producing an infant, without the assistance of a female, we would find it in the Athena/Diana narrative., a narrative which contrived the birth in such a way as to ensure that there could be no claim that Zeus/Jupiter had been impregnated by another male.

The notion that Lev 18:22 is affected by Greek is not without merit, but not in the way that scholars have proposed.  The text was affected by reception of the Septuagint text, which used the feminie plural noun, rather than a masculine plural one.  To rectify the matter, to avoid the messy implications that are already present in the text, and to reconcile the use of the Greek feminine plural noun with the Hebrew masculine plural noun, exegetes simply conflated the two, creating a new interpretation of “mishkavim” (beds) as a feminine plural “beddings.”  However, that understanding of the translation is unique to this text:  there is no other text that makes that such a use of “mishkavim.”

To achieve an understanding of the text as an injunction against homosexuality, the text has traditionally been presented as isolated, individual verses.   It is apparent, though, that the verses are a cohesive whole, all of which revolve around paternity.  The most telling of these is the injunction against giving seed to “Moloch” (which the Septuagint renders as “archon,” an indication that at the time of its inception, the ancient Judean world did not have a king).  The verse enjoining the giving of offspring to Moloch is a clear prohibition against disowning offspring.  The verse prohibiting disowning offspring precedes the verse enjoining a male from lying in the beds (mishkavim) of a woman.  The ordering of the verses was not accidental, nor was it coincidental.  The intent of the pericope was to enjoin males from engaging in behavior that could cause confusion over the ownership of the offspring, confusion which by its nature, could cause discord, and possibly even conflict, within the community.