The Bible supports marriage equality

As we can see from Lev 18:22 and 20:13, the bible does NOT prohibit homosexuality. It is concerned with the possibility that the possible product of a male impregnating another male would have to be disowned by one of the two males.  It is also concerned that the result of that disowning would be the end of the family line of one of the two males (which is the "dying, they will die in their blood" coda to Lev 20:13).

We see from Ruth that not only does the bible not prohibit homosexuality among women, it has furnished a paradigm for how a woman can construct a viable contract-for-life with a female partner, while at the same time completing a contract to provide offspring to the family of that partner.

The bible does NOT prohibit homosexuality, and DOES support marriage equality.  It is written very clearly in the text.

The story of Ruth: same gender marriage (women)

Al tifg’I vi leazvekh leshuv me’acharai’ikh.  Ki el asher telkhi elekh.  Uvasher talini, alin.  Amekh ami.  V’eloha’ikh elohay.   Ba’asher tamuti amut.  Ko ya’aseh YHWH li, v’ko yosif ki hamavet yafrid bene uvenekh.

“Do not urge me to leave, to turn from following you.  Where you go, I will go.  Where you stay, I will stay.  Your people are my people.  Your god is my god.  Where you die, I will die.  God will do this for me, this and more, for [only] death will separate us.”

This is beautiful and romantic.  It has been used, wrongfully, in marriage ceremonies for ages.   Why wrongfully?  Because historically, marriage ceremonies have been held between a man and a woman.  So how is this used wrongfully?  Because the speaker of these words is female, and we know from the verbs that the audience for them is also female.  Ruth says this to Naomi, the mother of her now-deceased husband.   This is the first recorded contract between women.

The book of Ruth is female-centric to a degree that is exceptional in the canon.  The story starts out in a very recognizable, traditional manner:  we are given the time:  the time of the judges.  We are told the place:  Moab.  We are told that  the story is about a family:  Elimelech , a man from Bethlehem, and Naomi his wife.  They have two sons Mahlon and Chilion, and two daughters-in-law Orpah and Ruth.

Then the narrative changes: Elimelech dies.  Naomi has completed her contract to provide his family with heirs.   Then both sons die.  Orpah and Ruth have not completed their contracts, and since she is also without the man to whom she was contracted, Naomi cannot provide them with other sons so they can complete their contracts.  Naomi decides to return to Judah because she has heard that G-d provides for the people there. 

Naomi tells her brides (כלתיה) to return to their mothers’ house (בת אמה) rather than to their fathers’ house.  By itself, it is exceptional that she instructs them to return to the house of their mother, rather than to their fathers’ house (for contrast, see Tamar/Judah).

Orpah agrees and leaves.  Ruth refuses, saying “Al tifg’I vi leazvekh leshuv me’acharai’ikh.  Ki el asher telkhi elekh.  Uvasher talini, alin.  Amekh ami.  V’eloha’ikh elohay.   Ba’asher tamuti amut.  Ko ya’aseh YHWH li, v’ko yosif ki hamavet yafrid bene uvenekh.  Do not urge me to leave, to turn from following you.  Where you go, I will go.  Where you stay, I will stay.  Your people are my people.  Your god is my god.  Where you die, I will die.  God will do this for me, this and more, for [only] death will separate us.’” 

Ruth constructs a viable contract-for-life with another woman:  Naomi.

Naomi and Ruth return to Bethlehem, Elimelech’s hometown.  Naomi hears about Boaz, a man of the family of her dead husband.  She tells Ruth to go out into the field near him, he may be favorably disposed towards Ruth because of her connection to his kinsman.

Ruth goes into the field, where she meets Boaz, the kinsman of her dead husband’s father.  Boaz tells Ruth he has heard of her and commands his male servants to look after her and make sure they leave something for her to recover to eat. (in contrast with the Levite of Judges 19, who throws his concubine out into the mob, and dismembers her after the mob has satisfied itself in abusing her).

Naomi tells Ruth that she should go to the threshing room and put herself under Boaz’s protection (so to speak).  Ruth goes, finds Boaz, and settles in with him.  He wakes, finds her and tells her that while he is indeed kin to her dead husband’s father, there is someone who is closer kin than he.  He tells her that if the nearer kinsman does not assume his obligation to complete Ruth’s contract, he himself will do it.  In the morning, he gives her food and sends her back to Naomi.

Boaz finds the nearer kinsman, and in front of a minyan (10 men of the city) tells him that Naomi is selling the land of her dead husband, and as close kin, the kinsman has the option to buy it.  The kinsman agrees to buy the land from Naomi.  Boaz tells him that Ruth is included in the sale of the land, and that in acquiring her, the kinsman would be producing heirs for Ruth’s dead husband, rather than for himself.  The kinsman refuses the deal, saying it could harm his own inheritance.  He gives the option to Boaz, who accepts, and acquires Ruth and the land.

The contract Boaz enters into is not, strictly speaking, a Levirate marriage:  he is not a brother who is assuming the contract of his deceased brother.  However, it is a form of Levirate marriage in that by accepting the contract, Boaz is knowingly providing offspring for his dead relative’s line rather than for his own.

The story of Ruth is revolutionary:  Naomi, whose husband and sons have died, instructs the women with whom her husband made contracts for progeny that they should return to their mothers’ houses.  One of those women refuses and constructs a viable contract-for-life with her.  She arranges for that woman to be acquired by a kinsman of her dead husband’s so that woman can complete the contract, initially constructed by the males of the family, to provide heirs for the male’s family.   She does this to safeguard the future of a woman who was “foreign.”  Thus, while the contract constructed between men for the preservation of the male line is kept, the contract-for-life, created by the women, to stay together until death, is also preserved.

Judges 10:1-30 Patriarchal narrative without Divine intervention

Judges 19:1-30 is known as the story of the rape and dismemberment of the concubine.  It is an odd narrative.  It seems to be an encapsulation of the Patriarchal narratives, but this encapsulation presents the tales of the Patriarchal narratives as they might have ended without the intervention of G-d.  We note that the protagonist is identified in relation to those around him.  First, he is “a Levite.”  Then, when he is with his female companion’s father, he becomes “the son-in-law.”  When he is with his servant, he is identified as “the master.”  In this way, the man is a malleable character, without his own identity, reflecting those around him.

* In those days, there was no king in Israel.  A Levite man stayed in the remote hill country of Ephraim, and he took יקח לו    a woman concubine  פילגשׁ from Bethlehem of Judah.

The man is identified by his tribe, Levite, and by his region, Ephraim.  The woman is identified by her city, Bethlehem.  He “took” her, yiqach, indicating there was a contract of some kind (money, conquest or intercourse is not stipulated).  He did NOT take her as “bride,” כלה  but as concubine   פִלגשׁ.  There has been a great deal of speculation about the exact nature of the status of the pilgash.  Since we lack specifics, the only thing that can be said is that it is evident the status is not comparable to the status of “bride”  כלה .  It is conjecturable that the pilgash was a woman the progeny by whom would not constitute a continuation of the family line.

* His concubine whored  תזנה אליו  against him and went from him to her father’s house, to Bethlehem in Judah, and she was there for four months.

In this, we hear echoes of Tamar/Judah, both in the verb and in the return to her father’s house.  Unlike Tamar/Judah, this text tells us that she whored, rather than simply dressing herself in the costume, and that she returned, presumably voluntarily, to her father’s house (where, by contrast, Judah sent Tamar in his attempt to evade the full execution of his contract with her, the “bride” he took to perpetuate the family line).

* Her husband rose and went after her to speak tenderly to her and bring her back.  A servant and a pair of donkeys were with him.  At her father’s house, they saw the girl’s father, he was glad to greet them.

In contrast with the story of Tamar/Judah, the Levite, identified as “her man,” went after her to speak tenderly to her.  Judah, when confronted with the tale that Tamar had played prostitute, demanded her death.

* His father-in-law, the girl’s father, seized יחזק him and he stayed with him for three days, and they ate and drank and lodged there.

* On the fourth day, they woke early, and he rose to go and the girl’s father said to his son-in-law, Sustain yourself with a piece of bread, and go after.

*  They sat and they ate the two of them together and they drank.  The girl’s father said to the man “Please be willing to make your heart merry”

* The man rose to go, but he urged his son-in-law again, and he stayed.

* He rose to go on the morning of the fifth day, and the girl’s father said, “please stay your heart and wait until afternoon.”  And they both ate.

* The man rose to go, he and his concubine and his servant.  His father-in-law said to him, “behold, now the day is now drawing close to evening.  Please spend the night here and make your heart happy.  Tomorrow you will wake up and go on your way home.

* But the man was not willing to stay, and rose and went, and came opposite Jebus, which is Jerusalem, and with him were two saddled donkeys and his concubine.

We seem to have an encapsulation of the Jacob/Rachel narrative, in that the girl’s father insists on the Levite remaining (as Laban required Jacob to stay and work for Rachel’s hand.)  The concubine, we note, is listed among his possessions.  His servant is not mentioned.

* They were near Jebus when the day was spent.  The youth said to his master, “Please come and let us turn to this city of Jebusites and stay in it.”

* His master said to him, “We will not turn in to a city of foreigners who are not Israelites.  We will go further to Gibeah.”

The Levite, who, while at his father-in-law’s house was referred to as “the man,” now is referred to in relation to his servant as “his master.”

* He said to his servant, “Come, let’s approach one of these places, and we will will stay in Gibeah or Ramah.”

* They travelled and went further and the sun went down on them near Gibeah which belonged to Benjamin.

* They turned there to come to stay in Gibeah, and he went in and sat by the road of the city, for no man took them into his house to stay.

In this narrative of wandering, we hear echoes of the story of Abraham.

* An old man came from his work in the field in the evening. The man was from the hill country of Ephraim and he lived as a foreigner in Gibeah.  The men of the place were Benjaminites.

The old man was a countryman of the Levite’s.

* He lifted his eyes and saw  the wayfaring man on the road of the city.  The old man asked, “where are you going and where have you come from?”

* He said to him, “we are passing from Bethlehem in Judah to the remote hill country of Ephraim.  I am from there, and I went to Bethlehem in Judah.  I am going to the house of G-d, and no man will take me into his house.

* There is straw and fodder for our donkeys, and I have also bread and wine, [my girl is] your maidservant and the young man [is] with your servants.  There is no lack of anything.”

* The old man said, “Peace to you, only let all your needs are on me.  Only do not stay on the road.”

* He took them into his house, with the donkeys, and they washed their feet and ate and drank.

* Their hearts were merry.  The men of the city, certain worthless men, surrounded the house, pounding on the door and spoke to the man who was master of the house, the old man, saying, “Send out the man who came into your house so we can have sex with him.”

This scene recalls the story of Lot.  The differences in the Lot narrative are that Lot was the protagonist and the guests who were demanded by the hooligans of the city were malachim.  In this narrative, our protagonist is not a malach, and his host is identified as an old man, hence, presumably, incapable of offering him much protection.

* The man who was the master of the house went out to them and said to them, “My brothers, please do not do evil  תרעו after this man came to my house.  Do not do this foolishness  נבלה. 

The first verb used by the old man,   תרעו , is the same verb we find in the Lot narrative:  “do evil.”

* Here is my daughter, a virgin and his concubine.  I will bring her out to you and you may rape  ענו them and do to them what is good in your eyes.  Do not do anything to this man.”

In the Lot narrative, Lot offers both of his daughters to the hooligans.  The malachim, in intervening and blinding them, forestall any need on his part to actually go through with his offer.  In this narrative, there are no malachim to intervene, and the old man, the master of the house, offers his own daughter and the concubine of his guest for the pleasure of those who have menaced his house.   This is the only occurrence of the verb “anu.”  Exactly what it means, we don’t know. It is variously translated as “ravish” or “humble.”  “Humble” seems to be rather...tame as a possible interpretation.

* But the men would not listen to him.  The man seized  יחזק his concubine and sent her to them outside, and they had sex with her and abused her all night until morning and when dawn broke, they let her go.

The verb used for the man and his concubine is the same verb used for the man and the concubine’s father: יחזק.  The verb used for the men and the concubine is the same verb used for by the men regarding their intent towards the man.  It is also the verb used by the hooligans of the Lot narrative regarding Lot: ידע .   In this instance, the verb is elucidated by its accompaniment “abused.”

* At the dawn of the day, the woman came and fell at the entrance of the house of the man where her master was, until it was light.

Where previously, she had been identified as “the girl” or “the concubine,” after a night of torture, she is now identified as “the woman.”

* In the morning, her master arose and opened the doors of the house and went out to go on his way, and behold, the woman his concubine had fallen in the entrance of the house, her hands were on the threshold.

We note the verse does NOT tell us that her master was going out to see how she has spent the night.  He was going out to go on his way.  From the text, it would seem that he had already determined that she was no longer his possession.

* And he said to her “Get up and let’s go.”  There was no answer.  The man took her on the donkey and rose up and went to his place.

* He came to his house, and he took the knife and he seized  יחזק  his concubine and he cut her up   נתח  into twelve pieces and he sent her through all the borders of Israel.

The verb used  נתח  does not simply mean “cut up.”  It is used in reference to those animals sacrificed at the Temple.

* All who saw said  “Nothing has happened, and nothing has been seen like this since the day the Israelites came up out of the land of Eqypt until this day.  Consider this, take counsel and speak.”

            We have a conflation of Patriarchal narratives that is unrelieved by the advent and intervention of G-d or of angels.  What is most horrifying about this narrative is not that a woman was abused, nor it is that she was given over to abuse by a man whose property she was (who, in theory, might have been expected to protect her).  What is particularly horrifying about this narrative is the historical span in which the abuse of the woman, and the man’s right to hand her over to abuse, was the norm.  In its own context, this narrative illustrates for us how the patriarchal narratives could have ended differently, had it not been for Divine intervention.  Arguably, that was the author’s agenda, because the narrative opens “there was no king in Israel”—no king indicates lawlessness, absence of justice, absence of mercy. Both culturally and theologically, G-d was melech hamalachim—the king of kings.  When there is no king, there is no justice, no mercy, and evil abounds. 

There are two significant things to note in the text.  The first is that the verb חזק changes in usage from "seizing" (by the girl's father) for positive purposes in the beginning of the text (to feed/shelter/entertain the Levite), to "seizing" for negative purposes at the end of the text  (to throw the girl out among the hooligans.

The second is in the coda:  Those who saw what was done said "nothing [like this] has happened and nothing like this has been seen from the days that the Israelites came out of the land of Egypt until this day.  Consider this, take counsel and speak."  We are not told if "this" refers to the Levite's throwing his concubine out to be abused, to the abuse inflicted on her by the mob or to the butchery of the girl by the Levite.  Or if "this" refers to the story as a whole.  The text does not give us any indication if this coda was intended as an expression of approval or of disapproval of the actions of the Levite and/or the mob.  We are left with a disturbing text and an amibguous  coda.  All we can say for certain is that the tenor of the text changes from kindness at its beginning to intentional brutality at its end.

The tale of Sodom prohibits bullying, not homosexuality

* And two messengers (angels) came to Sodom in the evening.  And Lot sat in the gate of Sodom, and he saw and rose to greet them, and they bowed, faces to the ground.

The traditional translation of this is “he bowed, his face to the ground.”  The problem with that translation is that the verb “bowed” is third person plural—THEY bowed.  However, since the “they” in question were “מלאכים” (messengers/angels), translators have felt uncomfortable translating the word accurately, preferring for this plural verb to have as its subject the singular individual Lot.

* And he said, behold, please, my lords, please turn to the house of your servant and stay   and wash your feet and rise and go on your way.  And they said no, [we will stay] on the road (ברחב) at night.

* And he urged them strongly, and they turned to him and came to his house, and he made for them a feast unleavened and baked and they ate.

* Before the men lay down, the men of the city of Sodom surrounded the house, from the young to the old, all the people of the quarter.

* And they called to Lot and said to him, Where are the men who came to you tonight?  Send them out to us so we will know (נדע) them.

* And Lot went to them in the doorway and shut the door behind him.

* And he said, Please, my brothers, don’t do evil (תרע).

* Behold, please, I have two daughters who have not known a man.  I will bring them to you, and you can do to them what is good in your eyes.  But to these men, please do not do anything because they have come under the shelter of my roof.

This is where it gets interesting:  Lot tells the men of the city not to do evil (and he uses the singular masculine future form rather than the plural masculine future in command—תרע—suggesting that he is going to make an agreement with them as with a single party).  He refuses to send his guests the messengers (angels) out to the men of the town, instead offers them his daughters to do to them “what is good כטב in [their] eyes.” 

It says quite a lot about socialization that commentators have chosen to notice only the desire of the men of the city to “know” (נדע) the guests/messengers/angels, yet seem to overlook the fact that the men of the city have stormed the house and bullied and threatened Lot.  The acts of group harassment and intimidation would seem to count for much less than the suggestion of sexual activity.  However, it seems that Lot was amenable to bullying, since he was willing to donate his daughters to the pleasure of the men of the village.  While daughters were useful property, as females they were not considered “people” in the sense that their autonomy was respected.  They were simply reproductive vehicles whose value lay in the advantageousness of the social contracts they could be used for.  So, as reprehensible as it is to us today, in his time and up until the advent of female sufferage, Lot’s offer of his daughters to assuage the harassment  and bullying of the men of the city was seen as proper use of female offspring: to create an advantageous contract.  In this case, the contract of offering his daughters in place of the guests was a contract to ensure his own safety, which was threatened.

It is notable that Lot says his daughters have not known a man—this indicates not simply that they are virgins, but also that they have no experience to distinguish acceptable sexual conduct from unacceptable sexual conduct.  Lot is offering them sacrifices who cannot complain that the treatment they receive is out of the norm because they have no experience of a sexual norm.

Commentators in the NRSV claim that in protecting the messengers (angels), Lot was acting with “oriental hospitality.”  This seems to suggest that somewhere there existed a social norm in which it was acceptable for groups of men to demand that visitors be provided for their sexual entertainment.  However, I have never encountered any report or study that claims that any culture has sexual use of guests/foreigners as part of its social behavior.  It is therefore more likely that the behavior of the men of the village was simply rude and discourteous

* And they said, Stand aside, and they said, one came as a foreigner and he is a judge judging  (שׁפט ישׁפט  or, if we accept that the doubling of the verb in present/future indicates intensification “he is REALLY judging”) now, we will do evil to you from them, and they pressed as a man באישָׁ against Lot strongly, and they came to break the door.

This is the second time “ישׁפט” is used.  The first time is in Gen 16:5, when Sarai says to Avram:  “I was wrong about you:  I gave my maid into your arms and she will see that she conceived and I will be despised in her eyes.  The Lord will judge (ישׁפט) between you and me.”  The use of ישׁפט in the Lot narrative suggests that the men of the city are equating Lot with G-d in passing judgment on them.  And they resent him for it.  There is no indication in the text that the men of the city are unhappy at not having sex with the guests.  Rather, the suggestion is that they are displeased that they have not succeeded at intimidating someone they perceived to be an ignorant foreigner (who, presumably, would accept nighttime bullying and harassment as a social norm).

* And the men stretched out their hands and made Lot enter his house with them and they closed the door.

            The verse is usually translated to indicate that the “men” means the guests.  However the verb used is יביאו

This is the hifil (causative) binyan, indicating that Lot was compelled to enter.

* And the men who were in the doorway of the house were struck with blindness, from the great to the small, and they wearied finding the door.

This is usually translated as “they struck the men who were at the door of the house with blindness…so they wearied themselves to find the door.”  But that doesn’t make sense:  if we understand “the men” of the previous verse to refer to the guests, then they had already pulled Lot into the house and closed the door, leaving the men of the city on the other side.  If, however, we understand that the men of the city succeeded in forcing themselves into the house, then we understand that once inside, they were struck with blindness and could not find the door to leave.  From this, we can infer that they did, in fact, enter the house forcibly and with intent to do harm.  Note there is no indication that they have succeeded in having sex with anyone.

Arguably, the confusion in the text over which men are inside the house and which are outside is deliberate:  both the men who are messengers/angels and the men of the city are identified as “enashim” without any qualifiers of “ha’ir” or “malachim.”  It is conjecturable that this deliberate confusion reflects the chaos of the scene as it is played out.

* And the men said to Lot, Who else is here?  Your daughters and the men they are contracted to and all those of yours in the city you brought to the place.

Because we are destroying this place because their outcry is so great before G-d, and G-d sent us to destroy it.

            The guests tell Lot to get all his people together and flee the city because objections to its residents has become so great that G-d has decided to destroy it.  There is no claim that G-d is objecting to the citizens’ request for sex with men.  More likely, the objections have been to the citizens’ behavior in engaging in harassment and intimidation.  The city is destroyed because its inhabitants are bullies, not because they have sex with men.

Abba, in Aramaic, is NOT "Dad," So much for Jesus calling God "Dad."

Post Vatican II doctrine holds that a salient aspect of Jesus' radicalism was that he had the audacity to call G-d "Dad."

This hypothesis is based on the recognition that אבא means Dad.  In modern Hebrew.

So, assuming post-Vatican II doctrine is correct, not only was Jesus audaciously radical, he was linguistically 2000 years ahead of his time.

However, if one assumes that Jesus was speaking Aramaic (which is generally supposed to have been the vernacular of the period and location), אבא, in Aramaic means "the father."

Aramaic, while using Hebrew letters, has something of a different grammatical structure:  in Hebrew the definite article  הַ  is attached to the noun as a prefix. In Aramaic, the definite article is א and it is attached to the noun as a suffix.

Thus in Hebrew "the father" would be האב, while in Aramaic, it would be אבא.

This is also consistent with social practice of the era--the male parent, as owner, lord and master of his family, was not generally treated with familiarity--that radical shift in familial behaviour was a creation of the 20 century, following the adoption of universal sufferage.  In the ancient world, the male parent (immanent as well as transcendent) was understood to be owner, lord and master of his domicile/domain, and that primacy was unquestioned.  Until the advent of universal sufferage.

The notion that the pronunciation of the tetragrammaton was lost is fiction

Popular wisdom has it that the pronunciation of the Name was "lost," but that it was pointed with the vowels for Adonay.  The transliteration of the consonants YHWH + the vowels for Adonay = Jehovah.

Well....not quite.

Jehovah is the product of the combination of YHWH + the vowels for Adonay.  That part is correct.  The incorrect part is that the text was pointed with the vowels for "adonay."

Why is this incorrect?  because texts of the time were without spacing between words and lacked nekudot (vowel points).

So how do we get "Adonay" as the name substituted for the Name that cannot be pronounced?

The LXX.

We find in the LXX that the Name is not transliterated from Hebrew into Greek (an impossibility because Greek lacks a consonantal sound approximating the soft "h" of ה .  So there was no means by which the Name could be represented as its full complicated verb.  The Name that was substituted in the text was one that would be recognized by all, Greek-speaking/literate Judeans and Greeks/Romans, as a Name to be respected:  κυριος , "lord."

The coda to Lev 20:13, "dying, they will die," is not necessarily a threat

Lev 20:13 contains a coda that Lev 18:22 does not have:  מות יומתו דמיהם בם:  dying, they will die, their blood on/in them.

That sounds dire.  But is it?

Bible scholarship says that when the very is duplicated, as this is
(מות יומתו) it acts as an intensifier.  Thus, "dying they will die" should be interpreted as "they're REALLY going to die."

That still sounds dire.  But is it a threat, or a statement of fact, based on the presumption that a male, attempting to impregnate another male, will fail to do so, and the result of that failure will be that both lines of descent are extinguished due to lack of progeny?  Conversely, it could also mean that the successful impregnation of a male by a male would result in one of the two having to disown the progeny, thereby ending his own family line.

Either situation would make the coda true without making it a threat of harm or punishment to be meted out.

Lev 20:13 also does not prohibit homosexuality. Go figure.

Ok, you say, so maybe Lev 18:22 doesn't prohibit homosexuality.  Lev 20:13 does.

Except, of course, that it doesn't.  In Lev 20:13, we again find משׁכבי אישׁה.  Specifically, the verse says  אִשׁ אשׁר ישׁכבה את זכר משׁכבי אִשׁה בועבה עדו שׁניהם מות יומתו דמיהם בם

"A man who will lie with a male in woman's beds both do ill, they will die, their blood on them."

That sounds dire.  I have translated "toevah" as "ill" because, as we have seen, the severity of the translation depends on the proximity to the Judean people.  I am assuming, in this instance, that the proximity to the Judean people is not the principal issue.

But we have noticed that Lev 18:22 does not make such a harsh declaration.  מה נשׁתנה?  How has this made itself different?

Lev 20:12 says  אשׁ אהר ישׁכב את כלתו מות ימתו שׁניהם תבל עשׂו דמִהמ בם
A man who lies with the woman he contracted to provide heirs for his son (כלתו) both will die, they have made confusion (תבל).  Their blood is on them.

Lev 20:14 says אשׁ אשׁר יקח את־אשׁה ואת־אמה הוא באשׁ ישׂרפו אתו ואתהן תהיה זמה בתוככם
A man who lies with a woman who is also a mother will be burned with fire.  There will be no immorality in your midst.

Le 20:14 says   אישׁ אשׁר יתן שׁכבתו בבהמה מות יומת את הבֶהמה תהרגו
A man who gives himself to lie with an animal will die, the animal will be killed.

All of these events have something in common--the possibility of producing offspring the ownership of which creates problems:  The man who lies with the woman he has acquired to produce heirs for his son (think Judah/Tamar), creates a situation whereby the ownership of the offspring could disinherit the son for whom the woman was contracted.

The man who lies with a woman who is already a mother creates the difficulty of presuming to attempt to steal the offspring of another man.

The man who gives himself to lie with an animal risks th animal producing offspring that is half-human half-animal.

So again, rather than encountering a text that prohibits homosexuality, we find a text in which ownership of the product of the union is a serious legal question, the disputation of which is unwelcome.

First instance of anti-semitism or religio licita? Catalyst for Christianity or Greco-Roman real politik?

At this time of year, it is common to seek a familiar face to retroject onto the person of Jesus.  It is common to revisit what is presumed to be known of the world at that time.  Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, is recalled.  What is not recalled is how Judea came to possess a Roman governor, since at the presumptive time of Jesus, Judea had not been conquered by Rome.

Christian scholarship contends that in the Greco-Roman world, Judaism was a "religio licita."  The phrase is from Tertullian, writing in the late 2nd/early 3rd century.  That alone should make the hypothesis suspect.

Jewish scholarship holds that the destruction of the Temple was the first act of deliberate Anti-Semitism in the west.  Christian scholarship contends that it was the catastrophe that proved the catalyst for the growth of Christianity as a major religion.  Neither are accurate.

In the ancient world, at the time of the rise of Greco-Roman civilization, Judeans were recognized as some of the fiercest fighters, and were sought after as mercenaries.  There were five fully-functioning Temples to the G-D of Judea.  One of those 5 temples was that of the Elephantine garrison community in upper Egypt.

We know from references in Tacitus that Cleopatra had engaged the Elephantine community as an addition to her forces.  We also know from Tacitus that when drought struck Egypt, and pleas were made to Cleopatra to release the corn stores and she refused, the Elephantine garrison switched sides and gave its strength to Augustus, ensuring his victory.

Victory as the result of assistance from Judean mercenaries was problematic for Augustus.  The problem did not arise because the aid was from mercenaries, but because it was not possible to assimilate those mercenaries into the Roman legions.  It was customary to incorporate allies into the Roman empire by giving them a place in the army--to facilitate this, the foreign gods worshipped by foreign fighters were given their Roman approximation.  This was not possible with the Judean mercenaries, whose god could not be represented in physical form, whose name could not be pronounced.  It was impossible to permit the Judean mercenaries to depart, with the possibility that they could rise against Rome.  It was equally impossible to assimilate them into the Roman army.

Augustus found a medium--claim Judea as a Roman "protectorate."  To forestall the possibility that the Judean mercenaries might rise up against him and Rome, Augustus decreed that Judeans were not permitted to carry arms.  In this way, the Judean mercenaries who enabled his victory were both "included" in the Roman Empire, and removed as a threat to it.  Judaism was not a "religio licita" because Judeans had not been conquered, and therefore had not been compelled to renounce their god or his worship.

The Jewish War was an astonishment to the Romans because this people who had been disarmed not only found arms, but made good use of them.  A people who were believed to no longer be a threat suddenly became an active threat.

In this context, the destruction of the Temple was not the first known act of Anti-Semitism in the west, but an act of Greco-Roman realpolitik:  the ancient world's way of saying "my god is bigger than your god and to prove it, I'll knock your god's temple down."  This was believed to be sufficient to show an enemy that the enemy's god was not stronger, and therefore the conquered people (and their god) were now subject to the stronger, victorious god.

Since this was not the first time the Temple had been destroyed (as attested to by the "rededication" as represented in the books of the Maccabees), it was not a cataclysmic action that provoked the uprising of a new sect that identified itself as "christians."

The Bar Kokhba Revolt of 132-136, on the other hand...a revolt by a people who had been conquered, who had been disarmed as a result of that conquest, and yet who found the arms and the courage to rise a second time...

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.